Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:52 — 58.0MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Stitcher | Email | RSS | More
Bryan Clayton – GreenPal
[00:00:14]
program can be found at the podcast
link at DrawInCustomers.com.
[00:00:18]
We are locally written
by Bank of Sun Prairie.
[00:00:21]
My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur,
[00:00:23]
author, speaker and helpful coach to small
business owners across the country.
[00:00:27]
And today we are welcoming/
prepared to learn from Bryan Clayton,
[00:00:31]
the CEO of GreenPal,
the Uber of lawn mowing.
[00:00:35]
So, Bryan, how are you doing today?
I’m doing great, James.
[00:00:38]
Thanks for having me on.
Thanks for thanks for coming on here.
[00:00:41]
I am curious, what is the Uber of lawnmowing?
Yeah.
[00:00:45]
So GreenPal is an app that anybody can
download to order a lawn mowing service.
[00:00:50]
So rather than having to call around
[00:00:52]
on Craigslist or Facebook or Yelp,
you can just download GreenPal.
[00:00:55]
You’ll get hooked up with a great lawn
mowing service in less than a couple
[00:00:58]
of minutes hire them
the come mow, your grass.
[00:01:00]
And if everything goes well,
you can just set it and forget it
[00:01:02]
for the rest of the year and everything
that happens in the background magically.
[00:01:06]
And so it takes a lot of the pain points
of finding a good lawn mowing service
[00:01:10]
and paying them and just
manages it all for you.
[00:01:13]
Been at this, we’re around eight years.
Eight years? Been been at it for eight
[00:01:18]
years we’re an eight
year overnight success.
[00:01:20]
We have over several hundred thousand
homeowners using the platform to get their
[00:01:24]
grass cut and doing 20 million
dollars a year in revenue.
[00:01:27]
So we started off very, very humbly,
[00:01:30]
just me and to my co-founders
hacking away on the project.
[00:01:33]
We ended our first year
in 2013 with 20 customers.
[00:01:38]
Half of them were my friends and family.
[00:01:40]
Here we are, eight years later,
[00:01:41]
have several hundred
thousand people using the app.
[00:01:44]
Very cool.
Very cool.
[00:01:46]
You know, it’s interesting.
[00:01:47]
I have a call answering service and we answer phones
[00:01:49]
for a few landscaper lawn mowing people
and generally speaking, by,
[00:01:57]
May,
[00:01:58]
they’re telling us that somebody calls
for service, just tell them we’re booked.
[00:02:01]
Yeah. That’s as far as lawn mowing goes.
It’s very common.
[00:02:05]
And then you get to your point.
[00:02:07]
My first company
was a landscaping company.
[00:02:10]
I started out I started a lawn mowing
business in high school as a way to make
[00:02:14]
extra cash stuck with that business
all through high school,
[00:02:18]
all through college, over a 15 year period
of time, built it into one of the largest
[00:02:22]
landscaping companies in the state
of Tennessee where I live.
[00:02:25]
Got it
over ten million dollars a year
[00:02:26]
in revenue, built it over 150 employees.
[00:02:29]
And in 2013, that company was acquired
[00:02:32]
by one of the largest landscaping
companies in the United States.
[00:02:34]
So building that company from scratch,
just me and a push mower to
[00:02:38]
150 people,
hundred trucks going out every day.
[00:02:40]
Yeah. I learned a lot about
[00:02:42]
the landscaping business,
how it works from the inside out.
[00:02:44]
And to your point, yes.
[00:02:47]
People to make a living mowing yards.
They’re busy.
[00:02:49]
They’re on a lawn mower every day.
It’s hard to reach them.
[00:02:51]
It’s hard to get them on the phone.
[00:02:53]
It’s hard to get them to quote
your your need for you.
[00:02:55]
And so our app takes care of all
[00:02:57]
that and actually helps the smaller
service providers that might be just
[00:03:00]
getting started, helps them really
get going and making material income.
[00:03:05]
Yeah, it’s interesting because there’s
[00:03:07]
other when I talk to other people about
lawn mowing services and all that jazz,
[00:03:12]
you’ll hear the the typical stories
that you hear with a lot of
[00:03:16]
service businesses, I guess,
where somebody showed up for a little
[00:03:20]
while and then they all of a sudden
just ghosted, they stop coming
[00:03:23]
no call, no show, no response,
or they’ll show up
[00:03:28]
and maybe their employees kind of did a
not so great job or it’s just cumbersome.
[00:03:34]
I guess it’s interesting that your
platform kind of gives it more
[00:03:38]
of a corporate feel as far
as a trustworthy foundation.
[00:03:43]
So that there is because I imagine
there are reviews and stuff like that.
[00:03:47]
Absolutely.
Yes.
[00:03:48]
It’s like an accountability
layer that that is. Right.
[00:03:50]
And it’s almost like,
[00:03:53]
you know, it’s almost like this is a boss
in a pocket for service providers.
[00:03:57]
They’re just getting started.
Don’t really know how to run a business.
[00:03:59]
And so.
To your point.
[00:04:01]
Yeah, the case of the
disappearing lawn guy is real.
[00:04:05]
They show up for maybe a month
and then they just disappear.
[00:04:08]
They jump off the face
of the earth. Our our app,
[00:04:11]
our platform enables homeowners
to sidestep all of that.
[00:04:13]
You can read reviews on on what people say
about them or how often they show up
[00:04:18]
on time or how many
transactions they’ve done.
[00:04:20]
How often do they get booked
for a second lawn mowing.
[00:04:22]
So you can make an informed decision
on this is why I want to work with and not
[00:04:26]
just have to take like a shot in the dark
and hope you get somebody good.
[00:04:30]
It really does solve a lot of problems
on the introduction and also making sure
[00:04:34]
that they show up on time
for months and years to come.
[00:04:37]
The other side of the transaction.
[00:04:39]
Why we really do what we do
is for the service providers.
[00:04:43]
That’s really my background it’s really
where our passion lies and like giving
[00:04:47]
them a platform to plug into to where they
can just work really hard mowing yards.
[00:04:52]
But everything was it relates to getting
new customers bookkeeping,
[00:04:56]
getting paid on time, optimizing your
route, keeping everything organized.
[00:05:00]
It just happens for them.
[00:05:01]
And so that’s really why we exist.
It’s really our purpose.
[00:05:04]
And our passion is to give these small
business owners a platform to plug
[00:05:08]
into to where they can just grow their
business and work hard doing it.
[00:05:11]
That is the part that I love about what
[00:05:13]
you have going on,
because it’s two fold, right?
[00:05:16]
There’s talk about the customers trying
[00:05:18]
to find a service provider,
which you solve that with.
[00:05:20]
That’s what I would consider to be
fairly easy as long as you can.
[00:05:25]
You as a business can get in front
[00:05:27]
of those customers. The back end,
where all these service providers,
[00:05:31]
we see that every day,
where they just don’t know.
[00:05:35]
They don’t know what they don’t know.
[00:05:36]
So their business, invoicing, scheduling,
[00:05:40]
all that kind of stuff is just like,
oh, I need to do that.
[00:05:44]
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
[00:05:45]
And that stuff is hard to learn
[00:05:47]
on the fly, especially when
you’re mowing yards all day.
[00:05:49]
You’re exhausted.
[00:05:50]
You don’t want to do bookkeeping
when you come home at night.
[00:05:52]
So it’s our job to enable that that hard
[00:05:54]
working lawn care service provider to just
spend time with their family on the nights
[00:05:58]
and weekends, not like passing out fliers
or or spend it doing emailing out invoices
[00:06:04]
and all the stuff that they
typically would have to do.
[00:06:06]
So that’s that’s really our purpose.
[00:06:08]
That’s that’s why we exist.
[00:06:09]
And it kind of stems from my fifteen
years in the business.
[00:06:13]
You know, it’s hard to make
a living mowing yards.
[00:06:15]
You wake up at the crack of dawn every
morning, you sharpen lawnmower blades,
[00:06:19]
you do all that you’re
working for two hours for.
[00:06:21]
You’ve made a dime.
And and then you have to, like,
[00:06:24]
sweat your butt off all day doing really
taxing, taxing, physical, hard labor.
[00:06:28]
And then, like I was mentioning at night,
[00:06:30]
you have to do all the back office
things and so are our platform.
[00:06:33]
Alleviates a lot of that
for service providers.
[00:06:36]
And we’re really kind of helps is is,
[00:06:38]
you know, your firemen,
your school teacher, your police officer,
[00:06:41]
your you know, your your bartender,
these these these folks that want like
[00:06:48]
a side hustle or like a side gig,
you know, an extra way to a way to put
[00:06:52]
an extra thousand dollars
a week in your pocket.
[00:06:54]
The lawn mowing business
is a great way to do it.
[00:06:56]
And we kind of give them the toolset
[00:06:58]
to plug into to where all they got
to do is just show up on a day.
[00:07:01]
They’re supposed to show up,
[00:07:02]
do a great job mowing the yard for their
client and just follow
[00:07:05]
the process on the app and everything
else is handled for them.
[00:07:09]
And as it turns out,
[00:07:10]
that’s really the best kind of service
provider that you want as a homeowner.
[00:07:14]
You want the owner operator.
[00:07:15]
You want the person that you’re hiring
to actually be the person on the mower.
[00:07:20]
And we kind of help power
[00:07:21]
that relationship, power that matching
and make it all happen like it should.
[00:07:25]
Tell me why you prefer an owner operator
running the mower, so to speak.
[00:07:30]
Yeah.
So would you want somebody to come mow
[00:07:34]
your yard for thirty five dollars that was
going to make all thirty five dollars or
[00:07:38]
would you want somebody is going
to make twelve dollars an hour.
[00:07:41]
You know, you want the person
you want the person that’s going to,
[00:07:45]
that’s making the money
that you’re paying them.
[00:07:47]
And so you don’t want the hourly employee
[00:07:49]
you want, you want the proprietor because
they’re going to do a better job.
[00:07:52]
They’re going to make sure that your needs
[00:07:53]
are met, whereas the employee is in most
cases, just going to do as half ass
[00:07:58]
a job as they can,
because that’s just human nature.
[00:08:01]
And so in any case, you know,
[00:08:04]
if you go to a coffee shop, ideally,
it’d be awesome to have the owner
[00:08:07]
of that coffee shop making
you that cup of coffee.
[00:08:10]
And so that’s kind
of like what we empower.
[00:08:12]
We empower these micro entrepreneurs
to to get in business for themself.
[00:08:16]
Because like you to you,
[00:08:17]
like you mentioned,
we handle all the the really kind
[00:08:21]
of mysterious stuff for them in terms
of how do I get new customers?
[00:08:23]
How do I do bookkeeping?
[00:08:24]
How do I how do I how do I make sure
[00:08:27]
my accounts receivable
is is not like lagging.
[00:08:30]
And so that’s really makes
it makes it a better fit.
[00:08:33]
And also, like, if you’re running a big
landscaping company like I used to,
[00:08:38]
if you’re a crew foreman, you know,
[00:08:40]
making fifteen dollars or twenty dollars
an hour, why would you do that when you
[00:08:44]
can just jump on GreenPal
and make fifty dollars an hour?
[00:08:46]
And so that’s really
what we set out to do.
[00:08:48]
It’s our purpose is to it’s to lower
[00:08:50]
the bar for people to be in business for
themselves, in the lawn mowing business.
[00:08:54]
And it’s really our purpose in life.
[00:08:57]
So I’m going to ask you as far as
marketing or growing GreenPal.
[00:09:03]
When you first started it,
[00:09:05]
how did you get both customers and how
did you get service providers?
[00:09:10]
Because that’s kind
of a chicken egg thing, right?
[00:09:12]
Right.
Yeah.
[00:09:13]
You have the chicken and egg problem when
[00:09:14]
you when you’re building
a multisided marketplace like this.
[00:09:17]
And it’s really, really hard to get over.
[00:09:20]
It’s really hard to get that critical
mass of buyers and sellers.
[00:09:24]
The way we approached it was
just through focus, sheer focus.
[00:09:27]
We we were only in Nashville,
[00:09:30]
Tennessee for three years
until we figured out how to how to like
[00:09:35]
a repeatable process to roll
it out city by city.
[00:09:37]
And so
[00:09:39]
it just took us that long
to figure it out.
[00:09:41]
And that focus in the early days was how
we kind of got over that cold start
[00:09:46]
and how we figured out
the playbook as we went along.
[00:09:49]
And the early days it
was it was door hangers.
[00:09:51]
We passed out hundreds of thousands
of door hangers in Nashville, Tennessee,
[00:09:55]
getting the word out about the platform
so homeowners would use it.
[00:09:58]
And then on the supply side for lawn
[00:10:00]
mowing services,
we would just cold call,
[00:10:02]
we would call call people off Craigslist,
Yelp, Facebook,
[00:10:05]
and just pitch them on the idea of,
hey, you know, you can use this app.
[00:10:09]
It’s free to use if you
get any work on it.
[00:10:11]
There’s just a small transactional fee
and that value proposition resonated.
[00:10:15]
And the other thing, too,
[00:10:16]
that we did in the early years,
because our product really sucked.
[00:10:20]
We were kind of building as we went.
Oh, yeah, it was terrible.
[00:10:22]
It was it barely worked.
[00:10:24]
It was a piece of shit.
[00:10:25]
But we kind of like just hacked
away on it as time went on.
[00:10:29]
And
but but the way we kind of like the glue
[00:10:32]
that we kind of put into the dynamic was I
would give free coaching,
[00:10:36]
I would give free mentoring to service
providers coming on the platform.
[00:10:41]
And in Nashville, Tennessee,
I’m kind of a known commodity.
[00:10:43]
And the lawn mowing business,
I’m like the only guy to have built
[00:10:47]
a landscaping company to over
eight figures and to have sold it.
[00:10:50]
So if you mow yards in Tennessee,
you know my name.
[00:10:53]
And so,
like, when I would call these people,
[00:10:56]
I’d be like, hey, you know,
this is my new thing.
[00:10:57]
And is this really you like?
[00:10:59]
Yeah, this is my new thing I’m doing now,
and I really would love for you to try it.
[00:11:03]
You know, I’ll give you free coaching
and you’re like, hell, yeah.
[00:11:05]
And so that’s how we got our first,
like several hundred service providers.
[00:11:10]
And they were like on the platform
modulated ready to go.
[00:11:12]
And in that way, we could focus on just
the the demand side, the homeowners.
[00:11:17]
That was kind of how we held
it together in the early days.
[00:11:19]
And then by way of doing that,
[00:11:21]
we were able to learn, OK,
this is how we’re going to go to our next
[00:11:24]
city, our third city,
fourth city and so on.
[00:11:26]
And now we’re in every major
city in United States.
[00:11:29]
Wow.
[00:11:30]
So when you see start out Nashville,
[00:11:34]
the thing the website or
the app is a little clunky.
[00:11:38]
Who was coding it?
[00:11:40]
Yes, great question.
You know, ideally,
[00:11:43]
when you’re starting a technology business
like this, you would have
[00:11:47]
a hacker and a hustler,
you would have somebody that knows how
[00:11:49]
to write code, somebody that knows how
to design software, who can just, like,
[00:11:53]
get the first minimal viable
product out the door.
[00:11:56]
And then you would have somebody who’s
just going to make it rain,
[00:11:58]
who’s going to figure out by any
means necessary how to market it.
[00:12:02]
And for us, I was passing out
door hangers in early days.
[00:12:05]
And so ideally, you’d have that.
[00:12:07]
We had three hustler’s we had me and two
guys I was recruited to co-found
[00:12:12]
the business with who were
just like really hard workers.
[00:12:15]
But we didn’t have anybody
that knew how to build software.
[00:12:17]
In fact, I didn’t know anybody
in my social circles.
[00:12:20]
And so, like, it just it
was just a nonstarter.
[00:12:23]
And so we we really believed
that we could outsource it.
[00:12:26]
And we paid a development shop
in Nashville, one hundred and fifty
[00:12:31]
thousand dollars to build
the first version of GreenPal.
[00:12:34]
Oh, yeah.
So here we think.
[00:12:36]
Here we think, OK,
we’re going to pay these guys to build it
[00:12:38]
and then we’ll market it and then
we’ll just be off and going.
[00:12:41]
And they took them like nine months
[00:12:43]
to build it and we released it and pass
out all these door door hangers.
[00:12:47]
And it was a total failure.
[00:12:49]
It was a flop.
[00:12:50]
It didn’t work, didn’t have
the feature set it needed.
[00:12:53]
And it really wasn’t those guys fault.
[00:12:55]
Like
[00:12:56]
the moral the story is,
is if you’re going to be in the tech
[00:12:58]
business, you have to be
able to execute it yourself.
[00:13:00]
You have to be able to build software.
[00:13:02]
And it was a really hard lesson,
the hard pill for us to swallow.
[00:13:05]
But we met with as many people as we
could get to use the first version.
[00:13:09]
And the the the feedback we constantly
[00:13:12]
kept getting was they were
disappointed that it didn’t work.
[00:13:16]
They were pissed off, it didn’t work.
[00:13:18]
They were upset that it didn’t fulfill
the promise they were let down,
[00:13:22]
that they had this problem
and this thing didn’t solve it.
[00:13:25]
And so, like all of that disappointment
was enough validation for us to know that,
[00:13:31]
OK, we need to keep going because
these people really wanted it to work.
[00:13:35]
It was really going to solve
a problem for them, but it didn’t.
[00:13:39]
And so we looked at ourselves
in the mirror and we decided, OK, well,
[00:13:43]
by any means necessary, we’re going
to learn how to build software.
[00:13:46]
We’re going to learn how to code, how to
design software, how to market software.
[00:13:49]
And we just, like, locked ourselves in a
room for three years and didn’t leave.
[00:13:53]
Like, we will read every blog we could.
[00:13:56]
We we we watched every video on YouTube.
[00:13:59]
We took every online course you could
[00:14:01]
and like, taught ourselves
how to build software.
[00:14:04]
And over a three year period of time,
we got a good product built ourselves.
[00:14:08]
And and then we started then
we were able to delegate.
[00:14:11]
We delegated too soon.
[00:14:12]
We had to like master the 80,
[00:14:14]
20 of software development and then
we were able to delegate again.
[00:14:18]
So are you saying the three of you,
the three initial founders?
[00:14:21]
That’s right.
Yeah.
[00:14:22]
The learned code.
[00:14:23]
We learned how to write software.
[00:14:25]
Yeah, I am I am a very, very,
very terrible front end developer.
[00:14:31]
But I knew just enough on how
to how to build build software.
[00:14:34]
And my my co-founder actually went
[00:14:36]
to a boot camp for six months that we we
spent like twelve grand for him to go to.
[00:14:41]
It was full time and he went from zero
[00:14:44]
to being able to build the back
end of the app in six months.
[00:14:49]
Now I’m not sitting here saying
that anybody can do that.
[00:14:52]
He worked really, really hard,
but it is possible.
[00:14:56]
Interesting.
[00:14:57]
That’s pretty cool.
[00:14:58]
Yeah, it was it was a hell
of a start and it was really hard.
[00:15:01]
But it is like you look at a lot of these
[00:15:04]
tech companies that like just come out
the gate, you know,
[00:15:07]
go from zero to one hundred million
in revenue in like three years.
[00:15:10]
What you don’t realize is like they’re
[00:15:12]
on their second, third or
fourth swing at the plate.
[00:15:14]
They’ve already crashed and burned.
[00:15:16]
They’ve already built like a two or
three tech startups that failed.
[00:15:19]
So they come to the like the starting
point of this winning company.
[00:15:24]
And they already know how to,
like, build software.
[00:15:26]
They already know how to market software.
[00:15:28]
They already know how
to do all these things.
[00:15:29]
And like you’re looking at like
three years of a 20 year period.
[00:15:33]
And so for us, we had to pay our dues.
[00:15:35]
And that’s just what it took.
Sure.
[00:15:38]
Luckily, luckily, we were chasing
an idea that was not sexy.
[00:15:42]
Nobody else is looking at it.
[00:15:43]
And so that gave us a lot of time.
[00:15:45]
And so there’s a lesson there.
[00:15:46]
If you’re starting a business,
I think there’s a correlation between
[00:15:50]
the least like exciting
and sexy and like fun.
[00:15:53]
The idea, the greater
your odds for success.
[00:15:57]
All right.
Because lawnmower and no one wakes up,
[00:16:00]
I guess, when they’re seven years old
and says, I’m going to start to learn.
[00:16:04]
Yeah.
Technology, business.
[00:16:05]
There’s something of that nature.
Yeah.
[00:16:07]
It’s just not it’s just not
the most glamorous place to be.
[00:16:10]
You know,
[00:16:13]
when I graduated college, I was mowing
yards and I went to business school.
[00:16:18]
I put myself through school cutting grass.
[00:16:20]
And when I graduated college,
I had to make like a hard decision.
[00:16:24]
Was I going to be like a grass cutter
the rest of my life?
[00:16:28]
Yeah.
Or was I going to go into the job market?
[00:16:31]
And I really started looking at it.
[00:16:32]
I was like, damn, I’m making more money
[00:16:33]
mowing yards than I could
starting out and in the business world.
[00:16:38]
So I’m just going to stick with this.
[00:16:40]
And I think that’s what.
[00:16:42]
Hangs up, a lot of people in business is
[00:16:44]
that they don’t want to be seen
as starting from the bottom.
[00:16:48]
They don’t want to be seen in the bottom,
like they don’t want to be seen as the guy
[00:16:51]
who is going to come out and mow your yard
or they don’t want to be seen as the guy
[00:16:55]
or gal who’s going to sell you a new
roof or cut your hair or or whatever.
[00:16:59]
And like,
I think that holds a lot of people up
[00:17:01]
and businesses like they don’t want
to be seen as starting from the bottom.
[00:17:05]
And for me, luckily, I was able
to get over that real quick.
[00:17:07]
And and so,
[00:17:10]
you know, like starting GreenPal all
[00:17:11]
over again, like I had to start
from the bottom again.
[00:17:13]
You know, I went from having having
a business that was doing 10 million
[00:17:17]
in revenue to now starting this new app,
begging people to use it for like twenty
[00:17:21]
seven dollars a mowing, you know,
so it was really humbling.
[00:17:24]
And that’s one of the beautiful things
about business, is it can be like this
[00:17:27]
feedback machine to cause you to be
a more humble, better human being.
[00:17:31]
Yes.
It’s interesting.
[00:17:32]
You mentioned the the perception
[00:17:34]
that people have of the
perception of other people.
[00:17:38]
Because I used to deliver beer for a living.
[00:17:40]
And I used to always joke that if
[00:17:43]
any given person was given a gun with two
[00:17:45]
bullets and they had to shoot two out
of three people, and there was the pope,
[00:17:48]
the president and me,
the beer guy, I’m safe.
[00:17:52]
Last man standing man.
[00:17:54]
Yeah, you were just I mean,
you made nothing for cash.
[00:17:56]
You’re working all the time.
[00:17:58]
And outside of being in shape,
you really had nothing going for you.
[00:18:02]
But oh my gosh, man.
Beer guy.
[00:18:04]
Yeah.
It’s a lesson in reframing to the outline.
[00:18:07]
Like you reframe, you can reframe anything
like and for me, you know,
[00:18:11]
the way I looked at it was, yeah,
I might be on a weed eater.
[00:18:16]
But I own my own business,
[00:18:18]
I’m in charge of my own destiny,
like like I don’t have to do what I don’t
[00:18:22]
want to do and I like to think
I have unlimited upside.
[00:18:25]
And so the reframing that was kind of what
got me through a lot of those early years.
[00:18:30]
Yeah, it’s interesting because I had
a printer repair company when I first
[00:18:33]
started that even I shouldn’t say when
I first the whole time that I had that.
[00:18:37]
When you say printer repair guy and people
started, knowing you as the printer repair guy
[00:18:42]
they still like, oh,
he’s blue collar or whatever.
[00:18:47]
Yeah, but I’m thinking
[00:18:49]
you’re hiding behind
some whatever company.
[00:18:52]
A Fortune 500 company.
[00:18:53]
Tell me you’re like the vice
president of banking or something.
[00:18:57]
Yeah.
[00:18:58]
You’re a bad market away
from being homeless.
[00:19:01]
Yeah.
And you’re in a cubicle.
[00:19:03]
And, you know,
I might I might fix printers for a living,
[00:19:07]
but I have I have the unlimited upside
and I’m in charge of my destiny.
[00:19:13]
And, you know, small business is tough.
[00:19:18]
It’s not for everybody.
[00:19:19]
But I think it’s one
of the best decisions.
[00:19:21]
If you’re willing to throw your entire
life’s force into one thing
[00:19:28]
and you are like sufficiently like
dedicated to do that and willing to make
[00:19:33]
the sacrifices, it can be the best
thing you do for your life.
[00:19:36]
And oh, absolutely.
[00:19:38]
I believe that like
[00:19:40]
to live an interesting life, you have
to have an interesting storyline.
[00:19:43]
And I think business
can be that storyline.
[00:19:46]
It can be the thing, you know,
[00:19:47]
if you think about your life
in the context of a story and you’re
[00:19:50]
the main character, like
every main character and every hero
[00:19:53]
of every story overcomes these these
obstacles to get to the mountaintop.
[00:19:57]
And, yes, you know, it’s it’s you passing
out fliers for your printer repair shop.
[00:20:02]
It’s me passing out door
hangers for my app.
[00:20:05]
You know, I got bit by a dog
two times doing that.
[00:20:08]
That’s that’s a that’s that’s a fun like
[00:20:10]
scene in the story, you know,
and like so my business is like the thing
[00:20:14]
that lends an interesting
storyline to my life.
[00:20:18]
That’s fair to be the hero.
[00:20:19]
You always believe that you wanted to be
here and your business can be the cure.
[00:20:24]
That’s right.
[00:20:24]
And the business can be
the arbiter of that.
[00:20:27]
It can be the thing that causes
you to have an interesting story.
[00:20:30]
Yeah, that’s cool.
[00:20:32]
Versus the guys versus the guy
hiring you to fix the printer.
[00:20:35]
He doesn’t have a very interesting story.
[00:20:37]
Not usually.
[00:20:40]
Well, what’s interesting,
though, full circle here.
[00:20:42]
When I started the call answering
[00:20:44]
service, which evolved
from a print repair thing.
[00:20:47]
Now I get to deal with people that have
interesting stories all the time.
[00:20:50]
Yeah, here you go.
[00:20:52]
So it’s kind of cool.
[00:20:54]
I want to ask you or shifting
to the competition thing.
[00:20:57]
So when you were first starting
[00:20:59]
in Nashville and you start
reaching out to these
[00:21:03]
service providers, did any
of them consider you competition?
[00:21:09]
If you don’t do a good job of explaining
it, they could,
[00:21:14]
but I was able to kind of understand their
position because I had lived it for so
[00:21:19]
long, in many ways, I was kind
of solving my own problems.
[00:21:22]
And I think that’s important for any
business owner or any entrepreneur.
[00:21:25]
If you can start like the starting line,
start solving your own problems,
[00:21:30]
that can help that can help
increase your odds of success.
[00:21:32]
So for me, it wasn’t like
I’m in competition with you.
[00:21:37]
It’s like.
[00:21:38]
I want to become like the thing that helps
you double your business this year.
[00:21:42]
I want to be the thing that you rely
on or that helps you get a new truck.
[00:21:48]
I want to be the thing that that helps you
[00:21:50]
pick up 20 new customers in the zip
codes where you’re already working.
[00:21:54]
And so it was never it was never like, oh,
we’re the big guys in town and we’re going
[00:21:59]
to put you out of business
if you don’t join us.
[00:22:01]
It’s hey, are the only reason we exist
is to help you grow your business.
[00:22:06]
And if and if you win, we win.
[00:22:08]
And if you don’t win, we don’t win.
[00:22:10]
And so we always have tried to align
the incentives and goals of the platform
[00:22:15]
and its growth with how our service
providers are doing and and how they’re
[00:22:20]
making material money and sticking around
and using it year after year after year.
[00:22:24]
It’s been a real healthy way
for us to build the business.
[00:22:26]
And we’ve bootstrapped this business.
[00:22:28]
We haven’t taken on any
capital or any outside.
[00:22:32]
And so when you do that,
[00:22:33]
like it offers like a really singular,
like clarity to where it is you’re doing,
[00:22:37]
because you have to, like,
do it right and you have to make money.
[00:22:40]
And so that’s that’s kind of how we have
[00:22:41]
approach to building
this thing sustainably.
[00:22:44]
All right.
You know, it’s interesting,
[00:22:45]
when I had that printer repair company
and I think this relates to the lawn care
[00:22:49]
business, I was telling a buddy of mine
who was working for a big corporation.
[00:22:55]
I’m like, I’m essentially creating jobs
because I had a few employees and all this
[00:22:58]
kind of stuff, we weren’t exactly
hiring hundreds or anything like that.
[00:23:02]
It was a few handful.
[00:23:04]
And he said, no, I don’t think you are
[00:23:08]
because people needed their printer fixed,
whether you did it or somebody else did.
[00:23:13]
So essentially you’re just moving jobs.
[00:23:16]
And I challenged them a little bit
because I said I think that there are
[00:23:21]
an X number of volume
of printers that are broken.
[00:23:25]
And if it’s a pain in the butt to get
that thing fixed, either finding a company
[00:23:29]
to do it, getting in touch with them,
having them show up,
[00:23:32]
having the person with a skill show up,
all that kind of hierarchy to happen,
[00:23:38]
then that printer is
not going to get fixed.
[00:23:41]
So we were doing everything we could
[00:23:42]
to make the customer experience
as good as possible.
[00:23:46]
And I think in the neighborhood of lawn
[00:23:49]
care, there’s people that they
essentially have a choice, right?
[00:23:52]
Either they can cut it themselves or
they can reach out to someone else.
[00:23:56]
And I personally have never even
considered reaching out to someone else
[00:24:00]
because I was just afraid that, one,
they’re not going to answer their phone.
[00:24:04]
They’re going to ghost me.
[00:24:05]
This is going to be this huge pain.
[00:24:07]
It’s going to be more of a pain to deal
[00:24:08]
with them and therefore, my wife,
than it is to just mow the lawn myself.
[00:24:13]
So you are making it easier
for us from a consumer standpoint.
[00:24:18]
That’s a great way to look at it.
[00:24:19]
Yeah, any time you can make things more
[00:24:20]
efficient, cheaper, more reliable,
win win for everybody, engage it.
[00:24:27]
It unlocks value.
[00:24:28]
It unlocks abundance.
[00:24:30]
It’s like the beauty of capitalism.
[00:24:33]
And so, you know, however
you want to look at it?
[00:24:35]
Like you look at like
Door Dash, Postmates, Uber Eats.
[00:24:38]
They make it so damn simple and easy to,
[00:24:41]
like, get food delivered in a way
that never was before possible.
[00:24:44]
So now look look at everybody who’s
winning the restaurants,
[00:24:47]
winning because they’re getting orders,
especially now in covid.
[00:24:50]
Like, these are like this.
[00:24:52]
This revenue stream is the only thing
[00:24:53]
keeping a lot of these restaurants alive,
like the the single mom who just got home
[00:24:58]
off of like a 12 hour shift
at the hospital, who doesn’t have time or
[00:25:02]
like want to cook, can just order food,
like, affordably, like everybody.
[00:25:06]
And the app is is growing.
[00:25:09]
There’s engineers and designers and people
working for that after stakeholders
[00:25:14]
in that app that that are winning
like everybody is winning.
[00:25:16]
That’s a beautiful, beautiful
thing of of of capitalism.
[00:25:19]
It’s it’s like you look at any any
country city culture that’s doing well.
[00:25:25]
It’s prospering.
[00:25:26]
It’s like it’s because
businesses are winning.
[00:25:28]
And and so I think,
[00:25:30]
like technology can accelerate
that and a lot of ways and and to your
[00:25:36]
point, like, you know,
you had your printer repair company,
[00:25:38]
you know, that person that was working
for you, that that was fixing printers may
[00:25:43]
or may not have had a college degree,
you know, and so, like,
[00:25:45]
they probably didn’t have a whole lot
of of opportunities for high paying jobs.
[00:25:51]
And look, look, now you’ve created this
thing where they can be good at it
[00:25:54]
and they can save stuff
from going to the landfill.
[00:25:57]
And the business owner
can save 50 percent on.
[00:26:00]
I mean, dude, everybody’s winning there.
[00:26:01]
And so, like the the person
that told you that is a cynic.
[00:26:04]
And they don’t they probably
didn’t own a business.
[00:26:06]
And so.
No, afraid to own a business.
[00:26:09]
Right.
Afraid to.
[00:26:10]
And that’s probably the rationale.
[00:26:11]
And so it’s like whereas you you know,
you’re giving this person a job
[00:26:14]
and they’re making good material
income and everybody’s winning.
[00:26:17]
That’s the beautiful thing about business.
[00:26:20]
Yeah, absolutely.
So I want to ask you,
[00:26:23]
when you were in that three year stint
where you guys were learning,
[00:26:26]
coding and all that jazz,
did you shut down or did you just maintain
[00:26:31]
with what you had and said,
hey, by the way.
[00:26:34]
We have a timeline for improvement.
[00:26:36]
Yeah, you know, I think momentum is
[00:26:40]
a principle to business that
that can’t be overlooked.
[00:26:44]
You have to keep moving forward.
[00:26:46]
You cannot stop it.
[00:26:48]
It’s like you see these crazy people
training for marathons and and
[00:26:53]
you see them at the stop,
at the corner, at the stoplight.
[00:26:56]
And they’re still jogging in place.
[00:26:57]
Well, you know, you’re like,
what the hell’s that person doing?
[00:26:59]
Well, what you don’t realize is like when
[00:27:01]
you’re trying to train for a marathon,
it’s it’s more painful to stop.
[00:27:04]
Oh, yeah.
Take a break.
[00:27:06]
Yeah.
At that stoplight and then start again.
[00:27:09]
That it is to keep jogging
a thousand times over.
[00:27:12]
And so it’s like that little parallel
[00:27:14]
can be applied to business and you’ve
got to keep moving forward.
[00:27:18]
You can’t stop.
And so for us,
[00:27:21]
you know, we stuck it out with the piece
of crap product that we had
[00:27:25]
in the marketplace
and just kept that out there as much
[00:27:29]
because we weren’t like two
bent on sales and transactions.
[00:27:35]
All we cared about was learning.
[00:27:37]
OK, so for the first two year, two years,
[00:27:40]
we were really on this like customer
development, looked kind of like
[00:27:44]
journey where we really just wanted
to know what problems people wanted
[00:27:48]
to solve, where we saw,
where we needed to improve.
[00:27:51]
And even then and now, eight years later,
that’s still how we operate.
[00:27:55]
We you know, in the early days,
the product was a piece of crap.
[00:27:58]
It barely worked, but we still had a chat
bubble in the lower right hand corner.
[00:28:02]
And it was insanely simple for anybody
to talk to me or my two co-founders.
[00:28:06]
And so seven, seven days a week,
anybody’s pissed off, could hit us up.
[00:28:11]
And like the the the chat software that we
[00:28:14]
were able to embed in the in our software,
you know, hit us up right here.
[00:28:18]
And so, like, you would be out to dinner
[00:28:20]
with your family on a Sunday night and it
would be like, OK, what’s going on?
[00:28:24]
OK, somebody in Denver, Colorado,
didn’t get their grass cut today.
[00:28:29]
Let me figure out what happened here.
[00:28:30]
And it’s like when that’s happening
on a daily basis, hourly basis,
[00:28:35]
you’re never at a loss for what you need
to be building,
[00:28:38]
what you need to be fixing, what you need
to be focusing all your resources on.
[00:28:42]
And that simple little heuristic is what’s
[00:28:45]
kept us, you know,
has kept us in the game.
[00:28:47]
And we still still use to this day.
[00:28:49]
It’s it’s like make it insanely simple
for your customers and your users to speak
[00:28:55]
with you, and you’ll never be at a loss
for what you need to be doing.
[00:28:59]
Right.
That’s interesting that it was going right
[00:29:01]
to you guys, but you would see you can
see patterns for where the problems are.
[00:29:06]
Oh, yes. What are people looking
for that they can’t see?
[00:29:09]
Or maybe something exists.
Right, right.
[00:29:11]
Well, software.
[00:29:11]
But people aren’t able to find it
where they’re confused,
[00:29:15]
where their expectations aren’t being met
functionally.
[00:29:19]
What doesn’t work, what’s you know, how
do you you know, like just things like,
[00:29:25]
you know, on the service provider side,
[00:29:27]
we would we understood,
like, really quick, like.
[00:29:30]
You need to show up tomorrow for your
[00:29:33]
customer to mow your customers yard
rather than Mrs.
[00:29:37]
Smith has an appointment for tomorrow.
[00:29:39]
That’s like, no,
you like using the pronoun you you need
[00:29:42]
to show up for your customer
tomorrow to service your customers.
[00:29:46]
You are like understanding
how to use that pronoun.
[00:29:49]
And that really shifted a lot
[00:29:51]
of the perception of like, oh, OK, now
I understand, like this is my customer.
[00:29:56]
GreenPal helps me get my customer
[00:29:59]
and GreenPal gives me the tools
to schedule and get paid for my customer.
[00:30:03]
But I do need to be there for my customer.
[00:30:05]
And like, just that insight, you know,
[00:30:08]
comes from speaking with people,
speaking with people on a daily basis,
[00:30:11]
either on the phone or on chat
and just making it really easy
[00:30:15]
for removing all the friction
for people to speak with you.
[00:30:19]
Interesting.
So essentially making the.
[00:30:22]
The service provider themselves
the hero rather than you guys the hero.
[00:30:26]
Exactly, yes, utility bills.
[00:30:28]
We are the thing that helps
the hero get what they want.
[00:30:31]
Sure.
And we aren’t your lawn mowing service.
[00:30:34]
We are not your landscaping company.
[00:30:35]
We are the thing that makes it insanely
easy to order from your landscaping
[00:30:39]
company, just like Door Dash
is not your restaurant.
[00:30:42]
Right.
Interesting.
[00:30:44]
Let’s talk about pricing,
because I imagine when you’re dealing
[00:30:47]
with some of the people that are
just doing it more as a
[00:30:51]
hobby, but as a secondary income.
[00:30:54]
I just talked to a guy Friday
[00:30:56]
who was doing handyman services and he was
charging is charging 50 bucks an hour.
[00:31:01]
I said, dude, there’s no way that you’re
making a living at 50 bucks.
[00:31:06]
Right.
So at any rate,
[00:31:08]
for the the people that have,
I’m going to say legitimate without being
[00:31:13]
derogatory to people that using
as a moonlighting job.
[00:31:17]
Let’s say the legitimate business like
[00:31:19]
this is my full time gig is mowing
lawns and landscaping or whatever.
[00:31:23]
Working as well with the people that are
[00:31:25]
doing this as a second gig or
a supplementary gig,
[00:31:28]
I imagine that there’s a price
variation between those two.
[00:31:32]
How do you deal with that?
[00:31:34]
Yeah, so we don’t set the price.
[00:31:38]
We don’t tell you is going to be thirty
five dollars, mow your yard,
[00:31:40]
we deliver you five bids and then
you can hire who you want to work with.
[00:31:45]
And so we it’s our job to get you the best
[00:31:49]
fit lawn mowing service
you might just have.
[00:31:51]
It might be a rental property and you just
want the grass knocked down twice a month
[00:31:55]
or it could be a million dollar house
that, you know, is your you
[00:31:59]
know, you’re proud of the property
and you want a great looking lawn.
[00:32:05]
So that’s a different
type of service provider.
[00:32:06]
And so it’s our job to provide you
[00:32:08]
with five different options and they’re
going to be on a spectrum of price.
[00:32:13]
And that way you can make the best
[00:32:14]
informed decision that you
want to work with.
[00:32:16]
And now to your point,
your smaller providers can be
[00:32:20]
a little more price competitive
than your your bigger providers.
[00:32:23]
But but that’s you know, that’s fine.
[00:32:26]
Like, that’s that’s our job is to make it
[00:32:28]
more affordable and make it more efficient
and more convenient to hire somebody.
[00:32:33]
And so it’s really kind
of what we empower.
[00:32:35]
Now, that said, when we first started,
we really thought that it was our job
[00:32:41]
to deliver the cheapest lawn mowing
solution possible.
[00:32:45]
We thought we thought with a competitive
[00:32:46]
bidding structure that we could,
like, reduce the cost of lawn mowing.
[00:32:52]
And after we started meeting with,
[00:32:54]
like the first several hundred
people using our product.
[00:32:57]
We kept coming across the feedback.
[00:32:59]
It’s like they’re like, no,
I don’t want the cheapest.
[00:33:02]
I just want somebody to mow the yard.
[00:33:04]
I need somebody to mow the yard tomorrow.
[00:33:06]
My last guy flaked on me.
[00:33:08]
I’ve been I’ve been through three
[00:33:10]
different service providers
in the last year.
[00:33:12]
I just need some I don’t want
a twenty three dollar lawn mowing.
[00:33:15]
I want a thirty five dollar lawn
mowing and I want them to show up.
[00:33:19]
And so we started understanding that we’re
[00:33:21]
actually in the business delivering speed
and reliability and not cost savings.
[00:33:26]
Yeah.
Here you go.
[00:33:27]
Price matters.
Right.
[00:33:29]
But is it just has to be in the market.
[00:33:31]
It’s not like somebody wants
a twelve dollar yard mowing.
[00:33:34]
They just need somebody to show up every
two weeks when they’re supposed to.
[00:33:37]
And so that’s that early feedback really
informed how we built out the platform,
[00:33:41]
how we built the product to ensure that
that we really do connect to a point,
[00:33:47]
weed out the bottom feeders
because they’re not reliable.
[00:33:49]
If you’re if you’re only making twenty
[00:33:51]
dollars an hour mowing yards, you’re not
going to be in business for long.
[00:33:54]
And so it’s our job to.
[00:33:57]
Yeah, make sure the pricing is
[00:33:58]
competitive, but not necessarily just
the craziest, cheapest solution.
[00:34:02]
Right.
It’s interesting.
[00:34:04]
The people are going through a pricing
thing like that’s a super good price.
[00:34:08]
It’s just not available because
the person is unreliable.
[00:34:11]
Right.
Right.
[00:34:12]
It’s like Uber.
And Uber is not
[00:34:15]
that much cheaper than a taxi.
[00:34:17]
I mean, in some cases they
might be more expensive.
[00:34:19]
In some cases they might
be like a dollar less.
[00:34:22]
Yeah depending on time.
[00:34:24]
Yeah.
[00:34:25]
I mean, it’s like it’s
in there and it’s like Uber.
[00:34:29]
You use Uber because it’s just
they’re going to show up.
[00:34:31]
You don’t have to call dispatch.
[00:34:33]
You don’t you don’t have to get
in a stinky cab like you don’t
[00:34:37]
you don’t have to like haggle over
the price and then like,
[00:34:41]
wonder how much you’re supposed
to tip them and all this stuff.
[00:34:43]
It’s like Uber is I mean, at times it
might be cheaper, but not all the time.
[00:34:48]
And so it’s like that’s kind
of the dynamic we’re in.
[00:34:50]
We aren’t looking to cut
the bottom out of the market.
[00:34:53]
It’s what we’re trying to make it more
[00:34:55]
reliable, easier and more
convenient and more efficient.
[00:34:58]
Right.
That’s interesting.
[00:35:00]
So you guys, they understand correctly,
you guys take care of the invoicing
[00:35:04]
and accept the payments
and all that jazz as well.
[00:35:06]
Everything.
Yes.
[00:35:07]
So when a homeowner books a lawn mowing
[00:35:09]
service, they say, OK,
I want to work with this person.
[00:35:12]
They will reserve them in a much the same
[00:35:14]
way as you would like reserve a hotel room
and they put a credit card number on file
[00:35:18]
and then after the job is done,
the card is charged.
[00:35:20]
And so we handle everything from
[00:35:23]
from getting them, like,
exposed to people who want to hire them,
[00:35:27]
getting them hired,
getting the payment on file.
[00:35:30]
And then after they get done
[00:35:31]
with the service, they upload a photo
of the completed job homeowner approves that.
[00:35:35]
And then and then they’re paid.
[00:35:37]
They don’t have to like,
sit on like thirty days of invoicing.
[00:35:40]
Sure.
Interesting that.
[00:35:43]
I guess as you’re talking about this,
[00:35:45]
I think the scheduling thing had to be
pretty challenging to code because,
[00:35:49]
you know, you got to figure out
the calendars for thousands
[00:35:54]
of people.
Yeah.
[00:35:55]
And everybody was being hired and what
days and when they’re supposed to be there
[00:35:59]
and then reminding them
that they’re supposed to be there.
[00:36:01]
And if they don’t show up at a certain
time of the day, nudging them again,
[00:36:04]
and if they didn’t show up,
making sure that they show up the next day
[00:36:07]
and if they don’t, then then
scoring them a certain way.
[00:36:11]
So where they don’t get hired again,
all of these things have taken us years
[00:36:15]
and years to figure out just
through trial and error.
[00:36:17]
All right.
And is that stuff that you
[00:36:20]
or you and your crew are still coding or
have you brought coding people on board?
[00:36:26]
Yes, time went on.
So we made a mistake in the early days.
[00:36:28]
We delegated too quickly.
[00:36:30]
We didn’t really know what we were doing.
[00:36:32]
And so we delegated
from a from a position of weakness.
[00:36:36]
I guess, you know, we didn’t really
understand how to build this stuff.
[00:36:39]
So we delegated from, like, abdication,
like, oh, you handle it.
[00:36:43]
And that didn’t work.
[00:36:44]
And so we learn how to do
all this stuff ourselves.
[00:36:47]
And then we we made a second mistake
of not delegating too soon.
[00:36:51]
We delegated we we sat on it
too long for ourselves.
[00:36:55]
And so far it’s like the next five years,
[00:36:58]
like we were seven days a week, 80,
90 hours a week, like
[00:37:02]
twelve hours a day coding and just trying
to build this thing to where it worked.
[00:37:07]
And we were almost afraid to delegate.
[00:37:09]
And so it took a little too long for us
[00:37:11]
to figure out, OK,
this is how we hire engineers.
[00:37:13]
This is how we bring new software
developers onto the team.
[00:37:16]
And now we have a team of twenty four
people, most of which are engineers.
[00:37:20]
And so now we’re able to like,
delegate this stuff and like build out
[00:37:25]
a spec and our product roadmap
and understand, OK,
[00:37:27]
this is stuff we’re working on and this
is what engineers are building and why.
[00:37:32]
So taking us took us a long time to learn
that if I if we had to do it all over
[00:37:35]
again,
we probably could have we probably could
[00:37:38]
accomplish in two years
what took us eight.
[00:37:40]
All right.
Well, in hindsight, yeah.
[00:37:45]
That’s how it goes, interesting.
[00:37:46]
What have been some of the other
challenges that you’ve had to deal
[00:37:48]
with over the course of the eight years
that you didn’t really anticipate?
[00:37:52]
Oh, man.
[00:37:53]
You know, like when you’re building
a a multisided marketplace, like.
[00:37:56]
This you have kind of like two customers,
almost, you have the wants and needs
[00:38:00]
and desires of of two
different constituencies.
[00:38:04]
And so, like every marketplace deals
[00:38:06]
with this, like Uber dealt with it
with what they call surge pricing.
[00:38:09]
I don’t know if you remember that, but.
[00:38:11]
Oh, yeah, they got raked over the coals
for surge pricing and that was their
[00:38:14]
attempt to try to balance
supply and demand.
[00:38:18]
And anybody that knows anything about
[00:38:20]
building a marketplace would look at that
and say, yes, that’s very reasonable.
[00:38:23]
But but to a consumer, they’re like,
oh, what is this all pissed off?
[00:38:28]
And and so it’s like that’s
a challenge they dealt with.
[00:38:31]
And so we have dealt with similar
challenges,
[00:38:34]
you know, having to figure out how
to balance the wants and needs of both
[00:38:39]
sides of the transaction
to where everybody wins.
[00:38:41]
It’s really hard, like in our case,
like homeowners that would use this thing.
[00:38:46]
They don’t really understand that this
is almost like a subscription business.
[00:38:50]
It’s like you hire somebody.
[00:38:51]
And if it worked out well,
you need to book them for the season.
[00:38:54]
If you want any kind of reliable
[00:38:55]
experience,
what they would want is they would hire
[00:38:58]
somebody on Tuesday, like the Fifth,
and then they would say, OK,
[00:39:04]
no, I don’t want to book
anything just yet.
[00:39:06]
I’ll call you when it needs it.
[00:39:08]
And it’s like it doesn’t
really work that way.
[00:39:09]
And it’s like now, well,
that’s what I want.
[00:39:11]
Well, it’s not that kind of business.
[00:39:13]
You need to book them
[00:39:15]
and like, be set for the year or you
need to, like, not use GreenPal.
[00:39:18]
And like, that was something we had to do.
[00:39:20]
We basically had it like through
how we have built our product.
[00:39:24]
It’s like, yes, you can use this for one
mowing,
[00:39:27]
but after that you have to book them
for weekly or biweekly for the season.
[00:39:31]
You can’t you cannot just use
it for one mowing at a time.
[00:39:35]
All right.
The whole season.
[00:39:36]
So they’re not on call.
[00:39:38]
You will not get a you will not
get a desirable experience.
[00:39:41]
Sure.
[00:39:42]
So it’s not like, OK,
I use them on Tuesday and then three weeks
[00:39:45]
later I call you on a Friday and I
want you there by the afternoon.
[00:39:48]
That is the expectation of a consumer.
[00:39:50]
And so but that’s not how
lawn mowing services operate.
[00:39:53]
They’re not just riding around with
eighty thousand dollars of equipment
[00:39:57]
saying, oh yeah,
I got twenty seven dollars lawn mowing
[00:39:59]
across town, let me run over
there and go do it.
[00:40:01]
We got a hot one.
Yeah.
[00:40:03]
Yeah.
It’s not how it works.
[00:40:06]
And so we’ve had to like
[00:40:08]
craft the messaging on both sides
of the, of the transaction.
[00:40:12]
Understand like no this is how this works.
[00:40:14]
And if you don’t want to do it this way,
you know, go back to Craigslist.
[00:40:17]
Yeah.
[00:40:17]
And and so that took us a long
time to figure that out.
[00:40:21]
All right.
All right.
[00:40:23]
So there’s a little bit of education
[00:40:25]
that has to happen with
the with the end users.
[00:40:27]
That’s right.
That’s right.
[00:40:28]
And it took us a long time
to figure out that messaging.
[00:40:31]
And even as that evolved to the point
where it’s cool now, it’s it’s cool now.
[00:40:36]
And but when we first started out and when
we first started out,
[00:40:40]
we made the ability where
the person could just order
[00:40:44]
services on demand and and like
service providers weren’t having it.
[00:40:49]
It’s like, no, no.
[00:40:50]
I was there three weeks ago and it was it
[00:40:53]
was out of shape when I
got there three weeks ago.
[00:40:55]
And now you’ve let it
grow this tall again.
[00:40:57]
You want me to, like,
make it pristine again?
[00:40:59]
No, take a hike.
[00:41:00]
And so they wouldn’t they wouldn’t pick up
[00:41:02]
they wouldn’t, like, show up when
that person hired them again.
[00:41:05]
And so.
Yeah, yeah.
[00:41:07]
And so they came to fruition.
That’s right.
[00:41:10]
Yeah.
It’s like if you want any kind
[00:41:11]
of consistent experience, this is how
it’s going to be or else don’t use that.
[00:41:15]
All right.
[00:41:15]
And it took a long time
to figure that out.
[00:41:19]
Interesting.
[00:41:20]
It was kind of funny.
Yeah, it is funny.
[00:41:22]
It’s kind of like using
open table, which is like
[00:41:26]
an app for reserving.
Dinner reservations?
[00:41:30]
Yeah, and like on Valentine’s Day,
[00:41:33]
at like six o’clock at night, expecting
to, like, push a button and get
[00:41:37]
into the hottest restaurant
in town. You go on the app!
[00:41:40]
Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:41:41]
That happens.
That’s funny.
[00:41:43]
Yeah.
I want to ask you about the service
[00:41:45]
provider headaches that you’ve had,
because I know that one,
[00:41:50]
you’re solving a lot of those headaches
for them as well as for the consumer.
[00:41:53]
But I also know that I guess in the world
[00:41:56]
that I’m in, we answer phones for all
kinds of service providers
[00:42:01]
and some of them are very good at what
they do for their professional skill.
[00:42:05]
But communication or anything
beyond their skill is a challenge.
[00:42:12]
So I want to know how how you
guys learn to work through that.
[00:42:16]
Yeah, ideally, in a perfect world,
[00:42:18]
everybody would just know how
to run a great business, right?
[00:42:21]
That’s just not how it’s just not
how it works like me especially.
[00:42:24]
And so what we do is we kind of like
lower the barrier to entry into business.
[00:42:28]
And so we get a lot of folks that just
don’t really know
[00:42:32]
the the common sense like bare things you
need to do to to run a reliable business.
[00:42:37]
And so our biz, our platform is kind
of like an accountability layer.
[00:42:40]
So every every service provider has a
series of metrics that we score them on.
[00:42:45]
And it’s very clear that’s their score.
They have a reliability rating where they
[00:42:48]
are scored based on if they hired you for
Thursday, did you show up on Thursday?
[00:42:53]
All right.
No objective things.
[00:42:55]
Yeah.
Yes.
[00:42:56]
No.
Yes.
[00:42:56]
Score goes up.
No score goes down.
[00:42:58]
And it pisses a lot of these guys off
[00:43:00]
because this is a layer of accountability
that does not exist in the analog world.
[00:43:06]
Oh that is beautiful.
[00:43:09]
I have a business partner in a contracting
company is essentially and he’s having
[00:43:14]
people like general contractors maintain
the time frame that they promised
[00:43:19]
the homeowner
and the general contractor gets the label
[00:43:23]
or list essentially what
that timeline is going to be.
[00:43:27]
And when my business partner asks them
[00:43:29]
to sign this document,
for them to essentially keep the promise
[00:43:33]
that they just made,
they’re like, whoa, whoa.
[00:43:37]
You want me to actually keep a promise?
Yeah, come on.
[00:43:39]
Yeah.
[00:43:40]
And the thing is, is a lot of, you know,
in the contracting world and lawn mowing
[00:43:45]
world, maybe in the home cleaning world
and the roofing world,
[00:43:48]
these types of really
manual labor intensive types of businesses
[00:43:53]
don’t tend to attract the most
sophisticated business operator.
[00:43:57]
And so that’s really the platform’s job
is to offer that layer of accountability.
[00:44:02]
It’s like, no, you’re being scored.
[00:44:03]
And if you want to use GreenPal
[00:44:05]
to make a hundred grand this year, then
you’re going to use it in such a manner.
[00:44:08]
And if you don’t, then don’t.
[00:44:11]
But it’s that’s that’s
the that’s the dynamic.
[00:44:13]
And so, like it or not,
you can either be reliable and show up
[00:44:17]
on time and get a high score and get
hired more and make more money.
[00:44:22]
Or you can show up three days late
[00:44:24]
and your score go through the floor
and you probably won’t get hired again.
[00:44:27]
And so that’s kind of what our technology
is there for, is to is to sideline service
[00:44:33]
providers that aren’t reliable, that for
whatever reason, don’t show up on time
[00:44:38]
and and to promote the ones that do.
[00:44:41]
And it’s funny, like
we have a Facebook group where thousands
[00:44:46]
of these of these contractors are
members of it and they share stories.
[00:44:50]
And, you know, we celebrate
a lot of the wins in that group.
[00:44:53]
A lot of people are like, oh, you know,
I was able to save my home
[00:44:55]
from foreclosure or I was
able to get a new truck.
[00:44:58]
I put my kids through school.
Thank you, GreenPal.
[00:45:00]
Like, it’s a lot of fun.
And then there’s there is some griping.
[00:45:02]
It’s like there are there are contractors
[00:45:05]
that will say, well,
I can’t win any new business.
[00:45:08]
And it’s like, well,
what’s your reliability rating?
[00:45:10]
Seventeen percent.
[00:45:11]
OK, well, that’s the problem.
[00:45:15]
You’re not reliable.
[00:45:17]
That blows my mind that that would even be
[00:45:18]
acceptable to a human
just to move that way.
[00:45:22]
Hey, check it out.
Check it out.
[00:45:24]
I was like, well, yeah,
[00:45:25]
I had a yard last Thursday,
but I was sick and I couldn’t go mow it.
[00:45:28]
It’s like, listen, you don’t understand.
[00:45:30]
You’re in business for yourself.
[00:45:32]
You don’t call in sick.
[00:45:33]
You got to you got to make it happen or
you got to have somebody else go do it.
[00:45:37]
Yeah.
And so it’s like this educational process
[00:45:41]
of getting folks to understand that,
no, you don’t work for anybody.
[00:45:45]
You working for yourself is something
that our platform does on the fly.
[00:45:50]
And it kind of demotes the ones that don’t
[00:45:52]
get it and it promotes
the ones that do get it.
[00:45:55]
As a homeowner
[00:45:56]
you just get to hire the best ones.
[00:45:58]
You don’t have to deal
with the B.S. That’s so crazy.
[00:46:01]
I was late for more than four
out of five appointments.
[00:46:04]
How come no one’s hiring me?
Yeah.
[00:46:06]
Really? Bless their hearts,
[00:46:08]
you know, I mean, maybe business
ownership isn’t for you, but guess what?
[00:46:13]
There’s dozens of other contractors
[00:46:14]
in your zip code that are
kicking ass on this platform.
[00:46:17]
Right.
Making money.
[00:46:18]
And those are the ones
that we want to help.
[00:46:20]
Right.
[00:46:21]
Part of success is showing up
[00:46:24]
in much the main part.
[00:46:26]
Yeah, I asked you, I guess you
alluded to it a little bit just now.
[00:46:30]
If someone is sick or their equipment
[00:46:33]
breaks or whatever,
or they can’t do a job,
[00:46:36]
can the can the service provider
use your system to essentially.
[00:46:42]
Get a backup person to take
care of the customer.
[00:46:45]
No, we don’t want that.
[00:46:46]
We want the homeowner to hire
who they’re working with.
[00:46:48]
So we don’t want this trading game.
[00:46:50]
What a service provider can do is they can
[00:46:52]
cancel and they can cancel,
but canceling hurts their rating.
[00:46:56]
And so, like as a homeowner.
[00:46:59]
You don’t care.
[00:47:00]
You don’t, my child is sick,
my equipment got stolen.
[00:47:04]
I’m sick.
My back hurts.
[00:47:08]
A pump went out.
[00:47:09]
Well, I don’t care.
You own the business.
[00:47:14]
You need to have that stuff
figured out like I’m hiring you.
[00:47:17]
And so, like
[00:47:19]
at the platform scores you
[00:47:23]
on a binary basis,
whether you did it or not.
[00:47:27]
There’s no gray area.
So yes.
[00:47:29]
Yes or no.
So and so that’s that’s how we are able to
[00:47:33]
offer up these reliable services that you
can hire right off the shelf,
[00:47:39]
because over time, our platform
has figured that out for you.
[00:47:42]
Very cool.
Very cool.
[00:47:45]
You know, if you order an Uber
[00:47:47]
or you order your food,
your dinner from door dash.
[00:47:52]
You don’t want to hear any excuses, no,
[00:47:57]
a thousand times, no,
I’m totally the no excuses guy.
[00:48:00]
Yeah, my my my General Tso’s
chicken better show up hot.
[00:48:05]
I don’t I don’t want to hear
that your child was sick.
[00:48:08]
And I mean, yeah, that sucks for you.
[00:48:10]
But I’m hungry. Like the American consumer
[00:48:14]
is selfish, egotistical, narcissistic,
like and I’m guilty of it.
[00:48:20]
Like when we push a button we
expect from magic to happen.
[00:48:23]
And so that’s that’s
why we push the button.
[00:48:25]
That’s right.
That’s why we put our credit card down.
[00:48:28]
We don’t want to hear
a bunch of excuses now.
[00:48:31]
That’s what our platform does.
No, it’s like I’m tired and hungry.
[00:48:34]
I don’t want to hear about somebody
else’s life problems.
[00:48:37]
Exactly.
My grass is four feet tall.
[00:48:39]
I didn’t I don’t want to hear
that your equipment got stolen.
[00:48:42]
You should have some extra equipment.
[00:48:44]
That’s that’s what that’s what happens.
[00:48:46]
That’s what I not that these
things happen all the time.
[00:48:48]
Like these like all of these like negative
[00:48:51]
scenarios happened less than
one percent of the time.
[00:48:53]
Right.
[00:48:54]
But it’s our platform’s job to make
sure that they happen as less as possible.
[00:48:58]
Yeah.
And I imagine the guy
[00:49:01]
that’s doing a really good job every once
in a while, he’s going to have a bad day.
[00:49:05]
Right.
[00:49:05]
The mower’s not going to start a flat tire
on a trailer or whatever
[00:49:09]
where he can afford the dock
in the rating to solve that problem.
[00:49:12]
Right.
You can reschedule you can cancel.
[00:49:17]
I’ll take care of it.
Right.
[00:49:19]
It might be later tonight
or something like that.
[00:49:20]
But just take care of the customer
as long as the customer knows.
[00:49:24]
Absolutely.
That’s then that’s the key thing,
[00:49:26]
is the communication between
the people in the transaction.
[00:49:30]
And that’s the that’s the the way
to operate a business that are that our
[00:49:35]
platform encourages the operator
to do it that way.
[00:49:39]
Yeah.
[00:49:39]
The ones that just don’t interact
with the system or no call, no show.
[00:49:43]
They get sidelined real quick.
Right.
[00:49:45]
Interesting.
[00:49:47]
So, Brian, I’m listening
to what you got going on.
[00:49:49]
And I so I feel like this could apply
[00:49:52]
towards many other industries
besides just lawn mowing.
[00:49:55]
Is that in the works or is it.
[00:49:58]
You know, I think.
[00:50:00]
For our business and most any business,
[00:50:02]
it’s important to focus on being the best
in your thing in your market.
[00:50:09]
And so for us,
we’re the easiest way in the United States
[00:50:11]
to order a lawn mowing service,
we’re not the easiest way to order
[00:50:14]
a roofer, a gutter cleaning,
pressure washing service, a locksmith.
[00:50:18]
We have focused on one thing
and that’s that’s lawn mowing.
[00:50:23]
And, you know, a lot of these
contracting businesses, like
[00:50:26]
from the outside can look similar
like like a plumber, a roof repair guy,
[00:50:32]
a home cleaning service,
a lawn mowing service.
[00:50:35]
Until you’ve actually
made a living doing one of these services,
[00:50:39]
you don’t really realize there’s
a million unique problems.
[00:50:42]
Sure.
That they all have.
[00:50:43]
And so they’re forced to offer like
[00:50:47]
the Uber like experience of I push
the button to hire this person.
[00:50:50]
They showed up and made
my lawn look great.
[00:50:52]
We have focused on just
this one thing now after.
[00:50:56]
The lawn mowing goes well, you can then hire
that same contractor for things like.
[00:51:01]
Shrub pruning, seeding, mulch fertilizing,
gutter cleaning, all these things,
[00:51:06]
but that’s downstream after, like, we have
nailed the experience on this one thing.
[00:51:12]
All right.
[00:51:12]
And so that’s that’s how
we’ve approached it.
[00:51:14]
And and the other thing, too, is,
is communicating that value to somebody
[00:51:18]
who doesn’t know a damn
thing about what you do.
[00:51:21]
So somebody comes to your website or your
[00:51:23]
app or page like you need
to answer three questions in less than
[00:51:26]
five seconds, really
less than three seconds.
[00:51:29]
Where am I?
[00:51:30]
What can I do here and why does it matter?
[00:51:33]
And you have to be able to answer those
[00:51:35]
things above the fold or else,
boom, they bounce.
[00:51:37]
And so it’s like, OK,
[00:51:38]
I have my grass that needs to be mowed boom lawncare
made easy click to get free quotes.
[00:51:44]
Got it.
I’m in. Not
[00:51:47]
do you need, you know,
the easiest way to get home service
[00:51:51]
professionals say OK,
well I need a painter.
[00:51:54]
How do I find that.
Great.
[00:51:56]
OK is ok.
[00:51:57]
So that’s not you know,
being like self-funded and bootstrapped.
[00:52:00]
We’ve had to focus on this one thing.
That’s all right.
[00:52:03]
It’s a big thing.
Yeah.
[00:52:05]
It’s going back.
It’s a big market.
[00:52:07]
Big, big market to 80
billion dollar market.
[00:52:10]
We did twenty million dollars in sales
last year, so it’s a long way to go.
[00:52:15]
All right.
Fair, fair.
[00:52:17]
All the way to world domination.
[00:52:18]
Great.
[00:52:21]
Awesome.
[00:52:21]
Well Bryan, thank you so much
for being on the show.
[00:52:23]
How can people find you guys?
Yeah.
[00:52:26]
So anybody listening to this doesn’t
want to waste time cutting their grass,
[00:52:29]
they can download GreenPal
in the App Store or play store,
[00:52:32]
get hooked up with a great lawn
mowing service in less than a minute.
[00:52:35]
Anybody wants to reach me,
you can hit me up on LinkedIn.
[00:52:37]
That’s the best way
to reach me these days.
[00:52:38]
OK, and is it greenpal.com?
yourgreenpal.com.
[00:52:42]
Or you can just download GreenPal
in either App Store. yourgreenpal.com.
[00:52:46]
I love it.
That’s awesome.
[00:52:48]
Thanks for being on the show Bryan, this is super cool.
[00:52:50]
Thanks James.
I really appreciate you having me on.
[00:52:52]
Enjoyed it.
This has been
[00:52:53]
Authentic Business Adventures the business
program that brings you the struggles
[00:52:57]
stories and triumphant successes
of business owners across the land.
[00:53:01]
Who knew that there was so much going
on in lawn mowing and landscaping.
[00:53:04]
That’s cool.
That is cool.
[00:53:06]
We are underwritten
by the Bank of Sun Prairie.
[00:53:08]
If you’re listening to this on the web,
please give a thumbs up,
[00:53:11]
subscribe, comment, and of course,
share, share, share. Calls On Call.
[00:53:16]
I’m sorry.
Whoa, I’m jumping ahead here.
[00:53:19]
My name is James Kademan
[00:53:20]
and Authentic Business Adventures is
brought to you
[00:53:22]
by Calls On Call offering call answering
and receptionist services to growing
[00:53:27]
businesses across the country, on the web
at CallsOnCall.com. As well as
[00:53:31]
Draw In Customers Business Coaching
offering business coaching services
[00:53:35]
for entrepreneurs in all stages
of the business, on the web
[00:53:38]
at Draw In Customers.com. And of course
The BOLD Business Book, a book
[00:53:43]
for the entrepreneur in all of us
available wherever fine books are sold.
[00:53:47]
We’d like to thank you our wonderful
listeners as well as our guest,
[00:53:49]
Bryan Clayton, CEO of GreenPal,
the Uber of Lawn Mowing.
[00:53:53]
Bryan, thank you so much
for being on the show.
[00:53:55]
Hey, thanks, James.
I appreciate it.
[00:53:57]
Yeah, this has been cool.
I’m impressed.
[00:53:59]
I’m impressed.
One,
[00:54:01]
that you grew your own landscaping
business that big, that quick
[00:54:05]
mean it probably seemed day to day
that it was taking forever, but.
[00:54:08]
Yeah, yeah.
[00:54:10]
It’s a healthy size company.
Yeah.
[00:54:12]
That was that was a hell of a journey.
[00:54:14]
I was I was I was done after that.
[00:54:16]
But then I got bored.
[00:54:19]
And that is how it goes.
Yeah.
[00:54:21]
It’s the joy of selling a business then.
Yeah.
[00:54:25]
I got to get back in the race.
[00:54:27]
I got, I got to have something to get out
of bed in the morning for. That’s fair.
[00:54:32]
Past episodes can be found
[00:54:33]
morning, noon and night at the podcast link
found at DrawInCustomers.com.
[00:54:37]
Thank you for listening.
We’ll see you next week.
[00:54:39]
Want you to stay awesome.
[00:54:40]
And if you do nothing else,
enjoy your business.
