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Listen to what lawn care pro Joel Adams said after buying the SOP training bundle. That's the least painful $999 I've ever spent. It would take my team 200 hours to make lesser content. That's five bucks an hour. I don't work for five bucks an hour. So it was a no brainer. Smart move, Joel. If you're a lawn care business owner drowning in bottlenecks and burning daylight training your team from scratch, stop reinventing the wheel. The training Bundle gives you plug and play systems that bring clarity, remove bottlenecks and free you up to grow. Just $999 using the link in the description or by visiting thelantrepreneuracademy.com stop duct taping your business together and be like Joel, pick up the SOP Training Bundle today. You're now listening to the Fullerton Unfiltered Pod.

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Straightforward, no nonsense business advice completely on filtered Grow your business, grow your life.

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Now here's your host, Brian Fullerton.

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Hey, what's going on guys? Welcome to another episode of the Fullerton Unfiltered podcast. It is your host Brian Fullerton here hanging with you guys in Good morning. Well have this podcast coming out real time on Friday. It has been a busy couple of days over here getting everything done as humanly possible for the route and want to make sure I got a show for you guys today and something that's been on my mind that I think that has kind of perfectly culminated was a comment left on a YouTube video last night that I want to talk about for a couple of minutes and discussing like the modern day landscaper or the modern day like lawn care business or snow business. There's a lot that I want to probably get into. We'll see how much we actually have time for today. But I'll just tell you it's comments like this that are super revealing about where a lot of folks are at or still at in the industry. And I will just tell you I'm not here to spend the next 10, 20 minutes convincing anybody that we have anything figured out. Hardly. Hardly the case, right? Far from it. I won't even bet to say that, you know, we are who you should be following for the best business advice ever or man, that guy's got it all figured out. Hardly. I think I'm doing a good job. I think that I'm doing my best to be as out front and as tip of the spear as possible in the industry. Now some of you guys might listen in and say, dude, Fullerton what are you talking about? Like, you're the best that we've ever seen. You're the best that I got. You're my boy. You're my, you're my guy. And dude, I super appreciate that. Like, I am trying to be that guy for so many with the podcast, with the content, with pointing to the people that I'm learning from. The, the Mark Bradley's, the Kevin Scotts, the R Mark coachings with Ryan Markovich, the, the Sam Gambles, the, the guys with great big snow businesses, right? Not like junk you see on social media from people who don't own businesses, have never grossed past, you know, $75,000 in revenue, which, I'm not putting that down. I'm just saying if you're selling education or trying to be a content creator and influencer and you've never eclipsed, you know, basic revenue rungs, you know, in business, probably not a lot of credibility there. But hey, you know, what am I to. To say? Or who am I to say? And again, not throwing elbows, I'm just saying, like, dude, I'm trying to do the thing that I'm telling you guys to do. And as you guys try to grow a bigger business, I'm trying to learn from you as much as you're trying to learn from me. And I want to summarize this whole thought for just a few minutes today and talk about a topic like revealing the modern day landscaper or whatever way you want to look at this. Like, there's going to be two versions of a landscaper in the next 24, 36 months, and that's already starting. Here's the interesting thing. It's already starting now. It's hard to sometimes see the future, right? It is hard to sometimes catch the vision about things that are happening and transforming around you when you're so in the thick of it every single day that you don't have the ability to look up and see the roses or smell the roses, right? You're so deep in the forest that you can't see the trees. And a good coach or a good environment allows you to hit, pause, zoom out, what are we doing here? Why do we do what we do, reevaluate some things and then get back into your sparring session, you know, doing your business, running your business, does that make sense? And so, for example, one thing that I like to do, and I hope to do more of it, is when we promote somebody from a crew member right hand to a crew lead, I give them a ticket or a pass to Come on down to Equip Expo, all expenses paid, you know, a couple thousand dollar investment. And they'll be able to see the macro of 30,000 people. That represents, you know, 5, 10, 20% of the industry all in one spot, right? There's 600,000 landscapers, probably a couple million jobs, you know, obviously 10 million jobs. But you get to get a huge perspective of, yeah, that's John Deere, they do, you know, 14 billion. That's Doosan, they do 5 billion, that's Toro Companies, they do 3 or 4 billion dollars. That's Ed Wright, that's this guy. And you can just show people, hey, it's not just like cutting grass and plowing snow in Novi, Michigan. Like, dude, you're part of a real industry, right? Like you're part of a real organization that's trying to grow Brian's Law Maintenance, right? Like we plug into real people, real education, real events, real conversations, real certifications, right? To grow a real landscape company. Now if you're 18, 19, 20, 26, 34, 44, and you've never been, and you've never plugged in and you've never gotten that large macro perspective, all you know is all you know I know, hang tight, I got more great advice for you over the next 20 minutes. But all you know is all you know. And even worse, all you know is all you know. So you start to reinforce that all you know is all there is to know. And now you're an expert. And now we've tried that, or I don't need that, or I don't need to use software to price and bid my work. After all, I've been doing it for 20 years and I've made a decent little lifestyle with my. I'm not even going to be mean. They, they've, they've barely creaked out a life and an existence. Nothing that I would be proud of. Nothing that most of you guys would be proud of. Most of you guys, 18, 19, 20 year old, listening to my show, watching my content for a decade, because a lot of you guys got started at 10 years old, have already eclipsed the lifestyle of most 45 year olds in this industry. Now we can say that and still be humble and that's okay. But you know what I'm trying to say. You know, there's these guys that are 40, 50, 60 years old that don't work, it ain't real, that you know, why are you following that guy? All that guy wants to do is sell you something. A course, a contract, a conference, an event Ticket. And I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about anybody putting something on, right? I had a guy say, oh, going to a conference to follow Marty Blunder. I'm like, marty Blunder? He goes, yeah, I used to work for Marty 20 years ago. He's DMing me. Just random dude, damning me, you know, two, three, four months ago, or this is like six months ago because he was coming to LAL, Marty wasn't. The guy goes, I worked for Marty, you know, 10, 20 years ago and that dude doesn't have nothing figured out. I go, really? You random commenter on Instagram DM, you know, texting me at 10 o' clock at night on a weeknight versus Marty Grunder, who's built a sizable 15, 20 plus million dollar company going to 30 million in a hot skip and jump and oh, by the way, pulls about 1100 people to an annual summit. Sure, okay, you're probably right, dude, you're right. I'm so confused. By the way. You should personally publish and put on social media every great thing that you have going on. Just so I can compare, just so I can compare lifestyle, just so I can compare businesses, just. Why don't you do me a favor? Why don't you pan your yard tomorrow and show me A photo of 70 of your Isuzu's and I want you to just pan me a photo of your 10,000 square foot office and your 30,000 square foot warehouse and I want you to just pan your 8 acre property tomorrow. Okay? Because honestly, like if, if you're doing 25 million and Marty's doing 20 million, okay, like maybe you have a couple more things figured out than Marty. Sure, that, that's fair. Like that's a super fair conversation. You're probably 90% aligned on things, but maybe there's a couple of things you're doing different that allow you to be that much further along and that would be fair. So why don't you just do me a quick salad and show me the photos of every great thing that you have going on. Well, well, you know, Brian, you know, like money isn't like, you know, my God, you know, like money isn't the, you know, the most important thing ever. No, no, no, for sure, I agree. But money is like a really, really, really good scorecard, right? Like if you're trying to, you know, measure success on this planet, right? You've got your relationship with jc, you've got your relationship with your wife or spouse or partner, then you get your relationship with your kids, then you've got your business. And obviously in your business, if you want that to look successful, the more money, the more wealth, the more profit you're making dumping that back into either a $5 million savings account or $1 million home, a couple hundred grand in cars and a beautiful lifestyle where you take your kids on vacation. Right. Like I just, you know, I'm just a very pragmatic person. I just want to see a little evidentiary proof about who's got it figured out or more figured out. So if you don't mind, I would love to have you just DM me or, you know, and by the way, why don't I personally come. Why don't you just actually FaceTime me? We got technology. Just FaceTime me and show me your fantastic amazing business that eats the lunch of any single person that I'm learning from. Mark Bradley, Marty Grunder, Nick Carlson. Hey, we've got this mulch product line. It moves mulch really fucking fast and it's got some great, you know, bells and whistles. Well, you know, that thing's $30,000. That things are a piece of junk really. Well, Nick ran a couple million dollar landscape company. Moved more yards of mulch than you have already in your career. You've been doing this for 15 years. What you've moved in your totality. Nick was moving every spring. Nick had a team of 50 guys and it's you and your, you know, your cousin Jason who unfortunately hasn't showed up to work yet this week and it's now Friday. Okay, so let me, let me rephrase this just so we're super clear about what we're talking about today. The modern landscaper versus the guy who is just the OG landscaper. The OG landscaper says you don't need fancy dumb trailers. You don't need Element software. You don't need to go to grow. You don't need to go to leanscaper. After all, look at the, look at the empire that I've built. Is one truck, is one crew. Everything's rust bucketed out. Nothing's that the dude makes $45,000 a year. True. Not take home. He'll tell you he makes $400,000 a year. Folks, I'm just going to tell you, even in the landscaping industry, we talked about this on Link Law the other night because we had Nick Bartolo, a wealth manager on and he just dispelled a bunch of myths about wealth creation, what to do with your money. It was a, it was a very intelligent conversation and you guys have heard the stats, right? Like the just so for any of you guys out there listening in, you're always feeling like you're behind because I, I do sometimes as well. Especially when you get on social and this guy's got seven trucks and this guy looks like he's successful and this guy looks like he's successful. Look, obviously if you don't know 80, 90% of what you see is debt on social and I'm not down on it, I have a lot of debt. While we've paid a lot off obviously, but we've also had a lot of debt too. But the cash flowing side of our business, like the profitability of our business, pretty good right now, praise the Lord, knock on wood. I can't say that about all the other companies that you see, right? It's not just flashy trucks. We're making money. But unfortunately most folks, and I'm not putting anybody down, but most folks that have flashy anything or shiny anything, they're not really making a lot of money because it's all going to debt servicing payments. And the guy that's got everything paid for and everything looks like junk. He doesn't have the clue or the insight or the foresight to charge market rate, be patting stats to go buy new equipment. I will assure you he's not vacuum cleaning profit out of the business and taking home $200,000 out of his company when his rig and setup looks like it's from the 90s. Now am I judging that? Absolutely not. I'm just giving you perspective. That that old guy, that old head, that 35 year old, likely all they know is all they know. They're in rural Tennessee, they're in rural Kansas City, they're in a metro market like Detroit or Chicago. And because they've been doing it for 10, 15, 20 years, they think they have it all figured out again with their Mickey Mouse little frickin empire. And then they throw arrows at the big guys saying you don't need what those guys do have, say or believe. And I'm like, what an asinine comment, what an asinine thought, what an asinine perspective. And I don't get in a wrestling match with any of these people daily because as the old saying goes, if you want to wrestle a pig in the mud, all you're going to do is get dirty. And the pig loves it by the way, right? Like that's the pig's lair, that's the pig's pen, that's where he loves to play. He would love to Roll around and sling mud and get muddy with you. And obviously you are just going to get muddy and dirty and waste a bunch of time. And, you know, I see so many comments from so many folks. I get a lot of data. I would argue, to say, humbly put, outside of Marty Grunder and outside of Mark Bradley and, you know, again, like, maybe a massive organization like a Techo or a Unilock or an lmn, right. I would say I've got a pretty decent pulse on what the hell's going on in the industry. I talk to a lot of people, a lot of people every single day. I dm, hey, man, what's working? What do you guys got going on? Hey, where are you at? What are you doing? How are you scaling? How you growing? How you changing? Every time I go to a conference, I sit down with somebody new. That's my rule. Hey, man, how's it going in Virginia? How's it going in, you know, Denver? How's it going in, you know, California? I love learning about what's working in this industry. I don't have any ulterior motive other than I'm just inquisitive and I just, like, want to know. I don't want to be, you know, left behind necessarily. So let me go to this conversation and we'll kind of button this up. I had a comment last night. I put it on DM because. Or on Instagram stories, because that's what I do. Look, I'm all about constructive criticism, but if somebody's just gonna, like, dump or blast me or somebody, like, I'll stand up for that, dude. I'll stand up. I'm definitely, like, a supporter of the underdog. I. I just don't like it when people try to eat other people's lunch. If you're gonna do that, I'm gonna do my best to destroy your lunch, eat your lunch, demolish you, and napalm what's left? I just hate injustice like that. You know what I mean? I just. I've always been that dude. I've always been the little guy. I've always been the run. I've always been the. The kid in the corner. I've always been the kid that was picked last. Well, guess what? Give him a loud mouth and a couple bucks and a little bit of means and a little bit of networking, a little bit of availability and resource to you, and you can help people that are less fortunate. Well, a guy leaves a comment yesterday, and I probably should just read it, but he says on the most Recent mulch video that I did showing about how we're blowing in all of our mulch and I'll just give you the cliff notes and spare you. But he said, you know, basically you don't know what you're doing. You're giving away all the profit. You're not making any money compared to if you self perform the landscaping work. Anybody who's been in business for any amount of time knows all the money is in landscaping. Also, anybody who's mowing exclusively doesn't make any money. Trust me, I've been doing this for X. Anytime somebody starts a conversation with as a certified nurse, it's always best to acts. That's a pretty good litmus. That person's probably so baked in their own self evidence proving what I call it bias, right? Like bias theory or whatever they call it against of what they're about to say next that their mind is so not even open. Look, quick, I'll just tell you guys, I tell my guys all the time, I'm not here to teach you how to cut grass. I'm here to teach you how to win at life. That's my job. That's what a leader does. I couldn't care less if you learn how to cut stripes. Perfect. Do we need to do a good job? Yes. I want to do life skills while you're here. If you leave this job and go to the next job, which I, you know, that's totally fine, that's your prerogative. But you will say at your next job, hey, my last owner, my last boss told me this and I remember this. And it really made a difference from customer service to going the extra mile to having a good attitude to leaving your rocks at the door like, these are life skills. Hey, feel felt, found. Hey man, I understand how you feel. Look, I would have felt the same way. What I found is that Marty Grunner's actually got a really big caring heart. Right? Like any. Like these are skills that I'm teaching at our team meetings, not hey, so the best way to get a, a better stripe is to use the full deck and to do a K turn. Is there a place for that? Of course. But that's not what our team meetings are about. So we go back to this guy and anybody who says, well, as an investment banker for 25 years, what I have come to find, that's usually like them, justifying based on their ego and their, you know, their credentials. A self perpetuating thought to bias theory to prove to themselves what they're going to say next is true and what you say is wrong. Like convincing themselves. It's a life skill to learn, folks, when you talk to somebody, if anybody says, well, I've been doing this for 25 years now, there's an element of listening and humbling yourself and listening to what that person's going to say next, but then going home and doing what you think you should do next. Well, we've always self performed our mulch and the margin that we're looking for is 20%. And you know you're giving away all your profit and mowing makes no money. In fact, anybody knows mowing makes no money was this comment. And I'm like, dude, there's six, seven, eight, nine different, what would you call it? Like, points made in this narrative in like two giant paragraphs. And all I'm thinking to myself is, wrong, wrong, wrong. Debunked, debunked. Total myth wrong. Not true. Not true at all. And that's not opinion. I don't say I, you know, I just disagree with you because I disagree with you. I would say, hey, man, I hear what you're saying, but based on what this guy's doing, that guy's doing what I'm doing, what that guy's doing, what this guy's doing, what I just learned what I'm doing, what I just found out what I'm doing. And oh, by the way, my buddy did this and this is what he found out, right? Like, I'm pulling nine different data sets to explain to myself and less so much the pig about what's working and what we're believing to be the best approach. And this is what I want to discuss is like the modern day landscaper. This is the modern day business owner. This is the modern day human being that has access to information that doesn't want to just, as the old saying goes, stick their head in the sand. It's really exhausting, right? It's really frustrating from somebody who gets a lot of data, a lot of feedback, and a lot of really pushback. It's interesting. Like, I get a lot of data on my content and it's always, you can't do this here. You can't. I revised our entire snow strategy and sales process last year. Shared it with a bunch of industry folks and even a couple local peers, big fish peers. And I got pushback. I got pushback from one or two. Not the usuals that you would think, but I got pushback from one or two folks. And they're like, that's just not Going to work here, dude, we tried that and like, no, no, no, like I'm really, really, really confident. Like, I'm betting my bottom, I'm betting the farm that this is going to work. It worked really big, really well, really great. A lot of data behind what I decided to roll out and the belief to make it work. And by the way, it's absolutely scalable. It's absolutely something that could be assimilated into another company. It's absolutely the future of the way to structure contracts, period. Not even a question. The amount of thought process that went into this. High level and low level. I'm not saying it's like, hey, the Titanic, she's made of steel. She can't sink. Oh, I assure you sir, she's made of iron. She will sink. Like the best movie ever, right? Or the best scene ever in a movie. In Titanic was like, it's a. She can't sink. The Titanic can't sink. And the guy, the engineer goes, she's made of iron, sir, I assure you at the same time, in three hours she'll be at the bottom of the Atlantic. Like, I don't know why, she's Irish by the way, but like that kind of thought process from the dude behind him that's like, she'll never sink. We just, it's impossible. Really? Really. Because you're going to be on a lifeboat in about two hours in 30 degree temperature water. Like, don't follow that dude. I don't know who that guy was. Don't follow that guy. That's the people that are so vocal that leave comments and hey, look like, like, aren't you glad for the engagement? I couldn't care less about engagement or numbers or stats or fig. Like I want to have discussions with folks that want to like grow. And by the way, the 10,000 people that watch the video, they're all going, yeah, not a bad idea. Like that would ship, that would send, you know, I know because Evan, the mulch guy that we had superior that blew in all of our mulch goes, dude, I've had like a half dozen people reach out to me, including a 11 million dollar company that's now going to sub out 3,000 yards of mulch, right? Not just Brian's, but all the way up to the big guys as they probably could and should. So I know it works and Evan knows it works. And like that's the idea. It's seeing something and acting upon it and like making a decision to make something different. Oh, like Lana Leanscaper. Dude, it's like the comments I get from everybody's like, love Mark, love leanscaper. Yeah, I don't know about Lana and integration, dude. My, one of my team members just bought the $1200 holographic heads up display HUD or whatever you call it. New metas, dude. They're sweet. Like you wear a Apple watch, kind of a deal. A wristwatch, I was gonna say boomer. And you can scroll with it and you get to see the hologram or heads up display, whatever they call it. And dude, like when Mark's like, dude, you'll be on site, you'll be able to order, you know, material, have a holographic heads up display of projecting where the plants go, seeing, you know, grade seeing infrastructure, underground, utilities. One day you're like, that stuff's, you know, decades ahead, decades away. Two, five, you know, 50 years from now, dude, I'm telling you, like 24 to 60 months grunder, you know, with ACE peer groups. Yeah, you know, we've, we've looked at that. Really? Like a heart shake, like you've been through the process. No, no, I just like, you know, I've seen the banner. Oh, oh, okay. So you're not going to get a personal coach to grow your 5 million dollar company. You have 50 souls on your boat and you can't make the investment of 10, 20, 30 grand a year. Make sure that you wind up where you're telling them you're going. I mean that's a lot of responsibility having 30, 40, 50 people on payroll. I feel the burden every day having, you know, a lot, a lot going on behind the scenes. A lot, a lot going on behind the scenes. I'm like, dude, just the number that I have to come up with every month just to break even. It's like my goal is just to make that number a year and then some. Dude. It's ridiculous how things have grown and I'm excited about that, I'm proud of that. But also makes me, you know, anxious or scared. Like what if something happens? That's why like I'm always trying to keep my financial ducks in a row. And as you get bigger, as they say, you had a couple zeros. It's like, holy crap. Like, dude, it's big boy club. And you know, I can only imagine folks that are running 20 million dollar companies. Folks, now is the time to get registered for equip Expo 2026. You can use promo code Brian to half off your Registration. Come join 30,000 industry peers as we descend onto Louisville, Kentucky for the super bowl of green industry trade shows and expos. There's over a million square feet of exhibit space on the inside where you can see all of your favorite brands and all the equipment that they have the offer. And also 40 acres of outdoor demo where you can test before you invest and you can try before you buy. There's education, there's community and there's training, all available for you at no extra cost. Come check it all out and we hope to see see you guys there again. Save 50% with promo code, Brian, and register today and we look forward to seeing you guys in Louisville October 20th through the 23rd this fall. Talking to Jason Cromley the other day, big fish, like, I can only imagine the stuff that he's got to mobilize every single day to, to make a buck. It's insane. Going back to the guy that left the comment, I'll just button it up here. But the modern day landscaper, I'm not here to convince you what that's going to look like. I'm just going to say like, unless you get out, unless you go out, unless you go to a show, unless you go to a conference, unless you go to an event. Launchmen Academy Live Equip Expo, Energize, Grow. You know, leanscaper quarterly intensives will be at the People Intensive here in Chicago in just another month or so. Dan Martell's coming in. Free ticket if you want one. Give me a shot, we'll get you hooked up. Love the Leanscape events and people, but unless you go, you don't have perspective. And so all you know is go wheelbarrow, mulch, go mow grass with a, with a mower. And you're like, that's all the business really is. And then you happen to maybe have a stray conversation with a guy like Gamble who says, and by the way, quick little plug here, we're going on tour. Gamble and I are going on tour with Element and Granum. We've got the Break Records Tour. We're going to be in six or seven different cities over the next five or six months. It's going to be incredible. It's like an eight, $900 ticket, two day event. Gamble's going to lead a workshop on day one. I'm hosting the shop and the shop tour for day two for the company that is hosting it local. You want to get behind the scenes, like in your market. Maybe a local player doing 3 to 10, 20, 50 million. That's what these guys are opening up. I think it's LMN or granum.combreak-records. We'll leave a link in the description. There's only like 20 or 30 tickets per city. So if you're in like denver, dude, there's 30 tickets. And there's a lot of landscapers in Denver. Or if we're going out to Chicago, right? So check that out. Little plug for them. But you happen to get a straight conversation with, with Gamble and he tells you, yeah, because we implemented, you know, software for payroll, software for bookkeeping, software for our CRM for our actual clients, and a little this little that. This technology allowed me to go from a, maybe a 4 or 5x multiple on his exit to a 6, 7, 8x maybe multiple on his exit. I don't know. Ask him. And we're talking dollars and cents difference of about 1 to 5 million dollars. Extra. Extra because you do it right. Extra because you did it how the modern day landscaper has it. You have fuel cards, you have Fleetio, you have dash cams. Like, and it's not just this guy who's very vocal and very loud saying, well, we don't do that here. You know, we do, we do 1.1 million. We got nine guys and everything's pen and paper and route sheets and route lists and credit cards. And it's just like, dude, what are you doing? What are you doing with, with, with your business? All this information is around. You just choose not to plug in, learn, you know, digest it and deploy it. And it's, it's not really me here to convince anybody to do any of the above because here's the last thing I'll say. You that guy that commented. I could, I Left a comment, 3 paragraph or 5 paragraph. Comment on it. You can check out Instagram stories today and see the whole discussion of me just, you know, my styles is napalm, scorched earth. Sorry. Like, if you're going to have like constructive conversation, sure. Like, I'll, I'll pitch and catch with anybody. I'm very kind, like on comments and DMs and emails and calls and conversation and in person. But if you're just gonna like dump, then I'm just gonna dump on you, dude. And I'll dunk on you if you're gonna try to dunk on me. And I dispelled every single thing he said in about 12 minutes or less. Because that's all it took. Because I have perspective that this guy doesn't have access to. And it's not like I'm trying to justify me as Much as he's trying to justify him. But what I'll just say, and I'll wrap it up with this is, you know what, in the beginning that guy, he's going to feel like he's right all the way up until he decides to do something with that business. And here's the thing I want to tell you guys like the fruit or the results of what we're talking about are not going to show up right now. They're not going to show up. Likely in five years they'll start, but it's not really a five year plan. It will start showing up in a decade, it will definitely be there in 20 years and it'll definitely, definitely, definitely be there in 30 years. And this is just like anything with long term investing. If you make the investment to get Angusto, you make the investment to get on element or Aspire. Pick your thing and you make the investment to get fuel cards and you make the investment to get an employee handbook and you make the investment to get your employees in a nice uniform and you make the investment into having a great space to rent or maybe buy a shop one day if you're so fortunate. If you make the investment into nice trucks, you make the investment into a nice website, you make the investment into nice branding. You make the investment into knowing your numbers, actually truly knowing your numbers. You get signed up with cycle cpa, you build this modern day business. You've got this octopus that has a central nervous system but the tentacles of eight different platforms all integrated and you're able to build this modern day business that's moving, you know, $7 million of revenue at 15% net and I don't know, a 19% EBITDA and you're able to get a 4 or 5x multiple on your exit and that's a 10 to $15 million plus payout, right? In 15 or 20 years or less, that's when it shows up. Because that's how it works dude. That's when it shows up. So you're right. This guy's right. He's so right right now to him. He's so right in the beginning to himself. Hey man, like you're giving away all your high profit. I'm not giving away anything. High profit, that don't make sense, that don't compute. Well, everybody knows there's no money in mowing. We ran a 15 plus percent net between lawn and snow on a blend. I assure you my maintenance is profitable. No doubt about it. We wouldn't do it. My comment back to that was. Yeah, you're right. A lot of private equities flooding the market. And you know what they're doing? Buying unprofitable maintenance routes for ARR. Annual current revenue. That's it. You're right. Private equity is getting into this field because there's so much negative loss leading, mowing out there just to go get that mulch. Right. Just to go get that pruning. That's it. That's it. You're right. They're going to buy a division that's losing a million dollars. It's like, it's like when you say stuff out loud that people type, that should be a good conversation or litmus. You should take any comment that anybody ever types you or emails you and then say it out loud and then go, is this person right? Or does this person have their. A basket case of emotions and their brain looks like a jar of marbles. I have come to find, find unfortunately, that most people that leave stupid comments like that, their brain is a jar of marbles. Not being mean. It's just a reality. And so in the beginning, even if you're right, even if you're right in your own little kingdom, your own little world, your own little empire, you're right all the way to the finish line. And then you get to the finish line and you have arguably. I'm not saying this is a scaling conversation. I'm just saying whether you have a small business or a big business or a giant business to sell, to pass on to the kids, to sell to the team, or to sell to private equity, or to have a strategic buyer and partner, that's when all this stuff comes to play. That's when all this stuff comes to light. That's when all the late nights become worth it. Because hour for hour, tit for tat, for the salary that we all earn in our business, most of us are not getting paid out of the business what we would have a fair market rate and value for. So what's the incentive? The $10 million payout for all the sweat equity you built and put into the business over that last decade or two. When you run those numbers, you get guys on stage like Mark Bradley saying, last year, if I took the aggregate of all the hours I put in for what I sold and what I did this, I was about $25,000 an hour per work. Or recently he made Another comment, about $78,000 per per hour worth of work that he did over the lifetime enterprise value of what he sold and moved on from. And that defies logic. Unless you know the plan, unless you know the playbook. And so like, I, I just, I'm telling you guys, in case you don't know, I'm reminding myself every day, dude, just keep doing what you're doing. Fuck that guy. Like you know what you're doing. I've seen the growth top line, we've seen the growth bottom line. I've seen my guys grow, I've seen the team grow, I've seen our client list grow. And somebody text me the other day, you only have like 30 or 40 residentials left. I go, yeah. They go, didn't you have like 100? I go, yeah, at 120 about four or five years ago, but the revenue is 6, 7, 800 grand now. We've double, tripled our revenue, lost, you know, 75% of our residential route, but we backfilled it with commercial as we've made a pivot to that type of clientele, which is extremely hard to do. Don't let anybody fool you. To pick up 35 to 40 new commercial sites in a matter of 24 to 36 months, that's good growth. But then you have people that comment, and I'm not saying like they're malicious or evil or bad. I'm just, it's, it's just a litmus, it's just a checkup from the neck up for me to be like, no, dude, you're doing, you're doing it right. No, dude, you're doing it good. No, that is the modern day approach. No, that's, that is the solution to go, to go with Element and. Well, it's 500amonth. Yep, sure is. Do you think Gamble carried about his 500amonth membership to. At one point, by the way, they were running SAP LMN and transitioning over to Aspires. They got out by shill. Do you think that Gamble cared about his five dollar a month subscription? Or let's say he's paying a thousand dollars a month for an enterprise plan, because I'm sure he's got a bigger plan for a bigger company. You think he cared about that when he was signing a check or, or having a check signed over to him for ten plus million, if that. That's what he got. And I truly don't know, so please don't ask. But you know what I'm saying, Like simple math, I'm like, okay, dude, probably cleaned up. Do you think he cared about his 500amonth subscription then? Well, that's easy. He had the money then. Listen, to his story, he didn't have any more money than you did, dude. They just started making money four years ago. He's told that story publicly. Like, I'm not dogging him. Like, he's. He talked about going to Equip Expo in 2017 and trying to run his card for rooms, and there was no cash on their corporate card, so they were paying 500amonth when they couldn't afford it either. There's no pride in staying there forever, right? Like, they had to rectify and they did. And they called Frank Bork and they got a couple coaches and blah, blah, blah, blah, and they went to the Element workshops and the Element tours. And that's like, God honest truth. That's why Sam and I are going on tour, because he believes in it. I believe in it also. They're paying me a lot of money to do it, so I'll, you know, that's got to be fair. But you know what I'm saying, Like, he believes in it. I believe in it. I've seen what it's done for my business. He's seen as what it's done for his business. And now you get to go on tour and see what it's done for these other half dozen or eight other businesses that we're going on tour with this summer and fall. It's going to be awesome. So I don't know what today's topic I'm going to title this bad boy. I just want to spend a couple of minutes. Like, I'm just so. I don't like, not like people or like, get, you know, or hate anything or anyone. I don't have any really, like, capacity for that in my heart. I just. Life is just so good. And, man, you have kids, you just look at them and they grow so fast. Like, life is so fleeting. I. I really do try to keep things in perspective, like, about all this crap, but I just look at where people comment with where people are at with where people, like, justify themselves to be. And I'm like, dude, you can do more. You can do better. Like, you can get help. You can call anybody today and ask for help. Like, Psycho will put Humpty Dumpty back together for you. You can get on LMN and fix your pricing and fix your budget and fix your finances in a year, maybe two at the most. But, dude, you're gonna be a year or two older anyway. My daughter's five. In another, like, three months, dude, five. And technically I have a kindergartner, right? Or pre K. She Was born two minutes ago. Well, you don't know what I got going on, dude, I've got just as much going on as you, so don't give me any of that nonsense. But I just think about this all the time. The modern day landscaper, you know, and there's extremes. Like Gamas built East coast facilities. 100 million dollar company in five years. They built their own app, they built their own software, they built their own trucking and logistics division to move big equipment, right? I mean think about moving 250 loaders around. They built their own weather system, by the way, with true weather. Like they built their own weather business. Like, oh, I'm gonna be a big landscaper and do $10 million. Okay, cool. He built a trucking division. A, they have to, they have 1200 employees, 250 loaders. The logistics on all that, the financing, all that, they're like, hey, like we're gonna do snow. We should probably like monitor our own Snow. Let's hire 10 meteorologists on staff before they were like even turning revenue. Like pre launch, pre start, pre idea, right? As the joke goes, like you see it big. You have a meteorologist on staff, you got 10 meteorologists on staff. Well, like we use Weatherbug. We use Weatherbug Pro. Use Weatherbug Pro. We paid the 299. You're telling me you're, you're gonna base your quarter million dollar snow operation off a 2.99 app that has so much biased from, you know, all the different radar platforms. If you ever figured out where their funding came from, of course they're going to tell you. It's going to be doom, doom and gloom and Snowmageddon every time. So you're going to base your entire snow operation off a 2.99 app and the Fullerton promotes true weather for a guy who's in it with God masters. In it for a thousand dollars for winner to ensure accuracy or at least a second opinion. Yeah, I don't need that. Yeah, we just use the free weather. I just use the weather rock. And it's like cool, man, cool. And at the point of my life I'm like, look, dude, I can't save them all. Not destined to. But I'm like, look, and I want to. That's just where my heart's at. But I can't save them all. You're right, dude. You don't need element. I'm not here to convince anybody to use any of this crap. I'm just telling you, like if your goal is to do the dang job and get it done fast and as good as you can and to make money at it. Wouldn't you want like all the best tools to like actually make the. Instead of just keep negotiating, you just negotiate the price of this, Negotiate this, justify it away, explain it away. That's what so many people do. Even, even you get a coach and the coach says you need to do this by Wednesday. You get back with him on Wednesday. Oh, dude, you just don't know. Still know what I had going on. Really? Really? You're gonna pay for coaching and then still give an excuse? It's. It's just wild, dude. And I'm not here to like poop on any of you guys listening in because you guys are the tip of the spear. You guys are the ones making the decisions. You guys are making the investment, you guys are going to the things, you guys are trying. You guys are looking over the shoulder and saying what? What are you guys doing over there? And then evaluating if that makes sense for your business. You guys are doing these things. And that's why I'm so proud of you guys. That's why I can wake up in a. On a morning and just roll with it and just say, man, like the friends that listen into this show, the 2510000 downloads that we'll get on the show in the next day or two in the week like that, those are my people. Those are the people I want to hang out with. I want to hear about what's working in your business. Those are the people I enjoy hanging out with at Link. Those are the people I enjoy going out to dinners, at events with our posse of people. Because even though everybody's at leanscaper, it doesn't mean everybody's doing what the leanscaper people propose. That's why I love hanging out with certain people that have implemented portions or all of certain different things and nobody's got it all done, nobody's got it all completed, nobody's got it all figured out. It's always going to be an evolution. But I enjoy getting around people who are doing the thing and that makes me be accountable to do the thing and do the deal too. Winners like that, losers don't. Losers explain and justify and negotiate away. By the way, whatever you come up with, that's all on you. And you justify, negotiate or explain it away. Dude, whatever you come up with, I'm excited for you. If you can't go to LAL because it's 500 bucks for a ticket in A hotel room. And you don't get around Jason Cromley, who's coming in to share this year. A guy who runs a $25 million company on paper is probably worth 7, 8, 9 figures, right? Big business. He's a platform business. If he sold that thing tomorrow, big money. Big, big money. If you can't figure out 500 bucks to a thousand bucks to come to LAL November 7th to hear from him, then I, I just can't help you, man. I just can't help you. You got to first be willing to help yourself. All right? So that's when I land the plan today. There's a modern day landscaper out there, guys. It's not just this Timbuktu dude out there with 20 year old truck, you know, two paid off Dixie choppers making, you know, what he thinks is 100 grand a year, probably making 30 grand. Everything's rusted out, dudes, you know, 50 pounds overweight. And I'm not being mean, I'm not, you know, being a jerk. I'm just saying, like, you know, that dude has nothing going on that I want to emulate. I want to emulate the Grunders, who are coming into together in the trades, by the way, to share and to speak about their legacy and what they've done and what they've built and who they are and of course the mistakes that they've made and the flaws that they have along the way too. I want to emulate, you know, the Mark Bradley's. I want to emulate, you know, the, the gambles. I want to emulate the, the Jason Cromley, okay? Like that's the, that's the future. That's the modern day business owner, entrepreneur, landscaper. So I guess my, the last thing I'll just say is just decide, dude. Just decide on one thing today to get better at and you guys are doing it all day long. Trust me, I get it. And it's a spring brush and you're like Fullerton. What are you talking about, dude? It's nine o' clock in the morning and I got 12 yards of mulch to move. Look, dude, I get it, but decide to go to something, invest into something this year, go to a conference, go to my thing, go to somebody else's thing, don't know, don't care. Just plug in, go on a webinar, go on a seminar register, go meet somebody new, go, go do a visit. You don't need to do anything formal. Call up a company and say, do you mind if I visit I'm 21, I've got seven guys, we're doing 900 grand, and I need to just get around somebody. Can I ever just do a shop tour with you and grab coffee for two, three hours? Almost anybody in America that's got a great business will say yes to that. But don't be the guy. It's not always like, hey, go do something. It's the fear of something that gets a lot of us, too. My fear is to be that guy that's 55, that's broke that has it all figured out and has made no progress in life. Man, that guy scares me more than not what I can become, but, like, not becoming, if that makes sense. Man, that scares the shit out of me as I say that out loud. I'm like, I don't want to be the dude that is in the comment section or going to a conference and has his arms all rolled up and says, like, that don't work around here. We've always done it this way around here. Not in our market. You can't do that. You can't get away with that. And then somebody comes through every five years, 10 years, trailblazes, blows it up, puts people like that out of business, and they go, oh, right place, right time. That guy got lucky. Your daddy's money. Oh, that guy had investment banking, that guy. That guy's dad gave him a million dollars to start his skyscrapers in Manhattan. Really? If I gave you a million dollars, you're gonna go build an empire, right? Like, just because somebody, like, gives you a buck, even you just think, like, that automatically denotes that you're gonna be successful. Dude, it's absurd. If I gave my kids a million dollars, you know what they'd do? Buy a million dollars worth of ice cream. But that's all the people that I'm arguing with on the Internet. It's insane. All right, anyway, on a lighter note, I love you guys. Shop tours with LMN coming down the pike. Element or granum.com, i think it is. Slash, Break- Records tour. Google it. It'll come on up. Register your tickets. Limited tickets, for sure. So that's gonna be really cool. We're super excited about hanging out with you guys there. Lal. November 7th, save the date. We've got a bunch of great folks locked in two speakers just yesterday. Very, very, very excited about the speaker lineup this year. It's very strong. It's going to be an entirely different event. We're going to switch up a lot based on more great feedback. I'm really, really excited. We're going to flip the whole thing on its head. Can't wait to share more about that with you guys. Promo Code Brian at Equip Expo Promo Code Brian at Cycle CPA. Save you 200 bucks off signing up with them Clean up your books. We just went to Secretary of State yesterday and we're cleaning up some stuff with our titles and registrations based on some stuff that we learned from our bookkeeper and our CPA Olivia with Cycle. So that was a stellar investment. Stellar investment for some asset protection conversation. Promo code Brian Brian's 10 everywhere you go. Equipment defender Ballard Cujo Isotunes Anything you need like we got just hooked up. We got you set up. Save you guys some money as well. And most of those folks, we get to earn a nickel off of that as well, which goes right back into making content like this. So guys, that's where I'm gonna leave it today. Have a beautiful weekend. Hope you guys had a safe one. Hope it was a productive week. Look forward to catching up with all you guys here next week. Monday. Have a great day.