In this episode, let's get to know the amazing Brian Clayton, the mastermind behind the nationwide sensation, GreenPal. Brian's entrepreneurial journey is nothing short of inspiring, as he recounts his transition from running a high school lawn mowing business to becoming the CEO of GreenPal, a revolutionary app that connects homeowners and property managers with trusted lawn care professionals. Discover how Brian's authenticity, consistency, and unwavering dedication transformed GreenPal from a challenging start-up to a thriving nationwide platform.

As Brian shares the ups and downs of his entrepreneurial adventure, you'll gain invaluable insights into the world of business, the importance of authenticity, and the power of consistency. Learn why putting in the hard work and focusing on acquiring your first customers are key steps on the path to building a successful venture. If you're seeking motivation, practical tips, and a glimpse into the mind of a tenacious entrepreneur, don't miss this captivating episode. Join us as we explore the remarkable journey of GreenPal and the entrepreneurial spirit that drives its success.

About Guest:

Bryan Clayton's entrepreneurial journey is one of those stories that inspire others to pursue their dreams. One of the most remarkable aspects of his success story is his ability to teach himself how to build software to create GreenPal, the multi-million dollar company he co-founded and currently leads.

Bryan's background was in the landscaping industry, and he had no prior experience in software development. But he knew that technology could solve many of the pain points in the landscaping industry, such as inefficient scheduling, unreliable service providers, and inconsistent pricing.

So, Bryan set out to teach himself how to code. He spent countless hours reading books, watching online tutorials, and experimenting with various software development tools until he was able to build the first version of GreenPal.

Bryan's expertise in both the landscaping industry and software development makes him a unique and valuable guest on any podcast. He can share his experience of bootstrapping GreenPal and developing software from scratch, providing valuable insights into how entrepreneurs can leverage technology to solve industry-specific problems.

Additionally, Bryan can talk about the importance of customer experience in building a successful business. GreenPal's success is largely due to its exceptional customer service, which has earned it a loyal following of users. Bryan can share his secrets to delivering excellent customer service, and how other entrepreneurs can do the same.

Overall, Bryan Clayton's journey is one of determination, hard work, and an unrelenting pursuit of excellence. As a guest on your podcast, he can offer valuable insights into entrepreneurship, technology, and customer service, inspiring your audience to pursue their own entrepreneurial dreams.

GreenPal: https://www.yourgreenpal.com/

LikedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-clayton-a96b33214

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryanmclayton/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/bryanmclayton

Fast Five Questions

1. If you woke up and your business was gone, you have $500, a laptop, a place to live, and food, what would you do first? "I could just run through building this platform again in two years, and I would probably raise capital to do it"
2. What is the biggest mistake that you have made in business? "Anytime I've ever tried to delegate something that I didn't know anything about, always blew up in my face"
3. What is a book that you would recommend? "E Myth by Michael Gerber and The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss"
4. What is a tool that you use everyday that you would recommend? "Trello"
5. What is your definition of freedom? "Being able to work on the things that I want to work on, and being able to sow seeds of opportunity for people in my company that work on the mission with me, and then also people that use my products"

About Jeff: 

Jeff spent the early part of his career working for others. Jeff had started 5 businesses that failed before he had his first success. Since that time he has learned the principles of a successful business and has been able to build and grow multiple seven-figure businesses. Jeff lives in the Austin area and is actively working in his community and supporting the growth of small businesses. He is a board member of the Incubator.Edu program at Vista Ridge High School and is on the board of directors of the Leander Educational Excellence Foundation

Connect with the Freedom Nation podcast at https://freedom-nation-podcast.captivate.fm/

Connect with Jeff:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freedomnationpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/JeffKikel

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffkikel/

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FN Intro/Outro: Welcome to the Freedom Nation podcast with Jeff Kikel. On this show, Jeff shares his expertise in financial and retirement planning from a different perspective. Planning for Your Freedom Day, which is the first day that you wake up and have enough income or assets and do not have to go to work that day. Learn how to calculate what you need, how to generate income sources, and listen to interviews from others who've done it themselves. Get ready to experience your own Freedom Day.

Hello, Freedom nation. It's Jeff here once again, and another episode of The Freedom nation podcast and today's show is going to be a blend of Bryan Clayton. Bryan is the CEO of a company that has an app that you're going to love if you didn't know that they exist. But one of the cool things is he did get his freedom that he built a business got his Freedom Day, went back for a second dip when he was looking at what that next life is. So Bryan , welcome to the show. Mr.

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

I'm really glad to have you on and we're really excited to hear the story, again, of my person, but a little bit more in depth. So why don't we kick it off? Tell us your story. How'd you get to where you are today?

Yeah, so today, like you mentioned, I'm CEO of a company called GreenPal. And green pile is a mobile app that works like DoorDash or Instacart, or Uber, but for lawn mowing services. So if you're a homeowner, or if you are a property manager or invest in real estate, and you have lawns that need to be mowed. Rather than calling around on Craigslist, or Facebook or whatever, you just download green powered pop address in and you can hire somebody at the push of a button, and they come out and take care of it for you. Green PAL is a 10 year overnight success. My two co founders and I have been at this for over a decade. And we have inched our way to now a nationwide network in every major city United States. You can order a lawn mowing service, and we have 300,000 people using the app to get grass cutting.

Well okay, so let's reverse back though. Because what was your How did you get started with this? I mean, you have this app, and you've done all this stuff with lawn care. How did you how did you get into this?

Yeah, I think when you're inventing a new new product, you're near inventing an app like I was 10 years ago. Authenticity can be a competitive advantage. And so that's one of the only things I guess I had going for me is my first business was a landscaping company. I started mowing grass in high school as a way to make extra cash. And little by little I grew my little lawn mowing business. Every year to eventually over 1015 years, I had 150 employees. And I got that business grown to over $10 million a year in revenue. And I learned a lot and the lawn mowing business learned learn how to work in the business and work learn how to work on the business and how to work on myself and I kind of evolved and grew as an entrepreneur. Through that for those first 15 years and 2013 it was acquired it was bought by a national company that has 1000s of employees and they in the landscaping industry and and that was I guess my my day, my forever day where all my future days were paid for at after that moment, I could kind of do what I wanted to do from that day forward. And I tried to retire I tried to live the good life. I just got done reading a book called The Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki great book. And, and in that book, one of the quadrants is one of the capitalists and he describes this guy, as the capitalists and I thought that sounds cool. All this guy has to do is just be involved in deals and like, you know, he just lets capital work for him. And, and that sounds like something I want to do so so I thought I'm just gonna do that. And I started doing real estate investing and stuff. And then I got I got really bored after about 60 days sit and really anxious and something was missing and, and I thought, well, I need another mission, I need another purpose. I need a reason why I should get out of bed in the morning and why it matters and what and why. Like, if it wasn't for me, then what? You know, the answer to that question always was my business. And so I thought, Well, somebody's gonna build a platform that makes this industry that I know work as easy as Uber is doing for ride sharing. Might as well be me and and just, you know, recruited two co founders, we started working on the idea never looked back. Love it.

Now how many I mean, it's a pretty fragmented industry. You've got a few like, large firms like you have, but then there's a lot of just Joe Average. You know, I've got a lawn mower and I show up. How do you recruit folks to be the end or the end of providers on your platform?

Yeah, it's very fragmented, and as part of the reasons why it's a challenge to do it. The old school way. Because the to your point, there's over a half million small lawn care services in the country that make their living mowing grass. Problem is it's it's hard to discover who's good, who's reliable, who's not. They don't have you know, when you call them, they don't have a receptionist to pick you up. When you call, it's hard to nail them down on a day and a price. And it's hard to keep it straight, but how much you owe them. The thing is, nobody teaches any of us how to run a small business. And so the there's such low barriers to entry and in the lawn mowing business that as the consumer, you basically are left with having to educate these these small business owners as to how business gets done. And it's really a headache for consumers. For contractors, it's also a nightmare, making a living in this industry is really hard, you're the last person to get paid in the household bills, it's hard to keep everything straight, it's hard to get new customers, it's hard to organize it all in the most efficient way. And so we set out to build a platform to solve both those those sides of problem set of problems for the buyers and the sellers. And we started off really, really small in Nashville, Tennessee, you know, recruited 50 contractors off of Craigslist, pitch them on the idea, and it back then the app really sucked. It was hard to use it have all these features I'm talking about. And so the way I kind of like hand cranked our way through that was I would, I would pitch these guys and gals on, hey, if you would just use my platform to bid work and conduct transactions, I'll give you free coaching on how to run a lawn mowing business because I know a thing or two about that. And so they would stick with me. And so that's how we got through the first two or three years, kind of hand cranking the supply. And then we went out set out and figured out how to market to consumers. And then kind of ping pong back and forth. As every year went by, we had to build more stuff for vendors. Next year, we build more stuff for consumers. And this kind of triage around what the most important things be working on at that stage of the game work.

That's awesome. To this day, you're now what and all 50 states. So

yeah, every major city in the United States, you have actually, if you live in a town with over 20,000 people, we've got green power in your town, and you can just you can sign up get quotes, and as a contractor, you can sign up and get new business and, and make your

life easier. Really, now the similar to like, like an Uber and stuff like that, do you process the transactions?

That's correct, yeah, we're what's called a managed marketplace where the whole experience flows through on the platform. So everything from getting pricing to reading reviews, figuring out who's good, who's not hiring them, scheduling them, and then paying the right to the app. And then you can push a button and set it for the whole year. And property managers love it because they can manage 1235 10 properties on one dashboard, and you get photos of the completed work after after every job. So like if it's an out of state property, and you you never go there, you can at least know that it's getting mowed every week. And somebody's looking out for it for you. And you can manage it remotely.

That is phenomenal, especially for those that have property in the states and stuff like that. I mean, there's there's properties. I've never even walked on the property. So that's awesome. Yeah. So I mean, that's fantastic. So I mean, this, it's surprising to me that nobody's come up with this idea before. And yeah, it's one

Of those things that should exist. That's why we set out to build it. When I started. When I sold my first company started this one, I made a decision that no matter what that moment forward, I was going to be working on my best idea. And in green power has been my best idea in 10 years. So it's made it pretty easy in a way that you know, is by default, I'm going to be working on this because it should exist.

Yeah. Now, I mean, let's shift back though. It was hard in the first years dealing with dealing with this. Yeah. How did what did you do to keep yourself going? How did you keep yourself going all

Those years? Yeah, the first thing was managing my own psychology. Because this was kind of like my mission. It wasn't a hustle to get get richer. It wasn't like, I mean, yes, it is a business and it is profitable. But in the early days and early years, it really was my life's work. It was my mission. I looked at it that way. And, and because I'd already built and sold a company, which wasn't a massive success, but it was a big enough success where I didn't have to work anymore. I guess you could say maybe it was a single or a double. And now with this one, I'm swinging for the fences. I'm trying to hit a grand slam. And so no matter what, I'm just going to stay enthusiastic about it as long as it takes to get it working. I just made that decision that that was my default. And failure was not an option. Quitting was not an option because I had already tried to quit the game. And there was no other alternative. I didn't have any other ideas and like this was it. And I saw just enough good validation in the early days. You know, it was really hard to get it going but but people would tell us You know, all the reasons why the experience sucked, and all the reasons why they didn't use it anymore. And they will tell us where it needs to be fixed. But they would never say I don't need this. And you can see, you could tell, we would speak to every person, I tried it out the first 1000 people, because we needed that aren't wet free r&d That figure out where to prioritize our efforts. And you can see the look on their face that they were disappointed that it let them down because they wanted it to work. And how convenient would it be if I if this did work? Yeah. Right. So that was, that was validation that this was worth pouring our soul into that literally, it was worth spending 10 years on, had had you just kind of seen apathy or just met, you know that then that's not a good sign, you know, move on to another idea. But But that wasn't a validation to keep rolling.

When your clients are grabbing you by the lapels and go, yeah,

Yeah, please solve this problem for me. Yeah, exactly.

That's awesome. Well, and I think, you know, the the interesting thing for me, in your world, it's actually kind of interesting, because in all the other ones, all your competitors, I guess, in the other, you know, the Ubers of the world, the Instagram relates to carts and all that those are not recurring revenue models, this actually kind of is a recurring revenue model. Because every week, you got to get your lawn mowed. Now, they may change around to a different person that's doing the mowing or whatever. But once they find that person, that's right, boom, they schedule it for the year. And it just goes and goes and goes, which is brilliant. Yeah,

That was one of the things that there's many challenges with getting a marketplace like this going many things that makes it difficult, but there are a lot of things that make it easy in a way and and then the the nature of the business where you always have to have it done, it's always going to be recurring. And AI ain't is gonna just steal it away from us, it's not gonna it's not gonna pull the rug out from under us because it's so we get like Rosie from the Jetsons cleaning our house, I don't know that we're gonna get like robots doing the landscaping maintenance. And so we're, you know, we got we got 2030 years, at least, where this has to happen. And so, so So the things that make it hard also make it valuable, as I think there's like, there's correlation between the least glamorous the industry, the greater your chances of success.

Yeah. You know, especially for those contractors that aren't necessarily fluent in English, that I live in. I live in Texas. I mean, you come across the border, the first job you can get is something laboring that throat, you know, there's usually one guy on the crew that can speak English well enough to converse with somebody, and everybody else speaks Spanish. So I mean, this makes it a lot easier for them to converse, and it gives them a technology platform that they traditionally wouldn't necessarily app they normally be wandering around neighborhoods putting things on doors.

Yeah, some of our it's an interesting, we have 32,000 contractors that use the platform, and some of the standout ones that really excel are female owned service providers, and are immigrant owned service providers. They really excel on the platform, because they just, both of them seem to have more of a proactive mindset, and seem to really care about taking care of their customers on like a on like a proportional basis, they always tend to do to do better than their male counterparts, their or their, or their just standard American counterparts.

Yeah. Well, if they work hard, yeah.

Thank God for him. Thank God for him.

So, you know, you've had two successful businesses, yes, their overnight successes. But, you know, you've had to say, what do you think is the key to being successful business, you know, if you were to put a finger on it,

I'm not particularly like talented in any one area, like, you know, you meet some people and and do your dislike, yeah, this person's fire. This person is oven burns hotter than mine. Like they're just smarter. You know, I can just tell that, like, you know, they're just, they're just a brilliant individual, and I see why they're successful. That ain't me. I got I was like, a barely graduated college student, you know, and so like, I'm not brilliant or talented in any in any giveaway, I think. I think for me, it's just like consistency is my superpower. It's just it's day in, day out. Looking at okay, what are the what are the three things we're focused on right now? What are the inputs and let's just grind out the inputs. One of my favorite books, is atomic habits. And in that in that book, he talks about really, a lot of what I kind of just stumbled onto in the last 20 years is that you don't rise to the level of your goals you fall back to the level of your habits and whether it's losing weight or being a good husband or or being a good business person. If you fall back to the level of your routines, your habits and your processes and your systems, you never really rise to the level of the goal that you put on the chalkboard, it's always the stuff that you're doing day in and day out. And that consistency doesn't add up it compounds. And you can wake up in a whole new reality three, five years, 10 years of consistency. And, you know, we were talking before the show, you know, you said it took took you 10 years to get your your day where all your future days were paid for. That's fast. You know, that's fast. And a lot of people will want to reach that day in 24 months. And that's just, you know, that rarely rarely, rarely happens, like you'd

like your first few years with this business. Yeah, it was, it was a whole lot of suck at the beginning to those first three to four years were a whole lot of stock for we didn't make very much money. That's right. You know, there was that it was just a lot of tough at the beginning. And I mean, you own multiple businesses, one of which is a co working space and watching the small business people over the years. And it's like, as soon as it gets tough. I mean, yeah, almost the I've got a little cartoon that hangs on my wall. It's got a little guy. He's like, you know, as the guy above him is turned around, and he's walking away, and he's got a little, you know, hammer on his shoulder, and the other one is wailing away at it. There's this wall of diamonds. Yeah,

I love the love that when

Wailing away at it, you know, that's gonna get to the diamonds and be done with it. But so many people point where it's just, it gets hard, and they just want to quit. They really is that way. I'll go get the Yeah, I'll just go back and get a job. Okay, fine. But yeah,

You know, and the thing is, in five years, you will arrive somewhere. What's that? What's that reality going to look like? And the business can be the answer to that. The business can be the vehicle, at least it has been for me. I mean, I have been able to do things and experience things and lead people and take on challenges that I never in a million years would have been able to do, had I not been in business for myself. Yeah. And so the business is kind of the vehicle that takes you places that you would never be able to go otherwise it makes your life interesting. And makes it rewarding, fulfilling.

Well, and it's also the fact that, you know, I mean, when you finally get past the grinding stage, you wake up in some mornings, and it's like, you know what, finally I have appointments, I'm probably not going to go to work that day.

Isn't that nice? That's a day that that's, that is something that you earned? And yeah, I feel like that from time to time myself. And I'm like, you know, what, it's 20 years that I've spent earning that choice. Yeah. And to be able to say, Okay, from this day forward, I'm going to do what it is I want to do. And if you want to work 100 hour week, it doesn't feel like work. Because that's what you chose to do. That's what you want to do.

And it's what you enjoy you. I mean, that's that I think was the the biggest thing for me, when I reached that point for me, which was, you know, a year ago, and I reached that point. And I literally sat down for almost a two week period. And I looked at everything I was doing, volunteering, businesses that I was in all the stuff, and I looked at it and said, Okay, this is the beginning of the rest of my life at this point. And I just started eliminating things that didn't make me happy. Yes, there were things I was doing on volunteer things that I was doing that I was unhappy with. And I'm like, just don't have to do that more. I should just write a check.

Yep. And you earn that. Yeah. Now you can start. The problem is a lot of these these, these younger entrepreneurs want to start with that mindset. No, you got to pay some dues.

I mean, what you don't understand, I mean, you and I are similar age, I mean, what you didn't understand is, you know, you can just go out there, open up a YouTube channel, and then you know, like, six, seven months down the road, you'll have a million followers a year making, you know, hundreds of million self year. So it's just we just did it the hard way of all.

That's the only way I know to do it.

We slugged it out. It did it the hard way. I mean, it's there's so many easier ways to do it.

That's true. And many ways. I think it's easier than it's ever been. But maybe it's also harder than it's ever been. It's easier to get started. There's more, there's better tools. You know, I just sit there and think about, you know, 15 years ago, I employed three people just to manage payroll in my business. And these days. I mean, I could do that in my spare time, an hour a week with the tools we have available. So in many ways, it's easier and it's also easier to learn. You can go to YouTube University and learn anything you need to learn to get started to get in the game. Whereas this stuff, I mean, when I was trying to learn how to grow my landscaping business, I spent 1000s of dollars on cassette tapes that were recordings from an industry conference that I couldn't For to go to. And they were cassette tapes. And these were the secrets to running a successful landscaping company. And they weren't helpful. But that was the only way you could get that information.

For those of you younger in the audience, a cassette tape was like about an hour's worth of what is on your iPad that you've got or on your iPod that's got like 30,000 things. This was one painting

In a bottle. Used to pop them in the truck and listen to that tape. Well, going from yard to yard mowing grass and hay. It was what I needed at the time. And it was only way I could get the information. But these days, you could get 10 times better information for free instantly. What a time to be alive are the

Good. Yeah, the good days of having the double tape recorder and you went to the library and rented the Yeah, the famous guys that you couldn't afford to buy this set. Yeah, exactly. Not saying I ever did.

I heard I heard of what you could do.

Yeah, you know, I think it is easier in some ways. But I think the the easiness of it, of why you just watch it on YouTube, and I'm instantly an expert in it. You know, I think that's been the challenge. I think for a lot of younger nurses. They don't have the they don't have the staying power to and you've got to get that staying power in that. Yeah, you might have the knowledge, but it's still going to take work. It totally consistency. And I think you know, like you said, atomic habits is one of the greatest books I've ever read. Because it was just that it's like, the little tiny, small things that you keep doing over and over

Exactly. You there. Exactly. And you know, there's so many it's so many parallels to this in business and life, you know, you can, let's say you want to learn how to, you want to learn boxing, you can sit here and watch as many you learn how to be a decent boxer. I recently started taking boxing classes five years ago, and one thing I learned was, you can watch a million YouTube videos and watch million Instagram reels about technique and whatnot. And you don't learn anything until you spar. And business is just like that. No business plan survives first touch with the customer. And a huge only way you learn how to get a business going is to put in the reps and spar with the customer and a set of customers. And that's how you learn. It's how you that's how you figure out how to do what you're what you're trying to do. You got to put the reps and and I see a lot of founders wanted wanting to an over indexing on planning and less on doing and it's like you know you don't have 10 Customers let's let's forget about the brand. Let's forget about what our company culture policy is going to be. Let's forget about all these days. Even though social media strategy. Let's just go get 10 customers. And then it would worry about all these other things you get 10

Customers go get 100 Right right. In most aren't worried about some of that the glitzy stuff.

Exactly. But that but but going and getting 10 customers is not fun. You gotta be up pass up. You got to pass out flyers. You got cold call cold email, you gotta prospect. It's not fun. It's not in the movie, The Social Network. There was no, there was no scenes where Mark Zuckerberg was passing out flyers, you know, it is like, no entrepreneurial movie, like everywhere where the business is built like that. That's like set the music montage. Like, is not fun to watch. It's not it's actually quite boring. It actually sucks. Yeah.

About About the only time I ever saw the work side of it was the founder.

Yeah, great. What? What a great movie. I mean, even even a scene I remember that movie was when Michael Keaton Blu Ray Kroc was was just visiting McDonald's, and he was picking up trash in the parking lot on his way into the store. Yeah, that is what that is a true representation of the mindset of a founder

Be Yeah, being an entrepreneur. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it. That's the one movie that I will say, pretty much accurately lays out what it is to be an entrepreneur be another, you know, 1015 year overnight success. What a great movie. Well, cool. So let's transition to the Fast Five questions. interested to hear your, your comments on that. So first off, wake up in the morning, business has totally got you have 500 bucks in your pocket laptop and play at your computer place to stay? What are you going to do first?

Well, you know, it took me 10 years to get where I am now. And I think I could do it again. And maybe two. So now I have that knowledge. And I could and I could just run through building this platform again in two years. And I would probably I would probably raise capital to do it. I did it. I didn't raise capital to build this business. And so so my co founders and I own 100% of the company which is rare for a tech business like ours, but this time around because I know everything to do, I would raise capital to move quickly. Now let's say I didn't have that knowledge. And I had to start all over again, without the knowledge of, of building a tech company, what would I do, I still love the idea of, of the blue collar millionaire, I still love the idea of working a real simple business and grinding it out for five or 10 years and becoming self sufficiently, you know, wealthy enough to where you don't have to have a job. And you can do that in a in a home cleaning, business, landscaping, business, roofing company painting business, any home services, business H vac, you could spend a decade in any of those businesses and intelligently build them and become independently wealthy in a decade, sell it and they get off first base, then swing for the fences. So I would probably do something like that. And maybe think about it almost like a tech company like if you if you started an H vac business today, and just figured out a way to make make the customer experience so delightful using technology making the the service so consistent using tools available to founders today, you could outwork your competition and probably offer a premium service at a better rate than these established old school incumbent. So I would take one of those two paths, given the circumstances,

Me as a little technology and someone to actually answer the phone. That's right, yeah, half the time. Half the time you're gonna beat most of your competition as That's exactly right. Yeah, what's the biggest business mistake you've ever made?

I think anytime I've ever tried to delegate something that I didn't know anything about, always blew up in my face. So when we started GreenPower, I didn't know how to code, I didn't know how to write software. I never done any of that. So the first thing we did was we outsource all of the mobile app development and website development to a third party shop thinking they'll just build it and will market it. And we wasted $150,000. And like a year of our time doing that, because we didn't know the first thing about how to build software. And so it was delegation from abdication. It's like, I don't know how to handle this. You do it. That always blows up in my face, you should delegate from a standpoint of stewardship. It's like, okay, here's how we do this, here. Here's why we do it this way. This is how long it should take, here's the standard operating procedure for how we do it. Here's what we expect to back, here's where we're going to judge quality, here's how much we think it should cost. You know it in the end, you're delegating it from the standpoint of stewardship. So the one of the biggest mistakes I made was trying to be in the tech business, and not knowing the first thing about tech, it'd be like opening a restaurant and never having cooked a meal. And so it was pretty silly as harmless like to learn.

Yeah, it is. I mean, it happened so many times. I mean, I, I was part of the I got brought in by one of the kids that I work with on an incubator program that helped him out. And you know, he didn't really understand the SAT, they abdicated that to a group and India to do it. And I mean, it, it never seemed to get moving forward. And I'm like, Okay, here's these very obvious mistakes that are happening. And we just got to get it to move forward. And it just never could move forward.

It's tough. And it is not the Poopoo on engineers in India, they have the best engineers in the world. The problem is, is they're they're misdirected. They're not being put to work on the things they're supposed to be putting the use was put on the workout, because you don't know, this was the mistake that I made. You know, I didn't know how to how to organize engineers, you know, into building on a product roadmap. I've never done it before. So I had to learn all those things from scratch the hard way. That's why it took 10 took 10 years, or I could do it in two now.

Yeah, that's awesome. What's a good book that you'd recommend for our audience?

Oh, man, you know, some classics, the E Myth by Michael Gerber and the four hour workweek, The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. Those are two really good books that you should probably read a couple of times. E Myth is great, because it is you can sit there as a small business owner and read it and be like nodding your head. Aha, yeah, that's my life. Yes, I'm making these mistakes. Uh huh. And so that's a great book. Wow, workweek is awesome about you, even though it was written 1517 years ago. It's about systems it's about delegating. It's about processes. And any business owner. Nice. Nice to know that stuff. Another favorite of mine is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey. The concept of delegation from stewardship versus delegation from education is one of the seven habits. So those are three of my favorites that are tactical and philosophical about business

Era. Everybody listens to the show knows I have like the most world's the world's most dog eared copy of four hour workweek. He had to let him read the four times a year for the last.

That's awesome. He needs to he needs to touch it up and rerelease it for 2024? I'm sure he's thought about a million times I think he I think he's probably tired of being the life hack guy. But man, what a helpful manual on changing the way you think about business.

Honestly, I still go back to it. And yes, all the stuff inside of it, like the different websites that are in there have changed and everything else. So it's not useful from that perspective. But the concepts are insanely use. Yes. It reminds me every time I go back in and I'm like, why am I doing all right? Am I not delegating this stuff out? Why am I holding all this stuff? And, and you know, enough very much same thing. But But I think from a from a smaller business perspective, just absolutely. The concepts are just you should drill into those over and over again.

Yeah, the thing that both those books talk about is, the difference between hard work and difficult work is hard work is just working your you know, your your hands to the bone, and just really working your ass off in the business difficult work is like 10 times more challenging, you get to think through the system that's going to execute that thing and how you're going to like codify it to where other people can do it. It's much, much more challenging is difficult work. And none of us want to do the difficult work. I hate doing difficult work. But if you invest your time in it, you can wake up in a whole new world three or four or five years later, most profitable work. That's right, high leverage,

What is a tool that you use in your business every day that you might recommend to our audience,

I'm looking at my tabs right now I've got about 40 tabs, left to right. And I've got I've got seven Trello boards open. So Trello nice, free tool Kanban tool, it's existed, I don't know, I don't know how long the Kanban charts existed maybe, maybe 50 100 200 years could be, you know, and, and just organizing things as they as they flow through the different states of completion. And it's free. What an awesome tool. So I love Trello

So you get too crazy and have too many of them. And then you have to start paying for it. Yeah.

Yeah. Which I feel bad. Like, I have used it for I know a decade I don't think I've ever paid for it. And you know, like they want to like upsell you on the on the storage but I just use a Google Drive link and different things I'm so I probably owe them a lot of money that I think about it. So

I got a friend that runs a a roofing business. And you know, he, like you were saying, you know, it's like, Hey, you go out there, he maybe restarted another business like that again. And John's the funny one, you know, he's like, I don't know, roofing, because I'm in the sale. That's right. I'm not in I'm not in the roofing business at all. I'm a sales company just happens to do route that, you know, exactly. Asked to zip through to the people to do the work. And then he collects the money and everything else. And he is the one that interview speed up to Trello Yep, look at his desk, and he's got like six monitors up, and all his Trello boards on

Him, and he's in the sales and systems business and the roofing is just almost doesn't matter. It's like, you know, going back to the founder of McDonald's being in the real estate business, and the hamburgers being the vehicle to for that, you know, figure out what business you're in. And if you can get into sales business, you know, that's how you build a business and not be self employed. Whereas, you know, I was over 15 years building my landscaping company, I was fully self employed for most of it. The business piece of it didn't come together to the what to the latter part of it. So, yeah, I like that he's in the sales business.

Yeah. Last question. What's your definition of freedom?

You know, we talked about it a little bit. Freedom to me is, is being able to work on the things that I want to work on, and being able to sow seeds of opportunity for people in my company that work on the, on the mission with me, and then also people that use my products. That to me is a lot of fun. That to me, feels doesn't feel like work. So then it feels like freedom. And and like you said earlier, you know, if I don't want to work a particular day, I have the choice to do that. If I want to take off for a month and go travel, I can do that. That's true freedom. And you know it does money buy happiness, no, but money does solve all your money problems. And if you can figure out a way to get to that day where all of your future days are paid for no matter what, at least you don't have to worry about a lot of like, the stress that comes with not having enough money. It can free you up to swing for the fences, and to do the big thing, but once one thing is law, people want to do the big thing right out of the gate. And it's like, Oh, I know us you're talking about a $50 million business here, buddy. Let's let's go start a a million dollar business and, and get a track record and then we can do the big thing after that. You know, it's hard to like come out the gate swinging

like that. Well, it's also a way to hell harder to start a million dollar business than is

Exactly, exactly So yeah, that's success for me. Oh,

Totally. That's awesome. Well, Brian, if somebody wants to learn more about green PAL and use your service that is all that what's the best way to find out more?

Yeah, greenpal.com Just go there, sign up, get free quotes. Hire somebody. If you are in the lawn mowing business, you can go there also inside up. And if anybody wants to hit me up, just find me on Instagram. Brian M. Clayton. Drop me a DM there,

Brian. Okay. Well, with all that stuff inside the show notes, Brian, thank you for being on and telling your story. It was awesome, man. I love that.

Thank you, Jeff. I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.

Great conversation. Folks. We do these for you a twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. So make sure that you are subscribing to the channel, wherever you're at, whether it is on the audio version of this on all the podcast channels, or if you're watching us on YouTube, and seeing our bright shining faces on there, whichever. Make sure you subscribe and hit that little up thumb button and let us know that you're out there and put a comment as you can. So thanks a lot, and we'll see you guys back here the very next time.

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