GreenPal Founder's Hard Startup Truths | Bryan Clayton

#026: Bryan Clayton, an accomplished entrepreneur, started out as a young landscaper with a push mower, gradually scaling his business to over 10 million in annual revenue and eventually selling it for eight figures. His journey from the landscaping industry to the tech world led him to found Greenpal, which has been likened to the Uber of landscapers. With his wealth of experience in building, scaling, and successfully exiting service-based businesses, Bryan offers invaluable insights into achieving sustainable growth and profitability. Small business owners looking to elevate their ventures will benefit from his expertise and practical strategies for navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship.

00:00:00 - Bryan Clayton's Entrepreneurial Journey
00:01:43 - Mindset in Building a Sellable Company
00:05:27 - Building a Sales Engine
00:09:53 - Building Greenpal
00:11:19 - Sustainable Business Growth
00:12:48 - Embracing Entrepreneurial Freedom
00:15:14 - Reassessing Work and Passion
00:18:06 - Learning from Failure
00:20:48 - Self-Taught Success
00:24:29 - Market Dynamics and Growth Strategy
00:26:07 - The Hard Part of Starting a New Tech Company
00:27:11 - The Challenge of Marketing
00:28:20 - Content Marketing and SEO
00:29:18 - Challenges of Marketing Spend
00:34:01 - Efficient Pricing and Platform Benefits
00:39:24 - Challenges of Running a Small Business
00:41:15 - Triage and Problem-solving
00:42:08 - Building a Personal Brand
00:45:20 - Business Growth and Personal Development
00:50:07 - Delegating and Learning from Mistakes
00:52:08 - The Importance of Learning Through Action
00:52:46 - Learning by Doing
00:53:21 - Conclusion and Parting Wisdom
00:53:28 - Final Thanks and Farewell
00:54:04 - The Reality of Entrepreneurship

Bryan Clayton's Links:
IG: bryanmclayton

Dylan's Links:

• 🎙️Podcast: BusinessConfessionsPod
• 📽️YouTube: @BizConfessions
• 📷Instagram: DylanWillx
• Linked-In: /dylan-williams

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Past Guests: Chandler Saine, Daniel Martinez, Stratton Brown, Lee Maasen, Nico Lagan, Daniel Roman,Tim Branyan, David Van Beekum, Nick Hutchison, Deirdre Tshein, Sanchez Zehcnas, Christina Lopez, Keigan Carthy, Hemant Varshney, Taniela Fiefia, Jennifer Blake, Nicki Sciberras, John Chan

Transcript

Track 1: 0:00

I've got a really cool guest today, guys. So this guy started a landscaping company when he was 15 years old, scaled that company to over 10 million in annual revenue, and then sold that company for eight figures. And then now started a tech company that they refer to as now as the Uber of landscapers. So Brian Clayton, welcome to the show.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 0:24

Dylan, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me on, man.

Track 1: 0:26

Good. Did I butcher any of that? Is that all right?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 0:28

No, that's about how it went down. Yeah, I started off me in a push mower, mowing people's yards in high school. and little by little grew that up into a landscaping business for around 150 employees.

Track 1: 0:40

Wow.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 0:41

then in 2013, big national company wanted to buy my business. And so I was, I navigated the exit of that company. And after that, I got. Got bored. I took a year off and figured out what do I want to do with my life now? and I thought, somebody is going to build an app that works like Uber, but for lawn care, why can't that be me? And, told two friends about the idea and they said, dude, that's a great idea. I'm going to quit my job tomorrow and start that with you. and now GreenPow is a 10 year overnight success. we have around 300, 000 people using. This app to get lawn mowing services done. So 22 years off with just me and a push mower. So who would have thought?

Track 1: 1:20

Holy cow. So I want to go back to building up peach tree, which is the landscaping company, because building a sellable company is not, you don't do that by accident, right? and I want to talk about the mindset that you had not when you're 15, but, built as you built that up, what was the mindset that you had to get that to it? A sellable state.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 1:42

Yeah. it's your point. It is challenging to sell a service based business like that. It doesn't happen very often because a lot of times it's hard for them to run without. The owner, and a lot of times they're just organized chaos and it, and the owner really has just built a job for themselves. and many times it's a good paying job, but it's hard to sell those types of companies. And so that's how it was for me. and I really didn't, build that business to sell it. I really thought I was gonna run that company my whole life. I was, I thought it was gonna be a business that I was gonna hand down to my kids one day. And I was running the business and something was happening as the time, as time went on, I was leveling up as a person, every year or two, I was growing into a whole new person. almost a passively, I didn't realize it was happening, but I would look back and I wouldn't like the same things. I would be reading different books and I would have different friends and I'm different things would interest me. And because the business was requiring me to evolve. And that was a really fulfilling thing. if you are throwing everything you've got into a business, into a project, you should be indistinguishable to yourself to two or three years at a time. you should be speaking a different language almost. and so that was like really fulfilling to me. And then that plateaued. at about year 15, that almost stopped. and I became very discontent with running the business for about two years and it, and almost was miserable running it because it was no longer challenging in that way. And, and I thought, man, I've got to create the space for me to do something else. I don't know what, but I've got to, I've got to create the space for me to start my next thing. And so had gone to conferences for my industry and you hear these talks from people who had sold similar types of businesses, I thought, I'm just going to sell my business. then I realized. Man, you have not done this right. you have not built this business to sell it. you have actually built this business to not sell it. And so I was confronted with the reality that I was going to have to really take the business down to the studs and rebuild it from the inside out. Build it to sell really. and there's a book called built to sell now. That's really good. That talks about this exact thing. I didn't have that book at the time. I wish I did. So I guess the lesson is if you do ever want to sell your business, start that today. start thinking like that today, because the way you run a business that you intend to sell is 180 degrees completely different the way you run a lifestyle business or the way you run a business that you intend to hand down to friends and family or you just tend to run forever. but so in a weird way, taking the business down to the studs and rebuilding it, like was fun all over again, not fun, but it was like challenging and rewarding. And by the time I had completed that process, I almost in love with it all over again and almost didn't want to sell it. but at that time it was like, I had already made my bets and it was time to see it through and took two years, two years to get the business, through that process, but I'm glad I did because it was challenging. It was rewarding. I learned a lot. and then now. I was able to start that process all over again with GreenPow. I had built and sold an eight figure business, but still I was like a first time founder all over again, building green pal. And so I got to start that process of evolving into a whole new person every year or two. And that's what I was after.

Track 1: 5:06

Yeah. Yeah, it's one thing to start something to build, and when you're 15 to, of course, like you said, it's a job. It's to make, have weekend plans at that point. And then it evolves into something more. What were those, systems that you had to set in place whenever you had, whenever you sit, whenever you, did you read that book and then have to go through it? Or is that something you stumbled upon? Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 5:31

and I'm reading the book and I'm like, Oh, yeah. Oh, so here's one big mistake. that I made the first 15 years, I didn't read, didn't read any books. I hadn't read a book cover to cover until I was probably 35 years old. And so that was a stupid thing. And so even if the book. I don't know if it was written at the time. I don't think it was, but even if it did exist, wouldn't have read it anyway. It was starting the tech company green pal that forced me to pick up books and read them because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I had to learn, I had to learn new things. And so I stumbled upon that book and I'm reading the book built still and I'm like, geez, man. I wish I had this book five years ago, because it would have saved me a lot of headache or 10 or 15 years and probably would have doubled My ultimate, outcome. And and yeah, man, like that's another lesson. if you intend to sell the business. proactively work a plan, but also read. You should always have a book that you're reading. You should be knocking out a book a month on, on things that are about what it is you're trying to do.

Track 1: 6:35

Yeah. So you don't learn those things in school. Who are you learning from at that time?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 6:41

no, nobody teaches us how to run a business. we're not taught budgeting, marketing, management, leadership. not taught people skills. We're not taught how to do things like PR. We're not taught salesmanship. We're not taught any of these things. And so you have to learn them the school of hard knocks. And I guess it was year four or five running the landscaping business that I realized that I wasn't in the landscaping business at all, that I was actually in the sales business and that I, and that. The landscaping was table stakes. And that was one thing that, that a lot of, that I was mixed up in, and a lot of my competitors were mixed up in is that we all thought that the main thing that we should be focusing on was green the bushes were and how green the grass was and how beautiful the flowers were. And really that stuff is just. of course

Track 1: 7:36

That's a byproduct.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 7:36

be. It's of course it should be. It's like going to, it's like going to a restaurant and the food being hot, of course it should be. and actually it's the processes around that connect that value with the customer that you should be spending all of your time on. and I had that epiphany, year five, When I went to a conference, and at the time there was a big national company that was worth about a billion dollars in the space and they were talking about their sales process and I thought, man, I can run a process like this in my business. And so I started to develop that process and try to figure out, okay, this is how we're going to connect what it is we do. With the types of customers we want. And we're going to spend all of our time perfecting that one step at a time. And I ran that process for a very long time, me personally. then I was able to codify it to where I could then teach somebody else how to run it. then I made the mistake for two years thinking that, Oh, there was something so special about our industry that I had to hire somebody who already had industry experience and put them into my business. And then I realized actually, no, there's nothing. Special about our industry that I needed to hire a motivated, sharp individual, and then teach them our process. and so that, that was something that took me like another two or three years to figure out. So all in took me five years to figure out how to build a sales engine at the core of the business. and, I could probably do it in five months now, knowing everything I know. and any entrepreneur. Can do in five months. What took me five years, because all of this stuff is at your fingertips. You can go to YouTube university. You can listen to podcasts. You can take sales courses. you can do all these things a lot easier now than you could. And in 2002, 2003, when I was trying to figure this stuff out, just by doing it wrong and talking to a handful of people who were doing it right, it was much more challenging back then.

Track 1: 9:29

Yeah, absolutely. So you built this thing up, you had a successful exit, you started another company, green pal. And what I term that this kind of company is, like a two sided marketplace

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 9:45

That's

Track 1: 9:45

to where, yeah, it's a marketplace for customers and then also for businesses to advertise as well.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 9:52

That's exactly right. It's it connects people who need lawn maintenance services with people who offer those services. so he's you have a chicken and egg problem that you have to crack and solve. and Uber has this Airbnb has this Instacart door dash. All of these types of services who are connecting suppliers and buyers have this problem and we have it in the humble world of lawnmowing. And so set out to solve that problem. And we started off in Nashville, Tennessee, where I'm from and spent three years in Nashville trying to figure out, okay, how do we market this? and help them with their day to day life and help them improve their livelihood and drive them more business. And then at the same time, market it to homeowners and get them on and make these matches and to help them conduct business in a way that's better than the status quo. And in the beginning, early days, it wasn't, it sucked. It wasn't a good experience. And so we had to keep making it better and better and better. And we spent three years just in Nashville until we launched our second market and our third and fourth. And now it's nationwide in the United States. And it took a long time, took a decade to build that out. and we're at around 300, 000 people using it every week for lawn mowing. And we want to get to a million. We want to get to a million people using it. And then we want to go to Canada, UK and Australia.

Track 1: 11:12

Yeah. didn't know this. You're from Nashville.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 11:15

That's right.

Track 1: 11:17

So am I. Are you here right now?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 11:19

Very nice. I'm actually sitting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee right now at my mom's house.

Track 1: 11:23

Oh wow. You're not too far from me. I'm in Brentwood right now.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 11:25

Okay. Very cool.

Track 1: 11:27

Yeah. That's awesome. I had saw where you had mentioned that you were in the Nashville market when I was just researching on you before, but I didn't know you're from here though. So that's awesome. where'd the idea go?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 11:36

usually I'm traveling somewhere. So

Track 1: 11:39

Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 11:39

as I built this business out, we. we in the early days, first year, we were going to go down this path of, okay, let's go raise an angel round of funding, and then we'll raise a series A round of funding and B and C and so on. And learned that wasn't for us. it's like a get rich or die trying type of thing. And there was a lot of Uber for anything ideas, Uber for car washing, Uber for laundry service, Uber for a valet parking that all did that. And there was other Uber for lawn care. also that, that, and they all crashed and burned because they all raised a bunch of money. then they spent it all on Facebook ads and Google ads and other bets that didn't pan out. And, they flamed out. So luckily we didn't go down that path and we focused on, okay, let's just build a sustainable business. That's profitable, slow and low. And that took seven years to build it, to get it to profitability. But then once we started getting profitable, we started We got out of our windowless office in North Nashville. we have an office in Germantown and literally has no windows. And we sat in that thing for six years. my two co founders and I, and, started to live a little. and so my lifestyle now is I travel. 11 months out of the year. I'm usually right now I'm visiting my mom, but I'm usually in some country in the world, checking someplace out and running green power from that location. that's one of the cool things about tech business is, is you can run it from anywhere. And I think that's me reconciling the fact that. first 15 years of my entrepreneurial journey, man, I could not leave that business for more than 48 hours. I've been three days max. If I was gone for more than four days, I would come back and there would be a big crater with

Track 1: 13:23

Things on fire.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 13:24

Yeah. so now, now, took 20 years, but now I'm starting to, enjoy the journey.

Track 1: 13:30

Yeah. Yeah. That's a similar path that I took, my background's in real estate

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 13:34

huh.

Track 1: 13:35

and,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 13:35

It's great business, but hands on.

Track 1: 13:38

Very hands on, yeah, and I'm such a huge visionary. I just have great ideas all the time, and I'm always starting another business or something. I got a few of them, doing pretty well for I say for me, we did seven figures in a few of them and, I had three or four going at a time and I was still, Owner operator and three out of the four.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 14:00

Yeah.

Track 1: 14:00

So I was just so burnout at one point, and then money doesn't matter at that point. It's I was just, is this really worth all this? and shut down a lot of them, hired out somebody else on something else, and then tried to retire, I guess I would say, when I was 30.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 14:13

Yeah,

Track 1: 14:14

And, got bored, got really bored and then started a podcast, had an app idea or a software idea. And I've just been dabbling in that stuff, just taking my time and figuring out what I really want to do,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 14:24

it's a very similar that I experienced. and so touching on that, when I sold my first company, it wasn't like I was yacht in the Caribbean wealthy or something, but I didn't have to. Work anymore. And so it I guess you could say I got on first base or second base. and so I had read the book, the cashflow quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. And in that book, he talks about this mysterious figure called the capitalist. And the capitalist is just this dude who rolls up and he's just in deals. And he's just investing in deals. and a lot of times he's rolling into deals with none of his own money just cause he's there. And I'm like, man, that sounds really cool. I want to be that dude. So I started to do some of that stuff and then it's, it was fun for three months. And I was like, no answer to the question. I didn't get out of bed this morning, why would it matter? if it wasn't for me, then what, for 15 years running my landscaping business. as humble as a landscaping business is, it was the answer to both those questions. there was 150 people that depended on me to show up and wrangle that thing and make sure it ran smooth and every one of those people had a family, that's just two or 300 people that depend on. There were thousands of customers that depended on it. So it's like that was gone. And so stuff got existential real quick. and so then I thought, I needed another project. I needed another thing to pour my passion into. I'm still, I was only 32 at the time. I'm a still a young man. and I thought, I don't want to start another construction business or landscaping business or another blue collar business, because that almost killed me. I want to start a tech. I want to start a tech company because that'll be so much easier. and it looked easy in the social network. Why can't I do that? And I was quickly confronted with reality after about six months of starting GreenPow that, man, this is 10 times, maybe a hundred times harder that all of the reasons why the first business sucked make this business also suck. But there's also like this other element of. You're inventing a brand new thing from scratch that does not exist. and nobody tells you that going out and starting a landscaping business or a construction business or a four off or a home remodeling business, restaurant, dry cleaner, whatever, these are all really hard businesses, but you're not inventing a new way of doing things,

Track 1: 17:01

Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 17:02

a new way of doing things. And usually technology products are. Is a hundred times harder. And, I just made a decision to myself that, I already tried to hang it up, And so from now on, I'm just going to work on my best idea. And so if I get a better idea, I'm just gonna, I'm going to do that. I'm just gonna work on my best idea as hard as I can. And green pal was my best idea. And I haven't had a better idea in 10 years. And so I guess I'm lucky that I'm not terribly creative because I've just stuck this thing out for a decade and now it's doing well. And I don't know what the lesson there is than the stuff's hard. None of it's easy. There's no easy way to make money and you still have to have some kind of outlet to pour your life's effort into to feel fulfilled, I believe.

Track 1: 17:48

Yeah. And you're going after it at a time too. There's no, it costs, and you correct me if I'm wrong. I would say you're in 150, 000 in developer fees, Yep. At the beginning, just to test something out.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 18:00

yeah, you nailed it. exactly what it was. It was 150 grand just to test the idea.

Track 1: 18:05

Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 18:06

only to learn, that if we're going to be in this game, we can't outsource the tech. And so that was the first lesson we learned. That was a big punch in the gut. And in the gut, we thought, so here we are, my two co founders and I, who are friends of mine. We thought that we could just outsource the tech and we could do the marketing and like the design, which we didn't know how to do that either. and, and then we could just do all the other stuff. Yeah. Go to the conferences and all the stuff that's fun.

Track 1: 18:37

Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 18:38

And so we did that took a year, pissed away 150, 000 paid a development shop to build the, what we thought the app should be launched it. And man, it was like dead on arrival. It was hard to use clunky vendors, hated it. Consumers hated it. And, was reading a book at the time called the lean startup, which is like the Bible of trying to pull one of these things off.

Track 1: 19:02

Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 19:02

the Eric Reese, the author basically tells you like two things. You got to get out of the building. You got to get out from behind the laptop and you got to go talk to the. Two or three customers you have, face to face, belly to belly, and you got to let them tell you the baby is ugly and only through that do you begin to understand, you on to something or not? And so we did that and, cause just out of paranoia and it really, just out of a loss for, Not really knowing how to proceed. And so we, I know the inside of every Starbucks of Nashville, Atlanta, and Tampa, Florida. and so meeting with our early users. would always tell us everywhere. It didn't work. Oh, I signed up. I didn't get quotes. I signed up. I got quotes. I hired somebody, but they did a half ass job. signed up. I got quotes. I hired somebody. Their lawnmower deck was too big for the backyard. I signed up, I hired somebody. He didn't show up. I signed up, I hired somebody. He got a DUI. I signed up, I hired somebody. He mowed with dull lawnmower blades. I could go on hundreds of more reasons why it didn't work. and they would tell us all the reasons why. This thing, we were like working seven days a week on 12 hours a day sucked, but they never said, I don't need this. They never said, I don't want this. And so we took that as validation that we were on the right, right track. we were thinking, what if it did work? like that would be awesome. and so we, we had maybe 20 or 30 people using it. At the time. And we just held on to them and talk to the talks to them all the time and rebuilt the whole thing while teaching ourselves how to code. So I took classes online. and my co founder went to, I don't know if it still exists, but he went through something called the Nashville software school, was an eight month and he learned Ruby on rails programming and he put 7, 000 of tuition on his credit card that he didn't have to go to this thing. so he would go all day at school, grown ass man, 35 years old, go all day at school, learning how to code and had never coded before. It didn't work all night and on weekends rebuilding the backend of this app. and then I would I'm like on YouTube. Learning HTML and JavaScript and CSS to build the front end of what he's doing. And we cobbled together a whole new version of the platform that was baked in what our like 20 or 30 users were telling us. And, and that worked, were able to, we were able to hold on. So like we get another 10 users, nine of them will stick around. We get another 50, 30 of them will stick around. And so we were able to like bank users and then we set a goal. Okay. We got to get a hundred people to use this thing in a week. And if we can do that. Then we can proceed. And if we can't do that, we just need to quit. we did it. we set that goal and we got, we hit that in a year and it wasn't like we were making any money or anything, but that was like validation to us that if we get to a hundred people using it in a week, I know we can get to a thousand. And if I can just double that three more times, then maybe I'll have a business. And, fast forward 10 years later, we were able to double it like four more times, and now we're trying to double it two more times to get to a million people.

Track 1: 22:33

What's the next step to get it to your next double?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 22:37

Yeah, we, we're working on the next double up. and so the big thing that we have to solve now is it works. it, it works. You sign up, if 90, if a hundred people use it, 99 of them are happy. There was once a point in time for a hundred, if a hundred people didn't use it, but if 10 people use it, nine of them were pissed off. So we had to solve that problem first. and it took years, but now it works. but it's a weird phenomenon. Like it's not one business. It's 300 businesses because every city, like I'm sitting in Murfreesboro, Tennessee right now, visiting my mom. you're in Brentwood, Tennessee. It was a coincidence. I've never done a podcast with somebody so close, but that's cool. but even though we're so close geographical terms, you might as well be in Portland, Oregon, as far as green palace concerned, because no vendor. services, this market goes to Brentwood and vice versa. so we have to build up the Brentwood, Tennessee market, the Nashville, Tennessee market, Murfreesboro, Smyrna, Laverne, Hermitage, good, let's feel like every vendor only drives about a 10 minute radius. Maybe some might do more 30 minutes, but that's the max just because it's not economically viable. If they're going to drive 40 minutes to your stop. it's going to cost you 300, 200 bucks, and you're not going to pay that. So they got to drive five, 10 minutes. And and really it's our platform's value proposition to drive route density to the landscapers that use it. So they get more lawns on the routes that they're already on. So they don't have to drive Nolensville and so on. And so with that being said, it's it's weird, man. Like we'll do more transactions in a Huntsville, Alabama than we will in a, a San Diego, California. And so why is that? And it's because we've reached some sort of tipping point of buyers and sellers and one market versus the other. And so diagnosing that, okay, Do we not have enough vendors or we don't have enough consumers? And how do we read jumpstart that little flywheel? it's if you landed, got off the plane in Denver and you jumped on Uber and there was no cars, You're pissed and vice versa. if you're a driver there and there's no riders, you're pissed. and so that's the problem we have to solve. And so diagnosing that, fixing that is how we get to a million.

Track 1: 25:01

What would you say was the biggest, growth tactic or growth hack that you, stumbled upon other than the initial stage of just getting belly to belly with, your users?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 25:12

Yeah. For us, like there's been no silver bullet. It's been all lead bullets. and so what I mean by that is. not been any one like big inflection point. The one thing we did, I think do was that we tested everything in the early days, because what you realize is that, building the damn thing is the easy part, the hard part is getting people to use it and let's just use Nashville as an example. Every week we get a hundred people moving to Nashville wanting to be the next, I don't know, Luke Bryan or something. and, so these people. move to Nashville with a dream. and so then they, so they think, okay, I got to learn how to write a song. And so they work really hard on that and they write a really good song. And then, I got to learn how to write a song and sing. Okay. They do that. I got to learn how to write a song and sing and play the guitar. Okay. then I got to learn stage presence. And so I go get a coach for that and I got to get a record deal. maybe they get that too. so now they got, now they write their own songs. they, they know how they can sing. They can sing and play the guitar. They're great on stage. And now they got a record deal. the, they've done so much damn hard work and they've gotten far further than probably 90 percent of the other ever will. And then they realize that was all the easy part that the hard part is getting 10 people to show up at a show. And that's what starting a new tech company is exactly like, you think that the hard part is writing the code. You think the hard part is designing the interfaces. you think the hard part is like the color scheme and the company culture and the TikTok strategy and the Instagram strategy, all that's the easy part. The hard part is getting it in the hands of 20 people who need it, will put down a credit card and pay for it and continue to pay for it. hard part. And. And so we were like, man, we were like, how do we climb this mountain? And so we started testing every single thing we could. Google ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, billboards, print TV, newspaper ads, you name it. And the only thing we could get kind of ROI on was content marketing, where would talk about the best landscaping contractors in Brentwood, Tennessee. We would interview them and talk about what makes them different. Talk to their customers, take pictures of their equipment. just write up stories about them and then surface that. to search engines and then when somebody is looking for a landscaping contractor in Brentwood, Joe's lawn care service in Brentwood pops up and their page for green pal is part of that. And so then now that they get sales off that. And as simple as that sounds, that's how we get 60 percent of the people that use the platform that come to find the platform. If they need a lawn mowing service in Lincoln, Nebraska, pop up as one of the options. And. Executing on that strategy is harder than building the whole system in the first place.

Track 1: 28:19

Marketing and then

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 28:20

It's the

Track 1: 28:21

not,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 28:21

distribution.

Track 1: 28:22

not, yeah, it's not your typical marketing as well. so it's SEO essentially SEO with blogs and articles.

28:30

Guys, real clear. Think about this. Share this episode with someone. It could create an ideal and you'd be responsible for that. You never know what opportunities that could create. All right, guys, I'll let y'all get back to it. Thank you.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 28:46

Yeah. Yeah. whatever you want to call it, inbound marketing, content marketing, in, search engine optimization, marketing, whatever you want to call it. It's a property. That's almost like a media property in a sense that creates content. that is surfaced that when somebody is looking for what it is, the platform offers, people are connected with the value that solves a problem for them.

Track 1: 29:11

Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 29:12

And that's a slog and it's just not something that you can just. Throw three letters on a business plan. you have to really innovate in it and you have to think about different ways you're going to attack it and how you're going to stay alive while you get the uptake while you get the traction, because it takes a long time for this particular strategy to pan out

Track 1: 29:35

Yeah. Cause I'm sitting here thinking right now to, you can throw a lot of money at this right now, and you still. It's one thing I think of like influencer marketing right now of you give a creator or somebody, a big name to push a product. But this still is, it's a slow build, it's not going to pick up. It's still a slow build on that. And because like you said, it's, nobody's done this before, this hasn't panned out. A lot of people failed at doing things like this, but.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 30:03

it's a lot of times. it's very hard. To find a channel where you can put a dollar in and get a dollar back out. I'm not saying put a dollar in and get a dollar 10 back out. Just even just break even.

Track 1: 30:16

Yeah,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 30:16

and in most cases, you don't know, it's that famous. Old saying, I don't, from some marketer a hundred years ago, he said, I know I'm wasting half of my marketing spend. I just don't know which half it is. And, still true to this day with all the attribution, with all the measurement, with all of the instrumentation we have, you still have leaps of faith and you have things like influencer marketing, which exists and nobody really knows If that's ROI positive or not, it's, and a lot of times it's not, a lot of times there was a lot of direct to consumer companies that crashed and burned because of that. They, whatever, the purple mattress company, they came in, I don't know if they're still around, but, or the, I think another Nashville company, the smile direct

Track 1: 31:05

it's not direct.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 31:06

Yeah. Not to disparage any of these companies, they had their huge success at a moment in time, but they were built off the back of this very thing that we're talking about, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to throw a million dollars at Facebook ads and I'm basically selling dollars for 80 cents. And anybody can do that. so this stuff's hard. It's part of it. Distribution is the hardest part of it. There's a saying that the first time founder worries about the product and the second time founder worries about the distribution,

Track 1: 31:37

it sounds like you had it. You had the first problem figured out because you had built and scaled a company and you knew the foundation already. So you had your foundation built so you knew you had a good product. And then you had the experience of the first product pushing the second product, I feel like.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 31:56

the first experience of building my landscaping company and selling it. Definitely helped me for a couple of reasons. one, it de risked a lot of this for me. I had somebody asked me the other day, they're like, I want to start a marketplace like yours, but for electricians, I'm like, okay, cool. Yeah, I think it could work. He goes, and he said, yeah, I have a question. I said, I was like, what's that? He goes, man, I need dude. I gotta have 150 grand a year just to live. Like, how do I pay myself that while I'm starting this? I'm like, you don't, he's do investors pay that? Or like, how does that work? it's not how this works. and so it was like, how do you got to solve that equation? Your, your burn is the company's burn. And so you got to drastically reduce that. Mark Cuban has a great quote. He says the least you can live on the greater your options. So for me, I had already gone from zero to one. I was on first base. So now I could take my time building green pal and, I'm gonna sound like a redneck by saying this, but I didn't have to worry about going to Kroger on Friday based on. What green power made that week, like I was going to be fine. And so that, that helped me take the slow and low approach. so my experience was unique in that way. so that being said, that helped, there were some other lessons. I knew bookkeeping, basic marketing, basic management, basic leadership, I had made a lot of mistakes around hiring people. So I didn't make those mistakes again. But that was about it. Everything else was brand new. I was starting from scratch on pretty much everything else. So 80 percent of it was all new, even though I had built and sold a company that was doing eight figures. I was very much a first time founder all over again, which was what I needed. Cause it was humbling. and, that's one of the best things about starting a business is that it gives you virtues that you probably need, one of the most humbling things you can do is go start a business. And so it was what, probably what I needed at the time. and so it wasn't like I was already, I was on first base, but I wasn't on second or third, man. it was starting all over again.

Track 1: 34:02

Yeah. At the beginning, did you have, at the beginning, how did you know how to price this on both ends?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 34:12

Yeah. So one important thing that, I knew that when we were building GreenPow that we didn't want to be in the landscaping business. I was already in the landscaping business. And in that business, you do set the price. Okay, here's the property, here's what it's going to cost to do what you want. I didn't want to be in that business. In fact, I wanted nothing to do with that. I knew that we wanted to build a platform that made a lot of these things that were already happening run way more efficiently. and On green pal, the price is set from vendors and consumers know that they're getting the actual spot price for what that job is worth. as a consumer, you get this done, normally, you call out, call around on Yelp or Craigslist you ask your friends or family, and you might get one or two quotes and you'll hire somebody, but you don't really know. you're getting the best price and, but with green pal, your property, you, you list what you want, and then all of the data is collected around your property. The aerial imagery, the street imagery, how many square feet it is. How long has it been since you last had it service, what you want going forward. And that's sent out to different service contractors and the best five. their pricing. And so now you have five data points in 60 seconds this is the spot price. This is how much it's actually worth. And so that, that is like a really efficient way to, to deal with pricing, that's fair for both consumers and vendors, because one vendor can do it for 40 bucks. Another one can do it for 60. why is one 20 more than the other is he 20 better or does he live in West Nashville and he's got to drive over to East Nashville?

Track 1: 35:49

And that's gas cost. Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 35:50

Right time, and so it's are you getting anything more for that 20 bucks? Probably not. and so it's, that's why the platform works. It creates that unlocks value by making it more efficient.

Track 1: 36:02

And that's really good. That's, that helps both parties. you can pick up more, you can price better for your customer based on where they're at in that, in your circle.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 36:15

That's right. and it's not a race to the bottom. We, it's fact. It's our job to we exist for one reason to help these contractors make more money, because we take a small transactional fee for all the work they do on the platform as a marketing fee. And if they're not successful, the platform is not successful. It's as simple as that. So the interests are all aligned. and, so we have to figure out ways to help them price more competitively and more efficiently. But not cut into their margin. because I know from running the business hands on that it's a thin margin business already. And that's one reason why Uber for home cleaning didn't work because there's not a lot of margin in the home cleaning business and they were trying to rake out 30 or 40 percent of a 80 home cleaning. maybe if you're doing every apartment in the building. but, that's not the way it works. Played out. So that's why it's density is important. And that's why every kind of marketplace, every city, every town, every suburb has to stand on its own.

Track 1: 37:16

I can see that. Is there, what are the benefits for the, the businesses? Trying to come in there. Is it strictly like a Yelp or something where they just get the lead sent to them or is there more benefits on that side to the, landscaper?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 37:32

Yeah. We learned early on that, man, they got to love it. If they don't love it, you don't have anything to offer consumers. So not only do they have to love it, but they have to be engaged. and answering the bid opportunities and submitting pricing and showing up when they're supposed to, and doing a really good job. The consumer doesn't care how slick the technology is. They only care, did the backyard get weeded and did the patio get blown off? that's what they care about. And so that comes at the discretion of the service provider. they got to love it. We learned that early on. So we decided a couple of things. One strategically, we weren't going to go wide in terms of offering lawn mowing and pool service and painting and HVAC, we were going to focus on one thing. What is the day in the life of a guy or gal? That makes a living cutting grass look like, and there's about a hundred things every day that make it suck. And so okay, so what are those of those things that suck? What are the, some of the things that, that we can do to help make it a little better? okay. like we talked about, they got to drive from one place and then drive 15 minutes across town to their next stop. And they're not getting paid for that 15 minutes. Okay. the first thing we need to do is we need to get them more. More properties in the neighborhoods. They're already servicing. Okay. let's start there. So all of the opportunities that are nearby, what you're already servicing, we're going to drive to you first. Okay. that's the first thing. The second thing is you wouldn't think it, but, a lot of these, a lot of these home service professionals don't get paid for the work they do. For a couple of reasons. it's not in the real high priority in the stack of household bills. And so they don't get paid because of that. And then also they don't get paid because their bookkeeping is sloppy.

Track 1: 39:26

Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 39:27

had this happen a lot. I dabble a little bit in real estate too. And I can't tell you how many times have a guy that does painting for me, or I'll have a guy that did a roof repair for me and off the nag them send me a, an invoice

Track 1: 39:40

Babysitting.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 39:42

yeah. And so this happens in the lawn mowing business as well. Like they just, nobody teaches us how to run a small business. We're not taught it in high school. We're not even taught it in business school. so having a system. you upload the photo of the completed work for every job you do. And then you're paid within 24 hours, because that goes to the homeowner. They say, okay, yeah, it looks good. Boom. Pay. If they don't, it automatically charges their card. They've got a little window of time to approve it. and so just that piece alone, getting paid on a rolling basis helps with cashflow. it does one thing. They don't have to sit at their kitchen table. At like from seven 30 at night till 10 doing bookkeeping every night because they know they're going to get paid for all the work they did. They don't have to send out invoices. They don't have to write most scheduling in this business. It's still done with a paper calendar. You're racing this, putting it over here. So all of this is handled on the fly. so all the work that you need nearby, the properties you already have, and then getting paid quickly and then having one place to put it all in, organize all the stops is, are the three real. of value that, that we provide for service contractors. That's why they like to use it, which in turn enables the platform to tee them up so consumers can hire them off the shelf, like ordering a pizza, ordering a book off Amazon, ordering, groceries off of Instacart.

Track 1: 41:09

You've got a really good system here. You've thought, I can tell that you've put the time in and thought of everything and it's each individual thing of the problems that you probably faced at the beginning. You addressed each one of them and built off that. It sounds

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 41:22

You just don't have any other choice, survival depends on it. And it's really, you really triage is what you do. You just say, okay, we've got a hundred problems, a hundred people pissed off. Let's triage it down. what are the, we can only focus on two. What are the two that's upsetting more people than anything? And let's just focus everything we got on just those one or two things. Let's fix those. And then let's move on to the next. And then you do that over and over again for long enough, start to keep more people using it. And then as that goes on, you start to make a little bit more money. Okay. And then as that time goes on, those people who keep using it, they end up telling more people about it. and then you start to get some press then Google sees that they start to rank your pages a little better. You get more people. some buzz, it's like a flywheel and it's like getting it going sucks. But if you could stick it out, it starts to reinforce itself.

Track 1: 42:15

Yeah. Yeah. So going on another, segment here, I want to know more about, you've got a really good following, a personal following. how, what was your strategy around like you're building up a social brand?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 42:31

I don't recommend that people waste time on it, until they're maybe on second or third base and what they're working on. and that was one thing I think I got right. I knew it was a waste of time. and. we had 20 customers, like there was no reason to build a CEO, corporate, personal brand with 20 customers. And as silly as that sounds, you do see that, like you, you see the C the like spending all this day on Twitter, I was like, bro, most of the time you need to be doing one or two things. You need to be building a product or service and getting people to use that product. One of those two things. And that's the reality for probably the first year to maybe even as long as three or four years. And that's how it was for us. So I didn't worry about that, for that amount of time. Then, I guess year six or seven, Google started changing the way they rank pages and they wanted properties to be associated with people. and so who is the person behind this? And we want to know this is not some fugazi thing with people hiding, in another country or something like there needs to be a figurehead and there needs to be buzz about that person. It's like this rising tide lifts all boats sort of thing. And so I. That was the only reason I began to invest in my personal brand because I thought, if people are searching for my name, will listen to a podcast about me or listen to a talk that I give or like to follow my travels or whatever, maybe they're Googling me, My, my brand equity, if you will lift the brand equity of green power. And so I've been working on that, as a hobby, out of my personal kind of, efforts, I guess you could say for five years. And I, I can't tell you that I put in a dollar and got a dollar 10 out, but I think it was worthwhile. I've had fun doing it. It also forces me to do interesting stuff, forces me to do, forces me to read, still read books and to listen to other podcasts and to keep up with trends to just be sharp, try to stay as sharp as I can. And also, like I like to travel and like to go to places. It forces me to share those experiences. So forces me to just live a more interesting life, I guess you could say. So that's a nice by product.

Track 1: 44:59

Hi, everyone. I'm going to

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 45:00

and then I think. It's helped green pal in the sense of, okay, there's these three guys that started this company. Each of them has their own story. They're getting mentioned in these different places. And, they're real people and they're real founders and they have their unique takes. And so that's why I did that. No green pal. I would not, I'd be a ghost, online. I'm usually a pretty private person, but, strategically I think it, it made sense,

Track 1: 45:27

I like that you reassured that for me too. I was the same way. first let me address what you said of have something to talk about. At least, you built your foundation, you'd built your company up, before you went out and started talking about something else.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 45:42

right?

Track 1: 45:43

So much today as people are just putting it out there, and I don't hate on this, the, like the building public kind of stuff for the first time founder. I get that, but I'm also thinking, put your head down and use that spare time to make your product better or get another customer. I think that would be worthwhile versus you trying to create the content around and letting other people know that what you're doing now, whether it works out or not, I don't know, but

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 46:07

is your customer,

Track 1: 46:08

that's true.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 46:09

if Buffer used to, I don't know, buffer for social media used to do this. and their audience, their customer was startups and they want to see how much money the buffer make. So if the audience is your customer, it could work, if the natural audience is not your customer, I think it's probably fake work. I think fake work is one of the biggest killers of getting some traction going.

Track 1: 46:30

Yeah. Yeah. So we're talking about it now. that's something I've actually been looking into and building up my own personal brand. And I really just don't know which way I want to go about it, what I'm even going to do. I'm honestly, I'm bored now and I really want to start another business, buy another business, do something, like it's just, it's the entrepreneur. It's in my blood. It's what I've done in my life. I've got,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 46:50

forward. You got to push, you got to push on something. If

Track 1: 46:53

yeah, I got to push something. Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 46:55

real quick.

Track 1: 46:56

Yeah, I got to measure something. I have to watch something grow, build something. and that's what I'm trying to figure out now is what direction I want to go on that end. what do you, what's your best advice on now that you did it and you started building that up? What were the, what were some of the actions or I guess frameworks that you used for your own social following?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 47:13

Yeah. For my own social following. I think you got to like it. I think you got, I don't like posting on LinkedIn. I don't like posting on Twitter. And so I suck at those.

Track 1: 47:24

Yeah,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 47:24

posting on Instagram and so I do pretty well there. so I think you got to genuinely like it. And I think that shines through. I think if you don't enjoy it. Then I don't think it's going to work. and so there's that. and then I, man, I think you got to connect it. You got to close the loop on it. and I haven't done this. I don't have a course. I don't have a, I don't have an offer. I don't have a thing. I'm just trying to gain awareness and visibility around me, who I am and my company. And so it's it's like a shot in the dark type thing. And so that, that's where I struggle with it is if I. if I was a grant Cardone where it's okay, I know I put out, I spent 10 million in content last year. The conference did this, my little investment, my, my investment syndicate did this, I sold this many online courses, like he's closing the loop. And so I. as that stuff is, I think you have to close the loop because man, it is so hard to create the type of video content that, that you got to create to get any kind of traction these days on, on social. So I think you gotta love it. I think it's gotta be something you already would do, whether you wouldn't get paid for or not. I got I like real estate investing. And so I follow a guy, who just do it to just builds up trailer parks in South Carolina. and

Track 1: 48:50

Chris,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 48:51

Maybe could be, this is my favorite Instagram

Track 1: 48:54

Louisiana,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 48:55

No, this guy's in South Carolina.

Track 1: 48:57

that's not,

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 48:58

real blue collar guy. And you can just tell this dude enjoys hunting up deals. He enjoys sharing how he did it. He enjoys fixing up properties. He enjoys putting families in homes and seeing them, get value from what he's doing. He enjoys seeing properties go up in value. He enjoys cashflow. don't think I've ever seen him pitch a course ever. And it's just the accounts got three or 400, 000 followers. I've got the little star marked on it. I want to see it every time. I think that's the formula, but man, what a lot of work. a tremendous amount of work. So I think you gotta love it. I guess it's gotta be something that you'd love to do. And maybe he's just holding himself accountable to, forward. Maybe it's like his public scorecard. Maybe that's why he does it. For me, that's a lot with traveling. Like I'm not a travel blogger or anything like that, but I want to go see new places just so I have interesting things to share. So I don't know, man, I don't know what the silver bullet there is. other than you gotta love doing it. You gotta enjoy it for free or otherwise you're going to burn out.

Track 1: 50:02

yeah, enjoy what you do help people and, then you can create content around that.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 50:08

First. Yeah.

Track 1: 50:09

before I let you go here, I know we're coming up on our time here. I want to ask one more question. And you can go into it as deep as you want to, or you can make it as brief as you want to, but we touched on this a little bit. I want to talk about, or I want to ask you, what would you do differently if you had to go back and start all over again?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 50:28

Yeah. it's, that's a tough question because you now know a lot of stuff you didn't know. So I think you first have to say, you don't know any of this stuff, because. if I know, if I knew all the things I had to do, then I would have raised a bunch of money and built out the team I have today. I just would have, I would have hired all the people I have today. I have, we have 40 something people and I would have hired them all. I would have told them to do all the stuff that I'm telling them to do today. what took us 12 years, what would have taken us 12 months. But I don't have that knowledge. I wouldn't have had that knowledge. so that's not fair. so you gotta have to take that out. but what I have done, so the mistake we made around delegating, we delegated too quickly. we, like I told you, we paid a development shop 200 grand to build this thing. We're like, oh yeah. You guys go build it and just let us know when it's done. And we'll just, we'll be off and going. And that was stupid. and so then we had to teach ourselves how to build software. And then we made the second mistake of we delegated too late. on to it all way too long. for three more years, writing all the code ourself, all the customer service, all the blog posts, all the content, the design, everything handcrafted by us, and that was stupid. That cost us probably five years. so delegating too soon and delegating too late. And knowing where you're at on that would be, if I could just beat into my head 10 years ago, once you get the 80, 20 Pareto principle stood up on something, lay it out in a process that somebody else can follow and Determine what success looks like and then start trying to get people to execute that it might take you 10 10 different people But start getting people in that role so you can move on to the next thing.

Track 1: 52:12

that's good. That's good. And I'll take that to anybody starting anything that's not out there. if you're creating something that's not been created before or something like that, You're going to have to go through those bumps and those, you're going to have to go through it to learn. Yeah.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 52:26

getting the reps in man. That's the only way to learn. I wish there was a easier way but I know of no other way, like success is a lousy teacher. only way to learn is just by getting in there and bumping up against it and figuring it out. and a lot of times we try to learn these things without doing that, by reading books and podcasts and YouTube without execution. and you don't learn anything doing that either. yeah. And then one more point is you can learn more in a weekend, starting a hotdog stand, and selling, a thousand dollars in hotdogs. Then you can in four years of business school. So just get in there, put the reps in and you'll figure it out.

Track 1: 53:05

Yeah. Yeah. It'll change. you'll fail. You'll change the way you thought it was going to be, but at the end of the day, it's the action that a lot of people, Don't do, and that's what's required to get them to that next step that they want to be at

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 53:18

That's right.

Track 1: 53:19

Brian, man, I could keep going for hours, man, but I know I'm gonna respect both of our times here. I'm going to link green pal for anybody, of course, who needs to have their yard mode, or any businesses looking to market and, I guess make their business, Or allow their, circumference of their business to, get better. other than that, I'm gonna link your Instagram as well. is there anything else that I'm missing here?

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 53:43

Sounds good, Dylan. thanks for having me on the show, man. I, I guess parting ways, I tell you one thing. I saw a meme this morning. That's top of mind. It was a meme from. movie Oppenheimer and the, it's Charles Oppenheimer and he's sitting, it's like this famous scene where he's sitting on a chair naked with his legs crossed. and the meme said, me contemplating if I should quit my, corporate job and just go start a coffee shop. and like the, I think the point of the meme was, it's like working a corporate job sucks and how awesome would it be just to have a nice coffee shop? And the reality is that the poor bastard running the coffee shop is working 10 times harder than the guy at corporate America. So please understand that. Do not go start the coffee shop if you think it's going to be easier than your corporate job, because it's not, there are a hundred things that have to go right for that customer to get their cup of coffee and for them to be happy. So that's the parting words that I'll leave with everybody.

Track 1: 54:46

You need to be passionate about whatever you do

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 54:48

right. That's right.

Track 1: 54:49

Brian, man. I appreciate it.

bryan-clayton_1_04-02-2024_110254: 54:51

Thanks Dylan. You have a good day.

54:53

Hey, if you're still listening, hopefully you got some value out of this or amusement. Either way, I really appreciate you for listening. My goal with this podcast is to build something of value while also showing others that it's possible to do the same. And what I mean by that is, I'm not perfect at this. I fumble, I stutter, and I just want to show that it's okay. If you've been putting something off, This is me telling you to go for it. So I need your help in growing this and there's two main ways a podcast grows. One is through ratings and reviews and two is through word of mouth. So I can only do it with your help. If you can leave me a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify as well as post this to your social and it doesn't grow without you. Thank you. Talk to you all next week.