EP 59: Scaling an Online Service Business with Bryan Clayton

Ed Mysogland  0:00  
I'm your host Ed Mysogland. I teach business owners how to build value and how to identify and remove risks in their business so that one day they can sell their business at maximum value when they want how they want to enter whom they want.

On today's show, I needed to meet this guy about 35 years ago, his name is Brian Clayton from green bow and green bow for those of you who don't know, but soon will green PAL is an online marketplace that connects homeowners with lawn care service providers. So Brian, welcome. Hey, thanks

BrianClayton  0:57  
for having me on. It's great to be here.

Ed Mysogland  0:59  
Oh, man, it is exciting. I was telling you the pre show I have a brother in law that's in the business. And so hopefully I can get you a client out of this.

BrianClayton  1:07  
Well, dude, that's what we're built for. We're built to help him and we're built to help homeowners find and hire and schedule him. Well, I gave

Ed Mysogland  1:13  
I gave a little bit of an overview of you. And it'll be in the show notes, but can give us a kind of a short version of how you got to green bow.

BrianClayton  1:22  
Yeah, short version of a 20 year journey.

Ed Mysogland  1:27  
It's never short for an entrepreneur is

BrianClayton  1:31  
seven, real real like lightning round. When I was 15 years old, I was a hot summer day and I was playing Super Mario Kart in my in my room and my dad came in my room and said, Hey, we got a job to do, we're gonna go mow the neighbor's yard. And he forced me to go cut the neighbor's grass, he and I mowed the yard together. And at the end of it, we got paid 20 bucks, and we split the $20. And ever since then I'll just hook on hooked on being an entrepreneur hooked on being a business owner. And I just took that little lawn mowing business and just ran with it. By the end of the summer, had like 10 or 12 lawn mowing customers in the neighborhood. all through high school, I cut grass. And by the time I was in college, I had 10 employees did lawn mowing all through college as a way to pay for school. And by the time I graduated college, I was confronted with a decision. It's like, okay, am I going to cut fold and close up shop on this little lawn mowing business, and then enter the job market and essentially take a pay cut, or am I gonna double down and try to make this into a real company. Luckily, I clicked the ladder. And I decided, Okay, try to make a run for it and really make this a real business. And I ended up develop a little business plan. And by the time I was three years later, 25 years old, I had to get the employees. And I had a real real humming running business, that I was just growing the hard way through trial and error. And over a 15 year period of time, I grew that into one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee, in excess of $10 million a year in revenue. And in 2013, that company was acquired by one of the largest landscaping businesses in the United States. And so over a 15 year period of time, I grew that business from just myself and a push mower to over 150 people $10 million a year in revenue, and all the way to eventual exit, which which almost never happens in that industry. And it's the only company of its kind in the state of Tennessee to ever be purchased. And that at that scale. That was a hell of a journey building a traditional style a business from scratch. And after I sold it, I kind of retired for a little while. And then I got quite frankly, I got bored. And I decided okay, what's the next thing and it for me, it was just obvious that green power needed to exist. I saw what technology was doing for ride sharing, and what technology was doing for accommodations with like Airbnb. And I thought, okay, a marketplace needs to exist. So people can find scheduling pay the best fit lawn care service in their neighborhood, just at the touch of a button. And I recruited two co founders, and we just started working on the project, it was excruciatingly hard, a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. But we just kept at it. And now here we are seven years later, and over 200,000 people use the platform, and this year, we're going to do $20 million in revenue. So that's 20 years. Yeah.

Ed Mysogland  4:21  
So thank you for the lightning round version. So so when you look at your co founders, I mean what what did they I'm looking at your previous business model, you've deployed people and and they perform the service now you've got you know, and that's kind of where I was heading is what is green bow look like behind the bull the garden curtain? What does it look like?

BrianClayton  4:40  
Yeah, yeah, great question. So, to your point, I don't typically recommend people take on business partners when starting a business because usually it doesn't go well. Especially for especially friends. And so most businesses you can you can execute yourself and hire the right people. Ready to hire to help you get there. However, when it comes to a tech startup, you're not just executing a known business, you're, you're literally inventing something new. And so you have to, it helps to have co founders because you have to bring people with very different skill sets to the table. Somebody with a technology background, somebody with a design background would be helpful. Somebody who has built tech products before and then somebody also who might have some domain industry experience and whatever it is problem you're trying to solve. And so when when I was recruiting my two co founders, that's what I look for was one people that I could trust, and two people that that brought some sort of skill set to the table that we would need to get us through the first three to five years. And I got lucky. Honestly, the two people I ended up going into business with were previously friends of mine. But also they were as hard working individuals, they were, they were just people that really wanted more out of life wanted to build a successful company. And the three of us just got in a room and literally worked our asses off for four years before really we got anything going. But that's that's the road. That's what we signed up for.

Ed Mysogland  6:08  
What did that those first four years look like? I mean, was it because you weren't getting traction? Or? What? What? Yeah, what's the iteration of deploying the Uber of of lawn care?

BrianClayton  6:20  
Yeah, really, really, really, really tough. We saw the first summer summer of 2013, we knew enough to be dangerous, but we didn't know how to really developed software in the to the scale that we would have to. So we paid a development shop in Nashville, $180,000, to build the first version. And this was our own money. To this day, we haven't taken on any outside capital. This is our own money that we cobbled together, and we paid this shop, and we built the first version of what we thought green power would be. And we launched it, and it was a total utter failure. I mean, I think less than 12 people even tried it. And we thought, okay, what do we do do like the software is hard to use? It's not doing what we it? Is we what the vision is, we don't really know how to fix it. What do we do? Well, we thought we thought okay, well, first, let's see, validate, this is a good idea. At the time, we were reading a book called The startup owners manual by an author named Steve Blank. And one of the core concepts of that book is a quote, get out of the building. And what that means is, you have to get out from your desk, you have to get out of your office, you have to get out of the building, and you need to go talk to every one of your customers that will talk to you, for us was pretty easy. We only had like a dozen. But we talked and met with every single person that had tried the software. And we tried to figure out okay, where are we solving a problem we're solving? Where did we delight you as a user? Where did we let you down? What do you wish the software would do? And we tried to glean from that, were we on the right track? Where are we building where we actually solving a real problem? Or is the problem that we thought exist, and we were able to get enough validation just to keep moving forward? After that we started we had to figure Okay, we have to get more people to try this version of software. How are we going to do that, and taking a page out of like my former playbook 15 years prior, we passed out door hangers, literally passed out flyers all over Nashville, Tennessee, 100,000 of these damn things, and took us a month. And we got several 100 people to try the software. And we just kept running the same cycle over and over again, get people to use it, talk to them, get the feedback, bake the feedback into the next version. So after doing that over and over again, and I think even like myself, I got bitten by two dogs, we realized that 10 customers per dog bite was not a scalable user acquisition strategy. So we started develop not only to develop around the product, and what the product did, and how it how it delivered quotes quickly and how it made sure that the lawn mowing service provider would come on time when you hired them. And how we made the payments. work flows seamlessly when a homeowner pushes the pay their service provider that actually happened reliably like building the software to make that happen. But not only that, but billing is also building the software to grow the product to distribute it, we knew we had to figure out ways to grow the product in a technological way. And not by just passing out door hangers. So for us, we get a lot of people through word of mouth but we also get a lot of people just through Google Search organic traffic, you know people that are searching for I need a lawn mowing service nearby me we have crafted our product in such a fashion to where we rank for those those key phrases. And so that's how we get at least half of the people that try the platform even to this day.

Ed Mysogland  9:42  
The fascinating thing about your the platform is that it serves two people it's so it's serving, it's serving the business owner but it's also serving the vendor. And you know, this is a lot about this podcast is we talk about value and those guys that are out, you know that have businesses. As you think about creating value, you're creating revenue. And I think one of the primary questions is, how do I get paid? And how soon do I get paid? Because, as you know, working capital in that business is pretty intensive. You guys want to get paid at the end of the day?

BrianClayton  10:18  
There? These are very keen questions. And so where are you adding value? And what is the intensity and thrust of your value proposition is something that even like, no matter where you're at in the stage of running a business, it's something you always have to circle back to it's a fundamental just life of the principles of businesses. What is your value proposition? And is it intense? Is it not? Is it growing? Is it getting better, stronger? Or is it getting weaker for us, to your point, we have two sets of value proposition. So we have to have a strong value prop to the vendor side, the lawn mowing service professional side, and also the homeowner side, the man side, and we have to orchestrate a delicate balance between the two, because a lot of times the things that each side of that transaction that they want, don't necessarily align. So we have to try on air figure out what is the striking a good balance, and how do we orchestrate this delicate balance so both sides of that transaction get value, and also that our platform is bringing enough value to where we can extract a small piece of the transaction as a fee to run the platform. So this makes running a marketplace like this very complex. And not only that, but it's never been done before. And so you're trying to have to invent it as you're going and the only way to figure out your way through the darkness is just through trial and error. So that was one thing that took us a long time several years to figure out. Okay, how do we strike this balance between adding value to the service provider, and also to the homeowner? Well, to your point, getting paid on time and quickly is a big part of the value proposition for our service providers. Because a lot of times in a traditional like business context, they'll have to come out and mow a client's yard all month long. mail them a paper invoice at the end of the month, I hope that that person like mails them a check or Venmo them or pay pals them or your cash app or however they like to pay. And then they have to keep track of who paid me who didn't. And then and then a lot of times the lawn mowing guy and at the bottom of the stack of bills to get paid. And so and so this is a big part of our value prop to vendors is that, okay? When you go out and mow Mrs. Smith's yard, you upload a picture of that completed work. And in 24 hours, you get paid. And that's a big part of the headache that we saw for service providers to make their life easier to where they can just focus on doing a good job actually making Miss Mrs. Smith's yard look good. They don't have to worry about is she going to pay me in 3045 60 days. So that's that's to your point, that is a big part of our value proposition to vendors. And then, you know, to homeowners, it's when I hire this lawn mowing service professional, they will show up on the day they're supposed to, like Believe it or not. That's the problem. When we there's one that we didn't really understand, until we got into this building this thing was that there's a mysterious like case of the disappearing lawn guy. That's a problem we saw. Like we make sure that they show up. It's almost like the platform is their boss in their pocket. And it makes sure they show up on time and they do the things you're supposed to be doing to run a successful business.

Ed Mysogland  13:28  
Is there any vetting that goes on to the service providers? Or is it you can sign up? And you know, the market will dictate whether or not you're gonna stay on the platform or not? Yeah, great,

BrianClayton  13:38  
great question. That's when you're building a marketplace, that's always tough. You have to figure out the again, the balance of okay, do I do like a ton of vetting? And then I have like, a shallow supply pool, or do I do none, it's the Wild West and let like the invisible hand of the market, like decide who sucks and who's good. And for us, it's somewhere in the middle. We do that these these guys and gals on the front end in terms of we make sure they have proper equipment, we make sure they have a few customer references, there is a bank check and a credit check done on them to make sure that their business is in stable condition. And then we bet that they have a good social security number. So we vet that they're an actual human being and that they they're legitimately in the business and that they that they are operating in the lawn mowing business, because it's not like Uber where any any person that can this operate a motor vehicle can be a supplier, you actually have to have like a minimum threshold of equipment and experience to run a lawn mowing business. You don't want this any person with a push mower showing up to come cut your grass. That's not a good experience. So we do that them to a degree on the front end. But then, like the mechanics of the marketplace, govern and dictate a lot of who's successful and who is sidelined. So things like do you show up on the day you're supposed Do what is your we have a thing called a reliability rating, which is we score them service providers based on what how often they show up on the day they're supposed to, and it's just a percentage, they show up 78% of the time. And then that is something that informs homeowners on. Okay, I really need it done tomorrow for my dinner party. This vendor shows up 63% of the time, but this one shows up 98% of the time, I'm gonna hire them. It's pulling in, like the activity in the platform and measuring that and benchmarking it to govern, okay, these are the guys and gals that we promote. And these are the ones we sign up.

Ed Mysogland  15:37  
I got it. So it's funny, he says, so one of my neighbors, one of the neighbor kids was trying to cut their lawn and the woman's like, the problem with hiring high school kids is they it's great to support them. But the reliability is the problem. So yeah, yeah, you solve that.

BrianClayton  15:56  
Right. And it's something that we when we first so this is one of the things that about getting out of the building, and talking to your users. When we first launched, I came to the equation with 15 years of experience and from the from the vendor side. And one of the things when you run a lawn mowing businesses, you always complain about the competition. And you always complain about how it's a cutthroat business. And you always complain about how homeowners just want to find the cheapest person to do it. And that's the attitude and like the paradigm that I approached the building green pout, where it's like, oh, man, these homeowners just want somebody cheap. And that's what we do, we develop that we build that the cheapest way, you can find a grass cutting service, because you're gonna get five competitive quotes, so you can hire the cheapest one. That is the frame that I came to building the company with. What I came to realize after meeting and talking face to face with hundreds of users, is that that's not what they wanted. They wanted somebody to show up on the damn day they were supposed to, they wanted somebody reliable. We weren't building the cheapest solution, we were building the most reliable, fastest way to find a grass cutting service at a fair price. And to this day, that's the thrust of the value proposition for homeowners. It's push a button, hire a great lawn mowing service and get a good fair price. And who will actually show up even if your grass is four feet tall?

Ed Mysogland  17:20  
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you that. It's funny you say that because and I think your business and a lot of businesses don't say like that. But let's just say like that, for sake of for sake of discussion. This is about time, my time, I don't want to chase people, I want this done. When I hit the button, someone's going to do what I need them to do. And I and I don't have to spend my time trying to track it down. We still

BrianClayton  17:45  
time at the end of the day. And many businesses are in the business of selling time. They just don't know it. We sell time and in the sense of you're not actually having to cut your yard but also like you say, you're not gonna have the hassle this this person to show up and do what they're supposed to do.

Ed Mysogland  17:59  
No, totally. I have a painter I'm fighting with right now. I have reached out to this guy two or three times he did a great job on my house, and I'm doing my best to help him earn some more money. It is an absolute train wreck on why this is so difficult. It's it's mind blowing. Yeah, it is. It seems you have an online business now. I mean, because that's how you view it. Right? Yeah. I mean, this is an online company. Absolutely. It's

BrianClayton  18:25  
a digital 100% online business, and making the transition from a blue collar entrepreneur to a tech one. It was tough.

Ed Mysogland  18:33  
Yeah, I was gonna say that, because, and that was one of the things that I was going to ask you is, you know, so you brought in some partners, and you said, Yeah, you know, I trust these guys. But at the same time, you're in the deep end of the pool, you know, you don't know, the tech side of things. And and I think that's a one of the challenges that a lot of people face is, your value is, look, I've been a practitioner for 15 years, I know, I know how this program works. And I need to entrust you to make this work in the computer world or the internet world, or whatever you want to call it. To me, I see that was probably your greatest risk, even though they were friends. You couldn't defend yourself, because you didn't know enough about Is that Is that fair to say?

BrianClayton  19:17  
Great, great, great question, because that's exactly what I went through. And I came to the realization is like, okay, but if you have dreams of building a tech startup, you're going to have to learn to a degree, how to build software. And I was just so resistant to it, because that's not the way my brain is wired. But when you're delegating something, you have to be able to like delegate it from a position of stewardship, not one of abdication. So what I mean by that is like, education is like, Oh, I don't want to do this. I don't know how to do it. It sucks. It's hard you handle it. It's not a good position to delegate anything from but if you can delegate it from, from a standpoint of stewardship. It's like, Hey, I've been doing this for the last six months or a year. This is my process in my recipe for how it works and how we do it here, I need for you to follow this process that I have laid out for you. And you did it delegate from a standpoint of stewardship, it's much more likely good outcome. And so for me, I had to like get in the trenches and learn how to write software, I didn't want to, but I forced myself, I went to a boot camp and learned how to do code, and I'm still a crappy programmer, but I learned enough to be dangerous, and to also just be able to delegate from stewardship and not from an abdication, and also be able to call bullshit when somebody is was blowing smoke, and telling me that something wasn't possible. It's like no, actually, it is I know, because I've looked at this thing. And I understand that this is how it works. And we actually can do that. So no, go back to the drawing board and pull it off, being able to like know enough to be dangerous, and actually have done some of the things that need to be done. And what I think are almost table stakes when it comes to building any business, particularly a tech one.

Ed Mysogland  21:08  
So how did it translate into this one? I mean, I know you're the practitioner. But there's more secret sauce than just being the practitioner. What did you bring from the first business into the second one beyond?

BrianClayton  21:21  
Yeah, yeah. That's a good, that's a good question. A lot of people talk to me and say, Oh, well, you know, you have 15 years experience in lawn mowing. So you that was your silver bullet, your secret sauce. And no wonder you're successful, because you knew the business from the inside out. Part of that is true. But it's not. It wasn't just the thing that doesn't solve all of our problems. A lot of times, when you're in a tech startup, and you are inventing something that has never been done, you're always at a loss, and you're always wondering is if you're even building something worthwhile. And if you're solving problems, that was never really a problem for us. Because I did spend 15 years in the industry, I did see firsthand how difficult it was for a small service provider to run their business. And also how difficult it was for just a homeowner wanting a basic lawn mowing every week, or every two weeks to find and hire them. I saw these problems manifest on a daily basis. Matter of fact, running that business. As it grew, we no longer did residential lawn mowing, it just wasn't profitable for us. As the business grew, we attacked more the commercial sector, we would do apartment complexes, office, parks, malls, hospitals, things of that sort, big 100,000 million dollar contracts. And so a homeowner calling our office and saying hey, I need you to come cut my grass Thursday for $35 It's really just wasn't something we can mobilize our machine to go do and make a profit on. And so what we would do is one of the values that we ran that business by was to always be helpful, no matter what. And even to this day, it's just something like the folks I run my life buys like to always be helpful. If you can be, even if that person can't do anything else for you always try to be helpful. And so we would maintain a list of 20 or 30, small lawn mowing services by the phone, my office manager would keep it by the phone. And so somebody would call us like, hey, you know, I see your trucks all over town, can you come cut my grass Friday at three o'clock for $27? And we would say, Well, no, we're not a good fit for that. Thank you for calling us. But we actually don't offer that service. But here are five names and numbers for smaller providers that do. And a lot of times people would be appreciative and they would that would solve their problem. But what was funny is a lot of times they would call back. And they would say I called and left voicemails from either of those people. Nobody called me back. And so it's like, then you get into this thing of like, no good deed goes unpunished. And we would deal with this phenomenon all the damn time of trying to be helpful, but like even even, they would like dial for dollars and pull all of these people and still nobody would call him back. So I saw this happen all the time. And I just knew that, okay, these are problems that exist. I'm coming to the table with with knowledge that software can solve some problems and make some of this stuff easier, that did help increase the odds of our success. However, on the flip side of the coin is I didn't know how to build software. I had never tried anything like this before. I didn't know how to build a marketplace. I didn't know how to distribute this sort of thing. So all of those things took a long, long ramp to learn and figure out how to do

Ed Mysogland  24:46  
so what could you have done to accelerate that? Or are you glad that it did and that you didn't because being able to go slow and deliver it was a heck of a lot better than the rapid fire mistakes and building it that way?

BrianClayton  24:59  
Good. Good. good questions to ask. So a lot. So what could have helped it go faster honestly trying and failing on something like this three times. If you have built software before, and tried to go swing for the fences before and just like crash into the ground over a two or three year arc, you have knowledge that will help you do it better the second time. And matter of fact, you know, we read in the in the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or like in the tech press, like so and so company raises $100 million, or so and so tech startup just sold for half a billion dollars, and you're like, holy crap, that company is only four years old. How did they do that? Well, a lot of times we don't realize is like that founder, that startup team is like, on their second or third try, they have crashed and burned two or three times before this one. That is something that could have saved my team and I years, had we attempted to do something of this sort and failed, we probably could have shaved two or three years off of the process. But I don't know that there's a way to short circuit.

Ed Mysogland  26:02  
So you have first mover's advantage. You're the first guy and everybody's gunning for you. How do you stay out in front?

BrianClayton  26:08  
It's one of those things like you watch the battle as it unfolded, like the Uber and Lyft battle, right? Like, those two companies just threw billions of dollars at this thing. And what was what was amazing one time I read that one of Uber competitive advantages was a cost of capital competitive advantage. And what that meant was that they could raise money cheaper than Lyft was, therefore they would they can beat Lyft. I'm like, Yeah, Lee man, like, like, that's how that's that's how intricate these these fights become. It's like, that's their competitive advantage. They can raise money cheaper. For us, in insane like for us. Yeah, there there was and still is a competitive aspect to building this marketplace and becoming like the Uber for lawn mowing, to build the button that you push to get your grass cut. There's two or three other startups that are similarly oriented to us, though, but the reality is, all of our competition is just the status quo. It's people that don't think to go to Google or go to a digital means to download an app to get this done. They're still conditioned to thinking they have to call 20 people and leave 20 voicemails, and meet somebody out in our front yard and haggle over the price and then get it done and then mail them a check or leave cash under the doormat or Venmo them and and who pays the Venmo fee and all this crap, people are still conditioned to doing it that way. And so that is still the competition for us is like that status quo. Yeah, of, of conditioning, the masses that do it the easy way. And until like green power is in like the lexicon of the English language. And you know, when you say I'm gonna, I'll meet you there, Uber there, until somebody says, like, Oh, let me get a green power to get the grass cut. We're not going to be done.

Ed Mysogland  28:01  
Yeah, I get it. So I've done a fair amount of work in the landscape industry as far as just helping price position and subsequently sell companies like that. A lot of people it seems these days are looking for bolt on acquisitions that not necessarily for you. But I'm curious to know, whether or not youth think about, you know, the peripheral services, you know, the topical stuff, you know, the fertilizing, you know, we're seeing people with the dog waste, picking that up as part of right, you know, an all in one service. As you look at your business. I mean, do you think about that? Or is it more like, you know, what, I'm going to do what we're great at, and I'm not going to diversify, because I imagine that's a real hard question to answer for you.

BrianClayton  28:49  
It's a tough balance, because I don't think there's not there's not like one simple answer, go wide or go deep. I think it depends on what your strategy is and what your focus is, for us. Because we're self funded, and we're bootstrapped. We're, like constrained to focus on being the best in the world. And one thing, we are the best, easiest, fastest, cost effective solution to get somebody to do a basic grass cutting service for you. Now, after that lawn mowing goes well and less and then you hire them for the rest of the lawn mowing season on your green power app. Then there are other options to add on after the fact you can get mulching done trimming done seed fertilizer, Gutter Cleaning, snow removal, it unlocks all of these and ciliary services that go into needing to get your yard maintenance taken care of. But we don't offer all of those things on the front end. Because when somebody gets to our app or our landing page on our website, we need for them to be able to understand in three seconds, what green power it is and what it can do for them. And literally that gets signed up in Less than a minute, that that relentless focus on one simple thing is why we are where we are, is because it just makes sense to the person who has the problem that we saw. You know, you look at big companies that are at scale, like people in the travel space like Expedia or travel or TripAdvisor, like you can get on those websites and do a million different things, or Airbnb or, or even like a home advisor or something. But you look at those businesses, those businesses are multi multi, multi billion dollar companies that are at scale. As a startup, you have to focus on one use case one thing and literally do it better than anybody else in the world. And that's a strategy that works for us the going deep strategy on one problem and just doing it better is what our strategy is.

Ed Mysogland  30:43  
So as green palette grow and hold forever, or is it a Built to Sell kind of situation that you know, I'm going to build it to 100 million 200 million? And then I'll, then I'll think about it.

BrianClayton  30:55  
Great question. We were in year, six or seven right now just depends on when you when you started the clock. So for us, it's we're profitable, we're making money, we invest the profits back into the business to grow it, it's working, we get acquisition interest quite regularly from people in the lawn mowing, like what's interesting is like, people that manufacture lawn mowing equipment, are interested in buying our platform, because they're sure they can totally position themselves in the platform. Right? And, and so we do get interest. But for us, it's not something we're entertaining right now, because we just, we have so much more land to conquer that, that we're just gonna keep at it. Keep at it for a while. Yeah, no

Ed Mysogland  31:42  
pun intended. Land to conquer. You know, the funny thing is, it seems as though like you were saying, after you have an exit, and you kind of rebalance yourself, you were young when you exited. So now you're sitting here saying, Well, I've done one thing. Now the question is, you know, when you translate to your next endeavor, and your case, green bow, it's like, alright, is this going to be my legacy? And that's what I was referring to is, some people are like, you know, this is an investment, like any other investment, and I'm not going to be romantic about it, and others are, you know, this is my identity. And so that that was the that was the background behind the question.

BrianClayton  32:19  
Great question. Because my first business was very much that it was, you know, I had 100 some odd people working for me that those people were my family, I loved them, they one person, one person named like, their first child after me, like, I mean, I'm literally like this, this, like running that business was like my family. And when I sold that company, I shed tears because it was, it was like, I lost my identity, who I, who I was, was a very people oriented business, green PAL is still like a big part of my identity, who I am is something that like I'm most proud of, but to a degree, because it's technology based, it's less hand to hand combat, it's less so emotional, to that degree yet, the day, the day we sell, it will be an emotional day. But that first one really, really, really hurt because of that. So I think it might just be like the blue collar verse, Journey versus the tech journey. The tech might be more divorced from that, just because of the nature of it. But still, like my for me, like my businesses are the thing that causes me to level up to grow, to keep pushing forward, keep to keep getting better and better and better. And if I don't have a business that that causes me to do that, then I get stagnant. And I don't like being stagnant. So I had to learn that after selling the first company was that the very much thing that causes me joy is growth, and prosperity and getting stuff done. And my business is the vehicle for

Ed Mysogland  33:49  
that. So along those same lines, so where do you see this industry going? Not only GreenPower but just you're you're in a niche of the tech world, again, you're saving people time. Where do you see this industry going?

BrianClayton  34:01  
I think we're in day, one minute, one of day one of what you're going to be doing online and particularly in marketplaces, there's this minute one day one of marketplaces that get stuff done. So whether it be a marketplace to get a dog walker right now there's there's a great marketplace called rover that's that you can jump on and get somebody to walk your dog. Like that's just a an SSR. It's a marketplace tech product focused on that one thing, push a button, get somebody to walk your dog. Yeah. Yeah.

Ed Mysogland  34:35  
That'll only be once.

BrianClayton  34:39  
I think I think we're going to start seeing way more of these traditional analog business transactions, particularly when it comes to services, get ported online and get done in a in a more efficient manner. And were part of that in a very, very, very small way, bringing online things that are happening offline, not for this sake of just doing it, but because doing it this way makes it run smoother, makes it get done right the first time, makes it run easier for everybody and saves everybody time and money. That's why we do what we do.

Ed Mysogland  35:11  
From the outside looking in and my research for our interview, it kind of compiles your Facebook, your home advisor, your next door app, you know, when those people are asking for who do you know, this kind of consolidates all of your questions into one app, it's right at least from

BrianClayton  35:29  
day one. For this one simple chore, a lot of people need to get done. And that goes back to the going wide going versus going deep thing. You can go to Facebook, Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, thumbtack Craigslist, and you can get a list a name and list the names and numbers for people that claim to mow yards. But you're still going to have to dial for dollars, you're still going to have to pull all of the service providers leave voicemails and negotiate price of all of them. Our app and platform handles all of that in less than a minute. And so that's for us part of our strategy is going deep on this one chore, this one thing and just make it as easy as magic in this letting people use it and move on with their life. That's what we do. I get you.

Ed Mysogland  36:18  
I really appreciate you going past our time. So got a couple more things I want to ask you. I ask every one of our the people I interview, if you had one piece of advice to give to our listeners, which are business owners and their advisors that would have the most immediate impact on their business, what would it be for

BrianClayton  36:35  
people just getting started that one piece of advice would be to do things that don't scale. So a lot of times you get into this idea, you're going to start this business and you want to like do it all from behind the scenes and you want to like just like build the thing to make it run on autopilot, and you want to do the glamorous stuff. But the reality is, when you first get started, you're gonna have to do things that don't scale. And this was one of the things that was humbling for me, you know, I'm coming off of an exit $10 million business, I didn't do residential lawn mowing anymore. And now I built this app. And I'm like, Hey, will you try it for your grass cutting, please. You know, like, that was very humbling. And like going through the motions of passing out flyers to get people to use it, like something we had to do. And then you know, even a year two years later, as we're building the software, I'm still trying to figure out how do we build a user experience that people will want to use. And one thing I did was I drove for Uber drove for Lyft, Postmates, DoorDash, I'd walk dogs on her on rover and wag I cleaned houses on Homejoy. I did handyman crap on TaskRabbit. And I did that because I wanted to see how these these companies were architecting their workflows, and how they were using technology to solve problems in the real world. And so that was something that didn't scale that I did that then like unlock all kinds of key learnings on how we were approaching our what we were doing. So that would be a piece of advice for people getting started like the first two, three years, do things that don't scale, and then figure out ways to automate those things.

Ed Mysogland  38:12  
So what's the best way we can connect with you?

BrianClayton  38:14  
The best way to get at me is email. Brian B, Ry n at your green pile.com. Shoot me an email. I love helping other business owners and entrepreneurs. If you email me just kind of put me on second or third base with what your business is and what your what your situation is and what question you have. And I'll be glad to help you in any way I can. I'm not the smartest guy when it comes to this kind of stuff. But I have gotten it out building two businesses from scratch. So if I can help you, I will well,

Ed Mysogland  38:42  
for those of us that have grass. And those of us that have brother in laws that are in the business. How about that? Where do homeowners get in touch with you?

BrianClayton  38:50  
Yeah, heck yeah, just download green pile in the App Store or the Google Playstore. Or just go to your green pal.com. Any of those ways you can if you need your grass cut, you sign up in less than a minute. And you'll get quotes from lawn mowing services nearby you that you can hire at a touch of a button. If you're in the lawn mowing business or you're thinking about getting into it. Green pal can help you make $100,000 in your first year

Ed Mysogland  39:12  
right on O'Brien Hey man, I'm so grateful for the time that you spent with us and the experiences that you help business owners maximize their value. For all of you listening. We're grateful for the time that you spent with Brian and I and to learn more about Brian like he said go to to your green bow.com Sign up today. And if he can help you all have everything in the show notes for your convenience. And Brian I'm so grateful. Thanks for spending some time with me and I sure enjoyed learning more about you your business your journey again and we'll be down in Tennessee this fall. So hopefully COVID will stay clear and and we'll get to enjoy your great state.

BrianClayton  39:53  
Right on thanks for having me on.

Ed Mysogland  39:54  
Hi, buddy. Thank you.