November 7, 2024 • 44 mins
Does the key to your landscape company's success lie in the talent of seasoned professionals and strategic technology investments? This episode of Roots of Success might just challenge your preconceptions. Join host Tommy Cole as he dives deep with Greg Cole, the mastermind behind Cole Landscaping, who's taken his company from humble beginnings to 7-figure success. Listen in as Greg shares invaluable insights on evolving with technology, the importance of continuous performance measurement, and fostering a thriving company culture. Discover how Greg's friendship with ACE Peers like David Amigo and Tony Angelo fuels both innovation and collaboration. This conversation is packed with actionable advice to help you navigate the complexities of modern landscape business management.
THE BIG IDEA:
Embrace Technology.
KEY MOMENTS:
[05:33] Adopted methods swiftly improved team performance insights.
[09:28] EOS company: accountability, communication, goals, difficult transition.
[15:28] Group criticized peer's annual-only financial assessment.
[18:19] Cloud-based system ensures project accountability and transparency.
[21:51] Efficient meeting structure enhances project collaboration.
[23:25] Seamlessly integrates software; easy setup and removal.
[28:07] New facility: 5 acres, nearly outgrown.
[29:59] Financing tough due to costly tech, permits.
[34:03] Earned income understanding was a game changer.
[36:27] Software requires ongoing management and updates.
[40:00] Surround yourself with amazing people, nurture growth.
QUESTIONS WE ANSWER
What are the benefits of using cloud-based software for small businesses?
How do I integrate different software systems in my business?
What are some strategies for improving company culture in a landscaping business?
How can technology improve operational efficiency in landscaping companies?
What is the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) and how does it work?
How to track real-time performance metrics in a small business?
What are the key differences between invoiced revenue and earned revenue?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
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.
Hey guys, it's Tommy with Roots of Successpodcast and I've got an amazing guest
today and I will tell you he's so Amazingthat him and I have the same last name.
(00:32):
That's why this guy Greg Cole is amazing.
How are you Greg?
I'm doing great.
Brother from another mother.
This is an easy sell right?
Oh, this is great when we metwell, it's been a couple years
we met It's been really fun.
And immediately you sent mesome swag here from your office.
And I got, I got thehoodie, I got everything.
(00:53):
And they're like, wow, man, you,you represent your name real well.
And I'm like, yeah, you have no idea.
Right.
I just kind of fit right in.
Greg is, is the owner of Cole landscapingout of the Boston, Massachusetts area.
Super great guy, super great team.
I I've been, he's been on our list for,for quite some time to get in here, but.
(01:14):
He's been doing a lot of great thingsout there and his company and his team.
And we're just reallyfortunate to have you on Greg.
This
appreciate it.
I'm super excited to be here with you.
I just love your podcast.
is great.
Awesome.
You can you can listen toyourself here, here shortly.
It'll be great.
So let's get into this coal landscaping.
(01:36):
What the heck happened?
How did it get started?
You know, tell me a little bitof background and we'll jump into
all sorts of great stuff thatwe've got off on store for this.
Awesome.
Thanks again.
And yeah, Greg Cole, ownerof Cole Landscape Inc.
We're about 30 milesnorth of Boston, Mass.
It's funny in Boston, kind of,we have our own language here.
So if you don't know what Uba is, Ka, orLobster, just take off the R and put on an
(02:01):
A, and that, that's kind of how we talk.
It.
Okay.
Hey, hey,
A, A, we're not in Canada, but we'll takethe R on a lobster and put an A there.
It's, it's funny, I went to schoolfor carpentry, and I soon learned that
I didn't like it, and I went to workfor two different landscape companies.
And out of the two different landscapecompanies to this day, I've learned
(02:23):
two valuable lessons by them.
My first boss that I workedfor never paid us on time.
And I had a lot of IOUs for our olderpeople, So to this day, 34 years in
business I joke around, it's taken me27 years to figure out how to run it.
But 34 years and I haven'tmissed one paycheck.
(02:45):
So I'm very proud of that.
That's motivation.
I will tell you that right now, right?
That's just like me My motivation as aproject manager it was to never have a
day where they couldn't show up in work.
Exactly.
You take care of your peoplethat take care of you.
We've grown, I mean, this yearwe're just under 10 million
and we're on our way to 20.
(03:06):
And we really scaled when webrought on our software platform
and we went tech in 2019.
We actually 3x the companyback from 2019 till today.
So great.
So what was the second thing youlearned at your old landscape company?
Was there
two?
Real, real simple.
I mean, my, my last bosswas just not a nice person.
(03:26):
You would yell andscream and demote people.
And to this day, I use that asa driver for myself to treat
my, my staff with full respect.
And the person on the rake is just asimportant as a person in the excavator.
They're all doing the same job, tryingto make money for them, themselves,
their families and the company.
It's nice to have those experiences,although they were really hard
(03:50):
at the time But you didn't knowwhat's going to turn out of those
experiences in your own company, right?
And now look at you Yeah, that's great.
So let's jump right into this, Greg.
We've got tons of stuff to get through.
Um, one of the things that isfascinating to me is about this software
thing, this operational software.
(04:11):
I'll tee it up.
we're going to talk about some Winsand losses that got started around 2019
pre COVID and I'm sure COVID hit andprobably threw a wrench into everything
and everyone wanted to bail out andfigure, you know, something else.
But, you know, they always say,Tommy, what's the best software?
And I said, the best softwareis the one that you implement
and use 100 percent of it.
Like, I don't care.
Just use it.
(04:32):
Right.
And so landscapers are just.
adamant about finding allthe reasons what it can't do.
But 98 percent of it is what it can do.
And so take, take me through that.
So you, you're thinking of asoftware, you're figuring it out.
And then you, I mean, you're scratchingthe surface to take me back to those days.
So 2018, we were interviewingthree different software companies
(04:54):
and I ended up going with aspire.
Actually Kevin Kehoe was my first
Yeah,
seminar ever seen and he was allnumbers driven and I'm like, why
do I need to know these numbers?
I'm not, I'm just, I cut grass, right?
I'm not, I don't even know the numbers.
in this business for numbers.
Exactly.
And now, and now today it, it drivesme more than ever with all the
(05:16):
matrices, but backing up, 2018, westarted to implement Aspire software.
We made the decision to go with Aspire.
It was probably the bestdecision I've made in my life.
From there, my tech just tookoff, but we made, we made a ton
of mistakes on implementation.
A lot of floundering.
I think the biggest thing thatwe floundered on was we said,
and Tommy, you just picked it up.
You said, they want it to do everything.
(05:38):
Well, we tried to bendthe software to call.
And no one listened to the implementersand say, Hey, Greg, do it this way.
And I think that was our biggest mistake.
And we probably took sixmonths to figure that out.
And when we went to their methodsand we held true to their methods,
we just rocked and rolled.
(05:58):
It was, it was very fast.
To get over that hump.
And then our biggest success waswe had a team of five people that
were on, we called our Aspire team.
And we met every week for two hours,wins, losses, and we just kept a notebook.
We didn't even put it ondigital at that point.
We just kept a notebook and wesaid, Hey, what are we winning?
(06:19):
What are we losing?
The wins we learned from them,the losses we tried to fix.
And then we just put it outto our teams and we said,
Hey, find holes in this thing.
Yeah.
Punch the crap out of it.
Tell us what's wrong and we'll fix itand we'll fix it and aspire has been
a great partner to us since 2019.
So it's at 5 years in.
I was down at ignite.
I just spoke at the conference.
(06:40):
And absolutely loved it.
Absolutely loved everybody that's withAspire and everything we do with Aspire,
Yeah, so take me back.
So the mistake was thinking weknow how to be the engineers and
we're going to build it our way.
Right?
just saw me ID personality,
Yeah, totally.
way or no
Yeah, and most people are right.
(07:01):
We learn how to do landscaping and wewant to be the software gurus that have
spent millions of hours figuring it out.
It's like building the rocket ship.
Also, this is the coalrocket ship to go to Mars.
Right?
And we want to we wantto argue with the system.
How as a leader tell me about the spirits.
How is a leader?
able to get the team throughthat experience and out
(07:23):
of it in a positive way.
What helped?
Real simple is us as owners.
We understand the end result and anybodythat's implementing any software, the
owner or the, the head GM manager,whatever you classify it as, you know,
Has to be the driver of the bus doesn'tknow how to drive, you know, know every
nook and cranny, but know the end goal.
(07:44):
And that's I knew the end goal.
And I just said, hey, team for the people,this is what I'm trying to accomplish.
Let's work on it.
And I just stepped backand let them do it.
they came back to me andsaid, this is, this is good.
This isn't good.
And we work together, lettingthe people do what they do best.
Because trust me, it's for meto type I'm I'm old school.
(08:04):
I'm the hen and peck method.
So yeah, it's not, it's not me.
Yeah.
And I hear a lot of times, most owners,will try to implement it themselves.
They're the head guy thatwill just kind of run from it.
And, 99 times out of 100that is not gonna work.
The owner
can't do that.
So you have to sort of what coach andmentor them along and pick them up
(08:26):
when they fall down because it's goingto happen and they're going to scrape
their leg and they're going to fight.
It's, it's a normalprocedure in life, right?
So you're there to motivate and pickthem up and keep them along the journey.
just let them go.
Let them do what they're,they've been hired to do.
And it's funny because I say, Hey, manageyour people, but don't micromanage them.
There's a huge difference in thatbetween manager and micromanager.
(08:48):
You can manage and say, Hey,listen, I'm going to do it this.
I want you to do it this way.
Tell me if you have anyroadblocks, come back and see me.
Instead of hanging over theirshoulder and, and micromanaging
demotivates people immensely.
It's, it's, it's horrendous.
Yeah.
Yeah, love it.
So you talked about, the, the success.
This is just amazing, Greg, butthe consistency of a meeting
(09:12):
every single week to drive it.
I've, I've traveled thelast several weeks as I do.
And I talk about consistency inanything you do, whether it's, you
know, this, you know, where I'm gonnasay, working out and exercising, it's
my God.
Yeah.
teeth every day.
It's putting the seatbelton in the truck every day.
It's,
But what happens a lot of times is we getstarted and then we just don't want to
(09:34):
do and it's always the software's faultFor not doing it, but when you create a
sense of consistency of every single weekall the time That's a whole momentum.
So for you to say that that's that'smassive anything to elaborate there.
hold the P hold the team accountable.
We are, we're an EOS company,entrepreneurial operating systems.
It's, it's basically a waywe communicate to each other.
(09:57):
It's the way we set goals.
So we set a 90 day world hold to it.
If you're driving the bus, you'vegot to hold people accountable.
In order to make this transition to,it's, it's not an easy transition.
I, it's funny, I probablyshouldn't even say this, but I
call software implementation,a root canal with no Novocain.
(10:17):
So let's just think about this, right?
So you have a toothache, right?
And you're in pain, you know, I don'thave a ton of pain, but you're in pain.
I need it now
You go to get the root canal.
There's, there's no, there's no Novocain.
Right.
And you're in a ton of painand then all of a sudden, boom,
you're eating candy apples.
you're out of the issue andyou're rocking and rolling.
(10:39):
You've got to stay the line.
No difference with, with working out.
If you miss a day, that's great.
If you miss two days ina row, there's a problem.
You just keep going.
Consistency throughout every meeting.
Same meeting agenda,same time, same place.
And the only reason why you miss isyou're on vacation or you're dead.
One of the,
(10:59):
Love it.
Love it.
Consistency is the key.
That's my recommendation to everybodyout there in anything you do It's got
to be over and over and over and over.
And where it lacks most times isthere's no consistency at the end.
And at the end of the day, the teamshould hold you Greg accountable as well.
It kind of works back up to the top ofthe, and if you're not consistent with it,
then this is a fantasy world that Gregis proposing, but doesn't really care
(11:23):
about it after a couple of months,
I think we call that what?
Yes, men.
Oh, yes, people.
You know, you don't wantyes, people on the team.
They want, you want them tocome back at you and say, Greg,
Tommy, this isn't working.
What are we going to do?
You know, and not say, Hey, you know, it'sokay, Greg, we'll, we'll work through it.
No, it's not okay.
Let's fix it.
love it.
Benefits of Aspire.
What do you love about that software?
(11:45):
Oh my God, I could go on for hours, right?
I kind of call it a cult.
It's an Aspire cult, right?
We all chant Aspire.
I joke around with some ofmy good friends with that.
But within three minutes of lookingat everything that I have built out
in Aspire, I see where the company is.
I see where my goals, my dashboards,my gross profit on maintenance,
My gross profit on design build,where we stand as a company.
(12:08):
What do we have sold?
We don't have in the pipeline,not sold in the pipeline.
If we're doing a 400, 000project and we're in the
middle of it, are we on track?
Are we off track?
Materials, labor and subs.
I mean, that's, that'swhat they're in control of.
Yeah.
Those three things.
Yeah.
They control how many materials,who they put on the job site.
If they're overspending, underspending.
(12:31):
it's super fast.
to see if we're on track or off track.
Yeah.
And one of the biggest things that I dois, is, is, oh my God, I just love issues.
Everything in my company is an issue.
And we close somewhere in thelines 150 to 200 issues a month.
And every single callthat comes in is an issue.
(12:52):
If somebody sends me an email andsays, Hey, Greg, you know, Tommy
called and you got to call him back.
I just respond issue, put it in there.
Cause we track it.
And that's the most powerful toolthat if it can be done, right.
When it's done, right.
You add like the client experience, it'sone to 3 percent of the bottom line.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(13:12):
That's great.
You know, we talk about thisoften, but we always want to
know how the company's doing.
And a lot of times we were like,okay, what's in my bank account?
What projects I'm I'm embedding?
What cool equipment did I buy?
And I'll look at the books everynow and then to see if they're, they
look decent and we'll go from there.
That's kind of how wemostly run a business.
(13:33):
It's no different than let'stake a mid level person, right?
Project manager and account manager.
Well, I go see some properties,I check on it, I sell some work I
install some work, but I'm not sure,but we're, we're making money, but
we don't know if we're making money.
But at the end of the day, everyone hasa dashboard for the most part, right?
Including yourself.
You can see is behind thecurtain that we can't see.
(13:58):
Right?
everybody has good and bad days, right?
You're not going to, you might have acrew that has a bad day and you say,
Hey, you know, Jose, make it up tomorrowor make it up next week, however it be.
So we measure daily, weekly andmonthly God, I think we had 11, TVs
right now throughout the companyand everything's, you know, a spy
is posted on almost everything.
Explain the importance of TVs.
(14:19):
I just had this conversationa couple of weeks ago.
What does that mean we have TVs?
So everything's Chrome casted and we havetwo different computers that Chromecast
throughout all the different TVs.
And we put a company update.
So people's birthdays super important.
I'm huge on culture.
We wanna recognize birthdays,anniversaries, those go
(14:39):
on it, upcoming events.
So it just scrolls.
It's, it's really, really prettycool when you come down to it.
And then we have dashboards to say on themaintenance, Hey, are you coming in today?
Good on the dashboard.
How's your week looking?
And how's your month looking?
So if they're kicking butt, you know,they're gonna kick some of butt.
If they're not, then somebody that'skicking butt is looking at that and
(15:01):
saying, Hey, Joe, what's going on?
How come you're falling behind?
So there's a ton ofcompetition and it's healthy.
Yeah, what gets measuredgets improved, right?
And then even with us, if I wantedto cast to a TV, I got a, I got a
70 inch in front of me right here.
I just hit a button and cast to it.
Everybody can see it.
Yeah, It's great.
That's the new technology now iscasting dashboards and metrics on TV.
(15:27):
So it's real time information, right?
That lets us know how we'redoing on a daily basis.
It's terrible to know that youcould go six months or year.
And not really know how you're doing.
Right.
So it's frustrating at the end of the day.
And some people are scared to even postthe ones that, you know, need some help
or need some more training, but that's howwe all get better at the end of the day.
(15:50):
was just in Aspen, Colorado at good earth.
With my, my peer group and we had someheated debate in our, in our meeting
and I'm not going to mention names,but one person didn't know where they
stand on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
And he says, I'm just going to look at theend of the year and see if I made money.
And you just saw everybody's face kindof cringe and like, what is going on?
(16:13):
Why would you do that?
You can correct it now.
yeah, yeah.
In the middle of the game, right?
Yeah.
And sometimes, and sometimes youcould be a day into a 20 day project
and you're making corrections.
I mean, you're a, you'rea construction guy, right?
you know how volatile that is.
That world is that
of the day.
And then all of a sudden you'relooking back and go, what happened?
(16:35):
We shoulda, we shoulda,we shoulda, we shoulda.
where it should be taken outof the goddamn dictionary.
get that out of here.
I'm so over it.
We shoulda.
With all this technology and allthese things that we have, embrace it.
A hundred percent.
And if you don't embrace it now,I'm telling you, the bus is gone.
It's funny to say that because ifI look and I look at the, everybody
(16:57):
that I deal with 25 to 30 year oldbusiness owners, They understand tech.
They grew up with it, right?
Boom.
I'm getting tech.
I'm going to run the best software,whatever that software be, right?
And I'm not tagging anypeople, but anybody really
over 30, they second guess it.
They would rather buy, as Kevin would say,an excavator versus a piece of software.
(17:18):
And I can make, an extra 10 or 15percent just on the software end,
if I run my business correctly.
And I can buy 10 excavators.
I love it.
Software is sexy.
So get it and installit and use it every day.
It's
Music.
all the things that you have.
A hundred percent.
Um, I love it.
(17:39):
one thing that I will sayis don't make it perfect.
Yes.
is a killer.
Progress.
perfect.
You're not going to make it perfect.
Love it.
There's a thing that youuse called company cam.
I'm a huge fan of itI I know it very well.
You guys It's something that's awesome.
It's really dominant in theconstruction Home building
(18:01):
gc general contracting world.
It's amazing Tell me a couple ofbenefits of of having that software
Oh my God, I can't evenknow where to start on that.
So we're 14 months in, we justcrossed 100, 000 pictures, 100,
000 pictures and videos, 14 months.
Think about that.
(18:22):
We have documentation on everysingle project, every single
maintenance account, and we'rejust going to keep on building it.
So it's an app that goes on somebody'sphone or your employee's phone,
and as fast as they can push thebutton with their thumb, It's as
fast as it's uploaded to the cloud.
There's no data on their phone.
There's no storage on their phone.
(18:43):
Everything goes up.
And they can see otherprojects within the company.
We started about six months ago.
We're running all of our pre andpost checklists through that all our
punch lists, we are running our saleshandoff from sales to production
through that, where there's a 10point checklist and it timestamps
(19:03):
it and says, Tommy approve this.
Today, and we know exactly who approvedit and it's total accountability
because if somebody doesn't do theirrole, we just go back and look and
say, well, you signed off on this.
I'll come
a system that you guys have builtthat pushes every human being
into the future which we're allvulnerable as human beings, but it
follows that process along the way.
(19:25):
So checks and balances and youcan't skip all the steps to get to.
You know to the very end.
Plus a picture is what picture is worth.
They say what a thousand
yeah, so how many pictures have you done?
we're just over a hundred thousand.
Yeah, it that is incredible becauseyou have documentation of everything
whether it be issues on the job Whetherit be pre pictures, post pictures
(19:49):
warranty control how to build thingsYou It's a paper trail of everything.
plus and above and beyond that.
We have our sales staff on it.
So we have everything starred.
So when they're talking to you,Tommy, as a salesperson, they just
pull up pools, boom, here's allmy pools, plantings, here's all my
nightscaping, here's all my nightscaping.
Everything's there.
If I want to change it as theowner, one place to change it,
(20:13):
send it out to all my sales.
simple.
It's probably the easiestsoftware anybody will implement.
It's that easy.
It's very easy.
I love those guys a lot.
I see them every year at the conferencesand shake their hands and thank them
for, for all the work that they do.
That's, that's good.
You did mention earlierthe EOS, system, the 9010.
(20:36):
The 90 I O.
Explain the importance andlet's, let's back that.
Why did you do this?
Everybody knows, I'm just goingto say it, meetings suck, right?
You get into a meeting, you get intoa meeting, you hear about, Samantha's
dog and, what they did last weekend.
And they ramble on for,you know, three minutes.
(20:56):
And then you get to somework and nobody takes notes.
And so 90.
io is a platform with astrict meeting agenda.
Just as I said, a spy is a cult.
E I O, E O S is a cult.
It's, it's a way to report matricesto each other and share amongst teams.
currently we have 14 differentteams within call and meetings.
(21:19):
No, I haven't part of that.
I can see the meeting.
So it forms a strict cadence.
You share a Segway.
You only have a minute each to sharea Segway, which is a personal best.
and a company best for the last week.
We go into data, which datais just a large excel sheet
that's on the 90 IO platform.
And if it's green, you're on track.
(21:40):
If it's red, it's off track.
It's an issue.
We go through headlines and thenwe cascade messages to other teams.
So.
If Tommy had a win on, on theconstruction project this week, hey,
the construction team is puttingthat up to the, all the other teams.
So they can see it's a win.
So if camaraderie, on ourmeetings, it's, it's, I don't know.
It's, how can I put it to you?
(22:01):
structure.
it's so structured in,I'm going to say fun.
People might disagree.
People might disagree with me.
don't suck as much anymore or at all.
They don't, they, theysuck, but not as bad.
So, so in your world on the design build.
It's, it's funny because one personruns the meeting, so it runs 90.
(22:22):
io.
One person takes notes and to dos.
One person runs company cam becauseyou have to remember is your
office staff and somebody, maybean owner or somebody else doesn't
know what these projects look like.
And it brings the physicalproject with the data together.
And then one person runs a spire andwe'll run through 750 to a million
(22:45):
dollars worth of production in 90 minutes.
And we'll have, 20 to 80takeaways from that to dues.
And it's all one platform.
love it, Greg.
So is there any other platforms thatyou use that we haven't mentioned?
We use a lot we're fully cloud based
Okay.
I, I drop about 200, 000a year on subscriptions.
(23:06):
So it tells you how much we use.
And so the benefits of all this.
I would, let me ask you this.
Is it too much for coal landscapingto have that, tell me the benefits of
having that many in all togetherness,
So not one software, even if youbuild the software yourself, it's
not going to be what you want.
(23:27):
So we just take bits and parts,and then we've been writing,
not myself, but I'm not a coder.
We've been writing open APIs togetherbetween different softwares, so now
they're all starting to talk to eachother, which has been phenomenal.
You know, we run a CRM, and it'spiggybacked with a Spire so everything
flows back and forth to and from.
(23:48):
we're gonna open up CompanyCam toAspire so we can click right in
through CompanyCam and get in there.
So, there's a lot of good stuffhappening, but the best part about being
cloud based is if you come to Cole.
give you a Surface Pro, it takes me 8to 10 minutes to liven you up to every
single software platform that you need.
(24:08):
And if you leave us, it takesme 30 seconds to kill every
single software program.
It's the benefit of that is tremendous.
I can't express it enough.
you know, this is a tool, nodifferent than an excavator and a
truck and a, and a shovel, right?
But if this is the most importanttool, because you're taking the
(24:30):
truck, the excavator, the crewmember, and the shovel, and you're
putting it all in the surface.
Right?
With all the applicationsand say, here you go, Tommy.
Welcome to Coal Landscaping.
This is everything you need to knowof how to run your job efficiently.
And that's what I like about it.
(24:51):
what we've done above andbeyond that is we've just done,
we have a whole loom library.
So what we've been doing is we've beencreating loom videos just a little
under everything under two minutes Hey,here's how to enter a client or spire.
Here's how to star aproject and company cam.
Here's how to use 90 Io so it's Cole'sversion of how we want them to use it And
(25:11):
let, let me just say that, you know, 2019till today, it's been five year process.
It does not happen overnight.
It did not happen overnight for us.
and we've had, I've gone to someof these grow conferences and ACE
conferences, and I'm like, Oh myGod, I'm going to buy that software.
And I buy it and we run it for likethree weeks and we'll throw it out.
And I'm guilty as an owner of that.
So we've been through a lot of programs,
(25:33):
And that happens.
Listen, you're trying different things.
You're getting new ideas.
That's kind of what the owner does.
But at the end of the day,you've got to do something and
stay with it and go all the way.
The software and these apps areyour tools to be successful.
Coal Landscaping Why?
Because they communicate within the entireteam to communicate with the client.
(25:55):
They keep everything in one system.
So you have dashboards built and youhave the photos to back everything up.
It's a collection of everything.
hands down.
And I don't think, I don't knowwhere I would be without that.
I probably still be at, you know,a million and a half to a million
dollars.
would still have a dry erase board write
I miss, I miss, I missthe dry erase boards.
(26:16):
I was just talking aboutthat today in a meeting.
He said, we need to bring backthe dryer, the mockup boards.
We
called them.
why you miss is because you go in atnight when people are gone and you race
stuff with your wrist And say,we're going to this job that I sold.
Yeah.
the post its and
Yeah.
that person doesn't need the excavate.
I'm going to put it to this crew.
Yeah.
Because I want them all on my projects,you know, and I want this client to be
(26:38):
happy because I'm best friends with him.
Yeah.
That's why you want it.
You know, that's fascinating thatyou mentioned, Greg was, I believe
this younger generation is willingto, it very embraces the technology.
I, it's just my world that I live, livingin currently, and even you're at your
age, we didn't embrace any of that.
I'm going to figure it out myself.
(27:00):
I'm going to do it.
And I'm going to fail 75times before I figure it out.
And maybe 35 years later, right?
Whereas this new generation goes, youForget it, Greg, and forget it, Tommy.
I'm not wasting my time with you two guys.
Yeah.
going to with peoplethat are smarter than me.
They embrace the technologyand they just go and hit it.
(27:21):
That's it.
It's exactly, you saidit right on the head,
yeah, There you go.
Man, you listen, let's, let'smove into something else, Greg.
You built a fascinating facility andthat is another, that is another This
is like in a software discussion.
Second to that is this facility thing.
Everyone talks about it all thetime and you went through it.
(27:45):
I'm sure it was a, you know,a piece of cake from start to
course it
super smooth,
was course.
Yep.
about some wins andlosses in that category.
Well, let me, let me start, youknow, back in the day I had seven
people in a 19 by 15 foot office.
One room and that was it.
When we left that facility, therewas mushrooms growing on the floor.
(28:08):
There was old in the ceiling.
And we moved to our second facility, whichwas, there's only 20, 000 square feet.
And we were doing 5 million out of that.
So 20, 000 square feet of yard shop.
It was all together.
You couldn't move.
And we were just, we were justclustered in there like sardines.
So when we searched for a new facility, wewanted the acreage and we got five acres.
(28:33):
And we moved just as in2019, we went tech here.
With five acres, we're 8, 000 square feetof shop, 6, 000 square feet of office.
Currently, we're probably90 percent grown into it.
We're going to outgrow this probablyin the next couple of years.
So we're looking for a satellite.
Okay.
We have full wireless onany point in the five acres.
(28:54):
Like I said, we have a tonof TV scattered all around.
We have no desktop computers.
Period.
Everything's Surface Pro.
They dock in.
Everybody gets three monitors.
They can be at Cole.
They can be with a client.
They can be at Starbucks and theyhave the same look that they,
that they had at their office.
No keys.
(29:15):
Now, let me, let me say this.
No keys, no keys, right?
So keys drive me crazy becauseI give you a key, you lose it.
Then who has the key?
So everything here is fob.
okay.
Thanks, Bob.
It's funny.
I was on my way to, I think it was anace group meeting and somebody locked
themselves out of the office and Igot right on my phone and unlocked
(29:36):
it from whatever, 30, 000 feet up.
awesome.
That's so great.
That's technology at the day.
I mean, keys are so outdated.
and then you can turn onand off the fob, right
Oh yeah.
hoarding, you get a fob exiting thecompany, it's shut off, whatever, so total
control, you can see who comes in and out.
So
But perfect example is our cleaners.
(29:56):
Our cleaners come in at 5.
30 every Tuesday.
So they can get in only from5 to 7 on a Tuesday morning.
They can't come in on a Sunday afternoon.
Won't allow them in.
So I set all those parameters inthe background, which is, which is
such a peace of mind for myself.
love it.
What are some things that you struggledwith in getting the facility from, from
(30:16):
the 19 by 15, all the way to the 5 acres?
Financing was tough because I wantedto build it a certain way, and it
cost a lot of money to build it.
Example, we dumped about aquarter million just into tech.
So 250k just into tech.
And some of the town ordinanceswere very hard to overcome.
But when we did, we rock and rolled.
(30:38):
I think we were shutdown three times here.
By the building department.
And it was something simple as, Hey,you didn't give me my permit for this.
And I said, okay, I said,how much is the permit?
He said, two 50.
And I said, I'll giveyou the two 50 right now.
He's like, no, you need to design.
Well, the design was 15, 000.
The job was already doneand I had to spend 15, 000.
So some of the thingslike that were tough.
(30:59):
You'd be surprised howmuch stuff you accumulate.
Oh boy.
Well, it was disgusting.
So a lot of the lessons learnedfrom our old were brought into this.
One of the lessons that welearned was everybody didn't like
bright lights in their office.
So they will unscrew the bulbs and thatI would walk into somebody's office and
(31:21):
there would be a light hanging with nolight bulbs and it would drive me crazy.
So now we have no light bulbsin the place and everything's
on the, everything's led beads.
There's not one light bulb,
Yeah.
but my biggest, I don't know, my biggesttakeaway or my biggest nugget to give
out on this is do your homework upfront,make sure all your ducks in a row.
(31:42):
And when the ducks are in a row, justgo, don't go as fast as you possibly
can, because you have to remember it'ssuch a disruptor to myself as an owner.
Yeah.
And the entire team.
You're trying to run the business andbuild a facility at the same time.
It's tough.
I think one of the experiences that isa good takeaway from this is embrace
the technology in your new place.
(32:02):
Right?
Hands down, hands down,
Yep.
I think that's the, one of the biggesttakeaways that we don't look into.
I think we look at, you know, thesquare footage of the building and the
shop and the acreage type deal, thephysical things I would compare it to.
Yeah.
I'm going to install a landscape here inTexas, but I won't put the irrigation.
hands
Well, it's not the sexy thing, right?
(32:22):
It, you bury it all.
You don't get to see it at all, right?
And it's like, what is going on?
But by God, when you need it, you need it.
Oh, I got, I got comments left and right.
Oh my God, you're nuts.
What are you doing that for?
And then we moved in and we hada hard deadline of April 1st and
boy, you know, construction, right?
Tommy,
yeah,
the deadlines.
(32:43):
you don't miss them.
my, I ran it as a military op andwe, we moved in the day before.
everybody's like, now Iknow why you did that.
Yep.
Yep.
I love it.
So we got a few more things to wrapup, but what are some three pieces of
advice you could leave our audience that.
The Mr.
Greg Cole has experienced in life andyou live and die by it or whatever.
(33:07):
What, what are some words of wisdom?
Oh God.
It's going to sound cliche,
many, right?
right?
Yeah.
I mean, this way I, Ifail more than I win.
So, you know, you don't try,you miss a hundred percent of
the shots you don't take, right?
Wayne, was it Wayne Gretzkyor something like that?
Said that.
And, and it's kind of sonic, it's kindof sound cliche, but know your numbers.
(33:30):
Everybody says that, but I'm goingto piggyback it a little bit.
You if you're under a million, haveQuickBooks, QuickBooks online, QuickBooks
test, whatever you want to classify it as.
Right.
And know how to how to read a P and Lprofit and loss and a balance sheet.
If you don't know how to readit, find somebody that can teach
you or Google it hands down.
And then I think the biggest,if you're over a million,
(33:50):
get a good piece of software.
There's so many out there,Aspire, LMN, the list goes on.
And know the difference andunderstand the difference between
invoiced revenue and earned revenue.
That is a huge gamechanger in our industry.
So what is that?
So invoice is pretty simple.
You send out an invoice, whetheryou've done the job or not, it
(34:12):
should be a liability, right?
Because you haven't been working onthe property, but it could be false.
I could bill Tommy out for 20 grand,but I did 10, 000 worth of work.
Earned is exactly what it says.
If we have a 100, 000 job andwe bill you 10, 000 a month.
There's going to be a point inthat contract that you are ahead
and behind if you're invoiced.
(34:33):
With earned, if you month one have20, 000 worth of work that you
performed, that's true earned income.
Even though you haven't gotten theinvoiced, it's, you know, what you're
earning per week, per day, per month.
It's a game changer.
It took us, we didn't listen to aspire.
And it took us two yearsto figure that out.
(34:55):
And when we did, oh my God,it was, it's a game changer.
game changer.
Yeah.
What we think is justthe invoice went out.
We're good, right?
just funny.
My staff right now is trained.
Oh my God.
We just, we build that.
I can say we build a hundred thousanddollars this week and they'll say,
nope, we didn't, we didn't earn it.
Yeah.
In the most fascinating worldin construction, I know it best.
(35:20):
Look at the top line revenue.
We're like, man, we're killing it.
Like, you know, we're at thetowards the end of the month.
Life's looking great.
And then what happens that concreteinvoice miraculously appears the
seventh day of the following month andbam, puts you right back in your spot.
The most frustrating, well, concreteXYZ, you know, is a small mom and pop.
(35:44):
They don't get it
out on time.
times
I've heard it all.
We experienced it.
We celebrated too early foryears and years and years.
And that is, I feel likethat's the difference between.
Invoice revenue versus earned revenue.
You haven't earned anythinguntil all the expenses are in
hands down, hands down.
Great.
(36:04):
Great.
Great.
Great advice anything experiencesout there in the world.
You've learned.
Yeah, there's a couple other, Imean, every, I'm going to go right
back to it, you know, surroundyourself with the best people.
I'm going to give kudos to my staff.
You know, we're, I think, 60some odd people right now.
I can't do this by myself.
I don't want to do it by myself.
And, and my people makethis company look good.
(36:27):
It's not me.
And
I give them,
than greg cole, right?
I'm a high D.
So I want to, just like youtold me, you want to jump in.
You want to get in the excavator.
You want to, you want to drive the truck.
You can't.
Let your people do their joband just get out of their way.
I mean, I think Marty said it the best.
The minute he got out ofthe way, boom, he scaled.
Yeah.
Love it.
Love it.
What else?
(36:47):
And then software, right?
Software is not a set and forget model.
And I thought about this, right?
Hey, you buy a truck, you buy amower, your mechanics are working
on the change in the oil, theguys are greasing them, right?
There's no difference between software.
You need somebody to manage your platformsbecause when you get into it with even
(37:07):
with a spy or a company camera LMN, peoplearen't going to know what's happening.
There's going to be a lot of trainingand have new people coming aboard.
You need one person to manage thatsoftware and keep everybody up to date.
Like your mechanics keepyour trucks up to date.
you know that That hits me prettyhard it's not a set it forget it Let's
think about that for a minute, Greg.
(37:29):
That's the business we're in.
You can't plant a shruband walk away forever.
So what happens?
You got to nurture it.
You got to water it.
You got to prune it.
You got to take care of it.
You, you got to prevent, you know,treat the diseases and sicknesses.
It's no different than yourfacility and your fleet and most
importantly your people, right?
(37:50):
You can't put someone out in aproject manager account manager
role and go you're gonna neednothing for me Good luck, and you
gotta sink or swim becausethat's the that's the construct.
That's where we live in So I lovenot a set and forget it mantra Great.
Let me recap.
I got tommy's takeaways.
I'm gonna run through these.
There's so many Greg I've gotfour pages of notes here You
(38:11):
Let's run through this two things.
You learn back in the day at the company.
Never, never stop payment to your team.
These IOUs for these young peopleout there never get involved in that.
And always be a nice person,take the high road at all times.
a nice person.
Be fair and treat everybody with respect.
(38:32):
Love it.
Software, whoo.
Don't bend it to your own way, right?
Accept the software.
Let's move on.
Assign a team or individual torun it and have consistent weekly
meetings every single week.
Rain or shine, busy or slowtimes, it doesn't matter.
(38:53):
But consistency is the name of the game.
Focus on the end result.
When you're the owner,hold them accountable.
The benefits in the Spire andcompany cam is the dashboards.
I love dashboards that showprogress daily, weekly, and monthly
use the TVs, the Chromecast,you've got 11 of them, love it.
Company can punch lists, sales,production, handoff, checklists.
(39:18):
You name it and the biggestthing of all accountability for
everyone.
No place to hide.
Nope.
No one died
bad.
It
EOS is great.
Your meetings used to suck now.
They don't suck as bad, right?
You've got a structure an Agenda, let'sget in and let's get the hell out and
let's go do what we love to do in thelandscape world Love it facility wins
(39:39):
and losses Listen, I love the no keys.
Just get rid of the keys.
I've got clients that still wear Thething off their belt loop dangling
around.
I'm like, are we, are we, whatworld are we living in here?
So, do your homework, you know, studythings about lights and get rid of
old junk and move on and, and we're soemotionally attached to the, to the.
(40:02):
One shovel that we had25 years ago and oh man.
I just got rid of my first walker.
It was a sad day.
They were all out there.
They were kind of like going like this.
Yeah.
like 1997.
So that tells you, it waslike four engines ago.
Yeah.
Forever.
this thing away.
We're
Forever.
Last but not least, experiencesis surround yourself with
(40:24):
really good amazing people.
I, I swear by that.
One of my favorites about thesoftware is it's not a set and forget.
You've got to nurture it, growit, train it, coach it, mentor
everything, and along the way.
Greg, next week is our ACE Summit.
It's our super fun trip.
End of the year, all of our ACEsget together, ACE alumni get
(40:46):
together, our spouses get together.
It is a super fun trip.
Super fun time.
Share an experience with ACEs or Summitthat you're just like, this is awesome.
I, I don't know whereto start on that one.
We've been, we're goinginto our third year.
And, and we're, we're known as ACEs wild,but we lost a couple of people and that
we call it, we're called ACEs miles.
(41:07):
And now I think we're all old, right?
So it's, it's, it's an ongoing joke,but some of the people or all the
people that I met in there, it's likecollege, they are brothers and sisters.
A couple of people that I can givea shout out to is David Amigo,
David made a great friend of mine.
And if it was, it transfers onto thepersonal side also, as I don't think
(41:28):
my daughter would be going to collegewhere she is without David's advice.
David's kind of sometimes mylittle dad and I'm like, Hey, you
know, what do you think of this?
And they're coming up to see us for threedays, him and seven of the staff, and
we're going to spend three days together.
And then we're going to roll reverse that.
And seven of my staff aregoing down to see him.
That's
(41:48):
great.
You know, Tony from Angelo'sunbelievable company.
My fuel system came from Tony,Tony, who's got your fuel system.
He turned me on to it.
There's, I can't, you think you'realone in this world, in the landscape
world, and then you meet these people.
And you're like, holy crap, they'redoing the same, the same problems
(42:11):
that I have, or, you know, youcan experience your back to them.
So, it's been unbelievable.
Yeah.
100 percent agree.
We met, you know, officially threeor four years ago, you and I did.
And I think I was the one thathelped you get into the ACE program,
but you had lots of questions.
Lots of comments, lots of suggestionson where you should go and
(42:32):
what's group
suggesting,
then, ever since then, it's been nothingbut great things from Cole landscape
and Greg Cole and his entire team.
David Amigo was.
I visited his place years ago and Ithought it might have been one of the
top 10 worst places I have visited.
Oh, yeah.
he's the top 10, almost amazingpeer group member I have ever seen
(42:52):
completely transformed himself andhis business and his son and his team.
Absolutely.
Give a shout out to that guy.
Amazing.
I have this whole thing that I do,and it's funny because I fly in a day
early to all my peer group meetings.
And I sneak up on the, on the company andI do a selfie and I sent it to the owner.
And I just, and I just didthat to Jeff from good earth.
(43:14):
Right.
And I snuck up, I was there a dayor I took up one to his yacht.
I took a picture and I'm like,Jeff, look, secret squirrel.
And he calls me right up.
He's where are you get
you?
spend time with my team.
And I spent time with his partnerand his wife on facility development
and what we went through.
And left that.
I was just so, so, sohappy, so happy to help.
(43:36):
That's great, Greg, man.
A super pleasure.
You might be the coolestguy I've ever met.
Greg Cole, Tommy Cole.
This is a, this is a match made in heaven.
It's awesome.
I keep following you all the time.
I see you around at the industry eventsand it's, it's just a blessing to have
you guys in your entire team within our,in a little inner circle of, of things
(43:59):
and And nothing but the best for youguys and the entire coal landscape team.
Give them my best.
They're awesome.
I've got your stuff posted here onmy other monitor of, of watching
all the videos of giving outto the community and the team
camaraderie, it just is fascinating.
Keep it going, Greg.
It's been a pleasure and we'llsee you soon down the road.
(44:19):
Thank you, Tommy.
Enjoyed it.
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.
Hey guys, it's Tommy with Roots of Successpodcast and I've got an amazing guest
today and I will tell you he's so Amazingthat him and I have the same last name.
(00:32):
That's why this guy Greg Cole is amazing.
How are you Greg?
I'm doing great.
Brother from another mother.
This is an easy sell right?
Oh, this is great when we metwell, it's been a couple years
we met It's been really fun.
And immediately you sent mesome swag here from your office.
And I got, I got thehoodie, I got everything.
(00:53):
And they're like, wow, man, you,you represent your name real well.
And I'm like, yeah, you have no idea.
Right.
I just kind of fit right in.
Greg is, is the owner of Cole landscapingout of the Boston, Massachusetts area.
Super great guy, super great team.
I I've been, he's been on our list for,for quite some time to get in here, but.
(01:14):
He's been doing a lot of great thingsout there and his company and his team.
And we're just reallyfortunate to have you on Greg.
This
appreciate it.
I'm super excited to be here with you.
I just love your podcast.
is great.
Awesome.
You can you can listen toyourself here, here shortly.
It'll be great.
So let's get into this coal landscaping.
(01:36):
What the heck happened?
How did it get started?
You know, tell me a little bitof background and we'll jump into
all sorts of great stuff thatwe've got off on store for this.
Awesome.
Thanks again.
And yeah, Greg Cole, ownerof Cole Landscape Inc.
We're about 30 milesnorth of Boston, Mass.
It's funny in Boston, kind of,we have our own language here.
So if you don't know what Uba is, Ka, orLobster, just take off the R and put on an
(02:01):
A, and that, that's kind of how we talk.
It.
Okay.
Hey, hey,
A, A, we're not in Canada, but we'll takethe R on a lobster and put an A there.
It's, it's funny, I went to schoolfor carpentry, and I soon learned that
I didn't like it, and I went to workfor two different landscape companies.
And out of the two different landscapecompanies to this day, I've learned
(02:23):
two valuable lessons by them.
My first boss that I workedfor never paid us on time.
And I had a lot of IOUs for our olderpeople, So to this day, 34 years in
business I joke around, it's taken me27 years to figure out how to run it.
But 34 years and I haven'tmissed one paycheck.
(02:45):
So I'm very proud of that.
That's motivation.
I will tell you that right now, right?
That's just like me My motivation as aproject manager it was to never have a
day where they couldn't show up in work.
Exactly.
You take care of your peoplethat take care of you.
We've grown, I mean, this yearwe're just under 10 million
and we're on our way to 20.
(03:06):
And we really scaled when webrought on our software platform
and we went tech in 2019.
We actually 3x the companyback from 2019 till today.
So great.
So what was the second thing youlearned at your old landscape company?
Was there
two?
Real, real simple.
I mean, my, my last bosswas just not a nice person.
(03:26):
You would yell andscream and demote people.
And to this day, I use that asa driver for myself to treat
my, my staff with full respect.
And the person on the rake is just asimportant as a person in the excavator.
They're all doing the same job, tryingto make money for them, themselves,
their families and the company.
It's nice to have those experiences,although they were really hard
(03:50):
at the time But you didn't knowwhat's going to turn out of those
experiences in your own company, right?
And now look at you Yeah, that's great.
So let's jump right into this, Greg.
We've got tons of stuff to get through.
Um, one of the things that isfascinating to me is about this software
thing, this operational software.
(04:11):
I'll tee it up.
we're going to talk about some Winsand losses that got started around 2019
pre COVID and I'm sure COVID hit andprobably threw a wrench into everything
and everyone wanted to bail out andfigure, you know, something else.
But, you know, they always say,Tommy, what's the best software?
And I said, the best softwareis the one that you implement
and use 100 percent of it.
Like, I don't care.
Just use it.
(04:32):
Right.
And so landscapers are just.
adamant about finding allthe reasons what it can't do.
But 98 percent of it is what it can do.
And so take, take me through that.
So you, you're thinking of asoftware, you're figuring it out.
And then you, I mean, you're scratchingthe surface to take me back to those days.
So 2018, we were interviewingthree different software companies
(04:54):
and I ended up going with aspire.
Actually Kevin Kehoe was my first
Yeah,
seminar ever seen and he was allnumbers driven and I'm like, why
do I need to know these numbers?
I'm not, I'm just, I cut grass, right?
I'm not, I don't even know the numbers.
in this business for numbers.
Exactly.
And now, and now today it, it drivesme more than ever with all the
(05:16):
matrices, but backing up, 2018, westarted to implement Aspire software.
We made the decision to go with Aspire.
It was probably the bestdecision I've made in my life.
From there, my tech just tookoff, but we made, we made a ton
of mistakes on implementation.
A lot of floundering.
I think the biggest thing thatwe floundered on was we said,
and Tommy, you just picked it up.
You said, they want it to do everything.
(05:38):
Well, we tried to bendthe software to call.
And no one listened to the implementersand say, Hey, Greg, do it this way.
And I think that was our biggest mistake.
And we probably took sixmonths to figure that out.
And when we went to their methodsand we held true to their methods,
we just rocked and rolled.
(05:58):
It was, it was very fast.
To get over that hump.
And then our biggest success waswe had a team of five people that
were on, we called our Aspire team.
And we met every week for two hours,wins, losses, and we just kept a notebook.
We didn't even put it ondigital at that point.
We just kept a notebook and wesaid, Hey, what are we winning?
(06:19):
What are we losing?
The wins we learned from them,the losses we tried to fix.
And then we just put it outto our teams and we said,
Hey, find holes in this thing.
Yeah.
Punch the crap out of it.
Tell us what's wrong and we'll fix itand we'll fix it and aspire has been
a great partner to us since 2019.
So it's at 5 years in.
I was down at ignite.
I just spoke at the conference.
(06:40):
And absolutely loved it.
Absolutely loved everybody that's withAspire and everything we do with Aspire,
Yeah, so take me back.
So the mistake was thinking weknow how to be the engineers and
we're going to build it our way.
Right?
just saw me ID personality,
Yeah, totally.
way or no
Yeah, and most people are right.
(07:01):
We learn how to do landscaping and wewant to be the software gurus that have
spent millions of hours figuring it out.
It's like building the rocket ship.
Also, this is the coalrocket ship to go to Mars.
Right?
And we want to we wantto argue with the system.
How as a leader tell me about the spirits.
How is a leader?
able to get the team throughthat experience and out
(07:23):
of it in a positive way.
What helped?
Real simple is us as owners.
We understand the end result and anybodythat's implementing any software, the
owner or the, the head GM manager,whatever you classify it as, you know,
Has to be the driver of the bus doesn'tknow how to drive, you know, know every
nook and cranny, but know the end goal.
(07:44):
And that's I knew the end goal.
And I just said, hey, team for the people,this is what I'm trying to accomplish.
Let's work on it.
And I just stepped backand let them do it.
they came back to me andsaid, this is, this is good.
This isn't good.
And we work together, lettingthe people do what they do best.
Because trust me, it's for meto type I'm I'm old school.
(08:04):
I'm the hen and peck method.
So yeah, it's not, it's not me.
Yeah.
And I hear a lot of times, most owners,will try to implement it themselves.
They're the head guy thatwill just kind of run from it.
And, 99 times out of 100that is not gonna work.
The owner
can't do that.
So you have to sort of what coach andmentor them along and pick them up
(08:26):
when they fall down because it's goingto happen and they're going to scrape
their leg and they're going to fight.
It's, it's a normalprocedure in life, right?
So you're there to motivate and pickthem up and keep them along the journey.
just let them go.
Let them do what they're,they've been hired to do.
And it's funny because I say, Hey, manageyour people, but don't micromanage them.
There's a huge difference in thatbetween manager and micromanager.
(08:48):
You can manage and say, Hey,listen, I'm going to do it this.
I want you to do it this way.
Tell me if you have anyroadblocks, come back and see me.
Instead of hanging over theirshoulder and, and micromanaging
demotivates people immensely.
It's, it's, it's horrendous.
Yeah.
Yeah, love it.
So you talked about, the, the success.
This is just amazing, Greg, butthe consistency of a meeting
(09:12):
every single week to drive it.
I've, I've traveled thelast several weeks as I do.
And I talk about consistency inanything you do, whether it's, you
know, this, you know, where I'm gonnasay, working out and exercising, it's
my God.
Yeah.
teeth every day.
It's putting the seatbelton in the truck every day.
It's,
But what happens a lot of times is we getstarted and then we just don't want to
(09:34):
do and it's always the software's faultFor not doing it, but when you create a
sense of consistency of every single weekall the time That's a whole momentum.
So for you to say that that's that'smassive anything to elaborate there.
hold the P hold the team accountable.
We are, we're an EOS company,entrepreneurial operating systems.
It's, it's basically a waywe communicate to each other.
(09:57):
It's the way we set goals.
So we set a 90 day world hold to it.
If you're driving the bus, you'vegot to hold people accountable.
In order to make this transition to,it's, it's not an easy transition.
I, it's funny, I probablyshouldn't even say this, but I
call software implementation,a root canal with no Novocain.
(10:17):
So let's just think about this, right?
So you have a toothache, right?
And you're in pain, you know, I don'thave a ton of pain, but you're in pain.
I need it now
You go to get the root canal.
There's, there's no, there's no Novocain.
Right.
And you're in a ton of painand then all of a sudden, boom,
you're eating candy apples.
you're out of the issue andyou're rocking and rolling.
(10:39):
You've got to stay the line.
No difference with, with working out.
If you miss a day, that's great.
If you miss two days ina row, there's a problem.
You just keep going.
Consistency throughout every meeting.
Same meeting agenda,same time, same place.
And the only reason why you miss isyou're on vacation or you're dead.
One of the,
(10:59):
Love it.
Love it.
Consistency is the key.
That's my recommendation to everybodyout there in anything you do It's got
to be over and over and over and over.
And where it lacks most times isthere's no consistency at the end.
And at the end of the day, the teamshould hold you Greg accountable as well.
It kind of works back up to the top ofthe, and if you're not consistent with it,
then this is a fantasy world that Gregis proposing, but doesn't really care
(11:23):
about it after a couple of months,
I think we call that what?
Yes, men.
Oh, yes, people.
You know, you don't wantyes, people on the team.
They want, you want them tocome back at you and say, Greg,
Tommy, this isn't working.
What are we going to do?
You know, and not say, Hey, you know, it'sokay, Greg, we'll, we'll work through it.
No, it's not okay.
Let's fix it.
love it.
Benefits of Aspire.
What do you love about that software?
(11:45):
Oh my God, I could go on for hours, right?
I kind of call it a cult.
It's an Aspire cult, right?
We all chant Aspire.
I joke around with some ofmy good friends with that.
But within three minutes of lookingat everything that I have built out
in Aspire, I see where the company is.
I see where my goals, my dashboards,my gross profit on maintenance,
My gross profit on design build,where we stand as a company.
(12:08):
What do we have sold?
We don't have in the pipeline,not sold in the pipeline.
If we're doing a 400, 000project and we're in the
middle of it, are we on track?
Are we off track?
Materials, labor and subs.
I mean, that's, that'swhat they're in control of.
Yeah.
Those three things.
Yeah.
They control how many materials,who they put on the job site.
If they're overspending, underspending.
(12:31):
it's super fast.
to see if we're on track or off track.
Yeah.
And one of the biggest things that I dois, is, is, oh my God, I just love issues.
Everything in my company is an issue.
And we close somewhere in thelines 150 to 200 issues a month.
And every single callthat comes in is an issue.
(12:52):
If somebody sends me an email andsays, Hey, Greg, you know, Tommy
called and you got to call him back.
I just respond issue, put it in there.
Cause we track it.
And that's the most powerful toolthat if it can be done, right.
When it's done, right.
You add like the client experience, it'sone to 3 percent of the bottom line.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(13:12):
That's great.
You know, we talk about thisoften, but we always want to
know how the company's doing.
And a lot of times we were like,okay, what's in my bank account?
What projects I'm I'm embedding?
What cool equipment did I buy?
And I'll look at the books everynow and then to see if they're, they
look decent and we'll go from there.
That's kind of how wemostly run a business.
(13:33):
It's no different than let'stake a mid level person, right?
Project manager and account manager.
Well, I go see some properties,I check on it, I sell some work I
install some work, but I'm not sure,but we're, we're making money, but
we don't know if we're making money.
But at the end of the day, everyone hasa dashboard for the most part, right?
Including yourself.
You can see is behind thecurtain that we can't see.
(13:58):
Right?
everybody has good and bad days, right?
You're not going to, you might have acrew that has a bad day and you say,
Hey, you know, Jose, make it up tomorrowor make it up next week, however it be.
So we measure daily, weekly andmonthly God, I think we had 11, TVs
right now throughout the companyand everything's, you know, a spy
is posted on almost everything.
Explain the importance of TVs.
(14:19):
I just had this conversationa couple of weeks ago.
What does that mean we have TVs?
So everything's Chrome casted and we havetwo different computers that Chromecast
throughout all the different TVs.
And we put a company update.
So people's birthdays super important.
I'm huge on culture.
We wanna recognize birthdays,anniversaries, those go
(14:39):
on it, upcoming events.
So it just scrolls.
It's, it's really, really prettycool when you come down to it.
And then we have dashboards to say on themaintenance, Hey, are you coming in today?
Good on the dashboard.
How's your week looking?
And how's your month looking?
So if they're kicking butt, you know,they're gonna kick some of butt.
If they're not, then somebody that'skicking butt is looking at that and
(15:01):
saying, Hey, Joe, what's going on?
How come you're falling behind?
So there's a ton ofcompetition and it's healthy.
Yeah, what gets measuredgets improved, right?
And then even with us, if I wantedto cast to a TV, I got a, I got a
70 inch in front of me right here.
I just hit a button and cast to it.
Everybody can see it.
Yeah, It's great.
That's the new technology now iscasting dashboards and metrics on TV.
(15:27):
So it's real time information, right?
That lets us know how we'redoing on a daily basis.
It's terrible to know that youcould go six months or year.
And not really know how you're doing.
Right.
So it's frustrating at the end of the day.
And some people are scared to even postthe ones that, you know, need some help
or need some more training, but that's howwe all get better at the end of the day.
(15:50):
was just in Aspen, Colorado at good earth.
With my, my peer group and we had someheated debate in our, in our meeting
and I'm not going to mention names,but one person didn't know where they
stand on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.
And he says, I'm just going to look at theend of the year and see if I made money.
And you just saw everybody's face kindof cringe and like, what is going on?
(16:13):
Why would you do that?
You can correct it now.
yeah, yeah.
In the middle of the game, right?
Yeah.
And sometimes, and sometimes youcould be a day into a 20 day project
and you're making corrections.
I mean, you're a, you'rea construction guy, right?
you know how volatile that is.
That world is that
of the day.
And then all of a sudden you'relooking back and go, what happened?
(16:35):
We shoulda, we shoulda,we shoulda, we shoulda.
where it should be taken outof the goddamn dictionary.
get that out of here.
I'm so over it.
We shoulda.
With all this technology and allthese things that we have, embrace it.
A hundred percent.
And if you don't embrace it now,I'm telling you, the bus is gone.
It's funny to say that because ifI look and I look at the, everybody
(16:57):
that I deal with 25 to 30 year oldbusiness owners, They understand tech.
They grew up with it, right?
Boom.
I'm getting tech.
I'm going to run the best software,whatever that software be, right?
And I'm not tagging anypeople, but anybody really
over 30, they second guess it.
They would rather buy, as Kevin would say,an excavator versus a piece of software.
(17:18):
And I can make, an extra 10 or 15percent just on the software end,
if I run my business correctly.
And I can buy 10 excavators.
I love it.
Software is sexy.
So get it and installit and use it every day.
It's
Music.
all the things that you have.
A hundred percent.
Um, I love it.
(17:39):
one thing that I will sayis don't make it perfect.
Yes.
is a killer.
Progress.
perfect.
You're not going to make it perfect.
Love it.
There's a thing that youuse called company cam.
I'm a huge fan of itI I know it very well.
You guys It's something that's awesome.
It's really dominant in theconstruction Home building
(18:01):
gc general contracting world.
It's amazing Tell me a couple ofbenefits of of having that software
Oh my God, I can't evenknow where to start on that.
So we're 14 months in, we justcrossed 100, 000 pictures, 100,
000 pictures and videos, 14 months.
Think about that.
(18:22):
We have documentation on everysingle project, every single
maintenance account, and we'rejust going to keep on building it.
So it's an app that goes on somebody'sphone or your employee's phone,
and as fast as they can push thebutton with their thumb, It's as
fast as it's uploaded to the cloud.
There's no data on their phone.
There's no storage on their phone.
(18:43):
Everything goes up.
And they can see otherprojects within the company.
We started about six months ago.
We're running all of our pre andpost checklists through that all our
punch lists, we are running our saleshandoff from sales to production
through that, where there's a 10point checklist and it timestamps
(19:03):
it and says, Tommy approve this.
Today, and we know exactly who approvedit and it's total accountability
because if somebody doesn't do theirrole, we just go back and look and
say, well, you signed off on this.
I'll come
a system that you guys have builtthat pushes every human being
into the future which we're allvulnerable as human beings, but it
follows that process along the way.
(19:25):
So checks and balances and youcan't skip all the steps to get to.
You know to the very end.
Plus a picture is what picture is worth.
They say what a thousand
yeah, so how many pictures have you done?
we're just over a hundred thousand.
Yeah, it that is incredible becauseyou have documentation of everything
whether it be issues on the job Whetherit be pre pictures, post pictures
(19:49):
warranty control how to build thingsYou It's a paper trail of everything.
plus and above and beyond that.
We have our sales staff on it.
So we have everything starred.
So when they're talking to you,Tommy, as a salesperson, they just
pull up pools, boom, here's allmy pools, plantings, here's all my
nightscaping, here's all my nightscaping.
Everything's there.
If I want to change it as theowner, one place to change it,
(20:13):
send it out to all my sales.
simple.
It's probably the easiestsoftware anybody will implement.
It's that easy.
It's very easy.
I love those guys a lot.
I see them every year at the conferencesand shake their hands and thank them
for, for all the work that they do.
That's, that's good.
You did mention earlierthe EOS, system, the 9010.
(20:36):
The 90 I O.
Explain the importance andlet's, let's back that.
Why did you do this?
Everybody knows, I'm just goingto say it, meetings suck, right?
You get into a meeting, you get intoa meeting, you hear about, Samantha's
dog and, what they did last weekend.
And they ramble on for,you know, three minutes.
(20:56):
And then you get to somework and nobody takes notes.
And so 90.
io is a platform with astrict meeting agenda.
Just as I said, a spy is a cult.
E I O, E O S is a cult.
It's, it's a way to report matricesto each other and share amongst teams.
currently we have 14 differentteams within call and meetings.
(21:19):
No, I haven't part of that.
I can see the meeting.
So it forms a strict cadence.
You share a Segway.
You only have a minute each to sharea Segway, which is a personal best.
and a company best for the last week.
We go into data, which datais just a large excel sheet
that's on the 90 IO platform.
And if it's green, you're on track.
(21:40):
If it's red, it's off track.
It's an issue.
We go through headlines and thenwe cascade messages to other teams.
So.
If Tommy had a win on, on theconstruction project this week, hey,
the construction team is puttingthat up to the, all the other teams.
So they can see it's a win.
So if camaraderie, on ourmeetings, it's, it's, I don't know.
It's, how can I put it to you?
(22:01):
structure.
it's so structured in,I'm going to say fun.
People might disagree.
People might disagree with me.
don't suck as much anymore or at all.
They don't, they, theysuck, but not as bad.
So, so in your world on the design build.
It's, it's funny because one personruns the meeting, so it runs 90.
(22:22):
io.
One person takes notes and to dos.
One person runs company cam becauseyou have to remember is your
office staff and somebody, maybean owner or somebody else doesn't
know what these projects look like.
And it brings the physicalproject with the data together.
And then one person runs a spire andwe'll run through 750 to a million
(22:45):
dollars worth of production in 90 minutes.
And we'll have, 20 to 80takeaways from that to dues.
And it's all one platform.
love it, Greg.
So is there any other platforms thatyou use that we haven't mentioned?
We use a lot we're fully cloud based
Okay.
I, I drop about 200, 000a year on subscriptions.
(23:06):
So it tells you how much we use.
And so the benefits of all this.
I would, let me ask you this.
Is it too much for coal landscapingto have that, tell me the benefits of
having that many in all togetherness,
So not one software, even if youbuild the software yourself, it's
not going to be what you want.
(23:27):
So we just take bits and parts,and then we've been writing,
not myself, but I'm not a coder.
We've been writing open APIs togetherbetween different softwares, so now
they're all starting to talk to eachother, which has been phenomenal.
You know, we run a CRM, and it'spiggybacked with a Spire so everything
flows back and forth to and from.
(23:48):
we're gonna open up CompanyCam toAspire so we can click right in
through CompanyCam and get in there.
So, there's a lot of good stuffhappening, but the best part about being
cloud based is if you come to Cole.
give you a Surface Pro, it takes me 8to 10 minutes to liven you up to every
single software platform that you need.
(24:08):
And if you leave us, it takesme 30 seconds to kill every
single software program.
It's the benefit of that is tremendous.
I can't express it enough.
you know, this is a tool, nodifferent than an excavator and a
truck and a, and a shovel, right?
But if this is the most importanttool, because you're taking the
(24:30):
truck, the excavator, the crewmember, and the shovel, and you're
putting it all in the surface.
Right?
With all the applicationsand say, here you go, Tommy.
Welcome to Coal Landscaping.
This is everything you need to knowof how to run your job efficiently.
And that's what I like about it.
(24:51):
what we've done above andbeyond that is we've just done,
we have a whole loom library.
So what we've been doing is we've beencreating loom videos just a little
under everything under two minutes Hey,here's how to enter a client or spire.
Here's how to star aproject and company cam.
Here's how to use 90 Io so it's Cole'sversion of how we want them to use it And
(25:11):
let, let me just say that, you know, 2019till today, it's been five year process.
It does not happen overnight.
It did not happen overnight for us.
and we've had, I've gone to someof these grow conferences and ACE
conferences, and I'm like, Oh myGod, I'm going to buy that software.
And I buy it and we run it for likethree weeks and we'll throw it out.
And I'm guilty as an owner of that.
So we've been through a lot of programs,
(25:33):
And that happens.
Listen, you're trying different things.
You're getting new ideas.
That's kind of what the owner does.
But at the end of the day,you've got to do something and
stay with it and go all the way.
The software and these apps areyour tools to be successful.
Coal Landscaping Why?
Because they communicate within the entireteam to communicate with the client.
(25:55):
They keep everything in one system.
So you have dashboards built and youhave the photos to back everything up.
It's a collection of everything.
hands down.
And I don't think, I don't knowwhere I would be without that.
I probably still be at, you know,a million and a half to a million
dollars.
would still have a dry erase board write
I miss, I miss, I missthe dry erase boards.
(26:16):
I was just talking aboutthat today in a meeting.
He said, we need to bring backthe dryer, the mockup boards.
We
called them.
why you miss is because you go in atnight when people are gone and you race
stuff with your wrist And say,we're going to this job that I sold.
Yeah.
the post its and
Yeah.
that person doesn't need the excavate.
I'm going to put it to this crew.
Yeah.
Because I want them all on my projects,you know, and I want this client to be
(26:38):
happy because I'm best friends with him.
Yeah.
That's why you want it.
You know, that's fascinating thatyou mentioned, Greg was, I believe
this younger generation is willingto, it very embraces the technology.
I, it's just my world that I live, livingin currently, and even you're at your
age, we didn't embrace any of that.
I'm going to figure it out myself.
(27:00):
I'm going to do it.
And I'm going to fail 75times before I figure it out.
And maybe 35 years later, right?
Whereas this new generation goes, youForget it, Greg, and forget it, Tommy.
I'm not wasting my time with you two guys.
Yeah.
going to with peoplethat are smarter than me.
They embrace the technologyand they just go and hit it.
(27:21):
That's it.
It's exactly, you saidit right on the head,
yeah, There you go.
Man, you listen, let's, let'smove into something else, Greg.
You built a fascinating facility andthat is another, that is another This
is like in a software discussion.
Second to that is this facility thing.
Everyone talks about it all thetime and you went through it.
(27:45):
I'm sure it was a, you know,a piece of cake from start to
course it
super smooth,
was course.
Yep.
about some wins andlosses in that category.
Well, let me, let me start, youknow, back in the day I had seven
people in a 19 by 15 foot office.
One room and that was it.
When we left that facility, therewas mushrooms growing on the floor.
(28:08):
There was old in the ceiling.
And we moved to our second facility, whichwas, there's only 20, 000 square feet.
And we were doing 5 million out of that.
So 20, 000 square feet of yard shop.
It was all together.
You couldn't move.
And we were just, we were justclustered in there like sardines.
So when we searched for a new facility, wewanted the acreage and we got five acres.
(28:33):
And we moved just as in2019, we went tech here.
With five acres, we're 8, 000 square feetof shop, 6, 000 square feet of office.
Currently, we're probably90 percent grown into it.
We're going to outgrow this probablyin the next couple of years.
So we're looking for a satellite.
Okay.
We have full wireless onany point in the five acres.
(28:54):
Like I said, we have a tonof TV scattered all around.
We have no desktop computers.
Period.
Everything's Surface Pro.
They dock in.
Everybody gets three monitors.
They can be at Cole.
They can be with a client.
They can be at Starbucks and theyhave the same look that they,
that they had at their office.
No keys.
(29:15):
Now, let me, let me say this.
No keys, no keys, right?
So keys drive me crazy becauseI give you a key, you lose it.
Then who has the key?
So everything here is fob.
okay.
Thanks, Bob.
It's funny.
I was on my way to, I think it was anace group meeting and somebody locked
themselves out of the office and Igot right on my phone and unlocked
(29:36):
it from whatever, 30, 000 feet up.
awesome.
That's so great.
That's technology at the day.
I mean, keys are so outdated.
and then you can turn onand off the fob, right
Oh yeah.
hoarding, you get a fob exiting thecompany, it's shut off, whatever, so total
control, you can see who comes in and out.
So
But perfect example is our cleaners.
(29:56):
Our cleaners come in at 5.
30 every Tuesday.
So they can get in only from5 to 7 on a Tuesday morning.
They can't come in on a Sunday afternoon.
Won't allow them in.
So I set all those parameters inthe background, which is, which is
such a peace of mind for myself.
love it.
What are some things that you struggledwith in getting the facility from, from
(30:16):
the 19 by 15, all the way to the 5 acres?
Financing was tough because I wantedto build it a certain way, and it
cost a lot of money to build it.
Example, we dumped about aquarter million just into tech.
So 250k just into tech.
And some of the town ordinanceswere very hard to overcome.
But when we did, we rock and rolled.
(30:38):
I think we were shutdown three times here.
By the building department.
And it was something simple as, Hey,you didn't give me my permit for this.
And I said, okay, I said,how much is the permit?
He said, two 50.
And I said, I'll giveyou the two 50 right now.
He's like, no, you need to design.
Well, the design was 15, 000.
The job was already doneand I had to spend 15, 000.
So some of the thingslike that were tough.
(30:59):
You'd be surprised howmuch stuff you accumulate.
Oh boy.
Well, it was disgusting.
So a lot of the lessons learnedfrom our old were brought into this.
One of the lessons that welearned was everybody didn't like
bright lights in their office.
So they will unscrew the bulbs and thatI would walk into somebody's office and
(31:21):
there would be a light hanging with nolight bulbs and it would drive me crazy.
So now we have no light bulbsin the place and everything's
on the, everything's led beads.
There's not one light bulb,
Yeah.
but my biggest, I don't know, my biggesttakeaway or my biggest nugget to give
out on this is do your homework upfront,make sure all your ducks in a row.
(31:42):
And when the ducks are in a row, justgo, don't go as fast as you possibly
can, because you have to remember it'ssuch a disruptor to myself as an owner.
Yeah.
And the entire team.
You're trying to run the business andbuild a facility at the same time.
It's tough.
I think one of the experiences that isa good takeaway from this is embrace
the technology in your new place.
(32:02):
Right?
Hands down, hands down,
Yep.
I think that's the, one of the biggesttakeaways that we don't look into.
I think we look at, you know, thesquare footage of the building and the
shop and the acreage type deal, thephysical things I would compare it to.
Yeah.
I'm going to install a landscape here inTexas, but I won't put the irrigation.
hands
Well, it's not the sexy thing, right?
(32:22):
It, you bury it all.
You don't get to see it at all, right?
And it's like, what is going on?
But by God, when you need it, you need it.
Oh, I got, I got comments left and right.
Oh my God, you're nuts.
What are you doing that for?
And then we moved in and we hada hard deadline of April 1st and
boy, you know, construction, right?
Tommy,
yeah,
the deadlines.
(32:43):
you don't miss them.
my, I ran it as a military op andwe, we moved in the day before.
everybody's like, now Iknow why you did that.
Yep.
Yep.
I love it.
So we got a few more things to wrapup, but what are some three pieces of
advice you could leave our audience that.
The Mr.
Greg Cole has experienced in life andyou live and die by it or whatever.
(33:07):
What, what are some words of wisdom?
Oh God.
It's going to sound cliche,
many, right?
right?
Yeah.
I mean, this way I, Ifail more than I win.
So, you know, you don't try,you miss a hundred percent of
the shots you don't take, right?
Wayne, was it Wayne Gretzkyor something like that?
Said that.
And, and it's kind of sonic, it's kindof sound cliche, but know your numbers.
(33:30):
Everybody says that, but I'm goingto piggyback it a little bit.
You if you're under a million, haveQuickBooks, QuickBooks online, QuickBooks
test, whatever you want to classify it as.
Right.
And know how to how to read a P and Lprofit and loss and a balance sheet.
If you don't know how to readit, find somebody that can teach
you or Google it hands down.
And then I think the biggest,if you're over a million,
(33:50):
get a good piece of software.
There's so many out there,Aspire, LMN, the list goes on.
And know the difference andunderstand the difference between
invoiced revenue and earned revenue.
That is a huge gamechanger in our industry.
So what is that?
So invoice is pretty simple.
You send out an invoice, whetheryou've done the job or not, it
(34:12):
should be a liability, right?
Because you haven't been working onthe property, but it could be false.
I could bill Tommy out for 20 grand,but I did 10, 000 worth of work.
Earned is exactly what it says.
If we have a 100, 000 job andwe bill you 10, 000 a month.
There's going to be a point inthat contract that you are ahead
and behind if you're invoiced.
(34:33):
With earned, if you month one have20, 000 worth of work that you
performed, that's true earned income.
Even though you haven't gotten theinvoiced, it's, you know, what you're
earning per week, per day, per month.
It's a game changer.
It took us, we didn't listen to aspire.
And it took us two yearsto figure that out.
(34:55):
And when we did, oh my God,it was, it's a game changer.
game changer.
Yeah.
What we think is justthe invoice went out.
We're good, right?
just funny.
My staff right now is trained.
Oh my God.
We just, we build that.
I can say we build a hundred thousanddollars this week and they'll say,
nope, we didn't, we didn't earn it.
Yeah.
In the most fascinating worldin construction, I know it best.
(35:20):
Look at the top line revenue.
We're like, man, we're killing it.
Like, you know, we're at thetowards the end of the month.
Life's looking great.
And then what happens that concreteinvoice miraculously appears the
seventh day of the following month andbam, puts you right back in your spot.
The most frustrating, well, concreteXYZ, you know, is a small mom and pop.
(35:44):
They don't get it
out on time.
times
I've heard it all.
We experienced it.
We celebrated too early foryears and years and years.
And that is, I feel likethat's the difference between.
Invoice revenue versus earned revenue.
You haven't earned anythinguntil all the expenses are in
hands down, hands down.
Great.
(36:04):
Great.
Great.
Great advice anything experiencesout there in the world.
You've learned.
Yeah, there's a couple other, Imean, every, I'm going to go right
back to it, you know, surroundyourself with the best people.
I'm going to give kudos to my staff.
You know, we're, I think, 60some odd people right now.
I can't do this by myself.
I don't want to do it by myself.
And, and my people makethis company look good.
(36:27):
It's not me.
And
I give them,
than greg cole, right?
I'm a high D.
So I want to, just like youtold me, you want to jump in.
You want to get in the excavator.
You want to, you want to drive the truck.
You can't.
Let your people do their joband just get out of their way.
I mean, I think Marty said it the best.
The minute he got out ofthe way, boom, he scaled.
Yeah.
Love it.
Love it.
What else?
(36:47):
And then software, right?
Software is not a set and forget model.
And I thought about this, right?
Hey, you buy a truck, you buy amower, your mechanics are working
on the change in the oil, theguys are greasing them, right?
There's no difference between software.
You need somebody to manage your platformsbecause when you get into it with even
(37:07):
with a spy or a company camera LMN, peoplearen't going to know what's happening.
There's going to be a lot of trainingand have new people coming aboard.
You need one person to manage thatsoftware and keep everybody up to date.
Like your mechanics keepyour trucks up to date.
you know that That hits me prettyhard it's not a set it forget it Let's
think about that for a minute, Greg.
(37:29):
That's the business we're in.
You can't plant a shruband walk away forever.
So what happens?
You got to nurture it.
You got to water it.
You got to prune it.
You got to take care of it.
You, you got to prevent, you know,treat the diseases and sicknesses.
It's no different than yourfacility and your fleet and most
importantly your people, right?
(37:50):
You can't put someone out in aproject manager account manager
role and go you're gonna neednothing for me Good luck, and you
gotta sink or swim becausethat's the that's the construct.
That's where we live in So I lovenot a set and forget it mantra Great.
Let me recap.
I got tommy's takeaways.
I'm gonna run through these.
There's so many Greg I've gotfour pages of notes here You
(38:11):
Let's run through this two things.
You learn back in the day at the company.
Never, never stop payment to your team.
These IOUs for these young peopleout there never get involved in that.
And always be a nice person,take the high road at all times.
a nice person.
Be fair and treat everybody with respect.
(38:32):
Love it.
Software, whoo.
Don't bend it to your own way, right?
Accept the software.
Let's move on.
Assign a team or individual torun it and have consistent weekly
meetings every single week.
Rain or shine, busy or slowtimes, it doesn't matter.
(38:53):
But consistency is the name of the game.
Focus on the end result.
When you're the owner,hold them accountable.
The benefits in the Spire andcompany cam is the dashboards.
I love dashboards that showprogress daily, weekly, and monthly
use the TVs, the Chromecast,you've got 11 of them, love it.
Company can punch lists, sales,production, handoff, checklists.
(39:18):
You name it and the biggestthing of all accountability for
everyone.
No place to hide.
Nope.
No one died
bad.
It
EOS is great.
Your meetings used to suck now.
They don't suck as bad, right?
You've got a structure an Agenda, let'sget in and let's get the hell out and
let's go do what we love to do in thelandscape world Love it facility wins
(39:39):
and losses Listen, I love the no keys.
Just get rid of the keys.
I've got clients that still wear Thething off their belt loop dangling
around.
I'm like, are we, are we, whatworld are we living in here?
So, do your homework, you know, studythings about lights and get rid of
old junk and move on and, and we're soemotionally attached to the, to the.
(40:02):
One shovel that we had25 years ago and oh man.
I just got rid of my first walker.
It was a sad day.
They were all out there.
They were kind of like going like this.
Yeah.
like 1997.
So that tells you, it waslike four engines ago.
Yeah.
Forever.
this thing away.
We're
Forever.
Last but not least, experiencesis surround yourself with
(40:24):
really good amazing people.
I, I swear by that.
One of my favorites about thesoftware is it's not a set and forget.
You've got to nurture it, growit, train it, coach it, mentor
everything, and along the way.
Greg, next week is our ACE Summit.
It's our super fun trip.
End of the year, all of our ACEsget together, ACE alumni get
(40:46):
together, our spouses get together.
It is a super fun trip.
Super fun time.
Share an experience with ACEs or Summitthat you're just like, this is awesome.
I, I don't know whereto start on that one.
We've been, we're goinginto our third year.
And, and we're, we're known as ACEs wild,but we lost a couple of people and that
we call it, we're called ACEs miles.
(41:07):
And now I think we're all old, right?
So it's, it's, it's an ongoing joke,but some of the people or all the
people that I met in there, it's likecollege, they are brothers and sisters.
A couple of people that I can givea shout out to is David Amigo,
David made a great friend of mine.
And if it was, it transfers onto thepersonal side also, as I don't think
(41:28):
my daughter would be going to collegewhere she is without David's advice.
David's kind of sometimes mylittle dad and I'm like, Hey, you
know, what do you think of this?
And they're coming up to see us for threedays, him and seven of the staff, and
we're going to spend three days together.
And then we're going to roll reverse that.
And seven of my staff aregoing down to see him.
That's
(41:48):
great.
You know, Tony from Angelo'sunbelievable company.
My fuel system came from Tony,Tony, who's got your fuel system.
He turned me on to it.
There's, I can't, you think you'realone in this world, in the landscape
world, and then you meet these people.
And you're like, holy crap, they'redoing the same, the same problems
(42:11):
that I have, or, you know, youcan experience your back to them.
So, it's been unbelievable.
Yeah.
100 percent agree.
We met, you know, officially threeor four years ago, you and I did.
And I think I was the one thathelped you get into the ACE program,
but you had lots of questions.
Lots of comments, lots of suggestionson where you should go and
(42:32):
what's group
suggesting,
then, ever since then, it's been nothingbut great things from Cole landscape
and Greg Cole and his entire team.
David Amigo was.
I visited his place years ago and Ithought it might have been one of the
top 10 worst places I have visited.
Oh, yeah.
he's the top 10, almost amazingpeer group member I have ever seen
(42:52):
completely transformed himself andhis business and his son and his team.
Absolutely.
Give a shout out to that guy.
Amazing.
I have this whole thing that I do,and it's funny because I fly in a day
early to all my peer group meetings.
And I sneak up on the, on the company andI do a selfie and I sent it to the owner.
And I just, and I just didthat to Jeff from good earth.
(43:14):
Right.
And I snuck up, I was there a dayor I took up one to his yacht.
I took a picture and I'm like,Jeff, look, secret squirrel.
And he calls me right up.
He's where are you get
you?
spend time with my team.
And I spent time with his partnerand his wife on facility development
and what we went through.
And left that.
I was just so, so, sohappy, so happy to help.
(43:36):
That's great, Greg, man.
A super pleasure.
You might be the coolestguy I've ever met.
Greg Cole, Tommy Cole.
This is a, this is a match made in heaven.
It's awesome.
I keep following you all the time.
I see you around at the industry eventsand it's, it's just a blessing to have
you guys in your entire team within our,in a little inner circle of, of things
(43:59):
and And nothing but the best for youguys and the entire coal landscape team.
Give them my best.
They're awesome.
I've got your stuff posted here onmy other monitor of, of watching
all the videos of giving outto the community and the team
camaraderie, it just is fascinating.
Keep it going, Greg.
It's been a pleasure and we'llsee you soon down the road.
(44:19):
Thank you, Tommy.
Enjoyed it.
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