July 23, 2024 • 50 mins
Bryan Clayton joins Shamus Madan to discuss his entrepreneurial journey, starting with his early experiences and scaling a lawn mowing business to $10M. Bryan shares insights from selling that business and transitioning to Greenpal, tackling early challenges and learning from failures. He details his journey into software development, building a tech platform, and forming a development team. Bryan also discusses the challenges of creating a new marketplace, monetizing Greenpal, and effective content marketing strategies. The episode concludes with a quick fire round, advice to his younger self, and final thoughts on personal growth and compound interest.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Lot of times, they've called back and say, Icalled all ten of those people.
(00:03):
One guy called me back, one guy gave me aprice.
I hired 2 of them, but they showed up.
And and so I saw that there was something weirdin the marketplace where it was hard for
consumers to quickly get pricing and discoverwho was reliable and who wasn't.
And because there was no data, about theseproviders.
(00:24):
And then, and then as a service provider, it'sreally, really hard running that kind of
business because you're you're mowing yards.
You don't have time to run sales.
You don't have time to go out and and giveestimates.
You don't have time to even answer the damnphone.
Or call people back.
You're literally cutting grass.
And then at night, you're you're mailing outinvoices.
(00:45):
And, like, the it's just a grind.
So there was, like, all of this disconnectbetween these two needs and desires of these,
of these two parties And so I knew thatsomebody was gonna build a platform that solved
all those problems, with a clean userexperience, that could automate a lot of these
things.
(01:05):
Brian, it's great to have you in the studiotoday.
I'm excited to record this episode.
I've been doing a ton of research about you andand Green Powell and the previous business you
sold.
And I'm excited to learn more about what you'vebuilt.
Before we get into how you built Green Powell,into a $30,000,000 business.
I wanna start this conversation with your earlycontext.
(01:25):
What would be the earliest piece of contextthat I would have to understand about you to
understand the person sitting in front of metoday.
Well, that's an easy one.
So, well, thanks for having me on, Shammas.
It's great to be with you.
So It all started, when I got a Nintendo 64 andI got Super Mario Kart because I played this
game, like, 7 days a week, for 10 hours a day.
(01:48):
And my dad got pissed off because I wasplaying, like, Nintendo all day long.
And, he talked to the neighbor one day, and theneighbor was like, hey, I'm looking for someone
to mow my yard.
And he goes, he says, my son cuts grass.
And, he he came up to my bedroom and he said,hey.
I got a gig for you.
You're gonna go mow the neighbor's yard.
And I said, well, I don't I don't mow yards.
(02:10):
And he goes, well, you do now.
And and, wasn't living in a democratichousehold.
It was kinda like this was a direct order.
And so he he took me to the neighbor's houseand, he made me mow the neighbor's yard.
And he pointed out all the spots that I missedand and showed me how to do it correctly.
And then after that, I got paid 20 bucks for,like, an hour of work.
(02:32):
And I was hooked.
I was hooked on entrepreneurship from that dayforward.
First thing I did was start passing out flyersall over the neighborhood, and, and and before
I knew it, I had 10 or 20 customers.
And so I stuck with that little lawn mowingbusiness all through high school and then all
through college.
And then, when I graduated college, I I had tomake a decision.
(02:54):
Was I gonna stick with this lawn mowingbusiness that I had ran in high school and in
college, or or was I gonna do something else inmy life.
And and I and I didn't really wanna be a lawnguy.
I didn't really wanna be like a blue collarlaborer the rest of my life, but I could
quickly, like, with a legal pad and pin and abig pin, like, pin out what this business could
(03:15):
be could become if I had, like, 10 or 20employees.
And I thought, well, I'm gonna try I'm gonnasee how big I can grow this.
And I made a little business plan, and Ithought if I could just get to a point where I
had 2 or 3 crews going out every day, and Ididn't have to personally do the work anymore.
And I could manage the work that that would besuccess.
And if I could do it in 5 years, that thatwould be, that would be worth it.
(03:38):
And and I ended up ended up being able to dothat in 2 years.
I ended up having 20 employees by year 2, and,3 or 4 crews going out every day and and and
building it into a real business.
That business eventually got to $10,000,000 ayear in sales and eventually got to a 150
employees.
And eventually it was acquired.
And then that teed up, the knowledge andfoundation to build Green Powell, which is my
(04:01):
company today, which is the the Uber oflawnmoy.
Yeah.
You mentioned you had a 5 year goal.
You accomplished that 5 year goal in 2 years.
I think this is something that I've oftennoticed with a lot successful entrepreneurs.
I was listening to Cody Sanchez.
She was doing a a podcast the other day.
She said the framework that she likes to thinkabout how to grow her business is try to figure
(04:24):
out how you can achieve, like, a 3 year goalin, like, 6 months or basically take whatever
you thought would take multiple years.
And basically cut it in half or or make it evensmaller.
What were some of the steps that you did tohelp achieve that goal that you had in 2 years
in instead of 5?
Yeah.
I really like that advice.
And and I I I'll take it a step further.
(04:44):
I heard a quote the other day.
I I heard it may have been Tim Fair said it.
He said, that it's easy to hide behind changingthe world.
And so what he means by that is, like, you canhave these big, huge goals.
It's like, oh, with my business, I wanna changethe world or, you know, some kinda big lofty
audacious goal.
It's really easy to hide behind that goal.
(05:06):
And before you know it, 3 or 4, 5 years go byand you're nowhere closer to that goal than you
were, you know, years before.
And and so what I have found and what I kind ofgravitated towards in those early days with
setting very small goals.
Not laughable, but attainable.
And and so I thought, well, if I can, you know,I've got 20 customers, if I can just get to a
(05:28):
100, and I'm not gonna worry about anythingelse until I get to a 100 customers.
And then when I get to a 100, I wanna figureout how to get to 200.
And just working at one level at a time, andand and and even breaking breaking it down
into, okay, I'm gonna get a 100 customers.
But what does that mean?
Well, that means I gotta pass out, you know,back in those days, I was passing out flyers.
(05:50):
Means I gotta pass out a 1000 flyers to get a100 customers.
So let's not worry about anything until we passout the 1000 flyers.
So breaking it down into really small goalsknocking those goals down, celebrating them,
was how I was able to get that businessrolling.
And it's and it's really how we were able toget Green Powell going, was was just breaking
(06:10):
it down to the bite sized trucks.
And it might go back to my video game dayswhere it was kinda like working one level of
the video game at a time.
You know, you can't worry about Bowser whenyou're on water world.
And and so you just gotta focus on water world.
You get through level, and you don't worryabout anything else until you get to that
level.
And and that's how I was able to do it, withthat first business and my second one.
(06:31):
And with Pete Shree, what which was your first.
You you scaled that to 10,000,000 in inrevenue.
Originally, you you were handing out flyers,like you said, to get your your first 10
customers and and 20 customers and so forth.
Did your strategy evolve when when you had toscale that all the way up to 10 mil?
Yeah.
You know, when when you when you're building aservice based business like that, they are
(06:53):
really good small businesses.
And what I mean by that is, like, oneproprietor, maybe a helper, and you just run
lean and mean, and you just make as much profitas you can.
And then you take that that low quality revenueand you you invested in high quality evidue.
And so I know a lot of blue collar millionairesthat have done just that.
(07:14):
They they ran a very small service basedbusiness and then and then invested in real
estate or or stocks or something like that.
And so that's great.
And then but then you have, you know, 8 figureservices businesses.
And and they are they're very profitable alsothat are at scale, and that's that's kind of
where the business became.
But then there's like this It's like a barbell.
(07:35):
There's this no man's land between.
That's like a huge long decade long slog.
And you kinda you kinda just go from onefailure to the next trying to figure out how to
scale the the the service business and yourealize that the margins are super thin and
that you can't afford all kinds of layers ofmanagement.
And and eventually, you you key in on that theonly way to scale a business like that is to go
(08:00):
after big 6 figure contracts and and beyond.
And you have to build a sales process for that.
And you have to build the evidence that yourcompany is is is capable of doing that type of
work.
It takes a long time to do that, and that's why99% of businesses in that industry never get
there.
And and so that's kinda what I had to do withthe company was it started with a res as a
(08:22):
residential base services business.
And then over time, I had to rebuild the clientbase from the inside out into a commercial
based business and understand how to pitchthose customers, understand how to how to meet
them where they were and figure out what theirwhat their what their needs were and solve
those problems.
Took a long time.
But once I figured out that I wasn't in thelandscaping business at all, I was in the sales
(08:46):
business, was I able to to scale the company toto 8 figures?
How old were you when when you sold thebusiness?
Thirty two years old.
So, made the decision to sell it at age thirty,and it took me 2 years.
Took me 2 years to get it to get it sold.
And and what I learned from that was it's theway you build a, a lifestyle business Like, the
(09:07):
way you build a small business that you mighthand off to your children or something is very
different than how you build a business thatyou intend to sell.
They're really 2 different journeys.
They're 2 different.
They're 2 different methods of running thecompany.
And I, you know, I was running that companyfrom the heart you know, I would really take
care of my people.
We gave out interest free loans to people to goto college, to buy houses, to buy cars, to put
(09:32):
kids through college, And, that was just bigbig part of our culture.
But the people that bought the business didn'tgive a damn about any of that So all of those,
like, all of those kind of discretionaryexpenses that that go into running a business
from the heart don't really port into the the Mand A process.
(09:54):
And, and so if you're gonna sell your business,you've gotta run it from the spreadsheet it's
really all about the numbers and how muchprofit you can deliver.
Cause ultimately, you're gonna be you're gonnagain the interest of acquires based on that
that net profit.
And whatever your outcome ends up being isgonna be directly a derivative or whatever that
profit is is and nothing else.
(10:15):
Nothing else matters.
And, they don't care about your trucks.
They don't care about your brand.
They don't care about your people.
They don't care about your, you know, how cleanthe office is.
They care about what your EBITDA is, and that'sit.
So so it took me a long time to learn that.
It took me a long time to break the businessdown and rebuild it from the inside out.
(10:35):
But that was kinda fun.
That was a fun challenge and got got that done.
And that that created the space for the for meto then start my second company, Green Powell.
I didn't really wanna start a tech company.
I didn't really wanna start another company atall.
I I didn't have to work anymore after the firstcompany.
It wasn't like I was, super wealthy oranything, but it but the outcome was good
(10:58):
enough where I didn't have to work anymore, andand so I could kinda do what I wanted to do.
So I tried to I tried to retire.
I tried to, like, just do real estate investingand stuff, and I got really boring.
Like, life didn't have meaning anymore, almost.
I didn't realize it, but my company was thereason why I get out of bed in the morning.
And it was the it was the thing that was givingmy life meaning.
(11:20):
And so I needed another mission.
I needed another project, and so that's whereGreenPath started.
And when you started Green Powell, I heard youtalk about on a different podcast that you
actually didn't have any technical backgroundYou didn't know how to code.
Now it says $30,000,000 marketplace techbusiness.
You guys have an app on the app store, 1000 and100 of 1000 of users.
(11:40):
How did you go from not knowing how to code atall to to building that type of business?
Well, it started with naivete, and so I I knewit was a good idea because I was kinda solving
my own problem with the idea.
So running my landscaping company, we grew itto a commercial based We we did office parks,
apartment projects, restaurants, banks, thingsof that sort.
(12:03):
We no longer did your your your weekly orbiweekly residential lawn mowing.
But because we were sending out 90 or a 100trucks on the road every day in in Nashville,
Tennessee, people saw those trucks.
They saw lawn mowers.
They saw the logo.
They saw them the phone number, and they wouldjust call the office.
(12:24):
They say, hey.
I saw you mowing the McDonald's.
I live right next door to the McDonald's, youknow, two streets over.
Can you knock my yard out while you're overthere?
And of course, you know, We didn't do that kindof work.
And so and and it's what we would lose money onthat stop.
And so we had we had a value by which to runthat business and and our current business is
to always try to add value and always try to behelpful whenever possible.
(12:49):
Don't just say no.
Say no, but we we have a list of 10 phonenumbers here, of of guys that we know that are
very small operators, and and Here they are.
They want that kind of business and just givethem a call.
And then and then what always happen is islike, a lot of times they have a callback and
say, I called all ten of those people One guycalled me back, one guy gave me a price.
(13:14):
I hired 2 of them, but they never showed up.
One guy showed up, but he didn't show up thesecond time.
Do you have any more phone And so it's kindalike no good deed goes unpunished.
And and so I saw that there was something weirdin the marketplace where it was hard for
consumers to quickly get pricing and discoverwho was reliable and who wasn't.
(13:36):
And because there's no data, about theseproviders.
And then and then as a service provider, it'sreally, really hard running that kind of
business because you're you're mowing yards.
You don't have time to run sales.
You don't have time to go out and and giveestimates.
You don't have time to even answer the damnphone.
Or call people back.
You're literally cutting grass, and then atnight, you're you're mailing out invoices and,
(14:00):
like, the it's just a grind.
And so there was, like, all of this disconnectbetween these two needs and desires of these of
these 2 parties.
And so I knew that somebody was gonna build aplatform that solved all those problems with a
clean user experience that could, that couldthat could automate a lot of these things.
(14:21):
And, so I knew the idea would work.
What I didn't have was was the the technicalacumen.
I didn't I never built a website, mean, sure.
My my last company had some tech, but it wasn'tlike we were we were creating anything from
scratch.
And, and I didn't know anybody.
Not only did I not know, but I didn't knowanybody who did know.
(14:43):
And so and so I had the idea, and and and it'slike, I started going to some tech meetups and
and I and, I mean, I'm in Nashville, so itwasn't like we're a hotbed for a lot of startup
activity.
And and so I was just having no luck, findingany technical people to start the business
with.
And so I told 2 friends about the idea, andthey were like, I'll quit my job tomorrow and
(15:05):
do that with you.
And and there was 2 guys that worked at Dell,Dell Computer, but they were in sales at Dell.
It's not like they were in the tech side.
And so and so the three of us form thiscompany, and and we pull our money together,
and we, on a whiteboard, kinda sketch out whatwe think the screens will look like.
That was We didn't know to do that, but we'relike, well, I mean, I use Uber.
(15:29):
I use Airbnb.
This was 2012.
I used the Facebook app.
I think that's what this thing should looklike, and here's why the and we just drew boxes
on a whiteboard.
And we took pictures of those boxes And then itstarted talking to dev shops, you know, that
that that do projects like that.
And we would get quotes and We got one quotefor $10,000, and we got one quote for
(15:50):
$1,300,000, and, we finally just landed on oneof the quotes that was like a $180,000.
And we paid these guys to build what we thoughtthe app should be.
It took them 9 months, maybe 10 months, Andthen we got that back, and and then we we
quickly realized that this was a huge mistake.
(16:13):
That this thing barely worked, that it wasclunky.
It wasn't like Uber.
It wasn't like Facebook.
It wasn't like Amazon.
Was, like, really unintuitive.
And, and that this that that there was just noway that we were gonna be able to do this if we
couldn't go through iteration cycles quickerthan 11 months.
(16:34):
What did you guys do from there?
I mean, you had the you paid a 180 k for forthe step shop.
Who was like, Hey, this this isn't gonna work.
We just spent almost $200 of our own money, andit didn't work.
What was the next steps that that you and theteam were thinking of?
Great question.
And it and and it was a real gut check moment.
So there's a couple of things at play.
1, was we we had really a a burn the boats,kind of dynamic going on.
(17:01):
These two guys quit their jobs.
And so it wasn't like they could go I mean,maybe they could go back to Dell, but they
didn't want to.
We wanted to push forward.
And and I had already tried to kind of retirealready.
So it wasn't like I could do anything elseeither.
And so I had personally made the decision thatthat no matter what, from that day forward, I
was just gonna work as hard as I could on mybest idea.
(17:23):
And and that was it.
That was like my my system default status wasworking as hard as I can on my best idea.
Fortunately, I'm not terribly creative.
I've had one good idea in, like, my whole life.
One original good idea.
Starting a landscaping bunt company is not a isnot a good idea.
Uber for lawn care is a good idea.
And so I've had one really good business ideain my whole life.
(17:46):
And so this was it.
And so I kinda had to it was kinda like getRichard Die trying.
Like, I I when we had no we had no way otherthan Ford.
And so we were kind of evaluating our options.
And and and so one thing we knew that we neededto do was educate ourselves.
And so we started picking up every book.
(18:06):
We could get our hands on about how to build adamn startup.
And so, of course, we read the lean startup,but then we went backwards and read all the
stuff before the lean startup, was like Foursteps of the epiphany and the startup owner's
manual.
These all three of these books kinda tell youin two thousand pages of text, that you have to
(18:28):
get out of the building, out from behind thelaptop, and you got you actually have to go
talk to customers face to face and figure outwhat their problems, what their needs are, and
figure and and build to that.
And so we were like, well, okay.
That's makes sense, and and, you know, it'sobvious, but we haven't been doing it.
(18:51):
And so and so we have this crappy, terrible,terrible app that we spent a 180 180 grand on.
Well, let's just keep it in the stores andlet's go door to door, and let's talk to as
many people as it takes pitching them on theidea to use an app to get their lawn and so we
(19:13):
did that.
And if they weren't home, we would leave aflyer in the mailbox, which is against the law.
And, we did that until we got a hundred people,and it took a month.
And so we we got a hundred people to use thethe terrible app And then and then we were able
to validate, okay, is this a good idea?
(19:36):
Will people use this?
I was pretty sure they would, but you know,there was a lot of things I was wrong about.
And and they would always tell us everywherethe app sucked.
But they and and they were like, you know, I Ihired a guy.
He didn't show up, or I hired a guy pushed thebutton.
It didn't work, or I hired a guy.
He did show up, but his lawn mower was too big.
For the backyard.
Or hired a guy.
(19:58):
He showed up, but his long wing blades weredull, and the grass looks terrible, or he left
grass on the back patio.
You name it million things that can go wrong.
With this with this kind of use case.
And so everywhere they everywhere we suck on adaily basis, people would tell us the 100 the
people that we eventually, like, were able tohold on to about 50.
But they never told us I don't need this.
(20:21):
And they never told us they were like, disdisappointed that it didn't work.
And and one lady she was an English lady.
She said she said, oh, but it would be divineif it did work.
And and so that stuck with me.
It's shitty.
It is terrible.
It doesn't work, but it would be divine if itdid work.
(20:43):
And and so that was enough, like, evidence forus to figure out okay.
So we know we got a good idea here.
We know we can get people to use it We knowwe're solving a real problem.
So so lean start up.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Now what?
Well, we gotta go find somebody to help usbuild So so here we go.
Yeah.
We're going to meet up stuff.
(21:04):
Can't find anybody to to join our our cause.
And quite frankly, I don't blame them becausewe didn't know what the hell we were doing.
And and so we thought, well, we're just gonnahave to learn how to build software.
We're just this is you know, if we're gonna dothis, we're just gonna have to learn how to do
it.
And and so my my cofounder, he know, at thispoint, we're all broke.
(21:26):
I mean, I I mean, I had taken all my proceedsfrom selling my business and locked it all down
in, like, highly illiquid investments.
So so I was poor all over again.
Even though, like, I had assets and they werecash flowing, I didn't have a bunch of money in
the bank.
I was I was I was very cash poor.
(21:48):
And so we were all broke, essentially.
And And, it was kinda good for me becausebecause it I I got the experience all that over
again.
It was it was almost in a way kinda enjoyable.
And so he so my cofounder, he's like, well, Ifound this thing called the Nashville software
school, and it's a it's a it's a it's a bootcamp for 9 months, and they're teaching classes
(22:11):
on Ruby on rails, whatever the hell that is.
And, and as and as $12 And I and my credit cardthe limit on my credit card is 12 grand.
And so he put $12 on his credit card that hedidn't have, and he starts attending the
Nashville software school, 8 hours a day.
(22:33):
And then and then whatever he would learn in agiven week, he would take it and and start
rebuilding the platform from the back end.
And so we're like we're like word, dev?
Check.
Zack's gonna become 1.
And he's like, he's like, you guys have no cluehow hard this is.
And and and he was right.
And and he's and he comes in so so about 3months after that, we're really not getting
(22:57):
anywhere.
E although he is working, like, feverishlyunder the water, but calm on the surface.
So from from, like, the outside looking in, itlooks like nothing's happening, but he's he's
he's building all rebuilding the whole thingbecause because everything that this dev shop
built was unusable.
And, and so he's rebuilding the whole thing.
(23:18):
And and but I'm like, dude, at this point, I'mgonna be fifty five years old by the time we,
we we we launch a product.
Like, he's like, well, you what you don't knowis is that gonna take a lot longer than you
think.
And as somebody has gotta build all the frontend of this, and I'm like, what are you talking
what does that even mean?
I don't even know what you're talking He hegoes, well, kind of the way it works is
(23:41):
everything I'm building is, like, on the serverside, but then everything that this thing spits
out.
Has to be marked up and in a way that thatbrowsers understand it and that a mobile app
can understand it and present it to the user askinda like the dashboard.
He goes, think of it this way.
I'm building the engine, but somebody's gottabuild the dashboard and the steering wheel.
(24:03):
And And I'm like, okay.
That makes sense to me.
So how are we gonna do that?
He goes, well, I I don't have time to do itbecause I'm gonna be on this for a year at this
rate.
And so and so I thought, well, I'll do it.
Go, I'm like, how hard could it be?
And he goes, okay.
Have fun.
And so I start I start.
You didn't know what you're getting yourselfinto.
I didn't
know what I was gonna do, dude.
I had never I I'm I I I never even attempted todo anything like this.
(24:25):
And it's not like it I mean, in retrospect, itwas it was not that hard, but it at at the
point, At this point, it was really hardbecause I didn't know what I didn't know.
So I start going to YouTube University and andand just pad a code up HTML, you know, ACSS
Basics, javascript tutorials, and and, man, Ijust start I just I just start taking every
(24:46):
online class I could, And after about 3 months,I became the world's worst front end developer,
but it was just enough where I could take whathe was working with and and and and connect to
it and build the views.
And and they were buggy as hell, and theylooked terrible, but they worked.
(25:08):
And and and and the most important thing was isis we could make improvements on it.
And so that's what we did.
And so, you know, after about another year, wetransitioned the 50 or a 100 users over to the
new thing.
And then at least now we had we had we hadsomething we could iterate on top of, and, and
(25:29):
and something that that we we had to acumenaround to delegate from.
So so so before we try to delegate fromeducation, which is I don't know how to do
this.
You handle it.
Let me know when it's done.
Pretty much every time you try to do that andanything is gonna blow up in your face.
(25:50):
And so what what you wanna be able to do isdelegate from a standpoint of stewardship,
which is Hey.
Here's here's what we need done.
Here's how we want it done.
Here's here's how we do it here.
Here's why we do it this way.
Here's here's our guidelines.
Here's we want it back.
Here's how much we think it should cost.
And, and so we were able to start building outa little kind of bad news bears team around us
(26:13):
of developers and and designers andfreelancers.
And, and and and you know, get to a point wherewe were ramen profitable.
You know, we got to about 4, 500 customers, andthen we got to a point where we could start
just rinse and repeat.
What are the 3 or 4 things that people arecomplaining about the most?
Let's fix those.
(26:34):
Move down the list.
It's kinda like triaging around what users weretelling us and it's improving it, getting it
bigger and bigger, better and better, bankingmore users, holding on to the users, talking to
customers 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, for 5years in a office that had no windows.
Is how we did is how we did it.
(26:56):
And I'll never and I'll never do it again, man.
It was so hard, and it was so much not fun.
I will never do that again.
People ask me, will you start another startup?
You know, I mean, this one's going well.
You should start another one.
I will never do it again, and I don't recommendthat anybody ever do it because it's so much
not fun.
And your odds of success are so small.
Do you regret anything during that time?
(27:18):
I don't regret anything because I I really madethe best decisions I could with the information
I had.
But if I if if, like, I had to go back in time,There's a lot of things I would do differently.
So, you know, going back to the dynamics ofdelegation, delegating too late, delegating too
soon, when do you delegate?
How do you know?
(27:39):
So we made both mistakes.
We delegated too soon.
Didn't know how to do it.
Hider hired to dev shop.
That was stupid.
Wasted a year and all of our money.
And and then we did and then we made and thenwe had, like, PTSD and scars from that.
And and the scars from delegating too soon.
So then we delegate it too late.
(27:59):
And so and so we did everything ourself for foranother 2 or 3 years, all the blog content, all
the customer support, all the front end, backend, all the CIS ad CIS admin, everything, just
three guys, and maybe like a friend of Zach'sfrom software school that we would give some
beer money to.
And and that that we wasted a lot of timebecause of that, be the the first thing we
(28:23):
should have done was, as soon as we had someacumen around it, as soon as we started getting
some traction, we should have started takingwhat little pennies we were making and throwing
it at freelancers to help us move quicker.
And so and so we would be, if if I had knownthat, I mean, I'd be 3 or 4 years into the
future right But, hey.
It is what it is.
(28:44):
You don't really know these things when you'reeven though I had built and sold a eight figure
business already, when I was starting GreenPowell, I was a first time founder all over
again.
Because it was a totally different journey,totally different skill set, totally different,
totally different, thing that I was doing.
There's a big difference between running abusiness and inventing a product.
And a lot of times people conflate thosethings.
(29:06):
And, you know, building a inventing a productfrom scratch is a hundred times harder than
just running a construction company or runninga restaurant.
And those businesses are really hard in and ofthemselves.
And so, I didn't know that.
Nobody told me that.
And, honestly, I don't ever hear anybodytalking about that, but if you're starting a
tech company, most of the time, you'reinventing a new product, and most people don't
(29:27):
know how hard that is.
Yeah.
One of the things that I've learned, over mytime just having conversations with a lot of
entrepreneurs is Some of the most successfulentrepreneurs are willing to go back down to 0
like you did.
So they've built up a bunch of industryknowledge in a certain space.
And if they wanna take something out and do itmaybe a different type of industry or a
(29:50):
different type of business, they're willing togo back down to that 0 level, start learning at
that level, and try to climb the mountainagain.
It's extremely difficult to do, but that'sthat's what I've learned.
Man, and and that's a that's a really hardlesson.
I I heard I heard I think I was in Naval putthat so beautifully.
He was like he was like, you know, most peoplein life just they they they're climbing the
(30:14):
mountain and then they reach a certain kind ofsummit, and then they look off into the
distance and they realize that the summit isactually way over there, and they realize the
only way to summit that mount that portion ofthe mountain is to go all the way back down.
And who has the stones to do that?
And at the time, I guess I did.
I had the tread on the tires to do that.
(30:38):
Do I have the tread on the tires today to dothat?
No.
I'm not going back down the mountain.
Wherever this path leaves me is wherever itleaves me.
And I and I will I will not start over again.
I will not do it all over again.
And so that's probably the wrong mentality tohave and the wrong attitude to have, but I'm 44
(30:59):
And it's like, I don't have the tread on thetires for another one.
That's why this is a young man's game.
I mean, get started early I mean, get startedget started as early as you can so you can get
as many at bats as you can because you reallyit does take 2 or 3 of these to hit one to get
get one that works.
Yeah.
And it's difficult as that was building out aproduct and and taking all that time and
(31:25):
building the back end and and the front of thefront end of the app.
Historically, building marketplaces like youare with Greenpal connecting home owners and
and, lawn care professionals is extremelydifficult.
Right?
We've we've seen a bunch of different companiesin this space fail.
Or even in marketplaces in general fail, justbecause you might be able to build out one
(31:46):
side, but maybe the other side doesn't wannabuild that side out.
One of the early stage companies I was workingfor is a company called Valley.
And one of the things we were doing is, hey,let's see if we can build, like, a Tinder for
founders in in the investors and basicallyconnect investors and connect founders in this
in this app.
The problem with that is all the founders wannacome on the app and they were super active on
(32:08):
but none of the investors wanted wanted to jointhe app, and and they wouldn't join that second
side of the marketplace.
And without that other side, then you basicallydon't have a business.
So we had to pivot the business.
We ended up doing fine, and I left since then.
But how did how are you able to build out bothsides of that marketplace and and do it
successfully?
Yeah.
(32:28):
It's man, it's something that I didn't know atthe time in 2012, you know, your your parallels
were eBay, maybe Uber, Airbnb, and that wasabout it, man.
I mean, the in terms of, like, end to endmarketplaces where you push a button and magic
(32:50):
happen, There were very few examples to learnfrom.
Now 10, 10, 12 years later, there's a lot ofdocumentation and and school of thought and
best practices about building a marketplacethat don't make it easier, but kinda demystify
the approach you might take.
One thing that a decade in this has taught melooking back and now kinda seeing all, like,
(33:16):
the graveyard of Uber for X ideas, Uber forhome cleaning, Uber for valet parking, Uber for
car washing and Uber for laundry service.
All of them all of them didn't make it.
And and, you know, 1,000,000,000 of dollars ofventure capital, burned up in the process.
The one thing, if I had instill it into onething, is it's the the marketplace's ability to
(33:39):
to generate demand.
Is all that matters.
And most people don't know this.
It's not like you build the marketplace and andthere's pull from the market into your market
place.
That's what everybody that's the fallacy thatseduces everybody into it.
No.
It's very much an outward push, and it's verymuch It's very much like the marketplace's
table stakes.
(33:59):
What you're really building is a demandcreation engine.
For one side or the other.
And you have to really innovate on that.
And you have to really figure out something inthat that nobody else is doing.
And it ain't it ain't Facebook AdWords and andPPC because because that's why all these other
(34:23):
Uber Ferex ideas went out of business.
All of that money went back in the two pockets,Facebook, and Google.
And and so you can buy enough liquidity for awhile, to kinda, like, put up some numbers and
maybe get to the next round.
But a certain at a certain point, unless you'vegot some kind of self reinforcing flywheel,
it's like that that that runs out real quick.
(34:44):
And and, you know, Andrew Chin's book the coldstart problem talks a lot about this.
You you have to you simply have to have somekind of innovative way to pull to pull the buy
side, the the the demand side into themarketplace.
And and if you don't, if you're not a salesengine, then then there's no you know, this
(35:06):
thing ain't gonna isn't gonna go anywhere.
And and so what we learned early on was we'rejust gonna have to be, like, one of the the
preeminent marketers of lawn care services onthe planet.
I mean, this is this is, like, that's reallythe business we're in.
Even though we have this ordering system,review system, a scheduling system, and route
management system, and balancing supply anddemand system, pricing systems, All of these
(35:30):
systems in place that make the marketplacetick.
None of it matters unless we can naildistribution
How did you create or build that demandcreation engine in a way that no one else was
doing at the time?
Had to figure out some kind of way to pullthese users into the platform, and so people we
you know, when we're talking to them wouldalways tell us you know, normally I would find
(35:52):
somebody on Google, but, you know, the lastthree people I called, you know, that didn't
show up or didn't answer the phone or didn'tgive me a quote.
And so we kept hearing that over and overagain.
And so I'd kinda known that Google was gonnabe, a channel for us, but I was hearing it so
much.
I was thinking, man, this may be the channel.
And so we started looking at, well, let's justlet's just do that.
(36:16):
Okay.
Check.
Done.
User acquisition strategy solved, except forsort of learning like, man, it's actually
really hard.
To compete in Google organic search.
I wouldn't have thought it, but it's like, it'sgonna be it's gonna be twice as hard as
everything else we're doing, just to rank, damnlanding page.
(36:39):
And, and so we we we tried to rank forkeywords, like, line mowing service in
Nashville, Tennessee, yard yard and gardenservice in in in Nashville, and and we were on
page page 10.
Weren't weren't getting anywhere.
And so I started, you know, after I kindalearned enough about front end development for
(37:00):
a while, I could I could pivot my YouTubeuniversity strategy now to SEO.
And so now I'm watching my daily routine in2013 look like, you know, get to the office at
7, you know, code until 1 or 2, go to the gymuntil 3, And then by by 3 o'clock, I had a
second wind.
(37:21):
And then from 3 o'clock till 9 o'clock atnight, I would just sit on YouTube.
And and so whatever the whatever, like, wasblocking tackling for the business at that
stage of the game, was that 5 or 6 hours in theafternoon and night.
I would watch every video that talked aboutsearch engine optimization techniques and
(37:42):
tactics and strategy and and began to reverseengineer what our strategy might look like.
And and and so I learned through doing that wasthat we're we're, you know, day 1, we're not
gonna compete for these what they call headterms.
But we could compete for the long tail.
So we, you know, we you know, we're nobodies.
(38:04):
We're not gonna rank for lawn mowing serviceNashville.
But we we can't rank for grass cutting serviceSmyrna, Tennessee, which is a 15,000 person
subcommunity of Nashville.
We can rank for that because nobody's nobody'scompeting for that.
And so we had we we had 5 or 10 serviceproviders in Smyrna, Tennessee, and, and we
(38:27):
interviewed him and talked about him and wrotecontent about him.
And and took pictures of their equipment, wherethey in to and wrote little bios and stories
about them, where they went to high school,what they do differently than their
competitors, why they got lawnmowing business.
And and it's this is very unique, rich, organiccontent about these small business owners that
(38:48):
didn't exist anywhere else.
And so From that bottoms up approach, westarted noticing in Google analytics, mate.
We're starting to get a little bit of traffic.
5 people signed up in Smyrna, yesterday, and Ididn't know who any of them were.
Wow.
I'm really bending the world to my way.
And, and that little inkling of, like, of aspark informed how we scaled out a repeatable
(39:16):
strategy of, okay, we can we can do this.
It's gonna take a while, but we can do this inevery city and subs and and subcommunity in the
whole country.
And so that's what we did.
What do you think most people get wrong aboutSEO today?
Well, I think I think SEO's done.
(39:36):
Search engine optimization is not what it was10 years ago.
And so you should you should forget about SEO,and you should just and that that term needs to
be replaced with with content marketing.
And that's really what it is.
It is it is carpeting the internet with reallygood, unique, helpful content that solves
(40:00):
people's problems that somehow connects mapsback to your product or service.
That also solves people's problems.
I'm in the media business.
You know?
It's like Yeah.
On top of everything else you're doing, youhave to be in the in in the in the media
business.
In in the in the sense of you have to developreally good content that that meets people
where they're at that that that that thatbrings traffic to your site.
(40:23):
Yeah.
I was speaking to Eric Alabest, the other week.
So he runs this company called chess.com.
He's grown it into a $100,000,000 business,completely bootstrapped, and He said from day
1, we didn't focus on Facebook ads, Google ads,none of that.
It was all through content.
Like, our strategy from day one was throughcontent, whether that be writing articles and
(40:45):
and writing blogs, like you said, to findpeople where they're at.
Or more recently with shorts and and TikTokvideos, like, that's pretty much how they've
been able to grow their community.
And I think every business going forward insome way, shape, or form will eventually be a
content business if you're online becausethat's just that's where people are.
And the only way to reach where people are isto be where be where they are.
(41:07):
We didn't touch on this yet, but I'm curious.
For those in the audience who who might notknow, you currently have hundreds of thousands
of users, but how do you currently make moneywith Greenpal?
So Greenpal makes money, by way of chargingservice providers a fee to access the platform.
And so they pay a transaction fee for everypiece of business they do through the platform.
(41:29):
And that fee varies based on the the volumethey're doing on the platform.
So consumers that use the platform are notreally the customers of Green Powell.
The customers are lawn care services.
They pay to access the toolset, the network,the community, and then they they kinda
modulate onto the platform and run theirbusiness on top of what we built.
(41:51):
Got it.
And how did it feel when when you made yourfirst $10,000,000 off of that?
It's scary because I thought, man, you know, Idon't know that I don't know that we can run
this at 20.
You know, I don't know, you know, I mean, thatthat that that number's gonna be 20 at some
point, and I don't I mean, they ran a$20,000,000 business.
(42:11):
I think if you're feeling that impostersyndrome, it's a good sign.
You you wanna feel imposter syndrome at almostevery step of the game because that means
you're you're ahead of your skis.
That means you're pushing it as as far as youcan and and you're growing.
You know, it's like that Mario and Freddyquote, you know, if if if you feel like you're
(42:32):
in control, you're not going fast enough.
And so on that that's imposter syndrome.
And so that's kinda what I felt.
It wasn't like we didn't really celebrate itbecause We've we've never really felt like
successful.
We've never really felt like we've made it.
It's always felt like day 1, and it's alwaysfelt like it's always been like, oh, look out
(42:57):
for where we come.
Yeah.
But you know, yeah, but, you know, we we we wegotta figure this thing out.
We we're at, you know, we're doing, x number of1000 transactions a day.
We should be at this.
And so it's never felt like where you couldjust take a deep breath and say, oh, look how
far we've come.
Maybe I should feel that way.
Maybe maybe it would be more fulfilling, butbut we wanna get to a $100,000,000 a year in
(43:19):
sales, and and and, right now, there's There'saround 300,000 people using it every week, and
and we wanna get to a million people using itevery week.
And so maybe maybe we'll we'll look back atthat moment.
But it's like when you're building a startup,you you you always think that if I just solve
these 1 or 2 problems, and make these 1 or 2hires, that life will be good.
(43:41):
And and all that means is that you solve these3 problems, at this means you get 3 more to
solve.
And you just have to be a never ending problemsolving machine, and you you have to embrace
that because that's just the way it is.
Yeah.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
We have a couple of last final questions for aquick fire round.
(44:02):
One is, what do you think is the best piece ofadvice you've ever received?
It's a a p a piece of advice I received, froman asynchronously from an interview I walk with
Brad failed, 10 years ago.
And it stuck with me all for the last decade.
He said, listen to your customers or you willhave none.
(44:25):
And and, man, I hate I hate insatiable, whiny,like, never you can never please on type of
people.
And and we have a lot of them that use GreenPowell.
And and, and, and it's like 1% of the userbase, but it feels like 50%.
(44:48):
And so and so, I always remind myself of thatmantra.
Listen to your customers, or you will havenone.
So here here we are 10 years in, you know,thousands of transactions every day.
I still do an hour, sometimes 2 hours a day ofcustomer support, myself, personally.
I'm answering the phone.
I, you know, I am doing the live chat.
(45:08):
I am knocking out email tickets because I neverwant there to be this gap that forms between my
perspective and my logic and the customer'sperspective and their logic.
And on the flip side, what would you say is theworst piece of advice you've ever received?
You gotta network.
You gotta get out there network.
(45:29):
You really gotta network and meet people andand network with people.
Do more of that.
That was terrible advice.
Somebody told me that in, like, year 1, and soI did that.
So I spent I spent, like, 2 years going toevery meetup every conference, I would fly to
(45:51):
conferences.
And I didn't it may it was probably my fault,but I didn't get a damn thing out of any of
that.
Any of that activity or money.
People don't care who you know.
They care what you've built.
And and so I was doing all of that at theexpense of actually building something and
actually getting people to build thatsomething.
(46:12):
I mean, actually getting people to use thatsomething that I built And so in the early days
and and what I mean by this, probably the 1st 3to 4 years, you should be doing two things.
You should be working on the product orservice, making it better and better and
better, and then getting people to use thatproduct or service.
That's it.
Everything else you're doing is a waste oftime.
(46:34):
And and so I don't wanna, like, devalue thepower of networking because sometimes I do wish
my network was better.
And so there there is a there is a cost thatthat I, for me, neglecting that.
But in the early days, I think it's almost atotal waste of time.
Unless, yeah, if you're building dope stuffthat people are using and and you're talking
(46:56):
about it on podcasts and and people are gettingvalue from it, the network will grow.
So do dope stuff the network grows.
Yeah.
I feel like sometimes too much, especially morein the early stage.
Founders, like like you said, we'll go to asmany conferences and events and set up a demo
and and everything like that.
(47:17):
It's just like go back to building.
And sometimes I speak to them and they're justlike, oh, yeah.
We're we're still working on our product.
I'm like, okay.
Just go back to working on the product.
Right?
Yeah.
You know, if if if you're building some kindof, you know, high Botality business tech and
you wanna go to the boutique hotel ownersconference?
Yeah.
(47:37):
Hell, yeah.
You need to be there because that's yourcustomer.
But if you're going to TechCrunch, or,conferences of the like, you know, just to, you
know, see what's cool and I don't know, man.
To, like, the every time I've ever done thatstuff, total waste of time, it's a it's a it is
a consumption decision.
It's not an investment decision.
(47:58):
Yeah.
And for a last question here, if I slid youover a phone virtually and you could give one
piece of advice to your eighteen year old self,1, what'd you call?
And, 2, if so, what would you say?
Oh, that's a great question.
So I get to call and talk to my eighteen yearold self.
Well, I think I think to honestly answer thatquestion, you gotta you kinda have you can't
(48:22):
just, like, tell him, you know, buy Amazon,Apple, Netflix.
Yeah.
It doesn't count.
Okay.
So we gotta keep it we gotta keep it like, wegotta keep it principle based and fundamentals
based.
And, okay.
So so one thing I regret you asked earlier.
One thing I regret is I didn't I didn't read abook cover to cover until, like till after I
(48:45):
sold my first company, until I was, like, 33.
And so I would tell him, okay, you need to bereading something all the time, that's gonna
help you get where you're trying to go.
So so that's one thing you gotta do.
And and maybe here's here's 4 or 5 books.
And then and then maybe I've got a little bitmore time, I would say you you gotta really
understand the the power of compound interest.
(49:08):
Because the sooner you can get that flywheelrolling on what it is you're doing, the the the
the the more that it that that you'll benefitfrom compound interest later on.
And the last few double ups are huge, and and Ididn't really understand that back then.
I didn't I didn't I I really kinda looked at itlinearly.
And it's not.
It, man, it really with compound interest inwhat you're doing, it it takes off.
(49:31):
And so I would try to get him to understandthat And then and then I would also try to get
him to understand, and, you know, investing inyourself, don't believe your own bullshit.
You know, for years, I would think, oh, I'm notan engineer, so I can't do that, or I'm not an
accountant, so I can't I can't I can't reallyunderstand those financial statements.
(49:53):
Or I'm not a designer, so I can't design it.
I'm not a copywriter.
So I can't I can't write that advertising.
And really, man, I mean, you can you with theper you can learn the 8020 on pretty much
anything.
So so invest in yourself, work in the business,work on your business, and work on yourself
You've gotta do that because you're thebottleneck.
You don't know it right now, but you're thebottleneck.
(50:14):
Yeah.
Compound interest, I would say, is huge.
And something I also did even notice untilprobably, like, just, like, 6 to 12 months ago.
But if you spend, like, all your time or asmuch time as you possibly can, on 1 or 2 things
and stay hyper focused on it for a period of 5,10 years.
Like, the amount that would change or theamount your knowledge base will change over
(50:36):
this 10 years is dramatically more than youever would have thought.
So That's right.
It's hard
to remember.
Yeah.
Totally.
Awesome.
Well, thanks, Brian, for taking the time tojoin the episode.
It's a great conversation.
And we'll have a link down below to GreenPowell for anyone who wants to take a look.
Give it a shot.
Well, thanks for having me on.
I enjoyed it.
Lot of times, they've called back and say, Icalled all ten of those people.
(00:03):
One guy called me back, one guy gave me aprice.
I hired 2 of them, but they showed up.
And and so I saw that there was something weirdin the marketplace where it was hard for
consumers to quickly get pricing and discoverwho was reliable and who wasn't.
And because there was no data, about theseproviders.
(00:24):
And then, and then as a service provider, it'sreally, really hard running that kind of
business because you're you're mowing yards.
You don't have time to run sales.
You don't have time to go out and and giveestimates.
You don't have time to even answer the damnphone.
Or call people back.
You're literally cutting grass.
And then at night, you're you're mailing outinvoices.
(00:45):
And, like, the it's just a grind.
So there was, like, all of this disconnectbetween these two needs and desires of these,
of these two parties And so I knew thatsomebody was gonna build a platform that solved
all those problems, with a clean userexperience, that could automate a lot of these
things.
(01:05):
Brian, it's great to have you in the studiotoday.
I'm excited to record this episode.
I've been doing a ton of research about you andand Green Powell and the previous business you
sold.
And I'm excited to learn more about what you'vebuilt.
Before we get into how you built Green Powell,into a $30,000,000 business.
I wanna start this conversation with your earlycontext.
(01:25):
What would be the earliest piece of contextthat I would have to understand about you to
understand the person sitting in front of metoday.
Well, that's an easy one.
So, well, thanks for having me on, Shammas.
It's great to be with you.
So It all started, when I got a Nintendo 64 andI got Super Mario Kart because I played this
game, like, 7 days a week, for 10 hours a day.
(01:48):
And my dad got pissed off because I wasplaying, like, Nintendo all day long.
And, he talked to the neighbor one day, and theneighbor was like, hey, I'm looking for someone
to mow my yard.
And he goes, he says, my son cuts grass.
And, he he came up to my bedroom and he said,hey.
I got a gig for you.
You're gonna go mow the neighbor's yard.
And I said, well, I don't I don't mow yards.
(02:10):
And he goes, well, you do now.
And and, wasn't living in a democratichousehold.
It was kinda like this was a direct order.
And so he he took me to the neighbor's houseand, he made me mow the neighbor's yard.
And he pointed out all the spots that I missedand and showed me how to do it correctly.
And then after that, I got paid 20 bucks for,like, an hour of work.
(02:32):
And I was hooked.
I was hooked on entrepreneurship from that dayforward.
First thing I did was start passing out flyersall over the neighborhood, and, and and before
I knew it, I had 10 or 20 customers.
And so I stuck with that little lawn mowingbusiness all through high school and then all
through college.
And then, when I graduated college, I I had tomake a decision.
(02:54):
Was I gonna stick with this lawn mowingbusiness that I had ran in high school and in
college, or or was I gonna do something else inmy life.
And and I and I didn't really wanna be a lawnguy.
I didn't really wanna be like a blue collarlaborer the rest of my life, but I could
quickly, like, with a legal pad and pin and abig pin, like, pin out what this business could
(03:15):
be could become if I had, like, 10 or 20employees.
And I thought, well, I'm gonna try I'm gonnasee how big I can grow this.
And I made a little business plan, and Ithought if I could just get to a point where I
had 2 or 3 crews going out every day, and Ididn't have to personally do the work anymore.
And I could manage the work that that would besuccess.
And if I could do it in 5 years, that thatwould be, that would be worth it.
(03:38):
And and I ended up ended up being able to dothat in 2 years.
I ended up having 20 employees by year 2, and,3 or 4 crews going out every day and and and
building it into a real business.
That business eventually got to $10,000,000 ayear in sales and eventually got to a 150
employees.
And eventually it was acquired.
And then that teed up, the knowledge andfoundation to build Green Powell, which is my
(04:01):
company today, which is the the Uber oflawnmoy.
Yeah.
You mentioned you had a 5 year goal.
You accomplished that 5 year goal in 2 years.
I think this is something that I've oftennoticed with a lot successful entrepreneurs.
I was listening to Cody Sanchez.
She was doing a a podcast the other day.
She said the framework that she likes to thinkabout how to grow her business is try to figure
(04:24):
out how you can achieve, like, a 3 year goalin, like, 6 months or basically take whatever
you thought would take multiple years.
And basically cut it in half or or make it evensmaller.
What were some of the steps that you did tohelp achieve that goal that you had in 2 years
in instead of 5?
Yeah.
I really like that advice.
And and I I I'll take it a step further.
(04:44):
I heard a quote the other day.
I I heard it may have been Tim Fair said it.
He said, that it's easy to hide behind changingthe world.
And so what he means by that is, like, you canhave these big, huge goals.
It's like, oh, with my business, I wanna changethe world or, you know, some kinda big lofty
audacious goal.
It's really easy to hide behind that goal.
(05:06):
And before you know it, 3 or 4, 5 years go byand you're nowhere closer to that goal than you
were, you know, years before.
And and so what I have found and what I kind ofgravitated towards in those early days with
setting very small goals.
Not laughable, but attainable.
And and so I thought, well, if I can, you know,I've got 20 customers, if I can just get to a
(05:28):
100, and I'm not gonna worry about anythingelse until I get to a 100 customers.
And then when I get to a 100, I wanna figureout how to get to 200.
And just working at one level at a time, andand and and even breaking breaking it down
into, okay, I'm gonna get a 100 customers.
But what does that mean?
Well, that means I gotta pass out, you know,back in those days, I was passing out flyers.
(05:50):
Means I gotta pass out a 1000 flyers to get a100 customers.
So let's not worry about anything until we passout the 1000 flyers.
So breaking it down into really small goalsknocking those goals down, celebrating them,
was how I was able to get that businessrolling.
And it's and it's really how we were able toget Green Powell going, was was just breaking
(06:10):
it down to the bite sized trucks.
And it might go back to my video game dayswhere it was kinda like working one level of
the video game at a time.
You know, you can't worry about Bowser whenyou're on water world.
And and so you just gotta focus on water world.
You get through level, and you don't worryabout anything else until you get to that
level.
And and that's how I was able to do it, withthat first business and my second one.
(06:31):
And with Pete Shree, what which was your first.
You you scaled that to 10,000,000 in inrevenue.
Originally, you you were handing out flyers,like you said, to get your your first 10
customers and and 20 customers and so forth.
Did your strategy evolve when when you had toscale that all the way up to 10 mil?
Yeah.
You know, when when you when you're building aservice based business like that, they are
(06:53):
really good small businesses.
And what I mean by that is, like, oneproprietor, maybe a helper, and you just run
lean and mean, and you just make as much profitas you can.
And then you take that that low quality revenueand you you invested in high quality evidue.
And so I know a lot of blue collar millionairesthat have done just that.
(07:14):
They they ran a very small service basedbusiness and then and then invested in real
estate or or stocks or something like that.
And so that's great.
And then but then you have, you know, 8 figureservices businesses.
And and they are they're very profitable alsothat are at scale, and that's that's kind of
where the business became.
But then there's like this It's like a barbell.
(07:35):
There's this no man's land between.
That's like a huge long decade long slog.
And you kinda you kinda just go from onefailure to the next trying to figure out how to
scale the the the service business and yourealize that the margins are super thin and
that you can't afford all kinds of layers ofmanagement.
And and eventually, you you key in on that theonly way to scale a business like that is to go
(08:00):
after big 6 figure contracts and and beyond.
And you have to build a sales process for that.
And you have to build the evidence that yourcompany is is is capable of doing that type of
work.
It takes a long time to do that, and that's why99% of businesses in that industry never get
there.
And and so that's kinda what I had to do withthe company was it started with a res as a
(08:22):
residential base services business.
And then over time, I had to rebuild the clientbase from the inside out into a commercial
based business and understand how to pitchthose customers, understand how to how to meet
them where they were and figure out what theirwhat their what their needs were and solve
those problems.
Took a long time.
But once I figured out that I wasn't in thelandscaping business at all, I was in the sales
(08:46):
business, was I able to to scale the company toto 8 figures?
How old were you when when you sold thebusiness?
Thirty two years old.
So, made the decision to sell it at age thirty,and it took me 2 years.
Took me 2 years to get it to get it sold.
And and what I learned from that was it's theway you build a, a lifestyle business Like, the
(09:07):
way you build a small business that you mighthand off to your children or something is very
different than how you build a business thatyou intend to sell.
They're really 2 different journeys.
They're 2 different.
They're 2 different methods of running thecompany.
And I, you know, I was running that companyfrom the heart you know, I would really take
care of my people.
We gave out interest free loans to people to goto college, to buy houses, to buy cars, to put
(09:32):
kids through college, And, that was just bigbig part of our culture.
But the people that bought the business didn'tgive a damn about any of that So all of those,
like, all of those kind of discretionaryexpenses that that go into running a business
from the heart don't really port into the the Mand A process.
(09:54):
And, and so if you're gonna sell your business,you've gotta run it from the spreadsheet it's
really all about the numbers and how muchprofit you can deliver.
Cause ultimately, you're gonna be you're gonnagain the interest of acquires based on that
that net profit.
And whatever your outcome ends up being isgonna be directly a derivative or whatever that
profit is is and nothing else.
(10:15):
Nothing else matters.
And, they don't care about your trucks.
They don't care about your brand.
They don't care about your people.
They don't care about your, you know, how cleanthe office is.
They care about what your EBITDA is, and that'sit.
So so it took me a long time to learn that.
It took me a long time to break the businessdown and rebuild it from the inside out.
(10:35):
But that was kinda fun.
That was a fun challenge and got got that done.
And that that created the space for the for meto then start my second company, Green Powell.
I didn't really wanna start a tech company.
I didn't really wanna start another company atall.
I I didn't have to work anymore after the firstcompany.
It wasn't like I was, super wealthy oranything, but it but the outcome was good
(10:58):
enough where I didn't have to work anymore, andand so I could kinda do what I wanted to do.
So I tried to I tried to retire.
I tried to, like, just do real estate investingand stuff, and I got really boring.
Like, life didn't have meaning anymore, almost.
I didn't realize it, but my company was thereason why I get out of bed in the morning.
And it was the it was the thing that was givingmy life meaning.
(11:20):
And so I needed another mission.
I needed another project, and so that's whereGreenPath started.
And when you started Green Powell, I heard youtalk about on a different podcast that you
actually didn't have any technical backgroundYou didn't know how to code.
Now it says $30,000,000 marketplace techbusiness.
You guys have an app on the app store, 1000 and100 of 1000 of users.
(11:40):
How did you go from not knowing how to code atall to to building that type of business?
Well, it started with naivete, and so I I knewit was a good idea because I was kinda solving
my own problem with the idea.
So running my landscaping company, we grew itto a commercial based We we did office parks,
apartment projects, restaurants, banks, thingsof that sort.
(12:03):
We no longer did your your your weekly orbiweekly residential lawn mowing.
But because we were sending out 90 or a 100trucks on the road every day in in Nashville,
Tennessee, people saw those trucks.
They saw lawn mowers.
They saw the logo.
They saw them the phone number, and they wouldjust call the office.
(12:24):
They say, hey.
I saw you mowing the McDonald's.
I live right next door to the McDonald's, youknow, two streets over.
Can you knock my yard out while you're overthere?
And of course, you know, We didn't do that kindof work.
And so and and it's what we would lose money onthat stop.
And so we had we had a value by which to runthat business and and our current business is
to always try to add value and always try to behelpful whenever possible.
(12:49):
Don't just say no.
Say no, but we we have a list of 10 phonenumbers here, of of guys that we know that are
very small operators, and and Here they are.
They want that kind of business and just givethem a call.
And then and then what always happen is islike, a lot of times they have a callback and
say, I called all ten of those people One guycalled me back, one guy gave me a price.
(13:14):
I hired 2 of them, but they never showed up.
One guy showed up, but he didn't show up thesecond time.
Do you have any more phone And so it's kindalike no good deed goes unpunished.
And and so I saw that there was something weirdin the marketplace where it was hard for
consumers to quickly get pricing and discoverwho was reliable and who wasn't.
(13:36):
And because there's no data, about theseproviders.
And then and then as a service provider, it'sreally, really hard running that kind of
business because you're you're mowing yards.
You don't have time to run sales.
You don't have time to go out and and giveestimates.
You don't have time to even answer the damnphone.
Or call people back.
You're literally cutting grass, and then atnight, you're you're mailing out invoices and,
(14:00):
like, the it's just a grind.
And so there was, like, all of this disconnectbetween these two needs and desires of these of
these 2 parties.
And so I knew that somebody was gonna build aplatform that solved all those problems with a
clean user experience that could, that couldthat could automate a lot of these things.
(14:21):
And, so I knew the idea would work.
What I didn't have was was the the technicalacumen.
I didn't I never built a website, mean, sure.
My my last company had some tech, but it wasn'tlike we were we were creating anything from
scratch.
And, and I didn't know anybody.
Not only did I not know, but I didn't knowanybody who did know.
(14:43):
And so and so I had the idea, and and and it'slike, I started going to some tech meetups and
and I and, I mean, I'm in Nashville, so itwasn't like we're a hotbed for a lot of startup
activity.
And and so I was just having no luck, findingany technical people to start the business
with.
And so I told 2 friends about the idea, andthey were like, I'll quit my job tomorrow and
(15:05):
do that with you.
And and there was 2 guys that worked at Dell,Dell Computer, but they were in sales at Dell.
It's not like they were in the tech side.
And so and so the three of us form thiscompany, and and we pull our money together,
and we, on a whiteboard, kinda sketch out whatwe think the screens will look like.
That was We didn't know to do that, but we'relike, well, I mean, I use Uber.
(15:29):
I use Airbnb.
This was 2012.
I used the Facebook app.
I think that's what this thing should looklike, and here's why the and we just drew boxes
on a whiteboard.
And we took pictures of those boxes And then itstarted talking to dev shops, you know, that
that that do projects like that.
And we would get quotes and We got one quotefor $10,000, and we got one quote for
(15:50):
$1,300,000, and, we finally just landed on oneof the quotes that was like a $180,000.
And we paid these guys to build what we thoughtthe app should be.
It took them 9 months, maybe 10 months, Andthen we got that back, and and then we we
quickly realized that this was a huge mistake.
(16:13):
That this thing barely worked, that it wasclunky.
It wasn't like Uber.
It wasn't like Facebook.
It wasn't like Amazon.
Was, like, really unintuitive.
And, and that this that that there was just noway that we were gonna be able to do this if we
couldn't go through iteration cycles quickerthan 11 months.
(16:34):
What did you guys do from there?
I mean, you had the you paid a 180 k for forthe step shop.
Who was like, Hey, this this isn't gonna work.
We just spent almost $200 of our own money, andit didn't work.
What was the next steps that that you and theteam were thinking of?
Great question.
And it and and it was a real gut check moment.
So there's a couple of things at play.
1, was we we had really a a burn the boats,kind of dynamic going on.
(17:01):
These two guys quit their jobs.
And so it wasn't like they could go I mean,maybe they could go back to Dell, but they
didn't want to.
We wanted to push forward.
And and I had already tried to kind of retirealready.
So it wasn't like I could do anything elseeither.
And so I had personally made the decision thatthat no matter what, from that day forward, I
was just gonna work as hard as I could on mybest idea.
(17:23):
And and that was it.
That was like my my system default status wasworking as hard as I can on my best idea.
Fortunately, I'm not terribly creative.
I've had one good idea in, like, my whole life.
One original good idea.
Starting a landscaping bunt company is not a isnot a good idea.
Uber for lawn care is a good idea.
And so I've had one really good business ideain my whole life.
(17:46):
And so this was it.
And so I kinda had to it was kinda like getRichard Die trying.
Like, I I when we had no we had no way otherthan Ford.
And so we were kind of evaluating our options.
And and and so one thing we knew that we neededto do was educate ourselves.
And so we started picking up every book.
(18:06):
We could get our hands on about how to build adamn startup.
And so, of course, we read the lean startup,but then we went backwards and read all the
stuff before the lean startup, was like Foursteps of the epiphany and the startup owner's
manual.
These all three of these books kinda tell youin two thousand pages of text, that you have to
(18:28):
get out of the building, out from behind thelaptop, and you got you actually have to go
talk to customers face to face and figure outwhat their problems, what their needs are, and
figure and and build to that.
And so we were like, well, okay.
That's makes sense, and and, you know, it'sobvious, but we haven't been doing it.
(18:51):
And so and so we have this crappy, terrible,terrible app that we spent a 180 180 grand on.
Well, let's just keep it in the stores andlet's go door to door, and let's talk to as
many people as it takes pitching them on theidea to use an app to get their lawn and so we
(19:13):
did that.
And if they weren't home, we would leave aflyer in the mailbox, which is against the law.
And, we did that until we got a hundred people,and it took a month.
And so we we got a hundred people to use thethe terrible app And then and then we were able
to validate, okay, is this a good idea?
(19:36):
Will people use this?
I was pretty sure they would, but you know,there was a lot of things I was wrong about.
And and they would always tell us everywherethe app sucked.
But they and and they were like, you know, I Ihired a guy.
He didn't show up, or I hired a guy pushed thebutton.
It didn't work, or I hired a guy.
He did show up, but his lawn mower was too big.
For the backyard.
Or hired a guy.
(19:58):
He showed up, but his long wing blades weredull, and the grass looks terrible, or he left
grass on the back patio.
You name it million things that can go wrong.
With this with this kind of use case.
And so everywhere they everywhere we suck on adaily basis, people would tell us the 100 the
people that we eventually, like, were able tohold on to about 50.
But they never told us I don't need this.
(20:21):
And they never told us they were like, disdisappointed that it didn't work.
And and one lady she was an English lady.
She said she said, oh, but it would be divineif it did work.
And and so that stuck with me.
It's shitty.
It is terrible.
It doesn't work, but it would be divine if itdid work.
(20:43):
And and so that was enough, like, evidence forus to figure out okay.
So we know we got a good idea here.
We know we can get people to use it We knowwe're solving a real problem.
So so lean start up.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Check.
Now what?
Well, we gotta go find somebody to help usbuild So so here we go.
Yeah.
We're going to meet up stuff.
(21:04):
Can't find anybody to to join our our cause.
And quite frankly, I don't blame them becausewe didn't know what the hell we were doing.
And and so we thought, well, we're just gonnahave to learn how to build software.
We're just this is you know, if we're gonna dothis, we're just gonna have to learn how to do
it.
And and so my my cofounder, he know, at thispoint, we're all broke.
(21:26):
I mean, I I mean, I had taken all my proceedsfrom selling my business and locked it all down
in, like, highly illiquid investments.
So so I was poor all over again.
Even though, like, I had assets and they werecash flowing, I didn't have a bunch of money in
the bank.
I was I was I was very cash poor.
(21:48):
And so we were all broke, essentially.
And And, it was kinda good for me becausebecause it I I got the experience all that over
again.
It was it was almost in a way kinda enjoyable.
And so he so my cofounder, he's like, well, Ifound this thing called the Nashville software
school, and it's a it's a it's a it's a bootcamp for 9 months, and they're teaching classes
(22:11):
on Ruby on rails, whatever the hell that is.
And, and as and as $12 And I and my credit cardthe limit on my credit card is 12 grand.
And so he put $12 on his credit card that hedidn't have, and he starts attending the
Nashville software school, 8 hours a day.
(22:33):
And then and then whatever he would learn in agiven week, he would take it and and start
rebuilding the platform from the back end.
And so we're like we're like word, dev?
Check.
Zack's gonna become 1.
And he's like, he's like, you guys have no cluehow hard this is.
And and and he was right.
And and he's and he comes in so so about 3months after that, we're really not getting
(22:57):
anywhere.
E although he is working, like, feverishlyunder the water, but calm on the surface.
So from from, like, the outside looking in, itlooks like nothing's happening, but he's he's
he's building all rebuilding the whole thingbecause because everything that this dev shop
built was unusable.
And, and so he's rebuilding the whole thing.
(23:18):
And and but I'm like, dude, at this point, I'mgonna be fifty five years old by the time we,
we we we launch a product.
Like, he's like, well, you what you don't knowis is that gonna take a lot longer than you
think.
And as somebody has gotta build all the frontend of this, and I'm like, what are you talking
what does that even mean?
I don't even know what you're talking He hegoes, well, kind of the way it works is
(23:41):
everything I'm building is, like, on the serverside, but then everything that this thing spits
out.
Has to be marked up and in a way that thatbrowsers understand it and that a mobile app
can understand it and present it to the user askinda like the dashboard.
He goes, think of it this way.
I'm building the engine, but somebody's gottabuild the dashboard and the steering wheel.
(24:03):
And And I'm like, okay.
That makes sense to me.
So how are we gonna do that?
He goes, well, I I don't have time to do itbecause I'm gonna be on this for a year at this
rate.
And so and so I thought, well, I'll do it.
Go, I'm like, how hard could it be?
And he goes, okay.
Have fun.
And so I start I start.
You didn't know what you're getting yourselfinto.
I didn't
know what I was gonna do, dude.
I had never I I'm I I I never even attempted todo anything like this.
(24:25):
And it's not like it I mean, in retrospect, itwas it was not that hard, but it at at the
point, At this point, it was really hardbecause I didn't know what I didn't know.
So I start going to YouTube University and andand just pad a code up HTML, you know, ACSS
Basics, javascript tutorials, and and, man, Ijust start I just I just start taking every
(24:46):
online class I could, And after about 3 months,I became the world's worst front end developer,
but it was just enough where I could take whathe was working with and and and and connect to
it and build the views.
And and they were buggy as hell, and theylooked terrible, but they worked.
(25:08):
And and and and the most important thing was isis we could make improvements on it.
And so that's what we did.
And so, you know, after about another year, wetransitioned the 50 or a 100 users over to the
new thing.
And then at least now we had we had we hadsomething we could iterate on top of, and, and
(25:29):
and something that that we we had to acumenaround to delegate from.
So so so before we try to delegate fromeducation, which is I don't know how to do
this.
You handle it.
Let me know when it's done.
Pretty much every time you try to do that andanything is gonna blow up in your face.
(25:50):
And so what what you wanna be able to do isdelegate from a standpoint of stewardship,
which is Hey.
Here's here's what we need done.
Here's how we want it done.
Here's here's how we do it here.
Here's why we do it this way.
Here's here's our guidelines.
Here's we want it back.
Here's how much we think it should cost.
And, and so we were able to start building outa little kind of bad news bears team around us
(26:13):
of developers and and designers andfreelancers.
And, and and and you know, get to a point wherewe were ramen profitable.
You know, we got to about 4, 500 customers, andthen we got to a point where we could start
just rinse and repeat.
What are the 3 or 4 things that people arecomplaining about the most?
Let's fix those.
(26:34):
Move down the list.
It's kinda like triaging around what users weretelling us and it's improving it, getting it
bigger and bigger, better and better, bankingmore users, holding on to the users, talking to
customers 7 days a week, 12 hours a day, for 5years in a office that had no windows.
Is how we did is how we did it.
(26:56):
And I'll never and I'll never do it again, man.
It was so hard, and it was so much not fun.
I will never do that again.
People ask me, will you start another startup?
You know, I mean, this one's going well.
You should start another one.
I will never do it again, and I don't recommendthat anybody ever do it because it's so much
not fun.
And your odds of success are so small.
Do you regret anything during that time?
(27:18):
I don't regret anything because I I really madethe best decisions I could with the information
I had.
But if I if if, like, I had to go back in time,There's a lot of things I would do differently.
So, you know, going back to the dynamics ofdelegation, delegating too late, delegating too
soon, when do you delegate?
How do you know?
(27:39):
So we made both mistakes.
We delegated too soon.
Didn't know how to do it.
Hider hired to dev shop.
That was stupid.
Wasted a year and all of our money.
And and then we did and then we made and thenwe had, like, PTSD and scars from that.
And and the scars from delegating too soon.
So then we delegate it too late.
(27:59):
And so and so we did everything ourself for foranother 2 or 3 years, all the blog content, all
the customer support, all the front end, backend, all the CIS ad CIS admin, everything, just
three guys, and maybe like a friend of Zach'sfrom software school that we would give some
beer money to.
And and that that we wasted a lot of timebecause of that, be the the first thing we
(28:23):
should have done was, as soon as we had someacumen around it, as soon as we started getting
some traction, we should have started takingwhat little pennies we were making and throwing
it at freelancers to help us move quicker.
And so and so we would be, if if I had knownthat, I mean, I'd be 3 or 4 years into the
future right But, hey.
It is what it is.
(28:44):
You don't really know these things when you'reeven though I had built and sold a eight figure
business already, when I was starting GreenPowell, I was a first time founder all over
again.
Because it was a totally different journey,totally different skill set, totally different,
totally different, thing that I was doing.
There's a big difference between running abusiness and inventing a product.
And a lot of times people conflate thosethings.
(29:06):
And, you know, building a inventing a productfrom scratch is a hundred times harder than
just running a construction company or runninga restaurant.
And those businesses are really hard in and ofthemselves.
And so, I didn't know that.
Nobody told me that.
And, honestly, I don't ever hear anybodytalking about that, but if you're starting a
tech company, most of the time, you'reinventing a new product, and most people don't
(29:27):
know how hard that is.
Yeah.
One of the things that I've learned, over mytime just having conversations with a lot of
entrepreneurs is Some of the most successfulentrepreneurs are willing to go back down to 0
like you did.
So they've built up a bunch of industryknowledge in a certain space.
And if they wanna take something out and do itmaybe a different type of industry or a
(29:50):
different type of business, they're willing togo back down to that 0 level, start learning at
that level, and try to climb the mountainagain.
It's extremely difficult to do, but that'sthat's what I've learned.
Man, and and that's a that's a really hardlesson.
I I heard I heard I think I was in Naval putthat so beautifully.
He was like he was like, you know, most peoplein life just they they they're climbing the
(30:14):
mountain and then they reach a certain kind ofsummit, and then they look off into the
distance and they realize that the summit isactually way over there, and they realize the
only way to summit that mount that portion ofthe mountain is to go all the way back down.
And who has the stones to do that?
And at the time, I guess I did.
I had the tread on the tires to do that.
(30:38):
Do I have the tread on the tires today to dothat?
No.
I'm not going back down the mountain.
Wherever this path leaves me is wherever itleaves me.
And I and I will I will not start over again.
I will not do it all over again.
And so that's probably the wrong mentality tohave and the wrong attitude to have, but I'm 44
(30:59):
And it's like, I don't have the tread on thetires for another one.
That's why this is a young man's game.
I mean, get started early I mean, get startedget started as early as you can so you can get
as many at bats as you can because you reallyit does take 2 or 3 of these to hit one to get
get one that works.
Yeah.
And it's difficult as that was building out aproduct and and taking all that time and
(31:25):
building the back end and and the front of thefront end of the app.
Historically, building marketplaces like youare with Greenpal connecting home owners and
and, lawn care professionals is extremelydifficult.
Right?
We've we've seen a bunch of different companiesin this space fail.
Or even in marketplaces in general fail, justbecause you might be able to build out one
(31:46):
side, but maybe the other side doesn't wannabuild that side out.
One of the early stage companies I was workingfor is a company called Valley.
And one of the things we were doing is, hey,let's see if we can build, like, a Tinder for
founders in in the investors and basicallyconnect investors and connect founders in this
in this app.
The problem with that is all the founders wannacome on the app and they were super active on
(32:08):
but none of the investors wanted wanted to jointhe app, and and they wouldn't join that second
side of the marketplace.
And without that other side, then you basicallydon't have a business.
So we had to pivot the business.
We ended up doing fine, and I left since then.
But how did how are you able to build out bothsides of that marketplace and and do it
successfully?
Yeah.
(32:28):
It's man, it's something that I didn't know atthe time in 2012, you know, your your parallels
were eBay, maybe Uber, Airbnb, and that wasabout it, man.
I mean, the in terms of, like, end to endmarketplaces where you push a button and magic
(32:50):
happen, There were very few examples to learnfrom.
Now 10, 10, 12 years later, there's a lot ofdocumentation and and school of thought and
best practices about building a marketplacethat don't make it easier, but kinda demystify
the approach you might take.
One thing that a decade in this has taught melooking back and now kinda seeing all, like,
(33:16):
the graveyard of Uber for X ideas, Uber forhome cleaning, Uber for valet parking, Uber for
car washing and Uber for laundry service.
All of them all of them didn't make it.
And and, you know, 1,000,000,000 of dollars ofventure capital, burned up in the process.
The one thing, if I had instill it into onething, is it's the the marketplace's ability to
(33:39):
to generate demand.
Is all that matters.
And most people don't know this.
It's not like you build the marketplace and andthere's pull from the market into your market
place.
That's what everybody that's the fallacy thatseduces everybody into it.
No.
It's very much an outward push, and it's verymuch It's very much like the marketplace's
table stakes.
(33:59):
What you're really building is a demandcreation engine.
For one side or the other.
And you have to really innovate on that.
And you have to really figure out something inthat that nobody else is doing.
And it ain't it ain't Facebook AdWords and andPPC because because that's why all these other
(34:23):
Uber Ferex ideas went out of business.
All of that money went back in the two pockets,Facebook, and Google.
And and so you can buy enough liquidity for awhile, to kinda, like, put up some numbers and
maybe get to the next round.
But a certain at a certain point, unless you'vegot some kind of self reinforcing flywheel,
it's like that that that runs out real quick.
(34:44):
And and, you know, Andrew Chin's book the coldstart problem talks a lot about this.
You you have to you simply have to have somekind of innovative way to pull to pull the buy
side, the the the demand side into themarketplace.
And and if you don't, if you're not a salesengine, then then there's no you know, this
(35:06):
thing ain't gonna isn't gonna go anywhere.
And and so what we learned early on was we'rejust gonna have to be, like, one of the the
preeminent marketers of lawn care services onthe planet.
I mean, this is this is, like, that's reallythe business we're in.
Even though we have this ordering system,review system, a scheduling system, and route
management system, and balancing supply anddemand system, pricing systems, All of these
(35:30):
systems in place that make the marketplacetick.
None of it matters unless we can naildistribution
How did you create or build that demandcreation engine in a way that no one else was
doing at the time?
Had to figure out some kind of way to pullthese users into the platform, and so people we
you know, when we're talking to them wouldalways tell us you know, normally I would find
(35:52):
somebody on Google, but, you know, the lastthree people I called, you know, that didn't
show up or didn't answer the phone or didn'tgive me a quote.
And so we kept hearing that over and overagain.
And so I'd kinda known that Google was gonnabe, a channel for us, but I was hearing it so
much.
I was thinking, man, this may be the channel.
And so we started looking at, well, let's justlet's just do that.
(36:16):
Okay.
Check.
Done.
User acquisition strategy solved, except forsort of learning like, man, it's actually
really hard.
To compete in Google organic search.
I wouldn't have thought it, but it's like, it'sgonna be it's gonna be twice as hard as
everything else we're doing, just to rank, damnlanding page.
(36:39):
And, and so we we we tried to rank forkeywords, like, line mowing service in
Nashville, Tennessee, yard yard and gardenservice in in in Nashville, and and we were on
page page 10.
Weren't weren't getting anywhere.
And so I started, you know, after I kindalearned enough about front end development for
(37:00):
a while, I could I could pivot my YouTubeuniversity strategy now to SEO.
And so now I'm watching my daily routine in2013 look like, you know, get to the office at
7, you know, code until 1 or 2, go to the gymuntil 3, And then by by 3 o'clock, I had a
second wind.
(37:21):
And then from 3 o'clock till 9 o'clock atnight, I would just sit on YouTube.
And and so whatever the whatever, like, wasblocking tackling for the business at that
stage of the game, was that 5 or 6 hours in theafternoon and night.
I would watch every video that talked aboutsearch engine optimization techniques and
(37:42):
tactics and strategy and and began to reverseengineer what our strategy might look like.
And and and so I learned through doing that wasthat we're we're, you know, day 1, we're not
gonna compete for these what they call headterms.
But we could compete for the long tail.
So we, you know, we you know, we're nobodies.
(38:04):
We're not gonna rank for lawn mowing serviceNashville.
But we we can't rank for grass cutting serviceSmyrna, Tennessee, which is a 15,000 person
subcommunity of Nashville.
We can rank for that because nobody's nobody'scompeting for that.
And so we had we we had 5 or 10 serviceproviders in Smyrna, Tennessee, and, and we
(38:27):
interviewed him and talked about him and wrotecontent about him.
And and took pictures of their equipment, wherethey in to and wrote little bios and stories
about them, where they went to high school,what they do differently than their
competitors, why they got lawnmowing business.
And and it's this is very unique, rich, organiccontent about these small business owners that
(38:48):
didn't exist anywhere else.
And so From that bottoms up approach, westarted noticing in Google analytics, mate.
We're starting to get a little bit of traffic.
5 people signed up in Smyrna, yesterday, and Ididn't know who any of them were.
Wow.
I'm really bending the world to my way.
And, and that little inkling of, like, of aspark informed how we scaled out a repeatable
(39:16):
strategy of, okay, we can we can do this.
It's gonna take a while, but we can do this inevery city and subs and and subcommunity in the
whole country.
And so that's what we did.
What do you think most people get wrong aboutSEO today?
Well, I think I think SEO's done.
(39:36):
Search engine optimization is not what it was10 years ago.
And so you should you should forget about SEO,and you should just and that that term needs to
be replaced with with content marketing.
And that's really what it is.
It is it is carpeting the internet with reallygood, unique, helpful content that solves
(40:00):
people's problems that somehow connects mapsback to your product or service.
That also solves people's problems.
I'm in the media business.
You know?
It's like Yeah.
On top of everything else you're doing, youhave to be in the in in the in the media
business.
In in the in the sense of you have to developreally good content that that meets people
where they're at that that that that thatbrings traffic to your site.
(40:23):
Yeah.
I was speaking to Eric Alabest, the other week.
So he runs this company called chess.com.
He's grown it into a $100,000,000 business,completely bootstrapped, and He said from day
1, we didn't focus on Facebook ads, Google ads,none of that.
It was all through content.
Like, our strategy from day one was throughcontent, whether that be writing articles and
(40:45):
and writing blogs, like you said, to findpeople where they're at.
Or more recently with shorts and and TikTokvideos, like, that's pretty much how they've
been able to grow their community.
And I think every business going forward insome way, shape, or form will eventually be a
content business if you're online becausethat's just that's where people are.
And the only way to reach where people are isto be where be where they are.
(41:07):
We didn't touch on this yet, but I'm curious.
For those in the audience who who might notknow, you currently have hundreds of thousands
of users, but how do you currently make moneywith Greenpal?
So Greenpal makes money, by way of chargingservice providers a fee to access the platform.
And so they pay a transaction fee for everypiece of business they do through the platform.
(41:29):
And that fee varies based on the the volumethey're doing on the platform.
So consumers that use the platform are notreally the customers of Green Powell.
The customers are lawn care services.
They pay to access the toolset, the network,the community, and then they they kinda
modulate onto the platform and run theirbusiness on top of what we built.
(41:51):
Got it.
And how did it feel when when you made yourfirst $10,000,000 off of that?
It's scary because I thought, man, you know, Idon't know that I don't know that we can run
this at 20.
You know, I don't know, you know, I mean, thatthat that that number's gonna be 20 at some
point, and I don't I mean, they ran a$20,000,000 business.
(42:11):
I think if you're feeling that impostersyndrome, it's a good sign.
You you wanna feel imposter syndrome at almostevery step of the game because that means
you're you're ahead of your skis.
That means you're pushing it as as far as youcan and and you're growing.
You know, it's like that Mario and Freddyquote, you know, if if if you feel like you're
(42:32):
in control, you're not going fast enough.
And so on that that's imposter syndrome.
And so that's kinda what I felt.
It wasn't like we didn't really celebrate itbecause We've we've never really felt like
successful.
We've never really felt like we've made it.
It's always felt like day 1, and it's alwaysfelt like it's always been like, oh, look out
(42:57):
for where we come.
Yeah.
But you know, yeah, but, you know, we we we wegotta figure this thing out.
We we're at, you know, we're doing, x number of1000 transactions a day.
We should be at this.
And so it's never felt like where you couldjust take a deep breath and say, oh, look how
far we've come.
Maybe I should feel that way.
Maybe maybe it would be more fulfilling, butbut we wanna get to a $100,000,000 a year in
(43:19):
sales, and and and, right now, there's There'saround 300,000 people using it every week, and
and we wanna get to a million people using itevery week.
And so maybe maybe we'll we'll look back atthat moment.
But it's like when you're building a startup,you you you always think that if I just solve
these 1 or 2 problems, and make these 1 or 2hires, that life will be good.
(43:41):
And and all that means is that you solve these3 problems, at this means you get 3 more to
solve.
And you just have to be a never ending problemsolving machine, and you you have to embrace
that because that's just the way it is.
Yeah.
I think that makes a lot of sense.
We have a couple of last final questions for aquick fire round.
(44:02):
One is, what do you think is the best piece ofadvice you've ever received?
It's a a p a piece of advice I received, froman asynchronously from an interview I walk with
Brad failed, 10 years ago.
And it stuck with me all for the last decade.
He said, listen to your customers or you willhave none.
(44:25):
And and, man, I hate I hate insatiable, whiny,like, never you can never please on type of
people.
And and we have a lot of them that use GreenPowell.
And and, and, and it's like 1% of the userbase, but it feels like 50%.
(44:48):
And so and so, I always remind myself of thatmantra.
Listen to your customers, or you will havenone.
So here here we are 10 years in, you know,thousands of transactions every day.
I still do an hour, sometimes 2 hours a day ofcustomer support, myself, personally.
I'm answering the phone.
I, you know, I am doing the live chat.
(45:08):
I am knocking out email tickets because I neverwant there to be this gap that forms between my
perspective and my logic and the customer'sperspective and their logic.
And on the flip side, what would you say is theworst piece of advice you've ever received?
You gotta network.
You gotta get out there network.
(45:29):
You really gotta network and meet people andand network with people.
Do more of that.
That was terrible advice.
Somebody told me that in, like, year 1, and soI did that.
So I spent I spent, like, 2 years going toevery meetup every conference, I would fly to
(45:51):
conferences.
And I didn't it may it was probably my fault,but I didn't get a damn thing out of any of
that.
Any of that activity or money.
People don't care who you know.
They care what you've built.
And and so I was doing all of that at theexpense of actually building something and
actually getting people to build thatsomething.
(46:12):
I mean, actually getting people to use thatsomething that I built And so in the early days
and and what I mean by this, probably the 1st 3to 4 years, you should be doing two things.
You should be working on the product orservice, making it better and better and
better, and then getting people to use thatproduct or service.
That's it.
Everything else you're doing is a waste oftime.
(46:34):
And and so I don't wanna, like, devalue thepower of networking because sometimes I do wish
my network was better.
And so there there is a there is a cost thatthat I, for me, neglecting that.
But in the early days, I think it's almost atotal waste of time.
Unless, yeah, if you're building dope stuffthat people are using and and you're talking
(46:56):
about it on podcasts and and people are gettingvalue from it, the network will grow.
So do dope stuff the network grows.
Yeah.
I feel like sometimes too much, especially morein the early stage.
Founders, like like you said, we'll go to asmany conferences and events and set up a demo
and and everything like that.
(47:17):
It's just like go back to building.
And sometimes I speak to them and they're justlike, oh, yeah.
We're we're still working on our product.
I'm like, okay.
Just go back to working on the product.
Right?
Yeah.
You know, if if if you're building some kindof, you know, high Botality business tech and
you wanna go to the boutique hotel ownersconference?
Yeah.
(47:37):
Hell, yeah.
You need to be there because that's yourcustomer.
But if you're going to TechCrunch, or,conferences of the like, you know, just to, you
know, see what's cool and I don't know, man.
To, like, the every time I've ever done thatstuff, total waste of time, it's a it's a it is
a consumption decision.
It's not an investment decision.
(47:58):
Yeah.
And for a last question here, if I slid youover a phone virtually and you could give one
piece of advice to your eighteen year old self,1, what'd you call?
And, 2, if so, what would you say?
Oh, that's a great question.
So I get to call and talk to my eighteen yearold self.
Well, I think I think to honestly answer thatquestion, you gotta you kinda have you can't
(48:22):
just, like, tell him, you know, buy Amazon,Apple, Netflix.
Yeah.
It doesn't count.
Okay.
So we gotta keep it we gotta keep it like, wegotta keep it principle based and fundamentals
based.
And, okay.
So so one thing I regret you asked earlier.
One thing I regret is I didn't I didn't read abook cover to cover until, like till after I
(48:45):
sold my first company, until I was, like, 33.
And so I would tell him, okay, you need to bereading something all the time, that's gonna
help you get where you're trying to go.
So so that's one thing you gotta do.
And and maybe here's here's 4 or 5 books.
And then and then maybe I've got a little bitmore time, I would say you you gotta really
understand the the power of compound interest.
(49:08):
Because the sooner you can get that flywheelrolling on what it is you're doing, the the the
the the more that it that that you'll benefitfrom compound interest later on.
And the last few double ups are huge, and and Ididn't really understand that back then.
I didn't I didn't I I really kinda looked at itlinearly.
And it's not.
It, man, it really with compound interest inwhat you're doing, it it takes off.
(49:31):
And so I would try to get him to understandthat And then and then I would also try to get
him to understand, and, you know, investing inyourself, don't believe your own bullshit.
You know, for years, I would think, oh, I'm notan engineer, so I can't do that, or I'm not an
accountant, so I can't I can't I can't reallyunderstand those financial statements.
(49:53):
Or I'm not a designer, so I can't design it.
I'm not a copywriter.
So I can't I can't write that advertising.
And really, man, I mean, you can you with theper you can learn the 8020 on pretty much
anything.
So so invest in yourself, work in the business,work on your business, and work on yourself
You've gotta do that because you're thebottleneck.
You don't know it right now, but you're thebottleneck.
(50:14):
Yeah.
Compound interest, I would say, is huge.
And something I also did even notice untilprobably, like, just, like, 6 to 12 months ago.
But if you spend, like, all your time or asmuch time as you possibly can, on 1 or 2 things
and stay hyper focused on it for a period of 5,10 years.
Like, the amount that would change or theamount your knowledge base will change over
(50:36):
this 10 years is dramatically more than youever would have thought.
So That's right.
It's hard
to remember.
Yeah.
Totally.
Awesome.
Well, thanks, Brian, for taking the time tojoin the episode.
It's a great conversation.
And we'll have a link down below to GreenPowell for anyone who wants to take a look.
Give it a shot.
Well, thanks for having me on.
I enjoyed it.
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