Where did this vision come from to create the Uber lawn care?
Well, so, uh, Green Pal is a 10 year overnight success.
My two co-founders and I have been at this for a little over a decade,
but now it's nationwide in the United States.
So anywhere in the U S you can use it around 300,000 people use it every week.
And, uh, the idea, the idea we had to start it 10 years ago is the same idea we're
working on now, which is how do you make this chore as easy as pushing a button?
And the idea came from my first business, which was a landscaping company.
I had a lawn mowing business.
I ran for 15 years in Nashville, Tennessee, eventually growing it from like me and a
push mower to over a hundred employees.
And, and then it was acquired in 2012 by a big national company out of Texas.
And after that, I got, I thought I was just going to like stop working for a
while, but I got bored really quick.
And I watched the movie, the social network and they made it look super easy
to start a tech startup.
They built Facebook in like 30 or 40 minutes and it looked awesome.
And so I thought I want to be a tech entrepreneur.
And, uh, luckily I didn't know what I didn't know.
Cause I never would have started this, but I thought somebody's going to build
an app that works like Uber, but for lawn mowing.
And so that's, that's where the idea came from.
That's it, man.
Ryan Dice of digitalmarker.com.
I saw him speak on stage at Infusionsoft's conference years ago.
And he said, I would rather eat my left pinky than build another CRM.
I was the only one in the audience who laughed out loud.
I believe it.
I had done it.
And you know, that's because you get how hard that is.
Okay.
So it's 300,000 users per week right now.
What in the world does that feel like?
Well, you know, it was 10 years in and, uh, and it's like, okay, you know, we
can breathe a little easier cause we're, we're profitable and it's a little
more fun now, but it's still really is day one.
We, we, when we, when we started this company, we wanted to build something
that could touch the mass market that, that millions of people could use.
And so, so until we hit a million people using it every week, I'm not going to
feel satisfied in a way that, that we have reached a portion of the mass market.
There's no greed in that.
There's wisdom in that.
And that's why I'm excited about your answer.
Like I can tell you, you know, you're, you know, what a blessing it is.
Um, you know, you're grateful for, for the time you've put in, but you also
know how real entrepreneurship is.
And that's a big part of what our show stands for is helping people catch that.
Yeah.
The visions are wonderful and the journey is important, um, as well.
Like there's, there's more to it than just the numbers.
So I'm glad you didn't put your sunglasses on and go stand by some
Lamborghini to talk about why, you know, you've made it and how everything
else doesn't matter anymore.
Um, but, you know, talk to me a little bit more about this.
So that feeling of you're at 300,000 per week.
Um, what if we just compared your feelings from day one and how you would
have felt, what would you have felt like then when you thought like, man, if I
were at 300,000 users, what would that have felt like if that had happened overnight?
Yeah.
So it was very surprising to me how long it did take to get this thing going.
I really thought we would be where we're at today in year two.
And, and so in the, in the early days, it was like a big punch in the stomach
when there was no pull from the market.
And it was a, if you build it, they will not come.
And what I began to realize and learn the hard way was, man, everything we
have poured our passion and soul into building this platform, that was the easy part.
The hard part now is the marketing and the distribution and getting it
in the hands of people.
And so that was like a level of the game that I didn't, I didn't know that
I was going to have to beat.
And cause I thought the market was just going to pull it out of our hands.
And so it was, it was challenging, but at the same time, I had made a decision
that no matter what I was going to work on my best idea, I built and sold a
small business and I was kind of, I was kind of on my own to, to, to work on
my best idea from there on.
And, and, and so that default of, okay, you're going to get out of bed this
morning, you're going to go into the office and you're going to grind on your
best idea was kind of like the default mentality that got us through the first
three or four years, which are really tough.
And I guess, fortunately, I'm not terribly creative.
I've had one good idea in 10 years.
This is it.
You should be a push a button and a lawn mowing service come over your yard for
you and that's it.
And, and so, uh, that's how we got through it.
And, and so, and so like, you know, in a way I'm glad it didn't happen.
Super fast because even though I was a second time founder, I was very much a
first time founder all over again.
So I kind of needed to slow bake in the crock pot to kind of learn what it meant
to be a tech founder, what learned, learned how to build a product and how
to get customers to use it.
So that just took time.
And that was, that was really the, the universe of, of, of the market giving
me what I needed looking back.
And so a lot of times, you know, these things aren't happening.
To you, they're happening for you.
Yeah.
And so that's, that's how it was for me looking back.
How do leaders lean into funding the vision, you know, rather than setting
aside and giving up or saying, I don't know, um, you know, you've got some
experience behind this for more than 10 years.
So our leaders hiding, why are they hiding and how do they lean in to making it happen?
Well, I think the first reason is it's, it's just damn hard for you to be able
to pull this off as a leader.
You're going to have to change.
You're going to have to evolve, you're going to have to grow.
You're going to have to get feedback.
It's going to be painful and it's going to suck.
You're going to have to talk to customers and they're going to tell you
everywhere that your business stinks.
And so that's hard.
Nobody wants to do that.
I know I, I didn't when we first got started.
And the other thing, um, I think the reason is, and I heard this the other day.
I don't remember who said it was some smart entrepreneur, but he said, it's
really easy to hide behind changing the world.
And what he meant by that was you have this big grand vision of this big lofty
goal and then, and then you kind of like put that on the shelf and then you
just kind of hide behind that.
Right.
And it's, and it's not easy to hide behind.
We're going to get a hundred new customers next week, but I don't, I can't
be held accountable for changing the world.
Right.
Exactly.
So you're absolutely right.
Go ahead.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's, so it's not, you can't hide behind changing the world.
You can't hide behind.
Um, I'm going to, I'm going to prune out one bad person in the, in the culture
and replace them with one better fit.
Uh, you, you can hide behind with, we're going to have the best culture in our
industry and the best, the best team attitude, but it's easy to hide behind
that like vague goal, but it's not easy to hide behind something that's very
practical, tactical that has to happen in the next, you know, 30 days.
Absolutely.
And so I think that's one thing that holds up a lot of new founders, not a
lot of new leaders is, is like managing back to something that actually is a
small goal, like set small goals and then, and then rinse and repeat, um, and,
and yeah, put the big goal on the shelf, but, but, but fall back to the habits.
They're huge.
Well, and that's the com that's a healthy combination between
B hags and smart goals, right?
The big hairy audacious goals, um, that drive us for the reason and the purpose,
but at the same time, the accountability of are my actions in line with what I
want to accomplish if you're, if you're refusing to address that or recognize
that, or you're not open to feedback for it, you mentioned, you know, customers
and in the early days, not wanting that feedback, um, you know, it sounds like
you made a transition there.
Um, I honestly don't know where my transition was, but I freaking love
hard feedback, like I live for it.
You know, that's what we are.
Indeed.
We know how to move everything forward, um, but it's, it's sometimes, um, it
can be a challenge to get out of people.
And more importantly, if I'm working with entrepreneurs, it can be hard
to inspire them to want it.
How did you make that shift?
Yeah.
Well, for us, it was a, it was like a back against the wall.
We have 10 customers and we needed to get to a hundred to survive.
And so not only did we need this feedback to know if we were on the right direction
and building the right thing, but we needed this feedback so we could fix
whatever the actual problem was to keep that person as a customer, because we
knew we needed to get a hundred or else we were going to have to hang it up.
Because I knew if we get to a hundred, we get to a thousand.
I knew if we could, that's the goal though, right?
You didn't have to do that.
You have that mentality.
You gave yourself the mentality that you had that you could have felt, um, right.
And you could have gone and gotten a job and maybe family or friends could have
built, you could have lived under a bridge.
There's a, there's a lot of things that could have happened, but you, like, you
have an incredible amount of tenacity.
I can see that in that story alone.
Um, so you made it happen.
Yeah.
And you know, the, quite frankly, the other thing was, was the book, uh,
Lee started up by Eric Reese and then his, his, uh, his mentor was a guy named
Steve blank.
He wrote a book called the startup owner's manual and these two books.
Basically in like a thousand pages of texts beat into your head that you, if
you're going to make it, if you're going to survive, you have to get out from
behind the laptop and go talk to your customers.
So listen, and that's it.
And if you don't do that, then you're going to waste five years building the
wrong stuff that nobody wants to use.
And you're going to beat your head against the wall and you're going to be upset.
And you're going to be, you're going to be wondering why things aren't working
because the phone number is not going to your cell phone, the email inbox is
going to a non responder, you know, like you don't even have a hundred customers.
Why is the email, why is the company email going to a do not respond at, you
know, it's like, you need that feedback to, to pull this off.
And so those two books were really instrumental for me.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned into vision pros live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes, you know,
as these episodes continue to move forward, this is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your
time and attention, have an excellent time building out your vision and
becoming a vision pro yourself.