Inventing Uber for Landscape Services | Bryan Clayton

Bryan Clayton isn't just another CEO; he's a VISIONARY and a groundbreaker. As the mastermind behind GreenPal, an innovative online marketplace dubbed the "Uber for lawn care" by Entrepreneur magazine, he's revolutionizing the way homeowners connect with local lawn care pros. Boasting over 200,000 active users, GreenPal pulses with thousands of transactions daily, a testament to Bryan's knack for understanding market needs. Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!

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Bryan’s Links:

•  LinkedIn | @BryanClayton

•  Website | https://www.yourgreenpal.com/

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GOLD NUGGETS:

(06:39) - Bryan Clayton’s Entrepreneurial Journey & Growth

(12:30) - Hiring for Attitude and Teaching Process

(23:06) - Landscaper to Programmer

(33:08) - GreenPal’s Investment Strategy + Business Model

(49:54) - Books for Scaling and Starting YOUR Business

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Books Mentioned:

• Built To Sell - John Warrillow

• The E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen Covey

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Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Beth Miller, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!

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If you loved this episode try these!

• Maximizing Business Valuation and Exploring Growth Strategies with Rob Macklin

• You Should be in the PeopleWare Business Not Just the Software Business | Mark Herschberg

• HR Usually Sucks…but It Doesn’t Have To | Wendy Sellers

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Have any questions or comments? Connect with me here!

Transcript

Bryan Clayton: 0:00

Yeah, I guess it was a year three or four, maybe year five. I realized that I wasn't in the lawnmowing business at all or the landscaping business at all. I was in the sales business, that I needed to develop a sales system that I could repeat over and over again and that could be kind of the engine of growth at the core of the business. And that aha moment hit me and I didn't really know what to do about it. You know, this was 2002 or three and so there really wasn't a whole lot of like online courses you could take. Yeah, you could buy some books and maybe go to some seminars, but it wasn't like today where you could just learn anything for free. So I just kind of like beat my head against it while trying to develop a sales process and did it wrong for about another five years.

Chris Lalomia: 0:44

Until it's just five years. Right, that's about right.

Bryan Clayton: 0:47

Every mistake you can make. I mean selling on price.

Chris Lalomia: 0:50

Welcome to the Small Business Safari, where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountain top of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from any of your own personal and professional goals. So strap in adventure team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountain top.

Chris Lalomia: 1:19

The Small Business Safari is one of the top the most popular, the most popular, the most popular safari in the world. Small Business Safari one of the top 10% podcast in the world. That's right, everybody. And when you look at the way we've done it, we're doing it the right way. You guys are listening, everybody's paying attention, they've been getting the word out. We have been growing leaps and bounds since the middle of 2023. If you're listening to this, you're getting on some of the hot stuff. We have had some amazing guests, some guests that I actually got to meet this past weekend.

Alan Wyatt: 1:52

Alan, would this have something to do with your raspy voice? Chris, are you going through a very white phase?

Chris Lalomia: 1:58

Hello everybody and daddy's back, little raspy Alan. So how did this weekend go? Yeah, tell me, caligula.

Alan Wyatt: 2:05

What can?

Chris Lalomia: 2:05

you do this weekend, so last. So my weekend, as we've established, is a little bit more than two days. It started Wednesday night.

Alan Wyatt: 2:13

It did.

Chris Lalomia: 2:14

Yep, wednesday night I flew up to Wisconsin. On Thursday I went to the Detroit Lions Green Bay game in Lambeau Field. I texted you at halftime and you didn't even respond. Well, because I was busy engaging with all the patrons of Lambeau Field and I was that guy Did you go down after?

Alan Wyatt: 2:30

Did you go down after, with all the Lions fans and you're screaming at the announcers?

Chris Lalomia: 2:35

No but my buddies did, which was phenomenal, and so what's funny is that my buddies who did that were all Packers fans. Oh, really, they were just down there because it was cool, so they were in actually the overshot. I was too busy up in the stands mingling with my people or making sure I didn't get killed, so we do that. And then on Saturday we drove to Milwaukee and took the train into Chicago O'Hare, which was a blast. We went to the Magnificent Mile, stayed down there that night, had an amazing meal at RPM Italian, shot out there, another company that should be sponsoring us.

Chris Lalomia: 3:11

And then on Saturday we went to another really cool venue and it's up in Evanston, Illinois, and it's the Northwestern Ryan Field and we get to see Northwestern and Penn State, which was tied at halftime and it was so much fun. We were so close. You could smell the grass, hear the guys and could see how excited Northwestern was. But they made it stop at the one yard line and stop Penn State and just to watch that pure joy coming off. It was such a classic old school.

Alan Wyatt: 3:38

Lots of brick. Right the old stadium, right you walk in and you walk up.

Chris Lalomia: 3:43

Oh yeah, it was just and it's a really cool campus because I was in charge of the Ubers and I took us to the Ryan Field House, so that's where we started At the basketball arena.

Alan Wyatt: 3:53

Yeah, Okay, good job.

Chris Lalomia: 3:54

We didn't mean to but we're there and so we took a great picture in Lake Michigan. So then we proceeded to Bar Hop all the way back down to downtown Chicago through Lincoln Park and got to watch football games and a great bar where we brought the average age up of the bar probably by 30 years. We usually we talk about being joking Then we go out that night and just kept Bar Hop and Bar Hop and then went to bed and then it flew out Sunday to Las Vegas where I was a speaker at the neary conference. How did it go? It went well. I actually had questions after Alan, really Three different people. They stayed awake, they stayed awake, they stayed engaged and after, after you're gonna love this, can't wait.

Chris Lalomia: 4:36

I had three people come up going. We really enjoy your podcast. Say hi to Alan for me. Said one Nice hello back.

Alan Wyatt: 4:42

Alan gets a shout out.

Chris Lalomia: 4:43

That was cool and other people say you know, I really like what you're doing for the industry. We really enjoyed your podcast. And then Brian Gottlieb who we had on. If you haven't listened to that episode about how to figure out how to do an exit on a company, and how to be a great leader.

Alan Wyatt: 4:57

Yeah, how to. If he could have a do over in life, you'd be Brian, that one.

Chris Lalomia: 5:01

So he was there, he was our keynote and after I finished he goes I wanna just show you something. And he shows me a text message that says hey, brian, I heard you on the small business safari. I wanna talk to you about a potential business opportunity, wow. So you know, who knows what happens from that? But that's what happens, you know, on his podcast and what they were all saying was you know, what's different about us is that it's kind of like a morning talk show. These guys I mean literally I had three of them pumping me up like we were getting ready to quit, like you need it.

Chris Lalomia: 5:27

I did all big daddy was rolling. So, no, my speech went great, I had a great time out there, but it's still Vegas. I did not burn into both ends. But I'm telling you, man, I got on the airplane yesterday and got in to the house at 12 o'clock at night and then put a full day in, and then here we are now.

Alan Wyatt: 5:42

So I gotta go back to Vegas. When you're in Vegas, even though we're conference, I mean, I'm sure you're hitting the tables right. Oh, I hit him, yeah.

Chris Lalomia: 5:48

What's your game? So I blackjacked. I ended up down 100. And here's the good news. Did you play a classic book? No, I do have multiple decks, but it's the first time I've ever been at the Mirage. Thank you, mirage, great, shout out. Thank you for not kicking me out, but I did get reprimanded. I used one of the seven words that George Carlin doesn't let you use at the table and he told me he asked me to come. He came up and said I asked you please not to use that word. I says can I use the other six that Carlin says we can't use, or it just, is that? Just that one? You didn't like my F word Because this lady was killing me. This deal. I had to get up and walk away and I was there with a bunch of people I knew. I didn't know that they cared about your language at a casino. He was showing off for the girl who was at the corner, so, but it was funny.

Alan Wyatt: 6:27

I was like, yeah, you got shushed in the casino. I did Only Chris Only.

Chris Lalomia: 6:32

Chris, I didn't get kicked out, so with that we appreciate Brian kind of hanging out. Yeah, we'd love to guest. Let's get this going, shall we? Brian Clayton has started a business that I am so intrigued on that. I've actually knew about him over a year ago, was checking his story out, but I don't want to tell a story for him, so he's going to explain what he has. But before we get into that, when did you start your first entrepreneurial gig?

Bryan Clayton: 6:58

Yeah, well, thanks for having me on the show, guys. Uh, my name is Brian Clayton, I'm CEO of GreenPowell and and, uh, my first entrepreneurial gig started 20, maybe almost 30 years ago when my dad, he got tired of me, uh, sitting around the house playing Nintendo all day and he said, hey, get off your butt. Uh, I got a gig for you. You're going to go mow the neighbor's yard. And he made me go cut the neighbor's grass. And my dad was a military guy and this was not a request, it was a direct order. And he, he escorted me next door, told me he says it pays 20 bucks and you're going to go mow this yard.

Bryan Clayton: 7:32

I had never mowed a yard before and and so he kind of taught me how to cut the grass while, uh, while showing me everywhere I missed and wherever, everywhere, I screwed up, and and we got paid 20 bucks and he let me have the $20. And I was hooked. I was hooked on entrepreneurship. From that moment forward, I, the first thing I did that night was make up a bunch of flyers and pass them all over the neighborhood and and, uh, and I had like 10 customers that summer and I never looked back. I just I kept kept sticking with that lawn mowing business, little by little, growing it year over year until about 15 years in I was able to grow it to about 150 employees and and $10 million a year in revenue. And then it was acquired by a big national company and that's what teed me up to build green power, which is like the Uber for lawn care.

Chris Lalomia: 8:17

Take that dad. How about that dad?

Alan Wyatt: 8:19

How am I doing now, hey I didn't tell you to do this for the rest of your life. Get a real job right.

Bryan Clayton: 8:25

That's, that's fair. Yeah, we often jokes about that, he's. I'm glad I didn't buy you a set of ice gates or something like that, cause you really want to, you really do this as far as you could, uh, so, so, yeah, no, it worked out for me. And and to that, to that kind of point, to your point, I didn't really want to be a lawn guy my whole life. It really nothing about the business appeal to me. I hated mowing yards.

Alan Wyatt: 8:48

Um, I hated the country yeah.

Bryan Clayton: 8:50

A Nashville, tennessee, oh okay, so hot summers and and uh, and I and I really did enjoy the business, but I saw owning a business in the home services space as kind of my lane, as as something that could take me places in life that I couldn't go otherwise, and and I and I saw it as the as the thing that would enable me to challenge myself and and to do something bigger than if I just got a job somewhere. So so, while I I didn't like the lawn mowing business, I did like being in business and and prospering and winning. So so I think it doesn't matter what you're doing is, so long as you're pouring your heart and soul into it, you could take, take it somewhere.

Chris Lalomia: 9:28

That's a great point. I think it's a. It, might you like you said, I don't like mowing lawns. In fact, I'm allergic to grass, so I.

Alan Wyatt: 9:36

I was sourcing. You know it's funny. I was walking in into your fabulous studios out by your pool and I'm like man, chris's lawn looks really good, it's nicely edged, and I know he did not do that, he didn't look at it, he does not do it.

Chris Lalomia: 9:46

No, first thing we did, we moved to Atlanta. In fact, the lawn mower never made it from Charlotte, that was, so was gone. But I love the business aspect. So, as you, what I want to do is talk a little bit about about the growth, because a lot of people try to figure out. You know they think, hey, I got a great idea. You know he just had a guy talk to me about he wants to get in painting. He doesn't want to do franchising, he wants to do it by himself. I'm like it's easy when you're one, but it's hard to compete in Atlanta, especially with our market. You got to really figure out how to scale and get good teams. So let's talk a little bit about how you scaled up and and some of those bumps along the road in the beginning.

Bryan Clayton: 10:19

Yeah, I guess it was a year three or four, maybe year five. I realized that I wasn't in the lawn mowing business at all or the landscaping business at all. I was in the sales business, that I needed to develop a sales system that I could repeat over and over again and that could be kind of the engine of growth at the core of the business. And that aha moment hit me and I didn't really know what to do about it. You know, this was 2002 or three and so there really wasn't a whole lot of like online courses you could take. Yeah, you could buy some books and maybe go to some seminars, but it wasn't like today where you could just learn anything for free. So I just kind of like beat my head against it while trying to develop a sales process and did it wrong for about another five years, until it's just five years, that's about right.

Bryan Clayton: 11:07

Every mistake you could make.

Bryan Clayton: 11:08

I mean selling on price, selling, you know selling, uh, hiring people that were in the industry, that were salespeople because I thought our industry was so mysterious and not have not hiring sales oriented people Um, you know, doing it, trying to delegate it, before I could codify it down into a step by step process, because I, honestly, I didn't want to do it.

Bryan Clayton: 11:32

I didn't want to cold call people, I didn't want to, I didn't want to go like sit in the lobby, um, you know, of a restaurant or, or a bank or, um, or an office park, office park, and try to ask for the facility service manager and and like bother them and pitch them on my services, like I didn't want to do any of that, and so, so, so one of the things I did wrong for a long time was I tried to like outsource and delegate that when, in fact, I had no clue what that process should even look like, and so it wasn't until I just like bit the bullet, ran it myself, codified it down into a step by step process and then started to build out a team around that. But it took like five years and then I so you know year, you know nine and 10, I started. I started being able to scale the business beyond a couple of million in revenue to three, four, five and then ultimately 10 million a year in revenue.

Chris Lalomia: 12:22

Let's talk about that sales for a minute, because you just hit on something I just heard again at this conference. I was just at out in Vegas. Uh, for Neri um was your best salesperson in the industry or outside of the industry?

Bryan Clayton: 12:38

See the best sales guy ever hired. Uh, I, I met him. He applied because he didn't like his job making sandwiches at Jersey Mike's. Um, so that was the best sales guy ever hired, because he was just a motivated, driven type of individual that wanted more out of life, had a chip on his shoulder and and hated his job at Jersey Mike's. And this was like in the in the great recession, so it it. It like it wasn't, like there was a whole lot of career opportunities if you just graduated college. And that was the best salesperson I ever hired because I could just teach him my process. He didn't know the first thing. He couldn't. He couldn't couldn't tell the difference between a weed and a and a blade of grass, or or a tree and a shrub. I had to teach him everything from the ground up, but he had. He had the ambition, he had the work ethic, he had the attitude and he was sharp and and he and I made a lot of money together.

Chris Lalomia: 14:48

Hard to do it but it's so key and that's higher for higher for attitude. Like you just said, he hated his job. If I have a guy sitting in front of me going on, I hate what I do. I hate what I do. I'm a dude. You're out, debbie Downer, but motivated, ooh, color me interested.

Chris Lalomia: 15:02

But I just heard the best sales guys are guys you bring in and train them on your sales process. They're not bringing all their head trash of the other company that's in your world and how they want to do it. They don't want to, because I've had that happen to. It had a guy come in. I thought, alright, man, he's in the business. Even he was like well, we do it this way at this place. I'm like, yeah, no, we don't do it like that man. Different sales process here for what we do and how we do it. He finally bought in. He's actually still with me but it was one of the few that internally worked out. But I found it's it's better to hire for attitude and skill, right and motivation, like you said, character.

Bryan Clayton: 15:34

Nice and then teach, and then teach them the process.

Bryan Clayton: 15:37

You got to have both, you got to have a we have to have a step-by-step process that you've codified, that you've, you have broken down into a repeatable process, that that you then plug them into you. You can't have one or the other, you can't just hot, you can't just like hire a motivated person and say, hey, good luck, let me know when you got a million dollars in business it like that doesn't work either. I mean, sometimes it works, you know, but but not not in my experience. I've always had to to give them a system, give them a process and put the right person in that system.

Alan Wyatt: 16:10

So your your sales process. You're saying you, you basically invented yourself after five years of pain. Is that right or did? You actually reach something or have an aha moment.

Bryan Clayton: 16:21

Um, I had a aha moment when One thing we did is we did prospecting at organizations that were that that consisted of the customer we wanted. So it could be like HOA's. There was an HOA meeting, hoa trade trade organization Apartments, multifamily. We we did tons of apartments and these were fifty hundred thousand dollar year contracts and so we were members of the greater Nashville apartment Association. It could be could be restaurants, offices, a real estate investor, things of that. That's what we would attend these trade organizations meetings, a sponsor, and just have a presence there. And so they knew who we were and and we could like rub up, reveal was with them and that really wasn't enough. That was enough to like Maybe break down some barriers, but it wasn't like that was a silver bullet.

Bryan Clayton: 17:16

But I was attending a Meeting that I sponsored and it was with a group of apartment owners and they were this was again and like the the great recession, and they were. They were all like complaining and like upset about how low occupancy rate was and and how that the averages and middle Tennessee were normally in the 90s and some of them were in the 70s, some of them were in the 80s and some of them were even lower than that. And so I thought, well, you know, okay, these guys don't care about anything but Filling the empty apartments, and so how can I help them with that? So and so I would approach apartment Community community managers and say, hey, what's your occupancy rate? And they say, why do you ask you just cut the grass. And we would. We would say, well, we would attended the meeting last week.

Bryan Clayton: 18:04

And they, you're saying, you know, 93% is what people are shooting for, you know. And they say, well, we're at 78. And I said that's easy. I said, with a, with a proactive plan, with landscape maintenance, we can make the grass greener, make the grass thicker, we can install some seasonal color around the model home, we can install a new floral display at the entrance and drive some traffic in here. And I know we can get you above 80%. It may take 12 months and, you know, with a two-year agreement, you know 24 months, I think we get you to 82, 83%. And so that changed the whole conversation From who's the cheapest guy I can get to cut my grass to who, who can I partner with to help me get where I'm trying to go in business, what with my business, thinking outside of the box there and showing a value add in Solving their major pain point.

Chris Lalomia: 18:51

Their major pain point was or not there was a weed there. Their major pain point wasn't or not the grass was edged correctly. Their major pain point was occupancy and you just tied in what you do to what they have their biggest pain on. That's huge. I mean, what a great idea.

Bryan Clayton: 19:04

Yeah, I can help with any, any business. It's a matter of what sales business here, what line of work you're in. You can tie what it is you do with what you're where your customers are trying to go and you know you really you don't sell the, what you sell the why and and, and that's easy to say. It's hard to do. But if you can really invest the time, play the long game doing that and selling that way, it it can. It can acquire new business at a higher margins and keep that business, because then you're not viewed as like a commodity vendor, you're viewed as a partner. But you gotta deliver, I mean you. You also gotta deliver. You you have we. You know we had to move that occupancy right up, but we had to really bust our ass to to make those properties look as good as as good as they could. So it kind of made us step our game up to nice.

Chris Lalomia: 19:51

So Percent residential versus commercial when you were coming out of the recession and talking about this stuff.

Bryan Clayton: 19:56

Yeah, well, as I grew that business, I had to grow it from a 100% residential business to a 100% commercial business. So so over the course of 15 years it completely flipped and those two businesses are really two different industries. The, the residential maintenance and installation Services business for in landscaping, is completely different than the commercial side. Some companies are good at both, but it's very rare. And so we we move from from all residential to all commercial and and that's really kind of have to be in that commercial space to even Try to get your business acquired in that industry, because that's all, that's all any national providers are looking for is market share and Commercial services.

Chris Lalomia: 20:37

All right, before we get into green pal, let's talk about that. So you, you didn't pivot you, you had to move that needle over to commercial to get acquired at that point. Is that what you were thinking? Is that this is my exit strategy is to get to that, and did you have a timeline on it?

Bryan Clayton: 20:51

I really for for 13 of the 15 years I just wanted to build a prosperous, thriving company and that was my only North Star a profitable, growing business, that that my employees could benefit from, that I could benefit from. That I could. I could offer new Opportunities for the people that work for me, because this time went on like this is 150, some odd people. I Took it very seriously that that their livelihood was dependent on the growth and prosperity of the business, and so I. That was a. That was a big reason why we, why I did what I did, and and so it was like year 13 it hit me that I Kind of got to a point of discontentment where, where I wasn't being fulfilled by the business anymore, by my personal growth, and it wasn't something I intentionally set out to do. But if you're growing it, if you're throwing your heart and soul into a business, you should evolve into a whole new person every year or two and and that was the case for me learning all kinds of things I had never learned. I was. I was taking courses on things I never would have tried to learn. I was reading books I never would have read, and so it was always like new challenges and it. I guess year 13 Wasn't like I conquered the world or anything, but I had reached a plateau on my personal development and so for two years I was kind of sideways and that really weighed on me and I thought, well, maybe I've taken this as far as I can take it or want to take it. Maybe I should explore getting it sold. And From the moment I had that, that notion In my head, it was probably another two years before I got it sold, because I had to rebuild a lot of things into the business that weren't in it a lot of systems, a lot of processes, hire some people that I didn't didn't really want to hire, and and it took a while and there was another set of challenges all over again, which was kind of fun and and so ideally you, you work out proactive exit plan.

Bryan Clayton: 22:39

You there's a great book that came out about ten years ago called built to sell. That is really about this, about building a business in the mid market and building it to where it could be acquired, and it's do everything that book says and Work a proactive plan and you don't have to like go into this rush office mode where you're rebuilding a lot of things in the business and Because because if I had done that, if I had worked a proactive five-year plan, I probably would have had an even better outcome, yeah, but but still was able to get it done.

Chris Lalomia: 23:07

So in year 13, at that point, when you weren't feeling fulfilled, it wasn't like you should get like season tickets to the Titans and the Preds and Go run around all over the nation with your buddies and ski behind our boats. So you're looking for validation, chris, because I do.

Alan Wyatt: 23:21

I might take a few vacations, so I wasn't feeling fulfilled, so I he was looking for personal growth in a much different way than you, and I mean I'm sitting here just marveling at this arc because I'm assuming you were 17 years old when your dad yelled at you for playing video games and then, 13 years later, you're thinking about how do I position this hundred and fifty employee company into something that can sell to a national buyer is just dumbfounding to me. That's amazing. Well done.

Bryan Clayton: 23:51

Well it was. It was one of the you know things that you running a business that forces you to do it I.

Bryan Clayton: 23:55

So I never would have done those things on my own. It was being in in the journey of growing and trying to sell a business that forced me to level up and and and really kind of like punch above my weight and and yeah, I did all of those things too, I I. One thing about that business is you could not leave it for more than about two and a half days, so it wasn't like I could just travel everywhere.

Alan Wyatt: 24:17

You could never do this, chris. Uh-uh, level up or be level. Oh my god.

Chris Lalomia: 24:22

He said to and I was like on to an athlete days, oh my god. So you have had a crew who just walked off the job, left the vehicles just sitting right there and you had to go get over there to get it right?

Bryan Clayton: 24:33

Oh, Multiple, multiple times and situations much worse than that, and and every day running that business was what's organized chaos. It was a hundred hundred different problems every day and he's hoped they weren't you just hope they weren't super severe problems. Yeah you know, you could get a phone call and this happened to me a few times like, hey, you need to come over here on the job site. Well, what's wrong? You just need to come here and.

Bryan Clayton: 24:56

And and. So I was right around the corner. I drove up and, and sure, and there's, there's. I could see two guys Huddled around, another guy and and and, and he's got a tech, he's got a. One guy's got a shirt off and he takes a shirt and inside of his shirt he's got three of his fingers. Where he cut three of his fingers off, and and so you can. You can get whack with surprises like that on a daily basis. Running, running that business.

Bryan Clayton: 25:20

So no I couldn't, couldn't leave it, couldn't turn your, turn your back on it for long.

Chris Lalomia: 25:25

He said to two down, really weeks.

Alan Wyatt: 25:27

I'm shooting for months.

Chris Lalomia: 25:28

He was days. I'm like, oh crap, alright, so Well done on the acquisition. You get, you get the business sold. You are here, you are in your 30s and you're like now, what Well, did you already have the green pal idea? Did you already have that?

Bryan Clayton: 25:42

I know what I'm gonna do next in your head when you were selling the idea was one that I had probably in 2010 or 11 and started green pal in 2014. So it was one that was sitting on and I I but I didn't really want to start that business. I had really planned on building the first company and I plan on running it forever. Then I changed my mind on that, sold it and then I had planned after that to become like a capitalist. The book the cash flow quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki he describes the four different quadrants and and I kind of lived this book being self-employed, being a business owner, being an investor and I like to the idea of being an investor, I like the idea of just being a capitalist, just being in the middle of deals, investing in real estate, because at that time I had invested a lot in real estate and I just wanted to do more of that.

Bryan Clayton: 26:38

So I tried that for like a six months or a year and, man, it was really weird. It was like there was no reason to get out of bed anymore and if there was no, there's no mission. There was no, there was no why there was no, there was no thing that I was a part of that mattered, and it really like made me feel Unfulfilled and I thought, well, maybe I'll start another business. I don't want to do another landscaping company or another contracting company because those are really hard and the last one about killed me. Yeah, maybe I can start a tech company I. I watched the movie the social network. It looked really easy in that movie.

Bryan Clayton: 27:16

So so maybe I could just do that those guys just sat behind a laptop for a week and every other business looks easier.

Chris Lalomia: 27:22

Yeah, it does be right, everybody else's business looks easier, but I promise.

Bryan Clayton: 27:25

The grass is always.

Chris Lalomia: 27:26

The grass is always green on the other side, and and and so I think a lot of people, when they're sitting there, like we all have those days, man, like just I was gonna sell and then I'm gonna be a capitalist, I'm gonna sit back, I'm gonna invest in other people, because it's right, it's easy, right I can just sit back and I can just tell people what I'm doing and then take off and go to the golf course and it sounds.

Chris Lalomia: 27:47

It sounds like the panacea, it sounds like that's where you want to be, but Brian's kind of telling you what it's. What really goes on because I've heard this from a couple guys Is that they they missed the game. They, they actually missed being needed. They got, I got to have that purpose. I nobody needed me anymore and it drove me nuts. And next thing you know, I invested in a company and the next thing I know I'm the CEO of the company because I didn't like the way the guy was running. I've heard that story a couple times already and so you, you've lived it and it sounds interesting everybody. But Maybe it's not as good as you think. It's good for a good, maybe a month or two, but maybe not for the rest of your life.

Alan Wyatt: 28:24

I think you could milk it for a while. I'll milk it. Oh yeah, I mean I'm getting beaten down so hard now.

Chris Lalomia: 28:28

I'm, and I'm old, I'm older, wheeled right, so All right. So you had this idea. You were sitting there, you thinking about it. How did you start to operationalize it?

Bryan Clayton: 28:37

Yeah, so to your earlier point, it's like if it was, if it wasn't for me, then what? And the business is the answer to that question. And so I needed, I needed another mission. I needed like, if I don't get out of bed in the morning, why does it matter? And so I wanted to start another project, and I had this idea for green pal Because I saw every day running my first landscaping business as we, as we rebuilt the business from a residential based company to a commercial based company, we still sent 90 something trucks out every day.

Bryan Clayton: 29:07

And so we had, we had like name recognition and in Nashville, and but people would say, hey, I see you guys doing the, the call office, I see you guys doing the office Complex over here on Memorial Boulevard. I live right around the corner. Will you come knock my yard out for me? And and we would have to tell them no, we don't do residential maintenance. But here's four or five phone numbers of some people that do. Because we wanted to be helpful, no matter what you never know that person could be, you know, facilities manager for for Domino's or Pizza Hut or something. And so we, we, we wanted to always be helpful, and so we would always like a hundred times a day, basically refer out these, these queries coming into the office to smaller providers that could fulfill them. And so, in effect, we were kind of like this hand cranking Uber for lawn mowing, like on a local level, and and so I saw it.

Bryan Clayton: 30:03

So I knew the problem was there. I knew that they needed a solution. I knew, I knew somebody, I was fairly confident somebody was gonna build a platform to make it as easy as clicking a button. And you know, I thought, why can't that be me? It was very much like naivete as an asset. I didn't know the first thing about how to build a tech product, didn't know how challenging it was going to be, but Two guys wanted to start the business with me. We, we got, we got it together and we just started working on the first version. We didn't know how to code, so we paid a Development shop to build the first version of the app. That was a disaster and Then had to teach ourselves how to learn how to build, how to build software and how to code. And we did that and that took like another year To.

Chris Lalomia: 30:44

And then you're telling me you went from cutting grass to actually writing code.

Bryan Clayton: 30:48

Yeah, that's crazy.

Chris Lalomia: 30:51

And I've seen. There's nothing wrong cutting grass, but coding these things, man, that's been one of those things where I'm like, coming from the software world before I even started my own business, I mean yeah wow, wow, it seems like too completely different.

Bryan Clayton: 31:05

It really was. It really was, and managing the, the people in your orbit, is very different and you know, in my first company I had three full-time mechanics like that's. All these guys did was change transmissions and trucks and motors and Fixed lumbar's all day.

Chris Lalomia: 31:21

So I had to speak mechanic every day and and then, which usually starts with f, and go over there and pick it up, and so now you start talking to code guys, and if you said that they probably go to a team, right? Totally different skillset sir said mommy, please don't yell at me anymore.

Bryan Clayton: 31:36

That's totally different and yeah, cuz not? Then now I'm having to deal with engineers and developers and designers and content creators and copywriters and it's just very different worlds. Some things carried through like basic management and leadership and things of that sort, but a lot of but it was a lot of things that I had the new start all over again. I had to learn all over again and and it was very much, even though I had built a solar company I had, I was starting all over again as my first time first first first time business all over again. And and one thing that a lot of people assume is that I had just built and sold a company, that I plowed a bunch of money into the Second business. I did not do that.

Bryan Clayton: 32:13

Um, the guy that bought my company Gave me a piece of advice on the way out. He said, hey, let me give you a piece of advice. You know we've got this transaction done, you've got a lot of money. He said it's a lot easier to hold on to a filth to to a million dollars. Then it is to make a million dollars.

Bryan Clayton: 32:32

And that really stuck with me and I thought, man, I really don't want to screw this up. I never want to pick up another weed eater again. I never want to like mow another yard again. So so I took every dime I made from sale that company and bought real estate with it and so I was like poor all over again. I had no cash at all. I had cash flow but I was reinvesting that and more deals and and buying more houses and so, starting green pal, we had to sing for its upper day one and it was a lot of nights and weekends. It was a lot of, a lot, of, a lot of part-time hustling until we were able to get the momentum going where we're making a little bit of money.

Chris Lalomia: 33:06

Wow, that's you're right, because I would have said exactly. I was gonna ask you a question about your investors Were they active investors and partners, or were they passive and just put the money in?

Bryan Clayton: 33:16

well. So Normally when you're building a tech company like this, that's the first thing you do. You, you get a prototype going, and then you go around and and you hustle up About what they call an angel round of funding, which is these days anywhere from 500k to 2 million bucks, and you, you cobble it together across 40 or 50 people, and so I just thought that's what you had to do, and so I started to kind of half-ass do that, and so I was taking these meetings. I was going all over town, I was flying to Boston, new York, san Francisco, meeting with these annual investors and and Just having to like grovel and pitch them on this vision I had for like a twenty five thousand dollar check or maybe a fifty thousand dollar check. I mean, I had just come, I just come off of selling a ten million dollar business.

Bryan Clayton: 34:03

This, to me, was not something I had the appetite to do, so I burnt out on that really quick, I think, maybe three or four months of doing that BS. Well, I was just like I'm not doing that. I don't care how long this takes. We're just gonna build a company that makes money and and we're gonna self-fund it and and then then we won't have to worry about Raising capital and while it took like three years, we eventually were able to do that, and now and then we got to point three years in where we were raising an angel round every month and and so that you know just through sales in the business. So for us that was the route we chose. If I had to do it all over again, like if you made me go back in time and start the business all over again, the first thing I would do is raise money, because I know everything there is. I know everything I need to do to get to where I'm at. I'm at today and I could do in two years.

Chris Lalomia: 34:52

What took me ten. When you say raise the money, you're saying go do that angel investor Road trip around the nation and do all that and gravel for the 20 and 50.

Bryan Clayton: 34:59

I would take a different approach because I can speak a different language and have and show the validation and proof points To to where that could skip that and I could go straight to a series a and not not have to raise an angel around a funding. You raise some real money, right. Raise a raise five, ten million dollars.

Chris Lalomia: 35:14

So your original partners in this. Did they bring the tech experience to you? What was the complementary skill sets they had?

Bryan Clayton: 35:20

no, ideally you, you get a hacker and a hustler. So you get, you get like somebody who knows the business side, who can drive the project forward, whose sales oriented, just an organized, motivated person. And then you get a hacker who is just a developer, somebody who can code, somebody who's been tinkering with websites their whole life, and it was just wired that way. And then these two forces come together and one plus one is three, five, ten, and and that's that's where some of the greatest partnerships that we read about in the business books were just that a hacker and a hustler.

Bryan Clayton: 35:54

Steve Jobs and Steve West was in the act right and and that's not how it was for us we had three, three hustlers, three guys that all had a chip on our shoulder, wanted to do something bigger in life, wanted to build something that touched the masses, so to speak, wanted, wanted to be a part of something bigger than ourselves and wanted to invent something, because it's basically what we were doing. We were inventing a new product, and that's all we had, and we figured that we could learn the rest, and so that worked out for us. I don't typically Recommend or advise new founders go on and take on a business partner. I got very lucky and if you do decide to take on a business partner, try to find your, your, your business soulmate, the person you couldn't imagine starting the business without. That complements your skills so well.

Chris Lalomia: 36:44

That's not what we had. Getting in business with a partner is like getting married, but worse.

Bryan Clayton: 36:50

It's easier to, it's a lot easier to get a divorce from a traditional marriage. Then it is to unwind the cap table and unwind the business, especially one that half-assed succeeded. It's easier. It's easier to get a divorce. It is to get out of a business partnership.

Chris Lalomia: 37:04

All right, so let's talk about what GreenPel is and what it does and how the business model works. So you got in the tech world, you took a swing at it and you said what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pair up Landscapers to a need in the residential market.

Bryan Clayton: 37:18

That's right.

Chris Lalomia: 37:18

Yeah, okay, all right. So how does that work? How do you guys make money?

Bryan Clayton: 37:23

Yeah, so it's a true marketplace business model. So we connect buyers and sellers and we take a small piece of each transaction to fund the business. So it works the same as Uber, airbnb, door-dash, instacart, ebay it was eBay, famously was one of the first businesses to do this Connecting buyers and sellers and taking a piece of the transaction. So that's what we do and the small little world of landscaping, maintenance, and we do it just for residences. We don't do any commercial work. I mean, there's there is some that commercial activity on the platform, but not much. And so if you own or rent a home and you, you know, your, your long guy disappeared on you, which happens, your grass is three feet?

Chris Lalomia: 38:01

No, come on, you tell me they're flighty. No, yeah, handyman, he may have cut off three fingers, chris, right, I know. Or what did I just have? Guy says text, my scheduler says can't come to work. My truck is gone gone.

Alan Wyatt: 38:19

Okay, your truck is gone.

Chris Lalomia: 38:22

No, I know he was he was coming in his own truck. Oh, okay, that one of our trucks, because if it was my truck roll, we would have found that one quickly. But yeah, my truck is gone.

Alan Wyatt: 38:31

So this isn't an app, it's a. It's a, you know, as an website, yep. So you download that.

Bryan Clayton: 38:37

Pop your address in. You get five quotes from long care services nearby you. You can read reviews, check out which one you want to work with. Hire them right there. They come out, mow it, upload a. They upload a picture when they're done. So that's proof of the work. And then, and if you like what the job they did, you just push a button and they come out every week or every two weeks for the whole year.

Alan Wyatt: 38:56

Okay, I'm gonna get stuck in the weeds here, but I'm so fascinated by these kinds of businesses because you kind of you have to have the service providers, then you got to get the customers and then you got to put them together. But then you know, I'm assuming you roll this out geographically and did you start in Nashville and does it go, you know, market by market, or how does that all work?

Bryan Clayton: 39:16

You got to do all those things. So you've got you've got a chicken and egg problem Combined with it's a locally constrained marketplace. So you kind of got three challenges going on at once. So you got to match buyers and sellers. You have to have enough long-care Professionals. You have to have enough consumers that want to try it out at a local level. And it ain't just Nashville, atlanta, it ain't Atlanta, it's, it's alpha. If that's it's alpharetta, it's smirna, it's it's Jonesboro, riverdale, east East Point. You have to build a mini market in every one of those communities from the ground up, and so it's very tedious. It's a lot of hand-to-hand combat making all that happen, and it's taken us a decade to get where we are now. We started off just in Nashville. We spent three years in Nashville getting the, the app, to work right and getting the marketplace to work smoothly. Then we developed a game plan to roll out into every town and city in the country. Now we're in every every city in the country with around 300,000 people using it every week to get law milling.

Chris Lalomia: 40:17

And now do you have local representation there? Is it all based out of Nashville doing the work there?

Bryan Clayton: 40:22

It's funny when we started we thought you had to and in uber did too. Uber was blowing up. They were about three or four years ahead of us. We were able to kind of watch what they were doing and copy some of it in terms of how they were rolling it out city to city. So uber did that. They would go to a city, get an office, meet with drivers, recruit people very much like boots on the ground.

Bryan Clayton: 40:43

And so we did that with our first four cities and I know the inside of every coffee shop, every, every Starbucks, and the greater Atlanta area, greater Tampa area, the whole Nashville area, st Louis area, because I have I've met with thousands of contractors in those cities recruiting them to the platform. And as time went on, we began to figure out a way to do this in a self-service Model where we could. We could reach these, these folks through social media or through Google and Present them with with an offering that made sense from a landing page and they could sign up and use it without having to have that human interaction. But if had we not hand-crunked it like that in the early days hand-to-hand combat, kind of belly-to-belly, so to speak we wouldn't have known what to build, we wouldn't have known what the system needed to look like. So going.

Chris Lalomia: 41:33

Going back to your sales experience in the beginning, you wouldn't know what you needed to build unless you actually went out there and did it. And as you say codify, I say process the same thing. Yeah, I think that's the thing where you go. I had to do that in the beginning. You had to. You had to walk before you could start running. I think that's another key thing. It it sounds really easy to sit, push a magic button and then have a contractor go Yep, I sign up. And have a consumer go Yep, I'm working on it. Next thing you know you're getting an email from the consumer saying the guy never showed or whatever it may be.

Alan Wyatt: 42:01

I was thinking the same thing from the customer service side. You're the one that they're gonna call, I'm assuming. So that's a whole nother beast you have to tame, right.

Bryan Clayton: 42:09

Yeah, well, we make it really, really clear that we're not your lawn care service. It's the same as if you found a restaurant on Yelp, or you bought something on eBay, or you you got. You got Chinese food on DoorDash. If, if the Chinese food is like doesn't taste good, you're just gonna give the Chinese restaurant a bad Review. You're not going to barbecue DoorDash. And so, for us, we have oriented ourselves in the same way. We're not your lawn care service. We are a platform, a mobile app, where you can hire multiple lawn care services and test them out, try them out, find a good fit for you. And so, while we do have customer support and vendor support, we have to we make it real clear that you know we're not in, we're not in the business of being a technology based Landscaping company. We're in the business of making the landscaping industry work smoother. And so there's there is a distinction there.

Chris Lalomia: 43:00

Nice, all right. So as you built this, you said 300,000. I got that number In the way it works. Then, if I'm a, if I'm a lawn care provider, I have to have a website, I have to have Google reviews. I guess I have to have a presence. Is that what you? Is that what you guys dictate?

Bryan Clayton: 43:15

No, you need to be a hard-working individual with some basic equipment and some some basic criteria To sign up for our platform and then you you're in the lawnmowing business. So who we hire, who we, who we help? We don't hire anybody that work for us who uses our platform is the smaller one-man band Molly and a mower, peter and a pickup who doesn't have the online presence. They don't have the marketing, they don't have the Google reviews. Maybe they work full-time on a big landscaping crew and they want to make some money nights and weekends Mowing grass for themselves and then transition into becoming full-time into the business we help.

Bryan Clayton: 43:56

A lot of small business owners do that, and so it's. It's the. The smaller operators that don't have all of those systems Is who we're set up to help, because they can plug into our system. All they got to do is quote the work, show up, do a great job, follow the process. They get paid in 24 hours and then we help them get booked for the rest of the season with, with our, with our system, and so we're in the. We're in the, in the business of being like a, like a coach in their pocket, like a business in the box for for long-care services.

Alan Wyatt: 44:25

So so most of the other companies that you talk about, like Uber and DoorDash and stuff, those are single transaction businesses and what you're doing is you know you've got more of a contractual business, and so how does that work when you're matching people up and getting paid and things like that?

Bryan Clayton: 44:43

That was one mistake that a lot of Uber for X Companies made when they were, when they were first like exploding in 2014, 1516, there was Uber for everything. There was, you know, a lot of venture-backed companies. Uber for home cleaning was a big one, uber for Car washing, uber for valet parking, uber for home painting I'm literally always existed in. 95% of them are out of business, and one of the main reason why None of them worked out was because they treated the supply side as fungible commodities that could be interchanged, and so you don't really like Uber. You don't care who picks you up it takes you to the airport, so long as they pick you up on time and get you there alive. And then you don't care who like gives you the return trip. It could be a different driver, it doesn't matter to you.

Bryan Clayton: 45:34

Well, long care is not that way. You hire somebody and then, if they do a good job, you want them for as long as you own the home, and so that's how we have built the system. We've built it to where, as a consumer, can use it. Try a few people out, and then they got to lock in and set up a cadence for with who they want to work with. They can't use it like ah, it's Thursday afternoon, why don't you come mow my yard? Like it doesn't work that way it's. You have to set up a regular service interval as a consumer if you want to use the platform, you can try it out one time and if it's not a good fit for you, that's fine. But after that first visit you have to set up like a every week or every two weeks schedule.

Chris Lalomia: 46:16

All right. So as a consumer, if I go in there I ask for a bid, they get a week to give me a bid. I get that, I guess, and then I decide who I want to go with.

Bryan Clayton: 46:26

They get 30 seconds to give you a bid. Whoa, you get five bids back in less than a minute. How can you do that? Well, that's one of the things that we simplify for lawn pros.

Bryan Clayton: 46:38

The reason why it sucks as a consumer to get this service done is because all of these, all of these people operating grass cutting services, are out mowing yards. They don't have time to go run sales and run estimates and return your phone call and to deal with that sales prospect. So we take everything we know about your property, your address, how often you want it mowed, how long has it been since you last did it and then we take that data and then we look up what is the square footage of your lot and we present all of that to the vendor along with here's the average price for that area, that zip code and here's what you've been bidding and how you've been winning and losing business in this area. And so we package all that up into one kind of opportunity so, as a professional, you can quote 10 of these in five minutes, rather than having to drive all over town giving out estimates and leaving them in the mailbox.

Alan Wyatt: 47:33

I got you All right. So all the future services for that one client are booked through your platform.

Bryan Clayton: 47:38

That's correct In theory okay, yeah, and that's part of the agreement that vendors sign when they come onto the platform is that that visit and all future visits will be through the platform. If not, their account gets terminated, which doesn't happen often. In the early days we had quite a bit of that, and as time we have figured out how to add more value to where it just doesn't make sense as a vendor to go do it the old way anymore. It's like it's kind of like if you were taking an Uber ride and the driver, like pulling over 100 yards before your destination, saying hey, if you'll cancel it in your app, you can pay me $7 in cash and each of us can save a dollar. They wouldn't do that, and so GreenPal is the same way. Once you've done it, once you've run your business on the GreenPal platform, you don't want to do it the old way anymore.

Chris Lalomia: 48:25

Nice, well done. I know we're coming to the end, so what do you have? An excess tragedy for GreenPal, or is that something you're like? Nope, today I'm still enjoying it. This is my why I want to keep doing it.

Bryan Clayton: 48:34

You nailed it, it really is. In 10 years there's been some 100 hour weeks, but I haven't worked a day. In 10 years it really has been what I've wanted to do Every day I have worked on this project. It is what I wanted to do that day. So I'm having fun doing it and it's not like I'm totally altruistic, but I really do enjoy running this business and I really do enjoy helping small business owners prosper on this platform and helping people get where they're trying to get. So you never know if the right offer came maybe. But as long as I'm having fun and I'm halfway good at running this business, that's what I'm gonna keep doing.

Chris Lalomia: 49:18

I love it. This is great. Well, go check it out. So how many cities are you in now?

Bryan Clayton: 49:25

Over 300 cities in the United States. So if you live in a town with over 20,000 people, you can use GreenPowell to get a law and money service, or if you're in the business, you can double your business in a year.

Chris Lalomia: 49:36

There you go. You wanna get in business and double your business? Get in with GreenPowell. Go do it. We'll put all the stuff out there for you. This has been amazing. What a great story. Two arcs, right, I mean all the way from the beginning. So, brian, thank you so much for coming on, but we can't let you go without asking a couple questions and then we'll plug a few more things for Brian Clayton. So number one you've mentioned two books. What is a book you would recommend to our audience when they're thinking about either scaling or starting a business?

Bryan Clayton: 50:04

Well, I think everybody needs to read the e-meth by Michael Gerber.

Bryan Clayton: 50:07

I mean that's just like the Bible of small business, one that I try to reread every couple of years, it's like, even though it's about a lady trying to build a bakery, there's so many parallels with how do you think about building a business and not being in the business and being on the business, so that one is Table Stakes. Another book I think everybody should read just to be a better leader, better founder, of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr Stephen Covey. I mean, that is just a. I try to. I do read that book every year.

Bryan Clayton: 50:42

I mean, that is just a yeah, that's a great book about you know just how to live a more intentional, more effective life, and it's timeless. I think it was written in the 90s. Awesome book Bit long, it's gonna take a while to read, but it's worth it. And then the audio book is great.

Chris Lalomia: 50:58

Yep, no, it was great. Yeah, that was one of my first bosses. Recommendations to me was I needed to get more organized and go read that book.

Alan Wyatt: 51:05

I like the idea of reading books like that every year. I think that makes a lot of sense. I've got a golf book I read every year.

Chris Lalomia: 51:11

Yeah, I always pick up something, right. If you're open to, all right. What's in it? For me, it's just getting back to the basics.

Alan Wyatt: 51:17

Yeah, it's a great reset. Amazing what you're forgetting a year, yeah, especially a year. Like you, live A lot of miles. What did I do yesterday?

Chris Lalomia: 51:23

Oh, my God, we're back. All right. What's the favorite feature of your house?

Bryan Clayton: 51:29

The favorite feature of my house. I've got a little koi pond in the backyard that just got a little fountain in it nothing fancy and I like just sitting out there listening to the fountain, so that's my favorite feature.

Alan Wyatt: 51:42

It's got a huge smile on his face for our listeners by the way yeah it must be your happy place, all right, is it?

Bryan Clayton: 51:48

having that Very calming it's got a net. Yeah, I got to have a net. Keep the crap out of it.

Chris Lalomia: 51:53

Right, oh, the crap, or take the boat, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I had a client.

Bryan Clayton: 51:58

I've been eating them for a while, but yeah, you got to put net on it.

Chris Lalomia: 52:00

Yeah, I know. I had a client here in Atlanta and had a koi pond out back and I said oh wow, that's really awesome. He goes. No, it's not. I said what's going on? He said I just stocked that koi pond a month ago. They're all gone. I said what happened? He goes, damn birds. They came from everywhere and he couldn't figure out what was happening either. So he said now I know I have to have a net. So there you go, net your koi pond so you can go listen to it and enjoy it.

Chris Lalomia: 52:30

I didn't see you ready. Yeah, All right. What's a customer service pet peeve of yours when you're out there and you're the customer?

Bryan Clayton: 52:38

Yeah, it's like come on, guys, let's get into 2023. I can't stand when I go into a business that operates like it's in the 90s. I went to the dentist yesterday and the minute I walk into the office they give me a damn clipboard with a big pen and 10 pieces of paper I got to fill out.

Chris Lalomia: 52:57

You know who? Your third trip there today, yeah yeah, this week, this week the. H&t cleaned yeah.

Bryan Clayton: 53:01

You know who I am.

Chris Lalomia: 53:02

Yeah.

Bryan Clayton: 53:03

You know who I am. I've been coming here for a decade, you know that should all just be abstracted away and it should just happen like magic. And 20 years ago 15 years ago maybe, as a small business owner, you had an excuse because those systems were just so expensive. Nowadays, if you're a dentist, you can buy the best in class operating systems or run your dentist practice for probably 150 bucks a month. So yeah, stick your game up.

Bryan Clayton: 53:30

I once stayed at a hotel called Citizen M and, like this is a reimagined hotel from the ground up, a technology forward hotel, and I was able to check in and get my room key and get into my room without interacting with anybody. I had the key to my room and I walked in the hotel and went to my room and I'd have to check in and have to do all that BS around giving them my ID and credit card for incidentals, and that takes 20 minutes. So just thinking about ways to remove the friction for your customer and do business with yourself, sign up for your own company, sign up for your own product and see where the friction is and, these days, what you can plug in to remove that friction.

Chris Lalomia: 54:13

Nice? No, that's a good one, Citizen M. What city is that in?

Bryan Clayton: 54:18

Well, they're all over now. This happened to be in lower Manhattan at the time, but I am seeing them pop up everywhere now. They're blowing up and they own the real estate and they have the flag I sort of speak of the hotel brand, and so that's what enables them to create that experience.

Chris Lalomia: 54:37

That's awesome.

Bryan Clayton: 54:38

Truly the way it should be, everywhere you know, without having to do that rigor moror of checking in everywhere.

Alan Wyatt: 54:45

I'm so with you on the whole doctor visit thing. I've had a couple recently and I'm like same thing.

Bryan Clayton: 54:49

I've seen.

Alan Wyatt: 54:50

I'm my general practitioner. I've had for 25 years now.

Chris Lalomia: 54:54

Yeah, and then they always use this it's for HIPAA. Do you even know what that stands for? Just?

Alan Wyatt: 54:59

ask me has anything changed? Yeah, that's the only question you need to ask me.

Chris Lalomia: 55:03

Yeah, I mean, what can I possibly check today that you didn't already know? And I'm checking them all anyway. I mean, I've been nevermind. All right back to that, all right. Last thing. Last question Give us a DIY nightmare story, me and the home construction business.

Alan Wyatt: 55:18

I love hearing about things like that we already heard about the fingers, but it's not you, right.

Bryan Clayton: 55:24

A DIY nightmare story. Well, so in my first business I would see this a lot. We laid pavers as part of our construction division and I would see I can't tell you how many times I would see people do their own paver project and not do the prep work underneath and not like excavate and lay out the gravel and tamp it and they would do that, but like halfway do it, and so then like a year later you have these divots and like tire divots where the car would come into the driveway, and that would always like give me a chuckle because I know they went with a cheaper contractor or they tried to save some money. But yeah, it's like 90% of the work in that business is never seen, and I guess there's so many other parallels in life that that's true for also.

Chris Lalomia: 56:19

Yeah, great point. Preparations, everything on that. For sure, brian, this has been great. Green Pal is your thing. Is there anything else you wanted to push or tell everybody about?

Bryan Clayton: 56:29

Yeah, you know, check us out at greenpalcom and you can get five free quotes and see if any of them, maybe you save some money. So check it out, try it out and let me know. Shoot me an email or hit me up on Instagram. You can find me at Brian and Clayton. Let me know what you think.

Chris Lalomia: 56:41

Awesome. I love it. This has been great. All right, guys, there you go. You know what to do when you're 17 and your dad's yelling at you, but no, you just gotta keep pivin' and keep rollin'.

Alan Wyatt: 56:49

He just makes me wanna go yell at my kids.

Chris Lalomia: 56:51

Right.

Bryan Clayton: 56:52

There you go, let's do this.

Chris Lalomia: 56:53

All right, everybody, I gotta get out of here because daddy needs some sleepy sleep time. Get ready for my next party, let's go.

Alan Wyatt: 56:59

All right, Brian.

Chris Lalomia: 57:00

Thank you All right, buddy, we're out of here. Thanks, Brian Bye.