on Hustle Podcast. Today we have a special guest
with us. This is episode number 117. And I heard
our guest speak at the LCR Summit in October,
the Monday and Tuesday right before Equip Expo.
And I was determined I had to get Mark on the
show. And today, we have Mark Bradley with us.
Thank you for joining the lawn hustle. Oh, thanks
for having me. Well, today we want to talk about
most lawn care companies don't fail because they
don't know how to mow grass. They fail because
of leadership or they fail because they have
no systems, no processes. So I want to talk to
you today about building the right team How you
do that? to where your team members buy into
your vision by into your mission statement and
They feel like they're not just cutting grass.
They're a part of a team so is it important for
every business, regardless of their size, to
have a vision statement and a mission statement.
business owners themselves have to have a vision
in mind for their own lives, which I don't think
any of us start out saying, we want to work six
days or seven days a week from sun up to sun
down. That's usually not the vision that we have
for our lives. I think, you know, often we start
businesses in this industry because we love working
outside and we love helping other people. And
I think we all have a certain level of a connection
to earth and tending the earth. And I think we
like working with other people. I think we're
social creatures, and I think that kind of draws
us into the industry. But the vision that we
have often is our life vision. And this is seeing
ourselves, providing for our families, providing
for ourselves. And when we've got that work done,
we usually like to also provide for others. And
creating teams in our businesses helps us navigate
that. in two ways, really. We're building our
business and meeting this vision for a growing
business, but we're also helping others create
a realistic path forward to their vision of providing
for their families. And so generally, I think
when you go to build a team, it's important to
have a vision for the business, saying where
it's going to be in 10 years. And it has to be
big enough that all of the other people on your
team can see that that vision will serve their
mission personally as well. When I started a
business, it was to create some financial freedom.
I wasn't thinking it would be a path to riches
or anything like that. I just wanted to make
sure that I could provide a good living for myself
and provide for a family in the future. And I
think when we share that personal mission and
we help others see that that's likely at the
core of their mission and that truthfully, I
think most humans are seeking out meaningful
connection with other humans, and that we can
all do that at work and build toward a vision
together, building a company, serving clients,
growing a company, creating more financial opportunities
for ourselves as individuals, but everybody on
the team at the same time. I just think that
becomes a much clearer way to decide. and also
motivate everybody more instinctively toward
continuous improvement for themselves and their
life vision and the company and its vision simultaneously.
And this way I think we end up with a little
bit more of a fabric as a team as opposed to
having silos on a team where everybody's just
thinking about themselves. And I think, you know,
quite honestly, That is good. I heard Dr. John
Maxwell say, if you think you're a leader and
nobody is following you, You're just taking a
walk. to prove to people around you that you
have a plan, that the plan is working for you,
and that it can also work for them. And I think
that's the clarity most people are looking for.
Well, how long have you been in the green industry?
I mean, as long as I can remember, if I count
working in the garden around the farm with my
parents. But I would say the first time I ever
earned I had started doing projects on my own
and planting and doing, I used to dig cedar trees
off of the farm and plant cedar hedges all around
the town that we lived in. 15 and 16 years old,
taking my father's pickup truck and doing projects
before I actually even had a driver's license.
It's been a long run and I'm 51 today, so. It's
been most of my life. Well, I believe I read
somewhere that you started and grew a top 100
lawn care business. Yeah. projects and maintenance
and residential snow clearing and the business
grew incredibly fast and 15 years later we were
62nd on the top 100 in North America and we had
the highest revenue per employee on that list
at the time so that was I think what I was always
most interested in I wasn't as worried about
being the biggest as I was When did you start
LMN? I started LMN in 2009, late 2009 was when
we went to market. I had started building the
products in 2007 because I needed products to
scale the business the way I was planning to
scale it. I really wanted to build a system that
would enable everybody on my team to see the
metrics. particularly estimated versus actual
hours so that they knew exactly how long we had
estimated things to take and that they had a
scoreboard of their own to understand if they
were hitting targets or not. I built that originally
so that. you have sold it, and now you are the
founder and chairman of the LeanScaper. Tell
us about that. Yeah, so I sold L &M in late 2024.
was helping him around the same time. And I kind
of had this thought as I was selling LMN, whether
I wanted to help him full time or if I wanted
to go on and continue on the mission that I had
set out to achieve, which was to help 100 ,000
landscape companies professionalize in the industry.
And I hadn't reached that goal with LMN. So I
felt I had some unfinished work and decided that
the timing was perfect and felt like the universe
sort of put an opportunity on my lap with AI
entering mainstream day to day right at the same
time I was doing that transaction. It was kind
of a divine timing, I guess you could say. So
I ended up really focused on developing a product
that I thought would really help business owners.
create clarity around the vision and mission,
but more importantly, create durable systems
that were highly actionable and in hand in the
moment using AI to help landscapers become more
efficient, but more importantly, really help
them develop leaders within their company because
I really believe that everybody's a leader and
everybody's an entrepreneur. I think that everybody
gets out of bed every day. to support their own
mission and their own family and provide for
themselves. And they just choose a company to
go to work at, which in my mind, they're working
for themselves. They just choose a place to go
to work. That kind of makes everybody self -employed.
I felt that I could build a product using AI
that would enable people to tap into the mastery
of others and the system's thinking that oftentimes
great founders, business owners have but struggle
to get those systems documented in a way where
others can actually use their mastery to get
elite results. And I also believe that we're
just all average people and some of us have some
systems that are better than others at various
things where we put our effort and if we can
document those and share those and utilize AI
to help others. understand what it looks like
and follow a pathway. Not much different than
following Google Maps to get from one place to
another. I feel that's a very possible thing
to do and we decided to build an AI platform
that enables that. And that's really what Leanscaper
is. And really, when I built Leanscaper, I wanted
to really focus on the leaders and that meant
creating a strong community and a mastermind
program that puts all the founders and all that
genius in the same room but more importantly
also their leaders within their companies because
I think over the years we've put too much emphasis
on educating owners and not enough on educating
their teams right I really think that for our
industry to evolve like some of the other trades
on apprenticeships and crew manager training
and manager training and leadership training
at every level in the business. And so we've
really put a lot of emphasis around building
the community, building the programs to build
those leaders, and then enabling them with an
AI platform that provides that roadmap and automates
the workflows in a business so that... owner's
mastery can be duplicated at scale while they're
not around, which has traditionally been the
big challenge for us. I am recovering from a
surgery right after a quip. I came home and we
started drilling holes for a fence build and
I hit a stump underground and it locked my auger
up and threw me about 20 feet across the yard.
and I tore this rotator cuff in three places,
tore ligament in half, and drove the collarbone
into the rotator cuff. So I've been off work
for six months personally, but the business kept
running. So I think that is a testament to investing
in people, making them feel a part of your vision
and your mission. And I just feel like sometimes
hiring people is a difficult thing in the green
industry. But I also think we sometimes make
it harder than what it really is. business, what
I started to really see was that there were patterns
that were repeating, and they weren't good patterns.
more mature and I read a little bit more and
I had more time, I think, to learn and see those
patterns were probably a reflection of my own
leadership more than anything. I started to realize
that I had been hiring the wrong mindset for
many years and it was really just when I was
bringing the wrong mindset into the business,
almost no matter what I did, I wasn't really
ever the systems and the training, activating
the way I would expect. And so I think I was
probably five, six years into business before
I had a proper interview system. And even then,
it wasn't great. Probably by year 10 or so, I
figured out that my interview system had to start
with unearthing whether or not this candidate
had a growth mindset. And when I got really good
at figuring out whether or not they had that,
first phase of an interview and I moved to like
a five -part interview I got really good at getting
really good people and that that truly changed
my business and changed me I think as a leader
because energy is real and when you surround
yourself with chaotic energy or people that don't
have a very high ceiling in terms of the way
they see themselves and they've got that fixed
mind mindset or don't believe that there's more
in store for them, you're really pulling those
people forward. And when you stop and change
your interview approach and you start to focus
on growth mindset and you hire people who have
done hard things in their lives and overcome
those hard things, whether that's in school or
in sports or in the arts, in music, in maybe
their church. you can see the pattern and when
you learn how to ask better questions during
interviews and you ask them about times where
maybe they've set a goal or set out to achieve
something and found a setback and how they reacted,
you start to see this pattern emerge where they
have a vision, they set goals, they want more,
when they see a setback they learn from it, they
do something different and eventually they either
achieve or get close to achieving whatever it
was they set out to achieve. That phase of interviewing
for me really changed everything. It allowed
me to really, sorry, we'll have to edit this
part out. So what I ended up learning when I
started to really change that interview phase
was it became much easier for me to train these
people and for them to learn because they wanted
to. And I think I wasted a lot of years trying
to teach people that weren't interested in learning
because unfortunately, whatever happened to them
in life, they had set such a ceiling for themselves
that was so low that it's too uncomfortable having
someone trying to pull. When you start with a
team of people who believe that they can have
more, everything changes. These people are everywhere.
I used to hire a lot of street kids and within
that community I could interview and I could
see right away who was going to want the growth
and who wasn't. So it didn't matter whether they
were a college grad or they came from a church
group or they came from the street. If they wanted
more and they had that Let's go back to your
lawn care business days. When your lawn care
business started growing and you were ready to
scale. What was it that helped you realize that
you couldn't do it all by yourself? that you
can teach apprentices a trade and everything
they need to know about a trade in four years.
And then you can groom them into becoming great
leaders over the course of a few years thereafter.
And by year, somewhere between five and year
seven, if you methodically grow people, you can
really scale around that. So my goal when I started
the business wasn't to run an owner. operator
business, it was to build a business where I
could build people. And I struggled figuring
out how to do it, despite having worked in that
environment and seen it. What I was missing early
on was knowing who to select. But once I got
good at selecting the right people, I was using
an apprenticeship program. that recipe really
began to work well. Again, knowing who to choose
was the most important thing, but then using
the apprenticeship model to train people to understand
how to do the work and get the skills and how
to work with others and how to understand safety,
quality, efficiency, customer service over the
course of three or four years, depending on the
role, and then putting them through leadership
training. became the way I did it but the knowing
I think was from my apprenticeship seeing that
that's how it's done in a more technical environment
like that where there's many many different trades
from carpenters to plumbers to electricians,
welders and just about every other trade you
can I think there's three important things for
a lawn care business or a service business owner
to know. Number one, what are the things that
only I can do as the owner? Number two, what
can I delegate? Number three, what can I eliminate?
Yes sir. So did you struggle in the beginning
of your scaling with delegation? Absolutely.
There's many, many, many other tasks that people
just don't know how to do yet. And when you attach
that yet piece to it, it motivates you and it
puts the onus on you to teach them. And I think
having systems, SOPs, standard operating procedures
that are well documented with the basic steps,
I don't believe in writing a novel for an SOP.
basic steps and when we read an SOP to an employee
and they understand it and they read it and they
initial it and then we show them that procedure
one time two three five maybe they'll master
that procedure and so you know generally speaking
I think when we have procedures for all of our
major workflows in our business and when we use
them day to day as a training tool, as a clear
path of what good looks like. And when we make
sure that the people that are working with us
understand the SOP and how to apply it, we remove
one bottleneck at a time. And if we just show
up every day as business owners and we try to
get 1 % better, this is why I love Lean so much.
when we try to get 1 % better each day, when
we look back after a year, if we work 250 days,
we're 250 times better. And if that means I write
one workflow every day or three every week and
I train the team to those and I make sure that
they understand them, then I build this organizational
muscle over time because they start teaching
others using the same SOP. And when I had hundreds
of employees, I didn't teach anybody anything
anymore. But they taught each other using those
SOPs that we initially built together, and that
they were now upgrading on their own. They were
improving those SOPs over time. And we had an
approval process. So if you didn't like the SOP,
you could make a recommendation to approve it,
and we'd improve it. And then that was the new
way of doing things. And I believe that SOPs
are just understand what the end is that we have
in mind, that we reverse engineer all the steps
to get there, show them the pathway, and then
we let them go and do that on their own. I think
that we all think we're a little more special
than we are. The truth is, if we show someone
the pathway, they'll get to the same result.
What was maybe one of the hardest things for
you to delegate? I think when you go to delegate,
you've got to trust that person and know that
you have invested in them to the point where
they're going to do it just like you would do
it. So what was the one thing that you were maybe
a little hesitant to delegate? but we were also
very family -like in that we could disagree,
we could agree. It didn't really matter much
either way to us. We were very comfortable that
way, just the same as two kids in the backseat
of the car disagreeing on which game to play.
For us, making a disagreement about what good
looks like was fine. We were okay with that.
And that's not normal. I think a lot of times
people used to come into the company and feel
uncomfortable with the way that we would debate
and create plans and decide on what we were going
to do and what we were going to prioritize and
what we weren't and our lead initiatives with
waste elimination and whatnot. So that was a
hard one, I think, for me to let go. A second
one that was really difficult. It was for me
a really hard thing to train people how to estimate
accurately and how to sell as a helper, not as
a slimy salesman. That's always been a thing
for me, is our job is to help people make decisions.
And they'll decide to do business with us if
we're the right company. So let's not sell them.
Let's just help them make a decision. And getting
that right was another one that I was really
hard for me to let go of, because I'm really
particular about two things. One, the quality
of the people that join our company, and two,
the quality of the revenue or the customers that
we decide to service. And so those two were definitely
the hard ones to let go of, but I do think that
if you want to scale beyond a 10 or 12 person
company, I do think that you have to accept that
other people have to have those skills and that
they can be trained. It's good. Let's take a
short break and hear a word from our show sponsor.
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the outside work, we run the office. And we're
back with Mark Bradley, the chairman and founder
of LMN and now Leanscaper. We want to talk for
a minute about hiring. What traits? Is there
a certain trait? So things like that are often
what we're looking for. The attitude toward learning,
the attitude toward customers, the attitude toward
coworkers or past employees or employers, sorry,
has a big impact also on my decision making.
And then really looking at their work history
and just understanding what they've done and
why they left. and what they were seeking next.
And, you know, with young workers, you're not
going to see people that have been in roles for
five years. It's just not the way it is. So they've
probably had a lot of six -month to one -year
jobs. But what I'm looking for is, you know,
what did you learn at that job? What did you
like? What didn't you like? Why did you leave?
And then looking at why they took the next job
and what they learned there, what I'm looking
for is progress. When you see somebody that's
gone from maybe 16 years old to 25 years old
with very little progression, it tells a story
where if somebody's been 16 working at the grocery
store and 18, they decided to go and work with
their uncle that had a plumbing business and
they didn't stay with it after two years because
they didn't see that as being a fulfilling career,
but they learned a lot about plumbing and they're
still interested in working in the trades. That's
okay. It's a pivot. But if I start to see people
that have just kind of done the same type of
jobs and never really stuck around and their
reason for leaving is just, I didn't like the
boss or I didn't like this coworker or the customers
were a nightmare. It starts to paint a picture.
And I'm not saying that it's not okay to hire
people who have strong opinions about their former
employers because I believe that it's good when
somebody tells me the truth and they say, well,
hey, listen, I worked there for five years, and
they wouldn't give me a raise, so I decided to
leave. I don't mind that, because that tells
me that they want more. And if there's a reason,
I'll usually say, well, why did you think you
deserved a raise? And if they say, well, because
I was longest there, that's not a good reason.
But if they tell me, I produced double the revenue
of all the other crews, but I was only getting
$2 an hour more, well, that's the person I want
to hire. And so I'm usually just trying to have
enough conversation with them to understand how
they think. And that's really what I'm looking
for when I'm hiring younger people. Oh, is there
a red flag that you look for in people that you
would not hire? Yeah, I think the big one is,
again, early in that interview process when those
behavioral pre -interview questions go out, I
like to ask tough questions. That's why I like
it being because in person, I think it's hard
for a young person to get put on the spot and
answer these questions. So they tend to give
you short answers, which don't work. And so by
giving them the form, if they put short answers
on the form, then it shows me that they have
a very short attention to detail, and they don't
really care what other people think. And that
tells me that they're not going to be very coachable.
The thing that tells me most about the coachability
is experience in the past, learning. And so I'm
asking a lot of behavioral questions around what
did you learn from this experience or tell me
about a time you set out to achieve a goal and
you didn't hit the goal in the timeline expected.
What did you learn from and tell me about what
you did next? And if they give me a short answer
to that one, And that tells me they don't have
a lot of inner drive. And again, they're not
that coachable at that point because they don't
want anything, not enough to go and do the work.
So I would say the deal breaker for me is usually
right there. It's like, if they don't cross that
line in their answers to tell me that they're
willing to do hard things and push through hard
things to get a result, then I really don't think
they're coachable. And if they're not coachable,
then. It doesn't matter how good our leaders
are, how good our systems are, how good our training
programs are. They're not going to cross that
line just because we're pulling them. And I feel
those are typically the people that end up being
late all the time. They don't do the training.
When they do the training, they do it in the
most minimal effort possible. And they train
themselves to do that. And they kind of look
for the path of least risk. distance, even when
it's not good for them. And that's a hard thing
to change. In our industry, I believe we are
moving from the chuck in the truck or Dan in
the van into a more professional level. What
changes have you seen in the green industry from
say the beginning and to where we are now? that
you are most proud of. size companies in the
industry. And certainly on the upper end, we've
got P companies doing massive roll ups and building
multi hundred million dollar platforms. But the
truth is the bulk of the industry is really today
being managed by the one to five million dollar
operators. There's a lot of businesses in that
category. And that is what I've seen shift the
most. The average landscape. When I got into
the business back in the early 90s, they were
around $500 ,000. And $1 million was a big company
at the time. And now what we're seeing is that
I think the norm, the typical companies I'm seeing
are more in that sort of $3 million range if
they're doing some installation, some enhancement,
and some lawn. And I'm seeing the lawn companies
that are smaller lawn companies. really starting
to average out closer to a million dollars, which
is a sizable revenue for a small business. And
I think if I were to say what I've seen the most
is with that average company size increasing,
there's more availability of money for overhead
staff. And overhead staff create systems and
manage systems, not professionalize the business.
answering the phone professionally, or building
more professional proposals, or having a more
robust sales process, or better customer service,
or a more clear financial truth with better accounting.
These things are all byproduct of having more
money to spend on overhead salaries. And so I
think as the industry has increased the average
company revenue, we've also been fortunate, I
think, to start I think we all start off as checking
the truck to a certain degree. I know I did.
I didn't know my numbers. I didn't know what
to charge. You know, I was thinking. $25 is better
than nothing. But then I realized very quickly
that it's not just that $25. It cost me money
to do that job. Gas in the vehicle, gas in the
equipment, insurance, you know, the list goes
on and on. So out of that 25, I might have made
seven or eight bucks for a job like that. So
it just wasn't worth it. So I had to learn very
quickly to raise my prices, and to learn very
quickly the importance of knowing who you want
to work for, what neighbors, neighborhoods you
want to work in. And, you know, I think with
people like Brian Fullerton, who has his training
classes and sessions and get togethers, Naylor
Taliaferro, Paul Jameson, these guys They are
investing in people you are investing with the
lean scaper and giving people Opportunity to
be a part of a community that's bigger than them
and I think that is what's moving us from the
chuck in the truck and It's helping us realize.
I'm not just cutting grass. I am running a business
You know The sooner we make their lives a little
better and all the people that they impact, whether
it be their families they're providing for, or
their employees and their families, I think as
we evolve and we learn, sharing that with others
is how we move forward as a species and I think
being a part of community. gives us this unusual
opportunity to learn from others, but also be
more vulnerable. And I think that's important
as business. vulnerable leaders who share, hey,
I had this struggle. I applied this wisdom that
I gained either through the mistakes I made or
maybe even from somebody else. And I tried that
out and here was my new result. And you should
give it a shot as well. It worked for me. And
I think that has really changed our industry
exponentially, which is why I actually believe.
They didn't know before either. I think we're
social creatures. We learn this way. And I really
think it's got a massive impact on professionalization.
Well, we've been going for 49 minutes. I want
to be mindful of your time. I know you're a very
busy man. But I want to express my appreciation
again for you coming on the show. And tell our
listeners. how they can become a part of Lanescaper
and how they can connect with you if they choose
to. Over the course of the year, we basically
built every workflow that powers a company. At
that point, you built your own software and you
can count on the fact that you're going to be
a leading organization. Well, I appreciate you
all listening to the Lawn Hustle podcast. Until
we talk again, remember to work smarter and keep
making a profit. That's what we're out to do.
We're out to be successful. And we want to help
each and everyone that we can find that level
of success. Mark, thank you for being on the
line hustle. We appreciate you.