April 24, 2025 • 54 mins
Are you still running your landscape maintenance crews like it’s 2005—while your competitors leap ahead with data-driven decisions and battery-powered fleets? In this episode, Tommy sits down with Bob Carey, a leader who’s mastered every angle of the business—from gritty field operations to creating scalable systems and jumping into the disruptive world of robotic mowers. Bob breaks down how tracking data, focusing on customer education, and building for capacity have fueled his growth, and he reveals practical advice for hiring, training, and future-proofing your workforce in today’s ever-evolving market.
THE BIG IDEA:
Systematize, train, and innovate for landscaping success
KEY MOMENTS:
[05:28] Landscaping Opportunity in Charleston
[08:37] Learn By Doing in the Field
[12:31] Data Tracking for Irrigation Management
[15:49] Home Development and Landscaping Partnership
[18:37] Landscaping Insight and Financial Expertise
[22:17] Creative HOA Cost-Saving Strategy
[28:05] Exciting Career in Autonomous Equipment
[29:46] Coaches and Mentors Enhance Success
[33:14] Three Charging Methods Explained
[38:10] Equipment Purchase Cost Analysis
[40:31] Plan Now for Future Demand
[44:42] Effortless Robot Mower Installation
[48:57] Labor Challenges and Purposeful Growth
QUESTIONS WE ANSWER
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How do I grow my landscaping business efficiently?
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What are the benefits of using battery-powered landscaping equipment?
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What is the best way to train and develop landscape maintenance teams?
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How do I create scalable systems for my landscaping company?
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How does data management improve landscaping operations?
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How can landscape companies increase profitability with technology?
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What are the challenges and solutions in HOA landscape maintenance?
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How do you implement a commercial robotic mower in your landscaping business?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The Roots of Success podcast isfor the landscape professional
who's looking to up their game.
We've got a brain trust of experts tohelp you nurture the roots of a successful
business and grow to the next level.
This is The Roots of Success.
Welcome to another episode of Roots ofSuccess, and I'm your host Tommy Cole.
(00:20):
And wow.
We have another amazing guest, myfriend from like years ago, Bob Carey.
He is now with Crest OutdoorPower Equipment and autonomous
battery operated mowing machine.
Dude.
But man, way before that I knew you.
(00:41):
I'm just gonna call you.
You didn't know this was gonnahappen, Bob, but I'm gonna
call you the maintenance man.
I like that,
I'm gonna call you the maintenance man.
Welcome to the show.
I'm super stoked to haveyou, Bob, how are you?
I'm doing great, Tommy.
I appreciate you bringing me on.
It's really fun just to dothis right off the cuff.
You know, you reached out to me andwere like, let's do this podcast.
(01:02):
I'm like, all right, let's get prepped.
And you're like, we do it live.
Let's just go.
Let's just go, you know,that's also the thing.
Bob's just kind of funnyis just don't overthink it.
Let's just jump on and do this thingbecause that's what's fun about this.
I never thought I'd behere in a million years.
We're now going two years strong onthis, on this show, and we spread out
(01:24):
to so many people across the country.
It's just been fun to watch and every timeI travel I always see someone that says.
Man, I love your podcast.
Let's keep going.
So that, that feels my motivation.
A hundred percent.
Bob, I'm extremely blessed andfortunate to have met you probably
six, seven years ago, is my guess.
Back in the early McFarland Stanforddays, did some recruiting to get
(01:47):
you kind of where you're going.
And, and now we're heretoday, but Bob, tell us.
Some of the past, like, what the heck?
What?
Why did you choose this crazy profession?
You sent me some photos last nightthat I was like, wow, I cannot believe
you saved some photos of a what?
A scrawny little kid, right?
(02:07):
Like myself, you
know, mowing grass.
Basically.
Tell me about yourselfand how you got started.
You know, there's a lot of guys thathave gone out and mowed grassed on
me in their, in their pickup truckor whatever, and done some lawns.
But when I tell people, you know,my wife had mentioned in the past,
she's like, you gotta forget aboutthat stuff you did as a little kid.
And I'm like, honey, this, thiswasn't some little kid thing.
(02:28):
You know?
I, I, so.
Yeah.
So my, my mom, I remember you know,I had my first mower, but my mom, I
call her, I'm like, Hey mom, I wannago pick up this mower I found on eBay.
It's a 36 inch walk behind mower.
We're gonna go, we're gonnago pick it up together.
So I have my driver's permit, butI had bought my first truck already
just from mowing some lawns with amower that I had bought when I was 12.
So we, we go together, we get down there,the guy puts it in the truck, belt driven,
(02:53):
brand new Husqvarna, walk behind mower.
We get home.
How mom, how are we gonna getthis mower out of the truck?
Like the truck's high.
How do I operate it?
Yeah.
And she's like, but she was on board.
You know, that's, that's what made it fun.
It was like,
I'm gonna support him.
He is.
This is a crazy idea.
What is he gonna do with this big mower?
(03:13):
You know, people, I'm from West Virginiaand the small town that I'm in, I remember
one guy having a 36 inch mower at thetime of all these landscaping companies.
And so.
That just grew Tommy, me to the pointthat we'd have like 65 accounts in high
school, in college, that we would doweekly with football, double sessions.
College was two hours away.
(03:34):
We did a Fri, we would take our classesand Monday through Thursday, Fridays
and Saturdays is game on however manyhours it took to get the work done.
Rain or shine.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I, I saw some some of the picturesyou sent me was the mowing charges,
you know, $30 here, $40 here, youknow, and had 'em all itemized out.
(03:54):
I'm like, we remember those days ofcharging clients and then go collect
the money and all that, that, that's,
Yeah,
that's hard work.
yeah.
You know, Tom, even back thenwith those small charges, once
you had really high route density.
A lot of houses on one street, youcould start to to do pretty well.
You know, the target would belike a dollar a minute back then
(04:14):
I remember I would read Lawn site,Tommy, did you ever read that?
Do you know what I'm talking about?
you got all yours.
yeah.
So there was a forum v blog calledLawn Site before, you know, the,
my computer was still dial upand I, I would read lawn site.
over and over and over get all thetips and tricks and it was like, hey,
if you can make a dollar a minute.
And so it was like, alright, so you lookat all your makeup of all your accounts
(04:36):
and you're like, I'm doing this bigone, it's $50, but it takes two hours.
It's like, let's get more at 25 and dofour of 'em in an hour on one street
and let's pump up the pump up in, andit's smaller equipment, less total
cost of ownership for the small mower.
Right?
So you're making more profits.
Yeah, I totally get it.
I mean, for you to figure that out at anearly age is pretty successful because
(05:00):
quite frankly, I know some companiesthat still can't figure that out and
they've been around for 20 years.
So,
Yeah.
so tell me about prior you had a lotof experience in maintenance, like
you started working for companies,so you eventually sold your business
or got out, is that correct?
Yeah.
I got, I got out.
Yeah.
And then, and then youwent to work for a company.
(05:21):
So tell me about that experience,and I think you were more in like
in, into some operations experience.
Tell me about how that went.
you, you know, Tommy, I've alwaysbeen, I had a pretty big personality
and so people kind of knew,they knew who I was from that
business back in West Virginia.
So I remember I'm in a supermarket.
I get a phone call andthe guy's like, Hey, Bob.
I own a landscaping company downin Charleston, West Virginia.
(05:44):
It's been in business for 30 years.
I want to open a branch inWest Virginia University.
I'm in Charleston.
They're three and a half hoursaway, but I wanna open a branch
and I want you to open it.
There's nothing there.
I'm like, but we have the contract withall the athletic facilities to do all the
maintenance except for the sports fieldlike that, the agronomy stuff, Tommy.
And so I'm like, okay, that sounds great.
(06:05):
I'd love to do that.
So I, I'm searching forwhat we're gonna rent.
They send me a brand new truck.
They start sending workers up from, threeand a half hours away to stay in hotels.
And I'm in charge and it's my, first jobout of having my own business, you know?
And so that was really fun, Tommy.
And I mean, one of the things that'skey I remember was, Hey, you're gonna
mulch the whole football stadium for WVU.
(06:28):
Oh yeah.
By the way, it's a hundredyards and it's all by hand.
And there's gonna be two of you.
Two of you,
Oh my gosh.
Wow.
It's almost starting over completely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you took off and ran that new branch.
Okay.
And then What happened after that?
You know, that was, and I wannapreface it too, like I had gone
(06:49):
there for, to landscape market,for landscape architecture at
WVU was a phenomenal program.
It was so fun working there.
After college, you're like still in partymode, so it's like party mode, work mode.
This is so fun.
Funer.
best friends and got a undergrad, and.
Yeah,
Some story.
He was in a fraternity.
(07:10):
He told me lots of stories thatprobably are not appropriate on, on this
show, so I know how youmountaineers can party.
yeah.
Work should be fun.
So I, I have a, I have a really good,my best friend, I talk to him every day.
His name's Matt Gris Covich.
He works at Wheat Salon and CustomLandscape in Indiana, Virginia.
Yeah.
And so Matt and I had done a lot of themowing together back in high school.
(07:33):
We had, we had worked with each other.
I actually did.
I took on half of his accounts,my half, and we combined.
And that's how I got to know him.
So Matt calls me and he is like, Bob,I'm working for this incredible company
in Washington, dc You should come.
And I'm like, yeah, let's do it.
And so Tommy, that's a huge movefrom a guy in a small town in
West Virginia to be like, I'm.
(07:58):
Yeah.
So what was there?
You know, I get there andreally incredible company.
All high end residential.
I can recall the first day,you know, they send you out.
You, I've never punched a time clock,so I go there, I hit a DP time clock
with my hand and I. I'm next to a guy.
I remember ErnestoPalacios from El Salvador.
I had no Spanish background.
his English was limited.
(08:18):
My Spanish was limited, but we had a blasttogether, and I enjoyed that more than
anything was getting to know Ernesto andmore about El Salvador and his culture.
And I love the idea of being bicultural.
And so I was just totally bought in.
I wanted to know everything about,about the people I was working with.
Yeah, that's fun.
(08:38):
You want to get in the field wherethe action is to learn the most.
So if anyone's young up on the show.
Get in the trenches and learn.
That's there's no, another better wayto experience how to be a good operator,
how to be a good listener, learner howto problem solve and what, what good
(08:59):
looks like on a maintenance property.
Right?
All those things are, are a lot.
Well, I, I learned in the industryas a. Young, scrawny kid, you know,
coming, you know outta school.
And I'm working with people that havebeen in industry for 40 years and they're
like, oh, here comes another whippersnapper you know, trying to make his name.
And I'm like, listen man, you know,George, I'm just here to learn.
(09:20):
Just show me everything.
I will listen and all that.
So kudos to you.
So then took a turn.
You went from far Eastcoast and now to West Coast.
What happened and whodid you work for there?
You know, I, I decided at one pointI was like, you know what, I, oh, I
did a big bicycle trip and I reallyhadn't challenged myself to do that.
(09:42):
I had worked and worked and worked, andI. I really focused on so much work time.
I was working, you know, every otherSaturday and I hadn't experienced
the world 'cause I had started, in myopinion, I hadn't experienced it because
I had started my business so early.
So a friend of mine, he asked me to goon a two week trip, mountain biking.
We go to Bend Oregon, we go toSalt Lake City, we go all over.
My best friend Matt fromWheat, he's with me.
(10:02):
We take, we're out there for 14 days.
We bike packed through Utah,140 miles, self-supported.
It was incredible.
And I'm like, I'm moving out here.
This is, this is it.
This is for me.
So I fly out here.
I don't have a job at all.
And I remember back at that time, I,LinkedIn was just starting to pick up and
I was like, all right, this is my key tosuccess right here as, as a young man.
(10:23):
So I'll boost this up.
And that's when I started really digginginto, that was back in 20 14 through 2018.
And yeah, I came out here and I gothired by Crystal Green's Landscaping.
I saw their tr I just, I'd interviewedwith a couple different people.
I saw Bob Grover fromPacific Landscape Management.
Amazing company.
I saw Nathan Dirksen and metwith him from Dennis' seventies.
They, they've been onthe top 100 list forever.
(10:45):
And I ended up seeing these trucksat Crystal Greens and I said, wow.
I like the way they keep this company.
The, the sites look good,the trucks look good.
And so I talked to them and they hired me.
They said, Bob, what,what role do you want?
Or what would you do?
And I said, well, what's the mostchallenging project you have?
What's your biggest pain point?
And they said, well.
(11:05):
Extra projects is what they called it,you know, enhancements and in irrigation.
They said, we need some support on that.
They had grown really rapidly,Tommy, from about 4 million to
20 at that time, back in 2018.
And so they had an antiquated computersystem that was just on the tipping
point of, of not being usable, lotof spreadsheets to track everything.
(11:25):
And then we were actually switchingto asset by include back then.
And so somebody neededto clean up all the data.
Set up all the iPhones and to get allthe information from the irrigation
department into asset by include.
But it all needed, looked over andcleaned up before it could get imported.
And that was, that's what they hiredthat, so that's what they brought me
on, that whatever challenging thingthey had, project I'd run the project.
(11:48):
Nice.
Whatever the, the most difficultthing was you said, sign me up.
So you're like an operationsirrigation guy, so to speak.
What are some nuggets thatyou learned along the way?
You know, irrigation was a ton of fun.
At that time, when I was runningoperations for the five years prior, I
was mainly just working with people as mysoft skills that I was using and I hadn't
(12:11):
done a lot of, you know, data mining.
And so I do that and I. I geta guy that's there, still there
at, at Crystal Greens today.
I really, I look up to this manLee Durall, and they, you know,
they've been purchased by Sperber,but Lee is super organized.
He's incredible spreadsheets.
So I'm watching this guy and I'm thinkingto myself, this guy can do what 10
people can do with this spreadsheet.
(12:31):
And so I'm like, Lee, can you,can you teach me how to do this?
So we, we start really lookingand digging into data and then we.
You know, it's funny, we make thisbig 11 by 17 sheet with, 14 columns.
We give it to the irrigatorsand we're like, get all your
maps, physical and digital, andlet's fill out the whole sheet.
How many zones and clocksdoes everything have?
(12:52):
We have a 850 sites with all this Tommy.
We know how many, we know how many zoneswe have, we know how many controllers
we have, and then all of a sudden Leebuilds a dashboard so that every time
a job gets done, at the end of theday, we know and we're like, okay, 15%.
All the sites have been checkedand they're running that can ex get
flowers, spring flowers, and it'sgotta, irrigation's, gotta be on
(13:14):
for these spring flowers, you know?
So now we have this visibility thatwe never had and we're like, okay,
now we can go do the flowers atthose sites, and so on and so forth.
And every day we have this newvisibility that we never had.
And so that's where that really scaled.
And then it was like, okay,take on the next thing.
And that was, that was a ton of fun.
so operations, efficiency, scalablesystem that you can, you know, that
(13:38):
the entire company could jump inon and rise to the occasion, right?
We're used to sort of paper andspreadsheets and things, but there's
an automation process in orderto improve your maintenance and
anything in your landscape business.
I love that.
Our awesome friend andcompany Grow Outdoor Living.
(14:00):
One of my favorite, just awesome dudes.
Mr. Garrett just a amazingperson and amazing company.
I've been knowing him for a longtime and he's just passionate
and loves what he does.
Loves the business.
And now you're becoming in sales, right?
And so you become a set, you know, let'sjust call it maintenance sales, right?
(14:22):
Probably new maintenance,reoccurring maintenance.
But one of the fascinating things thatI read on your bio was 200% increase in
the span of five years in maintenance.
Boom.
Tell me, what the heck did you crease thatso fast in such a short amount of time?
Well, I will say, you know, well first itwas incredible to go work with Garrett.
(14:45):
He was different than a lot of ownersthat I had worked with in the past.
Really focusing on people onthe core values of the company.
A lot of companies very focused on profit.
Not that any of the last companiesweren't really about the people.
They, they definitely were, but theway Garrett approaches things was
a bit different than I had seen inthe past, and it showed, showed me
a lot by the way he treated peopleand, just treated people incredible.
(15:07):
So.
Yeah, Tommy, we go in and I would say,you know, Southwest Washington where
they are in Vancouver, Washington,canvas and Ridgefield is really, EXPLO is
really exploding, still is at the time.
You know, there's a a lot of technology,chips, manufacturing and canvas
and so that does help drive people.
And the more there was drivingpeople, it made my job fairly easy.
(15:27):
Where I came in was, I saw a reallybig opportunity to get into homeowners
associations and like I had mentionedbefore, you know, doing something hard.
I was like, I'll never do a homeowner.
Owners association.
Everybody's like, that's thehardest thing you could do.
And then I, I, I just got stuck.
Board members, all that.
It's tricky.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(15:47):
So how.
So I, I get, I, Garrett had partnered witha great company where they were installing
the landscaping at every front yard.
And this company is developmentcompany and home builder.
They really cared that the wholeaspect of it from the quality build
of the home, the quality build ofthe landscape, and the care after.
Was all in alignment and that thosehomes would sell, sell efficiently
(16:12):
and be a great community for peopleall along the way until it was turned
over to the homeowners association.
'cause in the beginning, Tommy, they'remanaged by a property management
company with the developer in, inthat process with the homeowners.
So, you know, those are,those were complicated.
And I, we had one, well, I got tobe successful with that first one.
And I, the way I look at everything is,is how can I create a system around this?
(16:33):
That can scale, and then how doI make it so if I stepped away,
someone else can take the leadand continue to operate this, so.
Hundred percent.
Mm-hmm.
So tell me about that.
That's a like a, I feel likeyou're saying it's an automated.
Sales proposal process, so to speak.
Is that right?
(16:54):
Well, what it looked atwas at Crystal Greens.
I'd seen something with commercialthat I hadn't seen with my
residential background of weeds.
They were doing budget plans withall their commercial clients and I
said, well, I need to do a budgetplan with the homeowners association.
So let's dig in.
And one of the first things is,is they have a reserve study.
A lot of people may not even be familiarwith that, but it's money they set
(17:15):
aside for capital improvements, theirregular operating budget year to year.
And so I had, you know, the financialacumen you need to bring to that, that
adds a whole nother layer of value.
So I position myself as, I'myour landscape financial advisor.
Let's look at your reserve study.
So you start to look at thesereserve studies and say, who did it?
(17:36):
Are they from the area?
Because the area here in the PacificNorthwest is different than others.
So let's take a, let's take a lookat your reserve study together.
What, what do you have?
What do they have factored in?
So we'd look at some of thosethings and see, you know, big thing
was, Hey, do you have storm watermaintenance for your storm water swale?
Did you know that it's yours to maintain?
No, we didn't necessarilyknow that it was ours.
(17:58):
So we, with my landscape architecturebackground, we jump on GIS.
We'd look at maps and say, yeah,the, that site is yours to maintain.
You need to set, set this money asideto maintain that, that facility.
And then in the Pacific Northwest with thestorm water management principles, they
might have underground filters, Tommy.
So you have these filters.
You need to clean and havechanged every five years.
(18:20):
It could be 25, $30,000every five years to do that.
But did you know.
And so by bringing that conversationand now they've gained trust
that, Hey, you know what?
We should let Bob review allthis and, and give us his
feedback on building this budget.
I love it.
So education and knowledgegoes a long ways, right?
It's not, at the end ofthe day, just mowing grass.
(18:45):
It's much further than that.
It is make 'em aware of what'sgoing on the property, the reasons
why there is drainage, reason whythere are swells, reason why there
are weeds, reason why there's.
Shipment in the ground due tobad management of the grounds.
You know, aeration, all those practicesthat us landscapers know it's all
(19:07):
in our head, which is kind of easy.
But then our clients have no clue.
all we do is propose aprice with no added value.
So you, I love the fact that youbecame a landscape financial advisor.
Wow.
That's, that is such a massive takeawayand experience because it's all
(19:29):
about the money management and it'sall about the property looking good.
That's it.
There's nothing else.
Right?
And so if you check those two boxes, youcould also make an argument, maybe the
third box is just communication, right?
Readily available, et cetera.
That, that's amazing.
Tell me.
(19:51):
so, so you were able to grow it.
Did you use that sort of terminology ofeducation and knowledge with the client
and financial advisor and then repeatthe process to every single person you
meet and it started to domino effect toget your massive growth and maintenance.
Yeah.
Taught me it did.
And, and the big thing was, was I tookthe data management we were using at,
(20:14):
at Crystal Greens that Lee had taughtme, and it was like, okay, let's
start tracking things from day onewhen I have one HOA with one house.
And that's how we, that's howwe, that's how I started it.
And so it, for example, itwould be how many homes needed
an irrigation repair this year?
How many calls did we get?
Then I'd show 'em, Hey, youhad this many service calls.
(20:35):
You paid a service call fee at onetwenty five every time we came out.
Why don't I build it into yourmaintenance contract at the maintenance
contract rate and save you money?
And they're like, you,you can do that for us?
Yeah, we're partners.
Let's do this.
And then it's, I, I know I canallocate that resource now I have
more reoccurring revenue and thenI can ensure I'm staffed to support
(20:57):
my clients so that it can scale.
Then what it did is that Tommy was,I could divide that at the end of the
year too and say you needed to do thismany on average when you do your spring
startup next year it was $38 per housethat you needed, and then you track the
data again because at some point, Tommy,we had reached where we had seven HOAs
and some had 800 front yards, and wemaintained every front yard at these HOAs.
(21:21):
So it got to the point where wewere doing 2,500 front doors a week.
Oh wow, that's
amazing.
So what I'm hearing isdata drives decisions
It supports the client you share,you, you gotta share it with them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's no different in in,in installation either.
You gotta give me.
(21:42):
What are we producing out there, right?
Whether it be a certain size mower,whether it be a five gallon shrub, how
long it takes, how many stops on a route?
All that needs to be data pulledfrom the field into the office,
observed, studied, and then what'sthe action plan after that, right?
(22:05):
To in order to improve your own company.
But most importantly, improvethe client experience.
And because you're afinancial advisor, right?
Yeah.
And Tommy, you know, from your financialadvisor, you're, you're looking
for them to make you successful.
So one of the big things is you don'twant your client to have a special
assessment is where your HOA comesin and says, Hey, we didn't take, we
(22:29):
didn't get enough from you every month.
You gotta pay 5,000.
And additionally, I would go out andfight for the HOAs and say, Hey, I'd go to
different, you know, we call it bark dustout here, but mulch providers and say,
Hey, I have this volume, volume break.
I know you're slow in February.
I. Can we get it all in February, putdown if I get all the HOAs to sign up by
(22:50):
this date, and then I pass that savingsalong to them and celebrated it with them.
They're like, well, I only wanna use Bob.
He came up with thiscreative way to do it.
But I scale that throughout thecompany and show shows a lot of value,
Tommy, me to fight for your customers.
I mean, one other example is, is.
Hey, you need a bunch oftwo inch river rock done.
Hey, can out here in the PacificNorthwest, we have a conveyor trucks.
(23:10):
It's like, can I call that conveyortruck and just get it conveyed in the
whole area and just eliminate the labor.
And then you show the customer like,Hey, here was the proposal some other
guys gave you, and the one we gaveyou to do it by hand, it was 16,000.
I just brought the, Conveytruck, and we did it.
We cleaned it up.
We were in it out in half aday and it was eight grand.
And they're like, that'smy financial advisor.
Wow, that is just being smartwith your resources, right?
(23:35):
At the end of the day, there's alwaysa better way to do things, and I love
the fact that you like to pass thaton to the client and that, you know.
Clients only trust their contractorsright at the end of the day.
So they like knowing trust and thenthey spend more money and then they
want to increase the relationship, andthen they want to, you know, see you on
(23:56):
the sites, take care of the property.
So passing the savingson is, is phenomenal.
You also had to train anddevelop these teams, right?
It's, it's this day and age is, has beeninteresting the last years as far as.
Labor.
I don't believe we're in a labor shortage.
I believe we're in a lack oftraining and developing people in
(24:18):
the trades industry that we are.
And we as landscape owners and managersdo little to nothing to train everyone
to take a certain role in their company.
And it's doable.
I think we hire people and we say,get on a truck and go after it.
And our expectation is here.
That person and they come inhere and we're like, forget it.
(24:40):
He was a total loss.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
Right.
When really we shouldhave the expectation here.
Train him here, give him the careerladder, give him the path, give 'em
the tools, give 'em the resources,and they will get to that level.
Tell me about your sort of couple ofnuggets in training and developing, you
know, good field people and maintenance.
(25:01):
Well, I wanna say one thing, Tommy, youknow, training and developing people,
it, it is massive and a lot of guys don'trealize that they're either owners can
be working for their business inside it.
It, they can be working on it orthey think they do landscaping.
You know, when you go and talk topeople that are working on their
business, and I'll, I'll give you a,a really great example is there's an
amazing guy I met Neir, Nasim Nasimslandscape up in Puyallup, Washington.
(25:23):
He's grown his business900% in the last six years.
he does a thing called the cultureIndex, but when I see him, and I
spoke with him about this, he'sworking on his team and he understands
the training and development ofhis people is how he got it there.
And that's the secret sauce
everybody wants to know.
You know?
Did you, did you, is it the software?
Is it the measurements?
Is it the equipment?
(25:43):
No, it's training.
And you know, when you walk ina room and McFarland, Stanford
does this phenomenally and, askeverybody in there at the executive
table, what do you do for business?
And, you know, maybe nobody even says it.
No.
You're in the business of training anddeveloping people to provide service.
And so that, that's hits it.
That nails it, right, Tommy?
So I've always been, you know,I, I don't do this alone, right?
(26:04):
I was in sales, I had an operationsmanager, Nick McAllister, a grow,
phenomenal support and irrigation manager.
Jason Kleberg, phenomenal support.
We work the three of ustogether as just inseparable.
If I, they'd be CC'd onall my emails with my HOAs.
If I missed an email or I didn'tget back quick enough, they'd
respond, Hey, we saw this.
We're getting back to it.
(26:25):
It was the three of us supportingthe client that made it successful.
It wasn't standalone sales,standalone account management.
They knew when they needed to step inbecause we had that type of relationship.
That we fostered for collaboration.
It wouldn't be like, Hey, the irrigatorsare the only one supposed to change the
clock on the, the irrigation controller.
No, no, no.
If I see an issue, I call'em and say, hi, I'm here.
(26:47):
Can I change this for you?
Yeah.
We collaborate.
So that's, it's about collaboration.
Tommy.
That's the biggest thing.
that's great.
You know no one walks in the door, andif they do you're very lucky and blessed.
So I'm believed that you could almosthire anyone that has really good culture
that you live and die by, and they thenin turn trained for that certain position.
(27:11):
And I believe that yournumber one asset is people.
That's it.
Not the fancy skid steer.
Not the awesome office, not the swag gear.
It's the people thatoperate all of those things.
And the more you work on yourpeople, the better the outcomes
of your business will be.
And you know.
(27:33):
You could spend, literally, youshould spend a hundred hours a
year on training and developingteam members per one person.
That's my recommendation.
You'd be like, oh, Tommy,that's a little bit crazy.
I don't know.
Take some of the best companiesout there in the entire country.
You know, whatever it is.
Southwest Airlines,Chick-fil-A, you name it.
They are constantly trainingand onboarding and continuously
(27:55):
improving along the way.
So.
Very amazing stuff at Grow Outdoor Living.
Garrett is an awesome person.
Love that guy.
Love that company.
So big shout out to them, man.
Switching gears to this sort of crazytopic that we're gonna talk about now.
One of 'em was favorite things andI'm starting to dabble into this, is
(28:19):
this battery operational equipment.
Also autonomous robot.
I don't even know what theword right term is for this.
But you are now with Crest Outdoor PowerEquipment, a huge move in your career.
And I think you are the one of the best,if not the best person to run this.
(28:39):
And I think you're absolutelyexcited about this sort of trend.
It's happening in the west part of the.
States, states, you know,in Northwest and California.
I know some of your clients alreadyhas gotten into it, but, oh my gosh.
Crest, outdoor power equipment.
What do you do for them?
And, and give us a littlebit of an introduction.
(29:00):
Tommy, I'm the business developerfor Oregon, Washington, and Idaho
on the commercial garden side.
So our 60 volt power tools, ourcyber system and robotics it's
a phenomenal place to work.
I, it definitely is exactly what Iwanted to do, and, and I, I went for it,
you know, a year ago, no, a year and ahalf ago, Tommy, you know, I was like.
(29:20):
This is what I want to do and this is thepath that I'm gonna take to get there.
And I, I applied what Iapplied to be successful with.
Everything else that I've donewith these, these processes
and the imple implementation.
So I went through my planning process.
What am, what am I gonna do?
And you know, it was kindof got a funny start.
I like was like, I'm gonna go onedX and I'm gonna learn how to code.
And then I was like, wait a minute,this is really, this isn't it?
(29:42):
This isn't it.
And so I take this crazy course, I'mlike learning binary and writing notes.
I send it to my family.
I'm like, look at this stuff.
They're like, this guy.
I think my par, I think my familythinks I'm completely nuts.
And I'm writing binary.
So I'm like, okay, this isn't it.
So then I'm like, I study the nextthing and then I'm like, you know what?
Everything I've done, I've beensuccessful with I get a coach.
(30:02):
So I, you know, whether it's nutrition,health, you know, weightlifting, I.
Grab, grab mentors, grab coaches.
It's super important.
Like McFarland, Stanford, youknow, you guys help people
just 10 x the thing, right?
And you can do it fastwhen you have helped.
And so I, I reach out to a coachand this woman supports me greatly.
We, we design what, what, what I wanna do.
These are the three placesI wanna work at, or five.
(30:24):
And I go for it.
And I look back at my notes, Tommy, in myjournal just a couple weeks ago, and I was
like, crest was at the top of the list.
No way.
Yes.
gosh.
So you, you visualized it.
Mm-hmm.
amazing.
That's amazing.
The power of the, what they callthe law of attraction, right?
(30:45):
When you think it, you internalize itand you, you repeat it over and over
and you can visualize yourself atcress and on the Root Success Podcast
with Tommy talking about this thing.
Just kidding,
just kidding.
I went a little bit off board,off topic, but with you the law of
attraction, you know, see it, believe it.
(31:05):
Well, congratulations.
On, you know, seeing that come full cycle.
Wow.
That's cool.
Okay.
so tell me about all this stuff, right?
I'm in Texas, we are all about,big trucks and gasoline and
steaks and free roaming range.
(31:30):
But that's not always gonna be the case.
Moving a little bit down the road.
Right.
I feel like battery equipmentis really coming now, right?
I feel
like five years ago, not so muchmaybe, but like I, I saw some videos
of you in the amount of power andsome of those blowers is amazing.
Right?
(31:50):
So tell me about what, we'll,we'll start with the battery side.
Tell me about what the advantages are andsome, some nuggets versus gas and why the
technology has gotten way much better.
I.
Yeah, well, you know, the owner ofCrest, he, he invested a lot of money
in, in developing a new technology, a newbattery technology, and we rolled it out.
(32:13):
We have our Crest cybersystem, eight minute charge.
It, it's a. A unique chemistry inthe battery, proprietary chemistry
in the battery that allows it tocharge rapidly, discharge rapidly, and
have extreme power along that entireduration of its charge and discharge.
Some of these traditional lithium ionbatteries, as they start to discharge,
(32:35):
they start to lo, they lose power.
At the end of that, you know, hey, 10%,15 percent's left, left, 10 percent's
left, and when it is, you're onlygetting 70% of the power out of the unit.
Gotcha.
So tell me about, sothat's a quick charge.
So does Crest have a full line ofsmall tools, small power equipment,
all the way to the mowers?
(32:56):
Push right on.
Tell me about some of that equipment.
Crest does.
They have pro, we call it prosumer.
So that's our, our more homeowner,you know, homeowners with acreage,
they can go out, they'll use that.
And we also have our commercialgarden line of equipment,
our 60 volt system as well.
And you know, there's someunique approach to it.
There's we have our, our cyber tankwhere you can charge as you go out in
(33:17):
the field on that, or you can opt to takeall the power with you in the batteries.
So those are kind of thetwo different approaches.
And then there's some people that also.
Would have routes where they could plugin while they're out on the route and
they could charge while they're out.
So there's really three approaches,you know rapid charge off of our cyber
tank, charge on site with a smallcharger that works rapidly as well.
(33:37):
Plugged in or take it all with you.
So tell me about the costs.
I feel like some people are alwaysgoing, well, that's way too expensive.
Or, where do I start?
Like, do I just buy a mower?
is it a small power code?
Is it a blower to test it out?
(33:58):
It's almost like, we talked aboutthis earlier, what you and I did.
It's like software, right?
I think the expectation is justsort of open it up and just use
it and it just works, right?
But there's, there's a period oftesting and observation and awareness.
So talk about some of the costs,if you would, and then talk
about where the hell do I start.
If I want to convert my landscapingbusiness to go, you know, battery op.
(34:23):
We won't talk about autonomousrobots, but more to battery for now.
Yeah.
Well, let's just start with where you'dstart and that that would be the way
you'd start any project at your business.
Start with your planning process.
Sit down with your team, with yourexecutive team or your leadership
team and, and decide, What impactis, what are the desired results?
First of all, of, of this transition, thedesired results, they may look something
(34:45):
like, number one, cost savings noisefor your clients and for your workers.
Health bene health benefitsclients and, and your workers.
Vibration fatigue.
Cost savings is one of the biggest,so, you know, and, and, and clients.
They just, one of the biggestthings too is across the country.
Is noise bands, right?
(35:06):
And that's really what startedsome of the push to do it.
But the real thing to all this,Tommy, is the cost savings on battery
electric versus gas once you haveit out there in, in operating.
So we'll talk about the next, butstart with your planning process.
What's the desired result?
What are, who are your stakeholders?
(35:26):
What feedback do you want?
What metrics are you gonna measure?
And, and take that out there.
Communicate that to your team.
If your executive leadership teamand then, you know, bring us in for
a trial, try other equipment, trywhatever, try, try some equipment,
get, get those metrics filled out.
Sometimes people take, sometimes peoplego through three trials before because
they haven't established this before theystart, so by the third time now we're
(35:51):
creating this process where, you know,we're gonna do a cost savings analysis to
start run the crew for two weeks with gas,run the crew for two weeks with battery.
Let's determine.
What the differential is in that, and thenlet's extrapolate it out over the year.
Love it.
Love it.
love the fact that yousaid, let's plan this out.
(36:13):
I don't think many landscapecompanies plan out their gas power.
Mowers and equipment as much.
Right.
So this is gonna sort of take abit of a moment, and I feel like
I'm gonna take a stab at this.
Bob is understand whatyou have currently, right?
This is what we have in our entire fleet.
(36:34):
So what I envision is a fleet that has thesame sort of equipment across all fleets.
It's almost like the FedExtruck, the UPS truck.
And you can jump in that sametruck and everything is the same.
The tools are the same.
They're in the same spot.
The chargers, the, the fueltanks, whatever it may be.
(36:55):
So my first evaluation isevaluate what you have, right?
You got four maintenance trucks, great.
Systematize all of those trucks tobe the exact same wherever they are.
I don't, I don't encourage crewsto hop from truck to truck,
but you want 'em all the same.
So it creates less waste in your business.
(37:17):
So start from there.
My second step I recommend, based onwhat you're saying, Bob, is now that
you have that, understand where youwant to get battery operated, right?
And maybe it's one of thefour crews to start out.
So maybe get us a couple ofproducts, maybe test 'em out.
You know, every guy in the fieldand every woman, it feels like
(37:40):
they're always concerned aboutthe battery of a blower, right?
Test, use, operate, understand all thosetypes of things, and then maybe retrofit
or encourage one fleet to go batteryand test all that out and understand it
before you go all in on all four trucks.
Is that a recommendation kind of.
(38:00):
You know.
Based on the cost savings, Tommy,it's best just to jump right in,
do the trial and J and just go.
Okay.
You know, it's when you see thesa, the cost savings, Tommy, you
and you really understand yourcosts, that's where it's critical.
You sit down, crest, we sit downwith the CFO, we sit down with
the owner, the financial analysts.
(38:22):
When you take your cost of fuel.
Your cost of off-road repairs, andyou add that up and you sum it up,
and then you take the differentialand you take, crest has finance, has
financing, locked in rates to purchasethis equipment for over three years.
You take the cost of thatpurchase, the cost of electricity,
(38:44):
the cost of those repairs.
They're very minimal, andyou do that differential.
We are seeing that many companieswho adopt adopted our equipment,
there's companies $109 million.
They have a hundred crewsthey've committed to com to.
Everyone is converting to Crest overover two seasons at these companies.
Why?
Because they know that the cost ofthat fuel, plus the cost of offered
(39:08):
repairs, exceeds the cost of thefinancing of the equipment, plus the
electricity, and that differentialaverages around a thousand dollars.
A person per year, dependingon where you are and how many
days out of the year you work.
And based on that alone, people aremaking a hundred percent conversions.
Wow.
(39:28):
So you have people on your staff thatcan say, tell me what you got and I'll
build it, and we'll get it shipped toyou, and we will help you operate it.
And rock and roll, move on.
We'll finance it, pay forit, and let's just go.
So you're taking all the guesswork out ofthe owners and managers of the company.
So it's almost like a partnershipbetween Landscape Company and Crest.
(39:50):
Work together, figure out what you got.
Figure out what you're gonna need.
We'll build it.
Literally ship it, operate it, andwe're here for you for service.
Absolutely zero downtime.
We come in, we support those people, wesupport the we, we help build the dealer
up to get them the training to do it.
But it is, it's a unique thing from amanufacturer, and it's very, it's super
(40:12):
disruptive to the market right now, Tommy.
it's, it's incredibly disruptive.
It's, but I, you know,I love that part of it.
I'm a little bit of a disruptive guy, andso I come in and I like to shake it up.
But yeah, Tommy, we, I go in these places.
We go in these places as a team.
We're taking picturesof the breaker panel.
We're taking pictures of where theoutlets are located and taught me, look,
when we that's one thing that I willsay, Garrett Herger taught me a grow.
(40:34):
Build for capacity.
Build for capacity.
What does that mean when you go outand do your parking lot repairs?
Today, you're gonna go electricin the next five to 10 years.
Okay?
You are bottom line.
What you think you need today torun that crew is not what you really
think you're gonna need in five years.
Whenever everything's fullyautonomous, your mowers.
(40:57):
And that mower now needs 14kilowatts to charge overnight.
Your crew, each crew member maybe needsseven to eight kilowatts, maybe 12
kilowatts per crew to charge overnight.
What I'm getting at isthe build for capacity.
It's not that expensive.
Tommy.
Throw some conduit in the ground.
Get your sleeves in.
You don't have to pull the wire.
(41:17):
You don't have to set the breakers, just.
Put the conduit in theground with the trench.
The trench costs you once, youprobably already put 'em in
one, in for something else.
And then when it comes, you'reready just to stub it up.
You stubbed it up, pull, pull thewire, and you're rocking and rolling.
But you gotta think ahead,think five years out and, and
be ready for this transition.
(41:38):
And that's gonna save you a tonof costs, you know, and build for
capacity on what I ask people, what,where are you at with battery today?
Have you thought about it?
What would your co, what's your comp?
What is your plan for the nextfive years with your company?
What would your company look likeit was, if it was fully electric,
and what would you need to do that?
Wow.
It's the way we're going.
(41:58):
Bob and I, I believe in this a lot andI feel like you guys up in the West
Northwest are sort of the trend centers.
Parts of it are trying to really forceyou guys to do it and, and landscape
companies are getting hit pretty good.
It's, it's educating andchanging your mindset on this.
But I think it's gonnawork very, very well.
(42:20):
I just think about all the gas cansand the fuel and the repairs and the
exhaust and, and it's, it's just become.
Our industry where we're just burningand burning and burning constantly.
It's dirty, it's messy, it's noisy.
Right?
And I don't even think you canput a dollar amount on all the
(42:43):
health implications that it'scausing at the end of the day.
And so I'm a huge fan.
I, I gotta, I gotta getinto this sort of thing.
This is great.
Tell me, Bob, about robotics.
I feel like we're, I knowa couple of companies that
are jumping into this fully.
I, I know one that is fully investedinto it in their maintenance practices.
(43:06):
Tell me about your robotic mower and whyit's one of the best in the industry.
And then also tell meabout how do you do this?
Is it something thatyou leave at the house?
Or the, the, the commercial property?
Or do you pick it up andmove it to locations?
Like tell me about like what someoneneeds to be aware of, of this sort of
(43:30):
robotic thing that does it all for you.
Yeah, I mean, you know, tell me robotshave been around for a long time.
They really have been 15 years.
Errors, minimum, I would say.
I don't know.
I don't know how far back it goes, but wehad ones where we'd bury a wire and they
did a random pattern and you were limitedto where you could bury the wire and
cross across the sidewalk or how intricateit would be with the buried wire.
(43:51):
And, and they worked.
They worked but theyhad limited case uses.
You were limited by the wire.
And then as things evolved, we hadrobots that communicate from a ra
from a radio signal line of sight.
That gets tough because youdon't always have line of sight.
So then you gotta putmore receivers out there.
And then Crest developed their ownnetwork of antennas that we have
(44:13):
throughout the United States that speak
a cell, like a cell phone coverage?
Is that right?
Yes.
And yeah, so we have ourown network of antennas.
If you have a landscape companyand you wanna buy robotics,
you can have your own antenna.
And so.
If it makes sense for, you know,what's already in the area.
We don't, we don't have double overlapof coverage, but if it triangulates
(44:34):
it works so we'll, we'll work that.
And so we have that and that's, thatmakes it really great and easy to map.
You don't have to putup all these repeaters.
The process to install the robotnow just becomes, bring the robot,
set the base, and run the mower.
And another unique thing is ona lot of these other mowers.
To map, you grab your phoneand you walk behind it.
(44:55):
They call it walking the dog.
So you walk behind it real slowand you're moving it around
and fumbling around with it.
But Crest has a mapping cart.
It's a tool where you take the headoff the robot, you stick it on the
mapping cart, and you just, you, youknow, it's talking to your phone, you,
you map around the outside perimeter.
The trees, you're not gonna go inside.
You map those, the paths you're gonna goon and bam, you know, you can walk away,
(45:19):
you start mowing in just a few hours.
It, it's pretty incredible.
The mowers, they, they mow down to, youknow, le inch and a quarter or less.
And, and that's just I don't have allthe golf metrics if you want to go.
I don't, I don't do, Idon't do a lot of golf.
If you want to do golf and get thegolf kit and all that, Tommy, 'cause
I'm still pretty new at this is.
You can go lower.
(45:39):
I don't know.
I don't know how, I don't know how low,so I don't wanna be misleading about it.
I, I don't, I don't know what themetrics are 'cause I'm a landscape, I'm a
landscape guy, so all I care is, is thatit, it go, it goes up to 3.54 and, and in
the Pacific Northwest, I'm gonna mow it.
Two, two and a quarter, twoand a half, whatever, you know.
So it, it is prettyincredible on, on that front.
And then you know, you askedwhat's the difference between ours?
(46:00):
What makes ours so great?
On a lot of the robots I see they,they just have a di a spinning
disc and ours has more of a deckdesign to it that comes down on the
edges like skirts and it floats.
Everybody wanted a floating deck.
We remember the mowers way backwhen that had a fixed deck.
What happens with a fixed deck?
You run it into stuff and scalp, right?
So.
It, it has a floating deck with little, itcomes down at an angle, Tommy, so it kind
(46:24):
of contours with the ground as it goes.
And then as you go up through our productline, you get the ones that have double
blades, you know, six instead of three.
And they're stacked, one'son top, one's on the bottom.
And the quality of cut, in myopinion, is much better on the
double bladed units that are stacked.
And then when you get to our, to ourtop robotics at f. Built-in wheel
(46:46):
motors and the hubs, you know thetraction you get from that I is amazing.
The quality of cut.
It has two discs with 12 blades,and the quality of cuts incredible.
You can see it on someof my LinkedIn posts.
I, I know you've seen some of'em and just stripe super well.
But yeah, Tommy, it's leavinga great quality of cut.
People ask, well, what about,what about the clippings?
You're mowing it every three days.
(47:07):
It's a lawn maintainer.
so you're taking off a,you know, just a micro cut.
It doesn't tear the edges, so there's alot of research out there showing now that
the, the health of the lawn is much betterjust from a fungus and pest standpoint.
Also just counting how many,you know, leaves or how many
stocks are in a certain area.
Stock count, like density of the lawn.
(47:29):
When you start mowing every threedays, the lawn gets much denser.
So you have weed, weed, weedcompetition that increases and
then you have moisture retention
and you don't have that huge thatch'cause it's such a micro cutting.
It's breaking down really fast withthe biology and the, you know, it's
all that, it's, it's working superwell to, to make this whole system,
this whole system gets better.
(47:50):
Wow.
And, and I could, I could see that, youknow, it's such a minor cuts of blades of
grass, doesn't really create the thatch'cause then you have the whole thatch
buildup and then you have the raking ofthe thatch and then you have the aeration.
And then you have the, you have all thosethings, and then you have the, you know,
(48:11):
the weight of the mowers and the, the,the ruts and the wetness and all that.
I'm a huge fan.
Tell me about, one more questionabout, this is your robotic mower.
If I was to, buy one andput it somewhere, right?
Is, is that state at the, at the property.
And you leave it and thenit's got a home base?
(48:32):
Or is it something you pick upand go from property to property.
if you look on OPE plus, we justhad a article come out yesterday
or the day before, we do have an.
New autonomous mower,we call the drop and go.
So that mower you take with you, ittakes itself out of the truck, it mows
the area, it'll get back in the truck.
The other that's, that's comingand what we currently have is
(48:55):
mowers that you leave on site.
And those, you know, Tommy, me, onething we didn't talk about was just cost.
We talk about, you know, the qualityof the cut and, and, and how it works.
But the, the major thing is, iswe have a global labor shortage.
Labor and labor also is everincreasing, and I also see it as
how can we give people new, createnew positions in companies where
(49:17):
people have more upward mobility,where they can choose their purpose?
What's your, what's your purpose?
What's your mission?
Right?
That's why companies grow is when theyfind the purpose in the person that
they're training and developing, andthey give them that space to do it.
And we take 'em out of just a mowing roll.
And now I can take a person and say,would you like to be a robot technician?
(49:41):
I'd love to train you to do that.
Would you like that to be your purpose?
And now we elevate peopleand train them to do that.
And that's my, my real vision forwhy I also wanted to be part of
this, was to do that for people.
You're on the cutting edge of technologyand at the forefront of it right now.
Bob, I am not surprised you're hereright now talking about this new trend.
(50:05):
And actually it's not even atrend, it's just the way that
the industry's headed towards.
And I'm not shocked that you're heretoday because you're always on, you're
always pushing further when peopleare also sort of behind you, right?
you're the odd man to jump out andsay, this is where I'm headed towards.
Unbelievable.
Bob.
One last quick thing as we wrap up.
We talked yesterday and like, Bob, tellme what you are, what's your quote?
(50:29):
What's your mantra?
What's your lifestyle?
What?
How do you work and play?
Like get what?
What do you live and die by?
I would say, you know, I, I liketo do things pretty extreme, you
know, so I will say like one.
You know, one, one thing that'll kindof give you the idea of that was like, I
started in 2024 on the first of the yearin 2024, I ran 24 miles, and I want to
(50:54):
do that every year until I can't do that.
So 1, 1, 20, 25, I ran 25 miles.
I, I didn't train, I hadn't been running.
I was like, okay, if I can go towork and work for 12 hours five days
a week, and then work for three orfour hours on Saturday and Sunday.
I can go and do anything for five hours.
And so I go there and once you chipaway the first hour of it, you're like,
(51:17):
oh, I got four hours left of this.
This is, this is cake.
And so you know, 25 miles is easierthan the 24 from the year before.
And I look forward to doing that.
And people would ask like, well,how, how sustainable is that?
I don't, I don't know.
That's the point.
That's fun.
point.
The point is I'm in the now, right now.
Yep.
And I, I, you know, by doing thatthing the first of the year, you just
(51:38):
prove to yourself like, I just got thehardest thing done for my whole year,
and everything else is just gonnabe like, I can look back at that and
say, Hey, I'm having a tough day.
But I started out doing that andI, and I didn't even know how it
was gonna go, and I just did it.
But I thought about that Tommy,just to keep it simple, was build
for capacity and keep going.
Yeah.
(51:58):
Love it.
Love it.
I love built for capacity.
Keep going.
That's great.
I, I had a post this weekthat said just do hard things.
And we do hard things thatbuilds you to a better person.
And when you tackle those difficultthings that are meant for you to come
into your life, it makes you moreaccomplishable, let you figure things out.
(52:23):
And so I'm with you.
I, I'd love to do hard things.
I'm a health fitness freak.
I, I, I think, I think taking care ofyourself and doing the 25 mile run I, I
need you to send me some pictures or videoof you the next time you're doing that.
I, I'm wanna share that on my socialfeed because that's, that's amazing.
Bob, oh my god, there is so much.
I think we're in a record length of showhere 'cause there's so much to talk about.
(52:48):
So I think we need to do another episodein the near future and get really
deep into the Crest products and whatthey mean and some, some advantages.
'cause we just kind of, we sh youknow, kind of get a good 30,000
foot elevation and I think ouraudience is gonna hear more about it.
So we'll have to do thathere in the next few months.
Have a repeat of you and yourface and your awesome energy.
(53:10):
Yeah.
Thank you Tommy, as you as well.
This has been a been a lot of fun and Ilook forward to meeting with you again.
Absolutely.
Alright.
Bob Carey of CrestOutdoor Power Equipment.
Go find him on LinkedIn.
His last name is C-A-R-E-Y.
He is a trend center.
Go give him a follow, watch himon LinkedIn on all his posts.
They're fascinating.
Also, I wanna give a shout out to.
(53:31):
Mr. Garrett, the owner of Grow OutdoorLiving up there in Washington, fabulous
owner, great ace peer group member.
Love that guy.
And you can follow us on anysocial media platform and give us a
listen and we'll see you next time.
Thanks, Bob.
(53:52):
Ready to take the next step?
Download our free Profitability Scorecardto quickly create your own baseline
financial assessment and uncover thefastest ways to improve your business.
Just go to McFarlinStanford.com/scorecardto get yours today To learn more about
McFarlin Stanford our best in classpeer groups and other services go to
(54:13):
our website at McFarlinStanford.comAnd don't forget to follow us on
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
See you next time on the Roots of Success.
The Roots of Success podcast isfor the landscape professional
who's looking to up their game.
We've got a brain trust of experts tohelp you nurture the roots of a successful
business and grow to the next level.
This is The Roots of Success.
Welcome to another episode of Roots ofSuccess, and I'm your host Tommy Cole.
(00:20):
And wow.
We have another amazing guest, myfriend from like years ago, Bob Carey.
He is now with Crest OutdoorPower Equipment and autonomous
battery operated mowing machine.
Dude.
But man, way before that I knew you.
(00:41):
I'm just gonna call you.
You didn't know this was gonnahappen, Bob, but I'm gonna
call you the maintenance man.
I like that,
I'm gonna call you the maintenance man.
Welcome to the show.
I'm super stoked to haveyou, Bob, how are you?
I'm doing great, Tommy.
I appreciate you bringing me on.
It's really fun just to dothis right off the cuff.
You know, you reached out to me andwere like, let's do this podcast.
(01:02):
I'm like, all right, let's get prepped.
And you're like, we do it live.
Let's just go.
Let's just go, you know,that's also the thing.
Bob's just kind of funnyis just don't overthink it.
Let's just jump on and do this thingbecause that's what's fun about this.
I never thought I'd behere in a million years.
We're now going two years strong onthis, on this show, and we spread out
(01:24):
to so many people across the country.
It's just been fun to watch and every timeI travel I always see someone that says.
Man, I love your podcast.
Let's keep going.
So that, that feels my motivation.
A hundred percent.
Bob, I'm extremely blessed andfortunate to have met you probably
six, seven years ago, is my guess.
Back in the early McFarland Stanforddays, did some recruiting to get
(01:47):
you kind of where you're going.
And, and now we're heretoday, but Bob, tell us.
Some of the past, like, what the heck?
What?
Why did you choose this crazy profession?
You sent me some photos last nightthat I was like, wow, I cannot believe
you saved some photos of a what?
A scrawny little kid, right?
(02:07):
Like myself, you
know, mowing grass.
Basically.
Tell me about yourselfand how you got started.
You know, there's a lot of guys thathave gone out and mowed grassed on
me in their, in their pickup truckor whatever, and done some lawns.
But when I tell people, you know,my wife had mentioned in the past,
she's like, you gotta forget aboutthat stuff you did as a little kid.
And I'm like, honey, this, thiswasn't some little kid thing.
(02:28):
You know?
I, I, so.
Yeah.
So my, my mom, I remember you know,I had my first mower, but my mom, I
call her, I'm like, Hey mom, I wannago pick up this mower I found on eBay.
It's a 36 inch walk behind mower.
We're gonna go, we're gonnago pick it up together.
So I have my driver's permit, butI had bought my first truck already
just from mowing some lawns with amower that I had bought when I was 12.
So we, we go together, we get down there,the guy puts it in the truck, belt driven,
(02:53):
brand new Husqvarna, walk behind mower.
We get home.
How mom, how are we gonna getthis mower out of the truck?
Like the truck's high.
How do I operate it?
Yeah.
And she's like, but she was on board.
You know, that's, that's what made it fun.
It was like,
I'm gonna support him.
He is.
This is a crazy idea.
What is he gonna do with this big mower?
(03:13):
You know, people, I'm from West Virginiaand the small town that I'm in, I remember
one guy having a 36 inch mower at thetime of all these landscaping companies.
And so.
That just grew Tommy, me to the pointthat we'd have like 65 accounts in high
school, in college, that we would doweekly with football, double sessions.
College was two hours away.
(03:34):
We did a Fri, we would take our classesand Monday through Thursday, Fridays
and Saturdays is game on however manyhours it took to get the work done.
Rain or shine.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Yeah, I, I saw some some of the picturesyou sent me was the mowing charges,
you know, $30 here, $40 here, youknow, and had 'em all itemized out.
(03:54):
I'm like, we remember those days ofcharging clients and then go collect
the money and all that, that, that's,
Yeah,
that's hard work.
yeah.
You know, Tom, even back thenwith those small charges, once
you had really high route density.
A lot of houses on one street, youcould start to to do pretty well.
You know, the target would belike a dollar a minute back then
(04:14):
I remember I would read Lawn site,Tommy, did you ever read that?
Do you know what I'm talking about?
you got all yours.
yeah.
So there was a forum v blog calledLawn Site before, you know, the,
my computer was still dial upand I, I would read lawn site.
over and over and over get all thetips and tricks and it was like, hey,
if you can make a dollar a minute.
And so it was like, alright, so you lookat all your makeup of all your accounts
(04:36):
and you're like, I'm doing this bigone, it's $50, but it takes two hours.
It's like, let's get more at 25 and dofour of 'em in an hour on one street
and let's pump up the pump up in, andit's smaller equipment, less total
cost of ownership for the small mower.
Right?
So you're making more profits.
Yeah, I totally get it.
I mean, for you to figure that out at anearly age is pretty successful because
(05:00):
quite frankly, I know some companiesthat still can't figure that out and
they've been around for 20 years.
So,
Yeah.
so tell me about prior you had a lotof experience in maintenance, like
you started working for companies,so you eventually sold your business
or got out, is that correct?
Yeah.
I got, I got out.
Yeah.
And then, and then youwent to work for a company.
(05:21):
So tell me about that experience,and I think you were more in like
in, into some operations experience.
Tell me about how that went.
you, you know, Tommy, I've alwaysbeen, I had a pretty big personality
and so people kind of knew,they knew who I was from that
business back in West Virginia.
So I remember I'm in a supermarket.
I get a phone call andthe guy's like, Hey, Bob.
I own a landscaping company downin Charleston, West Virginia.
(05:44):
It's been in business for 30 years.
I want to open a branch inWest Virginia University.
I'm in Charleston.
They're three and a half hoursaway, but I wanna open a branch
and I want you to open it.
There's nothing there.
I'm like, but we have the contract withall the athletic facilities to do all the
maintenance except for the sports fieldlike that, the agronomy stuff, Tommy.
And so I'm like, okay, that sounds great.
(06:05):
I'd love to do that.
So I, I'm searching forwhat we're gonna rent.
They send me a brand new truck.
They start sending workers up from, threeand a half hours away to stay in hotels.
And I'm in charge and it's my, first jobout of having my own business, you know?
And so that was really fun, Tommy.
And I mean, one of the things that'skey I remember was, Hey, you're gonna
mulch the whole football stadium for WVU.
(06:28):
Oh yeah.
By the way, it's a hundredyards and it's all by hand.
And there's gonna be two of you.
Two of you,
Oh my gosh.
Wow.
It's almost starting over completely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you took off and ran that new branch.
Okay.
And then What happened after that?
You know, that was, and I wannapreface it too, like I had gone
(06:49):
there for, to landscape market,for landscape architecture at
WVU was a phenomenal program.
It was so fun working there.
After college, you're like still in partymode, so it's like party mode, work mode.
This is so fun.
Funer.
best friends and got a undergrad, and.
Yeah,
Some story.
He was in a fraternity.
(07:10):
He told me lots of stories thatprobably are not appropriate on, on this
show, so I know how youmountaineers can party.
yeah.
Work should be fun.
So I, I have a, I have a really good,my best friend, I talk to him every day.
His name's Matt Gris Covich.
He works at Wheat Salon and CustomLandscape in Indiana, Virginia.
Yeah.
And so Matt and I had done a lot of themowing together back in high school.
(07:33):
We had, we had worked with each other.
I actually did.
I took on half of his accounts,my half, and we combined.
And that's how I got to know him.
So Matt calls me and he is like, Bob,I'm working for this incredible company
in Washington, dc You should come.
And I'm like, yeah, let's do it.
And so Tommy, that's a huge movefrom a guy in a small town in
West Virginia to be like, I'm.
(07:58):
Yeah.
So what was there?
You know, I get there andreally incredible company.
All high end residential.
I can recall the first day,you know, they send you out.
You, I've never punched a time clock,so I go there, I hit a DP time clock
with my hand and I. I'm next to a guy.
I remember ErnestoPalacios from El Salvador.
I had no Spanish background.
his English was limited.
(08:18):
My Spanish was limited, but we had a blasttogether, and I enjoyed that more than
anything was getting to know Ernesto andmore about El Salvador and his culture.
And I love the idea of being bicultural.
And so I was just totally bought in.
I wanted to know everything about,about the people I was working with.
Yeah, that's fun.
(08:38):
You want to get in the field wherethe action is to learn the most.
So if anyone's young up on the show.
Get in the trenches and learn.
That's there's no, another better wayto experience how to be a good operator,
how to be a good listener, learner howto problem solve and what, what good
(08:59):
looks like on a maintenance property.
Right?
All those things are, are a lot.
Well, I, I learned in the industryas a. Young, scrawny kid, you know,
coming, you know outta school.
And I'm working with people that havebeen in industry for 40 years and they're
like, oh, here comes another whippersnapper you know, trying to make his name.
And I'm like, listen man, you know,George, I'm just here to learn.
(09:20):
Just show me everything.
I will listen and all that.
So kudos to you.
So then took a turn.
You went from far Eastcoast and now to West Coast.
What happened and whodid you work for there?
You know, I, I decided at one pointI was like, you know what, I, oh, I
did a big bicycle trip and I reallyhadn't challenged myself to do that.
(09:42):
I had worked and worked and worked, andI. I really focused on so much work time.
I was working, you know, every otherSaturday and I hadn't experienced
the world 'cause I had started, in myopinion, I hadn't experienced it because
I had started my business so early.
So a friend of mine, he asked me to goon a two week trip, mountain biking.
We go to Bend Oregon, we go toSalt Lake City, we go all over.
My best friend Matt fromWheat, he's with me.
(10:02):
We take, we're out there for 14 days.
We bike packed through Utah,140 miles, self-supported.
It was incredible.
And I'm like, I'm moving out here.
This is, this is it.
This is for me.
So I fly out here.
I don't have a job at all.
And I remember back at that time, I,LinkedIn was just starting to pick up and
I was like, all right, this is my key tosuccess right here as, as a young man.
(10:23):
So I'll boost this up.
And that's when I started really digginginto, that was back in 20 14 through 2018.
And yeah, I came out here and I gothired by Crystal Green's Landscaping.
I saw their tr I just, I'd interviewedwith a couple different people.
I saw Bob Grover fromPacific Landscape Management.
Amazing company.
I saw Nathan Dirksen and metwith him from Dennis' seventies.
They, they've been onthe top 100 list forever.
(10:45):
And I ended up seeing these trucksat Crystal Greens and I said, wow.
I like the way they keep this company.
The, the sites look good,the trucks look good.
And so I talked to them and they hired me.
They said, Bob, what,what role do you want?
Or what would you do?
And I said, well, what's the mostchallenging project you have?
What's your biggest pain point?
And they said, well.
(11:05):
Extra projects is what they called it,you know, enhancements and in irrigation.
They said, we need some support on that.
They had grown really rapidly,Tommy, from about 4 million to
20 at that time, back in 2018.
And so they had an antiquated computersystem that was just on the tipping
point of, of not being usable, lotof spreadsheets to track everything.
(11:25):
And then we were actually switchingto asset by include back then.
And so somebody neededto clean up all the data.
Set up all the iPhones and to get allthe information from the irrigation
department into asset by include.
But it all needed, looked over andcleaned up before it could get imported.
And that was, that's what they hiredthat, so that's what they brought me
on, that whatever challenging thingthey had, project I'd run the project.
(11:48):
Nice.
Whatever the, the most difficultthing was you said, sign me up.
So you're like an operationsirrigation guy, so to speak.
What are some nuggets thatyou learned along the way?
You know, irrigation was a ton of fun.
At that time, when I was runningoperations for the five years prior, I
was mainly just working with people as mysoft skills that I was using and I hadn't
(12:11):
done a lot of, you know, data mining.
And so I do that and I. I geta guy that's there, still there
at, at Crystal Greens today.
I really, I look up to this manLee Durall, and they, you know,
they've been purchased by Sperber,but Lee is super organized.
He's incredible spreadsheets.
So I'm watching this guy and I'm thinkingto myself, this guy can do what 10
people can do with this spreadsheet.
(12:31):
And so I'm like, Lee, can you,can you teach me how to do this?
So we, we start really lookingand digging into data and then we.
You know, it's funny, we make thisbig 11 by 17 sheet with, 14 columns.
We give it to the irrigatorsand we're like, get all your
maps, physical and digital, andlet's fill out the whole sheet.
How many zones and clocksdoes everything have?
(12:52):
We have a 850 sites with all this Tommy.
We know how many, we know how many zoneswe have, we know how many controllers
we have, and then all of a sudden Leebuilds a dashboard so that every time
a job gets done, at the end of theday, we know and we're like, okay, 15%.
All the sites have been checkedand they're running that can ex get
flowers, spring flowers, and it'sgotta, irrigation's, gotta be on
(13:14):
for these spring flowers, you know?
So now we have this visibility thatwe never had and we're like, okay,
now we can go do the flowers atthose sites, and so on and so forth.
And every day we have this newvisibility that we never had.
And so that's where that really scaled.
And then it was like, okay,take on the next thing.
And that was, that was a ton of fun.
so operations, efficiency, scalablesystem that you can, you know, that
(13:38):
the entire company could jump inon and rise to the occasion, right?
We're used to sort of paper andspreadsheets and things, but there's
an automation process in orderto improve your maintenance and
anything in your landscape business.
I love that.
Our awesome friend andcompany Grow Outdoor Living.
(14:00):
One of my favorite, just awesome dudes.
Mr. Garrett just a amazingperson and amazing company.
I've been knowing him for a longtime and he's just passionate
and loves what he does.
Loves the business.
And now you're becoming in sales, right?
And so you become a set, you know, let'sjust call it maintenance sales, right?
(14:22):
Probably new maintenance,reoccurring maintenance.
But one of the fascinating things thatI read on your bio was 200% increase in
the span of five years in maintenance.
Boom.
Tell me, what the heck did you crease thatso fast in such a short amount of time?
Well, I will say, you know, well first itwas incredible to go work with Garrett.
(14:45):
He was different than a lot of ownersthat I had worked with in the past.
Really focusing on people onthe core values of the company.
A lot of companies very focused on profit.
Not that any of the last companiesweren't really about the people.
They, they definitely were, but theway Garrett approaches things was
a bit different than I had seen inthe past, and it showed, showed me
a lot by the way he treated peopleand, just treated people incredible.
(15:07):
So.
Yeah, Tommy, we go in and I would say,you know, Southwest Washington where
they are in Vancouver, Washington,canvas and Ridgefield is really, EXPLO is
really exploding, still is at the time.
You know, there's a a lot of technology,chips, manufacturing and canvas
and so that does help drive people.
And the more there was drivingpeople, it made my job fairly easy.
(15:27):
Where I came in was, I saw a reallybig opportunity to get into homeowners
associations and like I had mentionedbefore, you know, doing something hard.
I was like, I'll never do a homeowner.
Owners association.
Everybody's like, that's thehardest thing you could do.
And then I, I, I just got stuck.
Board members, all that.
It's tricky.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(15:47):
So how.
So I, I get, I, Garrett had partnered witha great company where they were installing
the landscaping at every front yard.
And this company is developmentcompany and home builder.
They really cared that the wholeaspect of it from the quality build
of the home, the quality build ofthe landscape, and the care after.
Was all in alignment and that thosehomes would sell, sell efficiently
(16:12):
and be a great community for peopleall along the way until it was turned
over to the homeowners association.
'cause in the beginning, Tommy, they'remanaged by a property management
company with the developer in, inthat process with the homeowners.
So, you know, those are,those were complicated.
And I, we had one, well, I got tobe successful with that first one.
And I, the way I look at everything is,is how can I create a system around this?
(16:33):
That can scale, and then how doI make it so if I stepped away,
someone else can take the leadand continue to operate this, so.
Hundred percent.
Mm-hmm.
So tell me about that.
That's a like a, I feel likeyou're saying it's an automated.
Sales proposal process, so to speak.
Is that right?
(16:54):
Well, what it looked atwas at Crystal Greens.
I'd seen something with commercialthat I hadn't seen with my
residential background of weeds.
They were doing budget plans withall their commercial clients and I
said, well, I need to do a budgetplan with the homeowners association.
So let's dig in.
And one of the first things is,is they have a reserve study.
A lot of people may not even be familiarwith that, but it's money they set
(17:15):
aside for capital improvements, theirregular operating budget year to year.
And so I had, you know, the financialacumen you need to bring to that, that
adds a whole nother layer of value.
So I position myself as, I'myour landscape financial advisor.
Let's look at your reserve study.
So you start to look at thesereserve studies and say, who did it?
(17:36):
Are they from the area?
Because the area here in the PacificNorthwest is different than others.
So let's take a, let's take a lookat your reserve study together.
What, what do you have?
What do they have factored in?
So we'd look at some of thosethings and see, you know, big thing
was, Hey, do you have storm watermaintenance for your storm water swale?
Did you know that it's yours to maintain?
No, we didn't necessarilyknow that it was ours.
(17:58):
So we, with my landscape architecturebackground, we jump on GIS.
We'd look at maps and say, yeah,the, that site is yours to maintain.
You need to set, set this money asideto maintain that, that facility.
And then in the Pacific Northwest with thestorm water management principles, they
might have underground filters, Tommy.
So you have these filters.
You need to clean and havechanged every five years.
(18:20):
It could be 25, $30,000every five years to do that.
But did you know.
And so by bringing that conversationand now they've gained trust
that, Hey, you know what?
We should let Bob review allthis and, and give us his
feedback on building this budget.
I love it.
So education and knowledgegoes a long ways, right?
It's not, at the end ofthe day, just mowing grass.
(18:45):
It's much further than that.
It is make 'em aware of what'sgoing on the property, the reasons
why there is drainage, reason whythere are swells, reason why there
are weeds, reason why there's.
Shipment in the ground due tobad management of the grounds.
You know, aeration, all those practicesthat us landscapers know it's all
(19:07):
in our head, which is kind of easy.
But then our clients have no clue.
all we do is propose aprice with no added value.
So you, I love the fact that youbecame a landscape financial advisor.
Wow.
That's, that is such a massive takeawayand experience because it's all
(19:29):
about the money management and it'sall about the property looking good.
That's it.
There's nothing else.
Right?
And so if you check those two boxes, youcould also make an argument, maybe the
third box is just communication, right?
Readily available, et cetera.
That, that's amazing.
Tell me.
(19:51):
so, so you were able to grow it.
Did you use that sort of terminology ofeducation and knowledge with the client
and financial advisor and then repeatthe process to every single person you
meet and it started to domino effect toget your massive growth and maintenance.
Yeah.
Taught me it did.
And, and the big thing was, was I tookthe data management we were using at,
(20:14):
at Crystal Greens that Lee had taughtme, and it was like, okay, let's
start tracking things from day onewhen I have one HOA with one house.
And that's how we, that's howwe, that's how I started it.
And so it, for example, itwould be how many homes needed
an irrigation repair this year?
How many calls did we get?
Then I'd show 'em, Hey, youhad this many service calls.
(20:35):
You paid a service call fee at onetwenty five every time we came out.
Why don't I build it into yourmaintenance contract at the maintenance
contract rate and save you money?
And they're like, you,you can do that for us?
Yeah, we're partners.
Let's do this.
And then it's, I, I know I canallocate that resource now I have
more reoccurring revenue and thenI can ensure I'm staffed to support
(20:57):
my clients so that it can scale.
Then what it did is that Tommy was,I could divide that at the end of the
year too and say you needed to do thismany on average when you do your spring
startup next year it was $38 per housethat you needed, and then you track the
data again because at some point, Tommy,we had reached where we had seven HOAs
and some had 800 front yards, and wemaintained every front yard at these HOAs.
(21:21):
So it got to the point where wewere doing 2,500 front doors a week.
Oh wow, that's
amazing.
So what I'm hearing isdata drives decisions
It supports the client you share,you, you gotta share it with them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's no different in in,in installation either.
You gotta give me.
(21:42):
What are we producing out there, right?
Whether it be a certain size mower,whether it be a five gallon shrub, how
long it takes, how many stops on a route?
All that needs to be data pulledfrom the field into the office,
observed, studied, and then what'sthe action plan after that, right?
(22:05):
To in order to improve your own company.
But most importantly, improvethe client experience.
And because you're afinancial advisor, right?
Yeah.
And Tommy, you know, from your financialadvisor, you're, you're looking
for them to make you successful.
So one of the big things is you don'twant your client to have a special
assessment is where your HOA comesin and says, Hey, we didn't take, we
(22:29):
didn't get enough from you every month.
You gotta pay 5,000.
And additionally, I would go out andfight for the HOAs and say, Hey, I'd go to
different, you know, we call it bark dustout here, but mulch providers and say,
Hey, I have this volume, volume break.
I know you're slow in February.
I. Can we get it all in February, putdown if I get all the HOAs to sign up by
(22:50):
this date, and then I pass that savingsalong to them and celebrated it with them.
They're like, well, I only wanna use Bob.
He came up with thiscreative way to do it.
But I scale that throughout thecompany and show shows a lot of value,
Tommy, me to fight for your customers.
I mean, one other example is, is.
Hey, you need a bunch oftwo inch river rock done.
Hey, can out here in the PacificNorthwest, we have a conveyor trucks.
(23:10):
It's like, can I call that conveyortruck and just get it conveyed in the
whole area and just eliminate the labor.
And then you show the customer like,Hey, here was the proposal some other
guys gave you, and the one we gaveyou to do it by hand, it was 16,000.
I just brought the, Conveytruck, and we did it.
We cleaned it up.
We were in it out in half aday and it was eight grand.
And they're like, that'smy financial advisor.
Wow, that is just being smartwith your resources, right?
(23:35):
At the end of the day, there's alwaysa better way to do things, and I love
the fact that you like to pass thaton to the client and that, you know.
Clients only trust their contractorsright at the end of the day.
So they like knowing trust and thenthey spend more money and then they
want to increase the relationship, andthen they want to, you know, see you on
(23:56):
the sites, take care of the property.
So passing the savingson is, is phenomenal.
You also had to train anddevelop these teams, right?
It's, it's this day and age is, has beeninteresting the last years as far as.
Labor.
I don't believe we're in a labor shortage.
I believe we're in a lack oftraining and developing people in
(24:18):
the trades industry that we are.
And we as landscape owners and managersdo little to nothing to train everyone
to take a certain role in their company.
And it's doable.
I think we hire people and we say,get on a truck and go after it.
And our expectation is here.
That person and they come inhere and we're like, forget it.
(24:40):
He was a total loss.
He doesn't know what he's doing.
Right.
When really we shouldhave the expectation here.
Train him here, give him the careerladder, give him the path, give 'em
the tools, give 'em the resources,and they will get to that level.
Tell me about your sort of couple ofnuggets in training and developing, you
know, good field people and maintenance.
(25:01):
Well, I wanna say one thing, Tommy, youknow, training and developing people,
it, it is massive and a lot of guys don'trealize that they're either owners can
be working for their business inside it.
It, they can be working on it orthey think they do landscaping.
You know, when you go and talk topeople that are working on their
business, and I'll, I'll give you a,a really great example is there's an
amazing guy I met Neir, Nasim Nasimslandscape up in Puyallup, Washington.
(25:23):
He's grown his business900% in the last six years.
he does a thing called the cultureIndex, but when I see him, and I
spoke with him about this, he'sworking on his team and he understands
the training and development ofhis people is how he got it there.
And that's the secret sauce
everybody wants to know.
You know?
Did you, did you, is it the software?
Is it the measurements?
Is it the equipment?
(25:43):
No, it's training.
And you know, when you walk ina room and McFarland, Stanford
does this phenomenally and, askeverybody in there at the executive
table, what do you do for business?
And, you know, maybe nobody even says it.
No.
You're in the business of training anddeveloping people to provide service.
And so that, that's hits it.
That nails it, right, Tommy?
So I've always been, you know,I, I don't do this alone, right?
(26:04):
I was in sales, I had an operationsmanager, Nick McAllister, a grow,
phenomenal support and irrigation manager.
Jason Kleberg, phenomenal support.
We work the three of ustogether as just inseparable.
If I, they'd be CC'd onall my emails with my HOAs.
If I missed an email or I didn'tget back quick enough, they'd
respond, Hey, we saw this.
We're getting back to it.
(26:25):
It was the three of us supportingthe client that made it successful.
It wasn't standalone sales,standalone account management.
They knew when they needed to step inbecause we had that type of relationship.
That we fostered for collaboration.
It wouldn't be like, Hey, the irrigatorsare the only one supposed to change the
clock on the, the irrigation controller.
No, no, no.
If I see an issue, I call'em and say, hi, I'm here.
(26:47):
Can I change this for you?
Yeah.
We collaborate.
So that's, it's about collaboration.
Tommy.
That's the biggest thing.
that's great.
You know no one walks in the door, andif they do you're very lucky and blessed.
So I'm believed that you could almosthire anyone that has really good culture
that you live and die by, and they thenin turn trained for that certain position.
(27:11):
And I believe that yournumber one asset is people.
That's it.
Not the fancy skid steer.
Not the awesome office, not the swag gear.
It's the people thatoperate all of those things.
And the more you work on yourpeople, the better the outcomes
of your business will be.
And you know.
(27:33):
You could spend, literally, youshould spend a hundred hours a
year on training and developingteam members per one person.
That's my recommendation.
You'd be like, oh, Tommy,that's a little bit crazy.
I don't know.
Take some of the best companiesout there in the entire country.
You know, whatever it is.
Southwest Airlines,Chick-fil-A, you name it.
They are constantly trainingand onboarding and continuously
(27:55):
improving along the way.
So.
Very amazing stuff at Grow Outdoor Living.
Garrett is an awesome person.
Love that guy.
Love that company.
So big shout out to them, man.
Switching gears to this sort of crazytopic that we're gonna talk about now.
One of 'em was favorite things andI'm starting to dabble into this, is
(28:19):
this battery operational equipment.
Also autonomous robot.
I don't even know what theword right term is for this.
But you are now with Crest Outdoor PowerEquipment, a huge move in your career.
And I think you are the one of the best,if not the best person to run this.
(28:39):
And I think you're absolutelyexcited about this sort of trend.
It's happening in the west part of the.
States, states, you know,in Northwest and California.
I know some of your clients alreadyhas gotten into it, but, oh my gosh.
Crest, outdoor power equipment.
What do you do for them?
And, and give us a littlebit of an introduction.
(29:00):
Tommy, I'm the business developerfor Oregon, Washington, and Idaho
on the commercial garden side.
So our 60 volt power tools, ourcyber system and robotics it's
a phenomenal place to work.
I, it definitely is exactly what Iwanted to do, and, and I, I went for it,
you know, a year ago, no, a year and ahalf ago, Tommy, you know, I was like.
(29:20):
This is what I want to do and this is thepath that I'm gonna take to get there.
And I, I applied what Iapplied to be successful with.
Everything else that I've donewith these, these processes
and the imple implementation.
So I went through my planning process.
What am, what am I gonna do?
And you know, it was kindof got a funny start.
I like was like, I'm gonna go onedX and I'm gonna learn how to code.
And then I was like, wait a minute,this is really, this isn't it?
(29:42):
This isn't it.
And so I take this crazy course, I'mlike learning binary and writing notes.
I send it to my family.
I'm like, look at this stuff.
They're like, this guy.
I think my par, I think my familythinks I'm completely nuts.
And I'm writing binary.
So I'm like, okay, this isn't it.
So then I'm like, I study the nextthing and then I'm like, you know what?
Everything I've done, I've beensuccessful with I get a coach.
(30:02):
So I, you know, whether it's nutrition,health, you know, weightlifting, I.
Grab, grab mentors, grab coaches.
It's super important.
Like McFarland, Stanford, youknow, you guys help people
just 10 x the thing, right?
And you can do it fastwhen you have helped.
And so I, I reach out to a coachand this woman supports me greatly.
We, we design what, what, what I wanna do.
These are the three placesI wanna work at, or five.
(30:24):
And I go for it.
And I look back at my notes, Tommy, in myjournal just a couple weeks ago, and I was
like, crest was at the top of the list.
No way.
Yes.
gosh.
So you, you visualized it.
Mm-hmm.
amazing.
That's amazing.
The power of the, what they callthe law of attraction, right?
(30:45):
When you think it, you internalize itand you, you repeat it over and over
and you can visualize yourself atcress and on the Root Success Podcast
with Tommy talking about this thing.
Just kidding,
just kidding.
I went a little bit off board,off topic, but with you the law of
attraction, you know, see it, believe it.
(31:05):
Well, congratulations.
On, you know, seeing that come full cycle.
Wow.
That's cool.
Okay.
so tell me about all this stuff, right?
I'm in Texas, we are all about,big trucks and gasoline and
steaks and free roaming range.
(31:30):
But that's not always gonna be the case.
Moving a little bit down the road.
Right.
I feel like battery equipmentis really coming now, right?
I feel
like five years ago, not so muchmaybe, but like I, I saw some videos
of you in the amount of power andsome of those blowers is amazing.
Right?
(31:50):
So tell me about what, we'll,we'll start with the battery side.
Tell me about what the advantages are andsome, some nuggets versus gas and why the
technology has gotten way much better.
I.
Yeah, well, you know, the owner ofCrest, he, he invested a lot of money
in, in developing a new technology, a newbattery technology, and we rolled it out.
(32:13):
We have our Crest cybersystem, eight minute charge.
It, it's a. A unique chemistry inthe battery, proprietary chemistry
in the battery that allows it tocharge rapidly, discharge rapidly, and
have extreme power along that entireduration of its charge and discharge.
Some of these traditional lithium ionbatteries, as they start to discharge,
(32:35):
they start to lo, they lose power.
At the end of that, you know, hey, 10%,15 percent's left, left, 10 percent's
left, and when it is, you're onlygetting 70% of the power out of the unit.
Gotcha.
So tell me about, sothat's a quick charge.
So does Crest have a full line ofsmall tools, small power equipment,
all the way to the mowers?
(32:56):
Push right on.
Tell me about some of that equipment.
Crest does.
They have pro, we call it prosumer.
So that's our, our more homeowner,you know, homeowners with acreage,
they can go out, they'll use that.
And we also have our commercialgarden line of equipment,
our 60 volt system as well.
And you know, there's someunique approach to it.
There's we have our, our cyber tankwhere you can charge as you go out in
(33:17):
the field on that, or you can opt to takeall the power with you in the batteries.
So those are kind of thetwo different approaches.
And then there's some people that also.
Would have routes where they could plugin while they're out on the route and
they could charge while they're out.
So there's really three approaches,you know rapid charge off of our cyber
tank, charge on site with a smallcharger that works rapidly as well.
(33:37):
Plugged in or take it all with you.
So tell me about the costs.
I feel like some people are alwaysgoing, well, that's way too expensive.
Or, where do I start?
Like, do I just buy a mower?
is it a small power code?
Is it a blower to test it out?
(33:58):
It's almost like, we talked aboutthis earlier, what you and I did.
It's like software, right?
I think the expectation is justsort of open it up and just use
it and it just works, right?
But there's, there's a period oftesting and observation and awareness.
So talk about some of the costs,if you would, and then talk
about where the hell do I start.
If I want to convert my landscapingbusiness to go, you know, battery op.
(34:23):
We won't talk about autonomousrobots, but more to battery for now.
Yeah.
Well, let's just start with where you'dstart and that that would be the way
you'd start any project at your business.
Start with your planning process.
Sit down with your team, with yourexecutive team or your leadership
team and, and decide, What impactis, what are the desired results?
First of all, of, of this transition, thedesired results, they may look something
(34:45):
like, number one, cost savings noisefor your clients and for your workers.
Health bene health benefitsclients and, and your workers.
Vibration fatigue.
Cost savings is one of the biggest,so, you know, and, and, and clients.
They just, one of the biggestthings too is across the country.
Is noise bands, right?
(35:06):
And that's really what startedsome of the push to do it.
But the real thing to all this,Tommy, is the cost savings on battery
electric versus gas once you haveit out there in, in operating.
So we'll talk about the next, butstart with your planning process.
What's the desired result?
What are, who are your stakeholders?
(35:26):
What feedback do you want?
What metrics are you gonna measure?
And, and take that out there.
Communicate that to your team.
If your executive leadership teamand then, you know, bring us in for
a trial, try other equipment, trywhatever, try, try some equipment,
get, get those metrics filled out.
Sometimes people take, sometimes peoplego through three trials before because
they haven't established this before theystart, so by the third time now we're
(35:51):
creating this process where, you know,we're gonna do a cost savings analysis to
start run the crew for two weeks with gas,run the crew for two weeks with battery.
Let's determine.
What the differential is in that, and thenlet's extrapolate it out over the year.
Love it.
Love it.
love the fact that yousaid, let's plan this out.
(36:13):
I don't think many landscapecompanies plan out their gas power.
Mowers and equipment as much.
Right.
So this is gonna sort of take abit of a moment, and I feel like
I'm gonna take a stab at this.
Bob is understand whatyou have currently, right?
This is what we have in our entire fleet.
(36:34):
So what I envision is a fleet that has thesame sort of equipment across all fleets.
It's almost like the FedExtruck, the UPS truck.
And you can jump in that sametruck and everything is the same.
The tools are the same.
They're in the same spot.
The chargers, the, the fueltanks, whatever it may be.
(36:55):
So my first evaluation isevaluate what you have, right?
You got four maintenance trucks, great.
Systematize all of those trucks tobe the exact same wherever they are.
I don't, I don't encourage crewsto hop from truck to truck,
but you want 'em all the same.
So it creates less waste in your business.
(37:17):
So start from there.
My second step I recommend, based onwhat you're saying, Bob, is now that
you have that, understand where youwant to get battery operated, right?
And maybe it's one of thefour crews to start out.
So maybe get us a couple ofproducts, maybe test 'em out.
You know, every guy in the fieldand every woman, it feels like
(37:40):
they're always concerned aboutthe battery of a blower, right?
Test, use, operate, understand all thosetypes of things, and then maybe retrofit
or encourage one fleet to go batteryand test all that out and understand it
before you go all in on all four trucks.
Is that a recommendation kind of.
(38:00):
You know.
Based on the cost savings, Tommy,it's best just to jump right in,
do the trial and J and just go.
Okay.
You know, it's when you see thesa, the cost savings, Tommy, you
and you really understand yourcosts, that's where it's critical.
You sit down, crest, we sit downwith the CFO, we sit down with
the owner, the financial analysts.
(38:22):
When you take your cost of fuel.
Your cost of off-road repairs, andyou add that up and you sum it up,
and then you take the differentialand you take, crest has finance, has
financing, locked in rates to purchasethis equipment for over three years.
You take the cost of thatpurchase, the cost of electricity,
(38:44):
the cost of those repairs.
They're very minimal, andyou do that differential.
We are seeing that many companieswho adopt adopted our equipment,
there's companies $109 million.
They have a hundred crewsthey've committed to com to.
Everyone is converting to Crest overover two seasons at these companies.
Why?
Because they know that the cost ofthat fuel, plus the cost of offered
(39:08):
repairs, exceeds the cost of thefinancing of the equipment, plus the
electricity, and that differentialaverages around a thousand dollars.
A person per year, dependingon where you are and how many
days out of the year you work.
And based on that alone, people aremaking a hundred percent conversions.
Wow.
(39:28):
So you have people on your staff thatcan say, tell me what you got and I'll
build it, and we'll get it shipped toyou, and we will help you operate it.
And rock and roll, move on.
We'll finance it, pay forit, and let's just go.
So you're taking all the guesswork out ofthe owners and managers of the company.
So it's almost like a partnershipbetween Landscape Company and Crest.
(39:50):
Work together, figure out what you got.
Figure out what you're gonna need.
We'll build it.
Literally ship it, operate it, andwe're here for you for service.
Absolutely zero downtime.
We come in, we support those people, wesupport the we, we help build the dealer
up to get them the training to do it.
But it is, it's a unique thing from amanufacturer, and it's very, it's super
(40:12):
disruptive to the market right now, Tommy.
it's, it's incredibly disruptive.
It's, but I, you know,I love that part of it.
I'm a little bit of a disruptive guy, andso I come in and I like to shake it up.
But yeah, Tommy, we, I go in these places.
We go in these places as a team.
We're taking picturesof the breaker panel.
We're taking pictures of where theoutlets are located and taught me, look,
when we that's one thing that I willsay, Garrett Herger taught me a grow.
(40:34):
Build for capacity.
Build for capacity.
What does that mean when you go outand do your parking lot repairs?
Today, you're gonna go electricin the next five to 10 years.
Okay?
You are bottom line.
What you think you need today torun that crew is not what you really
think you're gonna need in five years.
Whenever everything's fullyautonomous, your mowers.
(40:57):
And that mower now needs 14kilowatts to charge overnight.
Your crew, each crew member maybe needsseven to eight kilowatts, maybe 12
kilowatts per crew to charge overnight.
What I'm getting at isthe build for capacity.
It's not that expensive.
Tommy.
Throw some conduit in the ground.
Get your sleeves in.
You don't have to pull the wire.
(41:17):
You don't have to set the breakers, just.
Put the conduit in theground with the trench.
The trench costs you once, youprobably already put 'em in
one, in for something else.
And then when it comes, you'reready just to stub it up.
You stubbed it up, pull, pull thewire, and you're rocking and rolling.
But you gotta think ahead,think five years out and, and
be ready for this transition.
(41:38):
And that's gonna save you a tonof costs, you know, and build for
capacity on what I ask people, what,where are you at with battery today?
Have you thought about it?
What would your co, what's your comp?
What is your plan for the nextfive years with your company?
What would your company look likeit was, if it was fully electric,
and what would you need to do that?
Wow.
It's the way we're going.
(41:58):
Bob and I, I believe in this a lot andI feel like you guys up in the West
Northwest are sort of the trend centers.
Parts of it are trying to really forceyou guys to do it and, and landscape
companies are getting hit pretty good.
It's, it's educating andchanging your mindset on this.
But I think it's gonnawork very, very well.
(42:20):
I just think about all the gas cansand the fuel and the repairs and the
exhaust and, and it's, it's just become.
Our industry where we're just burningand burning and burning constantly.
It's dirty, it's messy, it's noisy.
Right?
And I don't even think you canput a dollar amount on all the
(42:43):
health implications that it'scausing at the end of the day.
And so I'm a huge fan.
I, I gotta, I gotta getinto this sort of thing.
This is great.
Tell me, Bob, about robotics.
I feel like we're, I knowa couple of companies that
are jumping into this fully.
I, I know one that is fully investedinto it in their maintenance practices.
(43:06):
Tell me about your robotic mower and whyit's one of the best in the industry.
And then also tell meabout how do you do this?
Is it something thatyou leave at the house?
Or the, the, the commercial property?
Or do you pick it up andmove it to locations?
Like tell me about like what someoneneeds to be aware of, of this sort of
(43:30):
robotic thing that does it all for you.
Yeah, I mean, you know, tell me robotshave been around for a long time.
They really have been 15 years.
Errors, minimum, I would say.
I don't know.
I don't know how far back it goes, but wehad ones where we'd bury a wire and they
did a random pattern and you were limitedto where you could bury the wire and
cross across the sidewalk or how intricateit would be with the buried wire.
(43:51):
And, and they worked.
They worked but theyhad limited case uses.
You were limited by the wire.
And then as things evolved, we hadrobots that communicate from a ra
from a radio signal line of sight.
That gets tough because youdon't always have line of sight.
So then you gotta putmore receivers out there.
And then Crest developed their ownnetwork of antennas that we have
(44:13):
throughout the United States that speak
a cell, like a cell phone coverage?
Is that right?
Yes.
And yeah, so we have ourown network of antennas.
If you have a landscape companyand you wanna buy robotics,
you can have your own antenna.
And so.
If it makes sense for, you know,what's already in the area.
We don't, we don't have double overlapof coverage, but if it triangulates
(44:34):
it works so we'll, we'll work that.
And so we have that and that's, thatmakes it really great and easy to map.
You don't have to putup all these repeaters.
The process to install the robotnow just becomes, bring the robot,
set the base, and run the mower.
And another unique thing is ona lot of these other mowers.
To map, you grab your phoneand you walk behind it.
(44:55):
They call it walking the dog.
So you walk behind it real slowand you're moving it around
and fumbling around with it.
But Crest has a mapping cart.
It's a tool where you take the headoff the robot, you stick it on the
mapping cart, and you just, you, youknow, it's talking to your phone, you,
you map around the outside perimeter.
The trees, you're not gonna go inside.
You map those, the paths you're gonna goon and bam, you know, you can walk away,
(45:19):
you start mowing in just a few hours.
It, it's pretty incredible.
The mowers, they, they mow down to, youknow, le inch and a quarter or less.
And, and that's just I don't have allthe golf metrics if you want to go.
I don't, I don't do, Idon't do a lot of golf.
If you want to do golf and get thegolf kit and all that, Tommy, 'cause
I'm still pretty new at this is.
You can go lower.
(45:39):
I don't know.
I don't know how, I don't know how low,so I don't wanna be misleading about it.
I, I don't, I don't know what themetrics are 'cause I'm a landscape, I'm a
landscape guy, so all I care is, is thatit, it go, it goes up to 3.54 and, and in
the Pacific Northwest, I'm gonna mow it.
Two, two and a quarter, twoand a half, whatever, you know.
So it, it is prettyincredible on, on that front.
And then you know, you askedwhat's the difference between ours?
(46:00):
What makes ours so great?
On a lot of the robots I see they,they just have a di a spinning
disc and ours has more of a deckdesign to it that comes down on the
edges like skirts and it floats.
Everybody wanted a floating deck.
We remember the mowers way backwhen that had a fixed deck.
What happens with a fixed deck?
You run it into stuff and scalp, right?
So.
It, it has a floating deck with little, itcomes down at an angle, Tommy, so it kind
(46:24):
of contours with the ground as it goes.
And then as you go up through our productline, you get the ones that have double
blades, you know, six instead of three.
And they're stacked, one'son top, one's on the bottom.
And the quality of cut, in myopinion, is much better on the
double bladed units that are stacked.
And then when you get to our, to ourtop robotics at f. Built-in wheel
(46:46):
motors and the hubs, you know thetraction you get from that I is amazing.
The quality of cut.
It has two discs with 12 blades,and the quality of cuts incredible.
You can see it on someof my LinkedIn posts.
I, I know you've seen some of'em and just stripe super well.
But yeah, Tommy, it's leavinga great quality of cut.
People ask, well, what about,what about the clippings?
You're mowing it every three days.
(47:07):
It's a lawn maintainer.
so you're taking off a,you know, just a micro cut.
It doesn't tear the edges, so there's alot of research out there showing now that
the, the health of the lawn is much betterjust from a fungus and pest standpoint.
Also just counting how many,you know, leaves or how many
stocks are in a certain area.
Stock count, like density of the lawn.
(47:29):
When you start mowing every threedays, the lawn gets much denser.
So you have weed, weed, weedcompetition that increases and
then you have moisture retention
and you don't have that huge thatch'cause it's such a micro cutting.
It's breaking down really fast withthe biology and the, you know, it's
all that, it's, it's working superwell to, to make this whole system,
this whole system gets better.
(47:50):
Wow.
And, and I could, I could see that, youknow, it's such a minor cuts of blades of
grass, doesn't really create the thatch'cause then you have the whole thatch
buildup and then you have the raking ofthe thatch and then you have the aeration.
And then you have the, you have all thosethings, and then you have the, you know,
(48:11):
the weight of the mowers and the, the,the ruts and the wetness and all that.
I'm a huge fan.
Tell me about, one more questionabout, this is your robotic mower.
If I was to, buy one andput it somewhere, right?
Is, is that state at the, at the property.
And you leave it and thenit's got a home base?
(48:32):
Or is it something you pick upand go from property to property.
if you look on OPE plus, we justhad a article come out yesterday
or the day before, we do have an.
New autonomous mower,we call the drop and go.
So that mower you take with you, ittakes itself out of the truck, it mows
the area, it'll get back in the truck.
The other that's, that's comingand what we currently have is
(48:55):
mowers that you leave on site.
And those, you know, Tommy, me, onething we didn't talk about was just cost.
We talk about, you know, the qualityof the cut and, and, and how it works.
But the, the major thing is, iswe have a global labor shortage.
Labor and labor also is everincreasing, and I also see it as
how can we give people new, createnew positions in companies where
(49:17):
people have more upward mobility,where they can choose their purpose?
What's your, what's your purpose?
What's your mission?
Right?
That's why companies grow is when theyfind the purpose in the person that
they're training and developing, andthey give them that space to do it.
And we take 'em out of just a mowing roll.
And now I can take a person and say,would you like to be a robot technician?
(49:41):
I'd love to train you to do that.
Would you like that to be your purpose?
And now we elevate peopleand train them to do that.
And that's my, my real vision forwhy I also wanted to be part of
this, was to do that for people.
You're on the cutting edge of technologyand at the forefront of it right now.
Bob, I am not surprised you're hereright now talking about this new trend.
(50:05):
And actually it's not even atrend, it's just the way that
the industry's headed towards.
And I'm not shocked that you're heretoday because you're always on, you're
always pushing further when peopleare also sort of behind you, right?
you're the odd man to jump out andsay, this is where I'm headed towards.
Unbelievable.
Bob.
One last quick thing as we wrap up.
We talked yesterday and like, Bob, tellme what you are, what's your quote?
(50:29):
What's your mantra?
What's your lifestyle?
What?
How do you work and play?
Like get what?
What do you live and die by?
I would say, you know, I, I liketo do things pretty extreme, you
know, so I will say like one.
You know, one, one thing that'll kindof give you the idea of that was like, I
started in 2024 on the first of the yearin 2024, I ran 24 miles, and I want to
(50:54):
do that every year until I can't do that.
So 1, 1, 20, 25, I ran 25 miles.
I, I didn't train, I hadn't been running.
I was like, okay, if I can go towork and work for 12 hours five days
a week, and then work for three orfour hours on Saturday and Sunday.
I can go and do anything for five hours.
And so I go there and once you chipaway the first hour of it, you're like,
(51:17):
oh, I got four hours left of this.
This is, this is cake.
And so you know, 25 miles is easierthan the 24 from the year before.
And I look forward to doing that.
And people would ask like, well,how, how sustainable is that?
I don't, I don't know.
That's the point.
That's fun.
point.
The point is I'm in the now, right now.
Yep.
And I, I, you know, by doing thatthing the first of the year, you just
(51:38):
prove to yourself like, I just got thehardest thing done for my whole year,
and everything else is just gonnabe like, I can look back at that and
say, Hey, I'm having a tough day.
But I started out doing that andI, and I didn't even know how it
was gonna go, and I just did it.
But I thought about that Tommy,just to keep it simple, was build
for capacity and keep going.
Yeah.
(51:58):
Love it.
Love it.
I love built for capacity.
Keep going.
That's great.
I, I had a post this weekthat said just do hard things.
And we do hard things thatbuilds you to a better person.
And when you tackle those difficultthings that are meant for you to come
into your life, it makes you moreaccomplishable, let you figure things out.
(52:23):
And so I'm with you.
I, I'd love to do hard things.
I'm a health fitness freak.
I, I, I think, I think taking care ofyourself and doing the 25 mile run I, I
need you to send me some pictures or videoof you the next time you're doing that.
I, I'm wanna share that on my socialfeed because that's, that's amazing.
Bob, oh my god, there is so much.
I think we're in a record length of showhere 'cause there's so much to talk about.
(52:48):
So I think we need to do another episodein the near future and get really
deep into the Crest products and whatthey mean and some, some advantages.
'cause we just kind of, we sh youknow, kind of get a good 30,000
foot elevation and I think ouraudience is gonna hear more about it.
So we'll have to do thathere in the next few months.
Have a repeat of you and yourface and your awesome energy.
(53:10):
Yeah.
Thank you Tommy, as you as well.
This has been a been a lot of fun and Ilook forward to meeting with you again.
Absolutely.
Alright.
Bob Carey of CrestOutdoor Power Equipment.
Go find him on LinkedIn.
His last name is C-A-R-E-Y.
He is a trend center.
Go give him a follow, watch himon LinkedIn on all his posts.
They're fascinating.
Also, I wanna give a shout out to.
(53:31):
Mr. Garrett, the owner of Grow OutdoorLiving up there in Washington, fabulous
owner, great ace peer group member.
Love that guy.
And you can follow us on anysocial media platform and give us a
listen and we'll see you next time.
Thanks, Bob.
(53:52):
Ready to take the next step?
Download our free Profitability Scorecardto quickly create your own baseline
financial assessment and uncover thefastest ways to improve your business.
Just go to McFarlinStanford.com/scorecardto get yours today To learn more about
McFarlin Stanford our best in classpeer groups and other services go to
(54:13):
our website at McFarlinStanford.comAnd don't forget to follow us on
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
See you next time on the Roots of Success.
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