How to Identify Your Purpose in Business

Join us as the Lawn Care Millionaire Jonathan Pototschnik and Mark Bradley share their secrets to scaling, hiring, and avoiding burnout, exploring how a powerful mindset shift and strategic delegation can help you break through the plateau and achieve massive growth in your landscaping business. My friend Tony Rudolph also joins the program! 🎟️ LCR Summit: https://www.lcrmedianetwork.com/ 🎟️ Equip Expo 👉 Save 50% off Equip Expo Ticket w/ Promo Code PAUL: Register Here https://go.equipexposition.com/promocode-paul 📚 Level Up Your Money (New Release) 👉 Get Your Paperback Copy! https://pauljamison.org/book 🎧 Level Up Your Money (Audiobook) 👉 Listen on Audible https://pauljamison.org/audiobook 📲 Connect with Paul - Visit Official Website https://www.thepauljamison.com/ 🛠️ Paul's Recommended Tools & Professionals Try the CRM Jobber - Click Here https://pauljamison.org/Jobber 📞 CallRail – Track where your leads are coming from: callrail.com https://partners.callrail.com/cc4gs529efdp 📚 The Landscaping Bookkeeper – Know your numbers, stress less: thelandscapingbookkeeper.com https://thelandscapingbookkeeper.com/ The Lawn Care Bootcamp - Click Here https://pauljamison.org/bootcamp 📈 Lawn Care Launch: Click Here https://thelandscapingbookkeeper.com/lawn-care-launch (new program for business owners) 🌐 Footbridge Media – Get a pro lawn care website: footbridgemedia.com https://www.footbridgemedia.com/paul-jamison?ref=pauljamison 📦 Business-Building Resources by Paul Price Increase Letter Template https://www.thepauljamison.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/2150230978 Contract Templates https://www.thepauljamison.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/2150230978 📚 Paul's Most Popular Business Books How to Build a Thriving Lawn Care Business: Buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4K835L4 Cut That Grass and Make That Cash: Buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SP7MQ13

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:31Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go-to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jameson, is the author of five bestselling books, including Cut That Grass and Make That Cash and his latest, Level Up Your Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.

• 1:08Speaker 00

  Welcome back to the show. I am Paul Jameson down here in sunny South Florida, where it is sunny and it's hot. I hope you're doing well wherever in the world you are listening and I hope you are making a lot of money in your business. If this is your first time listening to the show, welcome. My name is Paul. I started my first lawn care business all the way back in 2011. And we started this podcast in 2018, just kind of sharing what I was learning about business. And over the years, I got to meet and interview on this podcast, a lot of folks who are very successful in the lawn care industry, fertilizer business, landscaping business, really in what we call the green industry, the lawn and landscape industry.

• 1:54Speaker 00

  And it's been fun to get to interview a lot of these people on the program. And so each year, we do one podcast in person in Louisville, Kentucky, at the Equip Expo. It's called the Morning Show. And I want to share really quick, a little bit of the history of that show, what to look forward to at the upcoming Equip Expo with the Morning Show we're doing this year. And then we're going to hear some highlights from folks like Jonathan Petoshnik and Mark Bradley and Tony Rudolph and guys that we've had on the program in person at the Morning Show before that have just shared very valuable insights into their business and what they've learned over the years. So how this Morning Show started, back in the day,

• 2:40Speaker 00

  my friend Naylor was like, we should do like an event where we get all the influencers together and folks can ask them any question they want. And so we got a whole bunch of influencers together. Naylor rallied up the troops and he asked me to be like the Q and A guy who runs out in the audience with the microphone and lets people ask questions and whatnot. And so we pitched the idea to, the GIE Expo was what it was called back in the day before they changed the name to Equip Expo. And they're like, have at it, you know, whatever you want to do, we'll give, we'll give you a room. So they got us a room on upstairs. I didn't even know there wasn't upstairs

• 3:24Speaker 00

  at the Kentucky Exposition Center, but upstairs, all the way down the hallway, you know, next to the janitor's closet is like so hard to even find this room. And they're like, and you can do it on Friday morning at 8:00 AM. Well, that was insulting because Friday morning at 8:00 AM, it's like a ghost town around there because everybody goes out Thursday night and everyone's tired from being at the Equip Expo all day Wednesday and Thursday. So it was, it was, it was slightly insulting that they're like, yeah, we'll give you a Friday morning. Have at it, kids. And they gave us a room that was, you know, hard to find. Even if you like knew what room you were looking for, it's like, where in the world is this? Oh, you gotta go upstairs. You gotta go down the hallway. Okay. Well, here it is.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Well, we just make a few Instagram posts, a couple of social media posts. Hey, we're going to be getting together Friday morning in this room. Good luck finding it, but, but, but we're going to be there and you can ask, you know, we'll have some influencers up on the stage and you can do Q and A. Well, anyway, standing room only Friday morning in the, in the jan, next to the janitor's closet, in this, in this room, standing room only. And I was the Q and A runner, so I'm walking throughout the audience and people are asking questions and the guys on stage are giving their answers. And everyone had a good old time and the powers to be at the GIE Expo just happened to walk by the room and peek in and like, what is going on?

• 4:51Speaker 00

  At Friday morning at 8:00 AM and this room's packed. And they're thinking, we have all these other, like on the main days, Wednesdays and Thursdays, we have all these rooms that are, we were, we're struggling to get butts in seats. Who are these guys gathering a crowd on Friday morning after the, you know, after, no one goes here Friday. Well, anyway, they're all intrigued. Who are we? What are we doing? So they're like, hey, we'll, uh, well, anyway, I'm fast forwarding. But anyway, they ended up moving us down to the main floor in the main ballroom on the main day, Thursday, 8:00 AM.

• 5:31Speaker 00

  So then I think it was 2023, 2024, 2025. We've been in this really nice room, B103, doing the podcast live there. And then now they have sponsors that make it so that they can afford to get us donuts and coffee, which you might be like, well, Paul, I can pick up some donuts and coffee on the way. These are good donuts, good coffee and very expensive because the way they cater at the trade shows is you can only hire the company that works for the Kentucky Exposition Center. And they, you know, they jack the price up to astronomical. So this is an expensive donut. I like each bite's like 20 bucks. So enjoy your donut, enjoy your coffee.

• 6:14Speaker 00

  But this year, we're going to be doing the Morning Show, Thursday morning, 8:00 AM, room B103. Naylor's going to be interviewing Eric Triplet, the Pondigger. And then Caleb and Brittany Allman are going to be interviewing each other. They're a husband and a wife team from Fairfield County, Ohio. They do a hardscaping jobs. And then I'm going to be interviewing fertilizer expert, John Paycheck, who has lawn care fertilizer business in Indiana, Chicagoland area. And John's also passionate about helping us understand the numbers in our business. And, and, you know, he's encourages us to make sure we're charging adequately for our services. So that's the lineup for this year.

• 6:56Speaker 00

  One of my favorite years of doing the program is when we had Naylor interview Jonathan Petoshnik, Caleb interviewed Mark Bradley, then I interviewed Tony Rudolph, and then we all did a group session together of rapid fire Q and A. So we're going to fire up that instant classic of just so much knowledge. And it's good to re-listen to this again and again and take notes. And this stuff's very valuable information. These folks are very successful people in their own paths that they've chosen in this industry. And so sit back, relax, enjoy, and I hope you learned something today from good old Naylor Tallyferro, Jonathan Petoshnik, Caleb Allman,

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Mark Bradley, Tony Rudolph, myself. Enjoy.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that was, what an epic intro, right? I mean, how can you not get pumped after hearing Metallica? But what a, what a great intro. I usually do all the pleasantries, but Mr. Producer took care of that. That was an epic intro. So thank you, Mr. Producer.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  You're welcome, Naylor. Thank you for having me this year. I hope that wasn't over the top, but we are definitely ready to rock the Equip Exposition.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  Is that Mr. Producer? Let's give it up for Mr. Producer in the back.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  The invoice is headed your way.

• 8:19Speaker 00

  Thank you. I appreciate it. All right, guys. How do we follow that up, right? Well, we have, well, okay, so the pleasantries, so now I have to rethink. The pleasantries are all good, but one important note, has anyone, has everyone gotten a raffle ticket for the Relco giveaway at the end of the show? Does anyone need a raffle ticket? Okay, keep your hands up, keep your hands up. The Relco team's going to be coming around because they're going to be raffling off a lot of great things after the show, but you have to be here to win. Makes sense? Cool? All right. So we're just, yeah, thanks. Cool? All right. All right. We're pumped. It's been an awesome week. Who's been having a fantastic week so far?

• 9:05Speaker 00

  All right. I usually, I usually ask this every time, who's here for the first time?

• 9:12Speaker 00

  Awesome. A lot of newbies, but not it, but a lot, lot more returning. So that's fantastic. Fantastic. All right. Well, without further ado, I wanted to, well, welcome back to the LCR Media Podcast. I almost forgot we're recording live for the live studio audience, right, Paul? I'm your host, LCR Naylor Tallyferro. This has been three, four years in running something awesome like that. It's been a vision and idea to bring more quality content and opportunities for you guys to network and learn and grow this community. So thank you all for coming out this early on a Thursday morning after a long week and probably a late night, right? So thank you. So my, my guest here is Jonathan Petoshnik, the Lawn Care Millionaire.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  For, for those of you that don't know him, I will let him do a quick intro, but I, I invited Jonathan to come here. So thank you very much. You're welcome. Good morning, everyone.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  All right, so let's just get this party started. Reminder, think of some questions that you might have for the one and only original lawn care millionaire and John Payjack will be out there. Payjack, you out there?

• 10:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  Damn, you got an epic mic up. So just make sure when you start thinking of questions, probably in about 15 minutes or so, just start raising your hands and so we can, we can get those questions answered for you. That's how we roll here. So Jonathan, can you go ahead and give everyone a little bit of a backstory, like who you are, how you started becoming the lawn care millionaire, like on YouTube and how you got into, to the whole community with that start?

• 10:51Speaker 02

  When I was 14, I wanted to make money and I didn't know how and I didn't have any examples and I started mowing lawns and I stopped mowing lawns my freshman year of college and I thought, I'll never do that again. I enjoyed it and I made really good money, more money than my teachers, but I just thought I was going to move on and do tech stuff the rest of my life. That's what I was going to college for. My first tech business didn't work out and I accidentally ended up back in the lawn care business and it went really well. It didn't go well at first though, and I learned a lot of lessons. So along the way, I've ended up building this outdoor services company. It's arbor, pest, lawn, irrigation, all that stuff. Ended up building a software company called Service Autopilot.

• 11:33Speaker 02

  I sold a majority stake in that in August of 2019 and the way lawn care millionaire came to be was really simple, actually. I was just trying to figure out if you wanted to, if you were a potential client of mine at Service Autopilot, what was it that you needed? I just started this little channel to be able to have a conversation with you and my idea was just give me a question and I'll answer it. And that's what I did and that became lawn care millionaire and that experience combined with Service Autopilot and later coaching I did in the industry changed my world in that I got to know tons of you guys and it's been incredible experience. I love this industry. I love the home services industry and I'm incredibly positive on where we're all going

• 12:18Speaker 02

  as an industry and what that opportunity is for all of us. And so this is the world I live in.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Yes. Thank you. Thank you for being a part of our world. So you kind of queued me up for the next one, but you talked about, okay. Let's talk about some of your humble beginnings. We all talk about that in the industry and the content creation because it's important to know where everyone starts, especially when you don't, you know, you, you see the iceberg breaking the surface, but you don't always see everything below. So we know the lawn care millionaire and service autopilot, all the things that you've done throughout the years, like a decade now, what, what, what were those humble beginnings that you kind of alluded to in, in your business in lawn care?

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay. All right. So I got, I'll tell you a quick story. So as I told you, I never thought I was going to be back in the lawn care business. I was doing this other business with some, some individuals and my partners were always starting other businesses and I had another, another separate thing I was doing as well. And I never wanted to be part of these other businesses that they were building. We, I just wanted to focus on this one core business with them, which was we were cleaning movie theaters around the country. And one day my partner comes in and says, hey, there's this lawn care company for sale out in the Dallas area. Let's go look at it at lunch. Cause he knew I mowed lawns in high school, like nah, I have no interest in this. He convinces me, we go to lunch and this fella, probably 65 year old guy is selling his business.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  He's doing about $50,000 a year in gross revenue on an old Cushman rider. I don't know if anybody knows what that is. I never knew what it was. Old mower and he sold his old Dodge truck, his trailer, his Cushman mower and 50,000 in revenue mowing these warehouses for 7,000 bucks. I got convinced to buy this thing. I didn't want to buy the thing. We bought it and within three weeks, my partner wanted zero to do with this thing. And that's how I ended up back in the lawn care business. And so now I have 50,000 in revenue. I also am doing tech consulting. I also am part of this other thing. I've got way too many things going and tech stuff takes you till like two o'clock in the mornings, kind of your work schedule. Now this lawn care thing starts it, it's all commercial and you got to mow before all the cars show up.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  So that's like a six o'clock in the morning business. It was a mess. That's the point. And I didn't know what I was doing, but, and so I start looking for team members. I start looking for accounts. I've pretty quickly built that business to about three or about 400,000 in revenue. And I very quickly realized I hated every single thing about the business and we made no money. I didn't know how to hire employees. Sometimes they just go home at one o'clock in the afternoon when they were supposed to keep working. I sold my work at the wrong prices. One time to an HOA, I sold a job and they said, hey, could we sign the three year contract instead of one year contract? I thought, heck yeah. They knew something I didn't know. That hurt. I can just go down the list.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  And so this is where this stuff came from. I went through all the pain everybody else has gone through and I hated my world. I mean, why did I have to start spraying lawns at five o'clock in the morning when I was trying to do all these other things? Well, because I lost that employee too and we didn't know what we were doing. Like, so I could rattle on and on, but I went through all this same stuff and through that pain, through that frustration, I started to learn, hey, there's a different way to do this stuff, a better way to do this stuff. And it took me a while to figure it out, but then once we figured it out, things started going.

• 15:49Speaker 00

  So the next segue, what helped you start figuring it out? Like it didn't just happen, right? Was there some intentionality there? And then obviously trial and error, a combination, like what were some key factors to help you figure it out?

• 16:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that particular business I'm describing really started as a commercial business because of the warehouses and I just did not know how to get accounts. In the commercial cleaning business, we would go out and sell. So it was more sales driven, but not marketing driven. And so it was scary. I hated it. I procrastinate all the time, but what I would do is I'd walk into businesses and say, hey, you know, I don't remember my little spiel, but basically you're asking if they need service and if not, when are you going to put your contract up for bid again? And that's how I got a bunch of that work. The transition or the turning point for me was that that same business partner had zero to do with the business. I'm whining about this thing and I'm, I'm probably whining about it because I've got all this other stuff that actually is much more important in my life.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  And he said something like, well, if you don't like it, you can just fix it. And that was just an offhanded comment and that did get me thinking. And so what ended up happening was I said, who are the best clients? Who are the best team members? I think we had three trucks. What's my best truck? What's my best equipment? And we chopped that business from about 400, if I remember correctly, to I think 225. I kept three employees, one truck, one set of equipment, the very best accounts and no joke, we made a hundred grand profit on that business, on a 225 business the next year. That would not have lasted because you'd have to reinvest in, in a equipment at some point, trucks, and also you, you're going to lose accounts and you got to go sell new accounts.

• 17:28Speaker 02

  It wouldn't have lasted, but that was a aha light bulb moment. And then I started thinking, what if we went into residential? And I started running my, uh, numbers in a spreadsheet. And the next transformation was, well, how in the world am I going to get lots of residential clients? And I started studying marketing and that drove me to start going to marketing events and conferences to really learn how to market. So those were probably the two single biggest defining events in that business and those events ended up impacting everything else I've ever done.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Nice. Thank you. Kind of wrapping up this part of the, of the topping conversation, we had talked off air probably like a month or so ago when we were in Dallas and we were, you had shared a story how you were, is basically in my terminology is like bootstrapping where you and your wife were like going to neighborhoods and putting out flyers and everything in the early days of city turf, right?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Not my wife, but she was doing some different stuff.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Right, right, right. No, no, she was helping with the, she was like doing stuff with further flyers.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  She was, yeah. She was folding invoices. She was folding these lead, uh, we would mail these lead letters to neighborhoods. And so she was doing all the folding and the stamping and the hand addressing envelopes. But yeah.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  That's what it was. And you guys were putting them all out and like, just like literally boots on the ground, doing it to build.

• 18:50Speaker 02

  Trying to figure it out.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Right. So what kind of, what kind of mental shift had to happen from, because I say all this because again, the tip of the iceberg, right? So without knowing those stories, you, you just, you, you think like, you know, you, you have it all figured out and you know, the things, the nice things that you have and your wife's not putting anything in, yeah, pretty, putting invoices or anything in envelopes. Like it's like a totally different relationship now with your business. So what kind of like mental shift, what kind of mentality did you have to go through from that kind of bootstrapping all the way to, I don't have higher level things to do? Or does that never really change?

• 19:31Speaker 02

  What do you mean by it doesn't never really change?

• 19:34Speaker 00

  Like, you know, like, what is the, is there a transition to be able to then get to the million dollar mark and above and get to eight figures and all that? Or is it similar, but you know, just looks different as you grow?

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Two parts to that. So one thing that I did have going for me in that scenario was we had this other business and that was a multimillion dollar business. And so I had seen a vision of, and when I was a kid growing up, I had no examples of anybody had money. I didn't know anybody was an entrepreneur or my dad was an artist. So that gave me the belief I could do my own thing, but I didn't have any examples around me of how do you create success? I just knew I wanted this thing. But I did have this fortunate outcome by that time in my life where we were running a business, it was a different business, but it was bigger. And so my mindset, and this is very important, that we, you can come to a point where you believe you are capable and deserving of being able to build a bigger business. And everybody in here is 100% there.

• 20:31Speaker 02

  And so I had at least had that experience. So that was helpful. But there was a massive knowledge gap in my life, especially going from commercial to residential. I had no idea how do you get clients affordably? Cause I can't go knock on all these doors. And so that's where a lot of shifts happened where it's, you've got all these problems. There are people problems, like how do I get team members? How do I get clients? How do I even figure out how to do fertilization? We control correctly and not burn the lawn. There's a million problems. I mean, it feels like literally a million. And so to answer your question, we'll start with the marketing. I don't know how to go get accounts. In fact, I hire a friend of mine, she's a designer. We designed this beautiful, beautiful door hanger.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  And we put it out and we spend tons of money and it doesn't work. And so now it's just fused up, call it 20,000 bucks or whatever the number was, that's pain. There's all these examples of where you've probably felt pain like that. So what does, what do you do? Well, I'm like, well, I gotta figure out how to do this right. And so that's where I said, okay, well, who would have the answer? And I started reading books about marketing. Then I went to a conference, back to what I said earlier. Well, now just think about each additional problem. How do I get employees? Okay, well, who has that answer? What could I, how do I learn that? And then I, then it's like, okay, well, this fertilization we control, we're jacking this all up and then we lose the client. So back in the day, I go to Lesko and say, can you guys teach me how to do this? What if I pay you, which I didn't have to, will you come to my company or a couple

• 21:58Speaker 02

  yards? Like you just go find the person that has the answer and you ask for the answer and then you do the thing they tell you. And then when you go back to them, they'll be like, oh, this guy actually does what we tell him. Yeah, we'll keep helping you. You know, it's, it was that. And it was just stacking over years, that kind of thing that led to lots of breakthroughs.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Awesome. Thank you. So as we start to segue into Q and A to leave time for all of you, anyone have questions? Yes, okay. So when we segue into that, before we segue into that, I wanted to ask you two final questions, Jonathan, and thank you for your time and for coming out here for us and sharing everything. What's one piece of advice for the solo owner operator that doesn't want to necessarily get bigger, but be more efficient, more profitable, things like that, right? Cause we could always still grow in different ways without being a huge massive business.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Well, you don't need to be a huge massive business, but I won't spend much time on this. I would encourage you to consider going a little bigger than you are, or whatever that number is, simply because you can build a really nice business. And if it's just you and a couple of people, you have tremendous risk. I've known several individuals over the years I've become friends with that something's happened. Like one of them, for example, got in a head on collision and he was gone from his business for a year. Another one had a medical condition, just like this really weird sudden thing that popped up. And in all those cases, it destroys businesses, incomes, families. So usually going just a little bigger to find that one really good key person can make all the difference.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  But to answer more directly your question, if you're going to keep it small, you have to have really great people. You really do. And so I would focus really hard on getting good people and learning what good people is, that's an evolution. We learn what good work looks like. And then this is really hard, having the courage to say, I've got a good person, but they're not the right person and letting them go to bring in the next person. You just, I, most of us spend way more time thinking about getting good clients and we don't put nearly the effort into getting the team. And the team is actually the magic. It's not the clients. And I would encourage you to learn everything you can about finding, how to find, how to train good people.

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Cause that will make all the difference in your life. And all the problems you associate with having a bigger business, they're generally because you have the wrong people. And so you, we all think that if my thing were double the size, I'd have double the problems because of all the pain you're feeling with the people. And that's not true. Actually, as a business gets bigger and we learn how to get better people and get the wrong people off our team, the business gets massively easier. Because all the stuff you were having to do, now your awesome team is doing a lot of that. And it's exact opposite of what most of us believe. And so just spend all your time thinking about people.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Kind of my way to end that one. Thanks, Jonathan. Thank you. Well, I think we're going to end it on that note and go straight to Q and A. What do you guys think? Do we have, we have anybody?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, we do.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  All right, let's go.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Good morning, everybody. Here we go. Our first question's from Kayden.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Hi. I had a question for anyone but kind of Jonathan. So we have some clients who they want mowing or they want bush trimming, or maybe they want fertilization and overseeding, but they can't afford it in the, you know, like the quick spurts because it's just too much in one chunk. So we were thinking that maybe a 12 month billing process would be able to spread that out for them, but I haven't heard anyone that does that. So I was going to ask, what would you, have you heard anyone that has done that and has had good results with that? Or would you not recommend that?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Oh, that's incredibly common. When I started in my industry, that's, when I started in my market, that's how everybody did it. And that's how I did it at first. And the big, so our company has 12,000 clients. And the big breakthrough for us was to actually leave that model. And we went to a model where we would sell over the phone and we would get your credit card and we'd charge your credit card right after we do, did the service. And that was exact opposite of how everybody else did it in the market. And it's one of the ways that we were able to go gross so fast. Now, the reason why that approach is perfectly okay, it doesn't matter if you do a 12, they call that installment billing. It doesn't matter if you do it that way, but what I would encourage you to do is get paid immediately.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  So normally under that model, what you'll do is you'll send them the invoice and you'll get paid sometime after that. And so you're usually floating your money for at least 30 days. You're waiting at least 30 days to get paid from the time you do the work. Don't do that. You will always find it to be very difficult to grow your business because you'll never have enough money. Tons and tons and tons of companies charge credit cards. Do that right now. It will change the rest of your life. A lot of people push back on that. Tell me who, I don't, when I travel around, I was just telling somebody, I travel all over the world. I never take cash. Maybe I'll be in a country for five weeks. Doesn't matter what country we're talking about, Asia, it doesn't matter, Eastern Europe, anywhere, I might get $200 worth of currency in that country for the whole five weeks.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  In the United States, I have no cash when I came here. Nobody does. We all use credit cards. Your clients want their 2% back on their credit card? Charge, you charge credit cards, it will change your life. Also, one other little quick thing, if you find that a lot of your clients aren't able to buy more than one service, really start to think about where, where are all the clients that have the money and go to them and build in that market? Thank you.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  All right. Great question. Great question. All right, we got it.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Hey.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  My question kind of has some context before it. I work full time. I'm running a lawn care business, three days a week, part time. So my business has full time expenses, part time income. And I'm trying to get it to the point where I can scale it a little bit more so that I'm not necessarily needed in the day to day. Just in case something happens, I get hurt, sick, something like that, so that my family still has that passive income through my business. I'm solo right now, but I am trying to bring on some new guys that I trust and that I can depend on to go out there by themselves. Can you give me some pointers on just how to start scaling that to where it can kind of snowball effect to where to the point that I want it to be to?

• 28:42Speaker 02

  From a scaling standpoint, do you feel like your problem is more getting clients or getting team members? Which one is most important?

• 28:48Speaker 03

  The clients are coming, I mean, as, as they always do. I mean, the calls are going to come in. I'm, I doubled last year, but the, the problem that I'm having is kind of on the back end where I want to start bringing guys in that I can trust. I just don't know really how to go about doing that. And at what point in my business's financials, is that going to be a suitable, you know, suitable thing for me to do like income wise over expenses?

• 29:17Speaker 02

  Sorry, one more. Are we talking about a field team member or somebody help you in the office?

• 29:22Speaker 03

  Field team. So I can do all the office stuff. I'm thinking if I get hurt or something and I can't go out there and ride the mower or, you know, edge of the yards or anything like that anymore. I still want to be able to make that income.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Okay. Well, I will first tell you, you're thinking about correctly. The other thing I'll tell you that I've observed, it's kind of interesting. So my business was always a part-time business for me as I described. I had other businesses. I used to own this coaching business and also I've met thousands of people in the industry. I've met a number of people over the years who had, I know you're full-time in your business, but they had full-time jobs and they were forced to build their businesses kind of on a part-time scenario. And what that forced them to do is very early in the business, do exactly what you've just described, which is, which is not the way most people think about it. They were forced to have to build where they're not out in the field doing the work. And it's amazing how well that has turned out for so many. So I just want to say, the

• 30:14Speaker 02

  way you're thinking about this is exactly spot on. You want to be off the truck out of the field as fast as you can. The challenge is the, the affording of the people. And so I hope I'm answering what you're asking. The way I think about this right now is you need to be hiring driver capable individuals. So as an example, let's say you've got a crew and really you could fill a role with a, with a, an individual doesn't need to drive or doesn't need to be a lead. And so you could save some money by doing that. I would encourage you to spend the extra money and staff that truck as an example, with an individual that could be a driver and a lead, even though it's going to cost you more money, because that individual will, it'll make it much faster to split that person

• 30:58Speaker 02

  off into the next truck. And that's the way I would approach that. Add just a little more context if I'm not fully answering your question.

• 31:08Speaker 03

  No, that, that helps a lot. I'm, I'm just trying to get to a point where I can have somebody go out on their own and I can just kind of, that way that gives me an extra day, basically, so that I can continue to grow and kind of do that. I just don't know how to do that. I'm at the stalling point.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Perfect. For, for, for many of your next crews, you hire that person and as I described, not just a, a worker on the crew, you're hiring what could be a lead. Oftentimes the lead won't work out. You'll be disappointed. Restaff them with a lead, but that will keep, that will speed up this entire process of building enough work so that you can afford to not ever be in the field again.

• 31:46Speaker 03

  Okay. Thank you.

• 31:47Speaker 02

  You bet. Good luck.

• 31:49Speaker 00

  Thank you. Next question?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  All right.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Sorry.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  How's it going?

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Great.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  My name's Zach. My question for you is, as you grew this business, it sounds like you were also growing other businesses at the same time. What did time management look like for you and your day-to-day life if you're growing multiple businesses at one time? Obviously, you're kind of in the treadmill operator stage, as we kind of call it. You're bootstrapping it. You're kind of having to figure everything out, how you want things to look in these businesses. So how did you navigate your day-to-day life in order to be productive and kind of grow the businesses at the speed that you want to and put people in place?

• 32:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, that was difficult. I also had two little boys at home and I was married. So it was a lot, too much, actually. There is a fella that I started learning marketing from. His name was Dan Kennedy. This goes back quite a ways. And he wrote a book called No BS Time Management. And I read that book four times at least. And I applied and he is ridiculously hardcore. To this day, I have no social media on my phone. I got so trained to try not to waste time and be distracted. I even got to a place where at one point at one of my companies, I would notice when I go to the, I'm not encouraging you to do what I'm about to say, but it does make a point. I noticed that when I went to the company, everybody would ask me questions. And if I didn't go to the company, everybody just figured it out. So I rented an office by my house and I worked

• 33:23Speaker 02

  in that office by myself and didn't go to my other office. And not that that's what you should do. I wasn't running for my company. I was very involved in the company. I would show up, but I wouldn't show up every day. I don't think you should do it this way, but I want to make a point. What you start to think about is how do I protect my time? And so, for example, with my team members, how do I have them batch their questions and come to me? Or when they do come to me, there's, I try to first think about, well, how would you solve this? Like asking them the questions. And I try to put things back on the team. That creates this gap where, or maybe a better said, it creates a situation where they start to solve way more of their own challenges and you find that you get a lot of your time back. So start thinking also in terms of batching. If you've got

• 34:05Speaker 02

  lots of things going, today is finance day in the company. Today is marketing day in the company. And that way, when you get into a train of thought, you can go deep that day on all marketing and stay in that mindset versus jumping like now we're doing invoices, now we're doing marketing, now I'm dealing with this. You're still going to be pulled in lots of different directions, but try to think about it that way. We're out of time.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  No, that's great. Thank you, everyone. That is the, the end of the LCR Media Podcast episode. We're going to wrap this up and we're going to swap out and then we're going to have Caleb on with the Kid Contractor Podcast coming up right after this.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  Are you serious about leveling up your lawn care business this year? Then you need to be in Louisville, Kentucky from October 20th through 23rd for the Equip Expo. This is the Superbowl of our industry, featuring 30 acres of outdoor demos where you can test the latest gear from every major manufacturer. Don't be the pro who pays $120 at the gate. Go to the link in the show notes right now. Use promo code PAUL at checkout and you'll save 50% off. That's half off your registration, locking in your pass for as low as $12.50. Don't wait. Register today at the link in the show notes. Use promo code PAUL. You'll save half off and I hope to see you soon in good old Louisville, Kentucky.

• 35:27Speaker 04

  Lawn care and landscaping pros, listen up. If you're tired of guessing your way through pricing, marketing, hiring and sales, this is your wake-up call.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  The LCR Summit hits downtown Louisville, October 19th and 20th at the Galt House. The same week as Equip and it's going to change the way you run your business forever. This is not another sit and listen event. It's two full days of hands-on workshops from leaders who've actually built what you're trying to build. Naylor Taliaferro shows you how to generate better leads through smarter marketing. Paul Jamison teaches content that converts. John Payjack breaks down your numbers so you'll stop working for cheap. Eric Triplet, the pond digger, reveals how he built a multimillion dollar business making more money with less work. Plus, you'll have a surprise guest speaker. Add in live Q and

• 36:18Speaker 01

  A panels, powerful networking, and an exclusive VIP dinner with all the speakers when you purchase at the platinum level. Grab tickets and info at LCRsummit.com or just tap the link in the podcast description. That's LCRsummit.com. Stop guessing. Start growing. Build the business you've always imagined at the LCR Summit.

• 36:42Speaker 05

  Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Kid Contractor Podcast. Right? All right. Here we go, folks. How you doing? I've got my guest today, Mark Bradley, here at the beautiful Equip Expo. Great time. Everybody having a good time today? All right. How about the stuff from Potashnik? Potoshnik, I never know how to say that properly. That was good stuff, right? Like that was incredible. And I think we're going to dig deeper into that on bringing in your, your, your first key team members and how to develop them. And I think ultimately too, the most important thing that especially that I'm learning is your, your self-development really matters maybe the most first. So we'll talk with Mark here about that. Naylor, thanks so much for the opportunity to be up here on stage. I really am grateful for that. Thanks to-

• 37:27Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 37:28Speaker 05

  How do we say? Raco? Raco? What is it now?

• 37:31Speaker 00

  Roco.

• 37:31Speaker 05

  Roco. Okay. I'm learning here, folks. So big thanks to them for being part of that too here. And Paul Jamison, hi, how you doing, buddy? You made it through the hurricane. Good job down there, buddy. He rode out the hurricane down there in Tampa. For those of you don't know, that was a little wild. So my guest today, Mark Bradley, and here with founder of LMN and TBG Landscape way back in the day. Mark, how you doing? Good morning.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  Morning.

• 37:58Speaker 05

  Being as we don't have a lot of time and I want to get down to it. Mark, if you would, give, give some background on yourself, things you've founded, built, sold, done, and background in the industry and all that. And then we'll, we'll dig into hiring your first key personnel.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  All right. This is going to sound very similar.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  Fourteen, I wanted to make some money.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  Yeah, no, all through high school, I did grass cutting, I did a lot of tree planting and worked for another landscaper. Also, just kind of grew up building houses and doing plumbing with with my father.

• 38:37Speaker 04

  So the trades were sort of a natural pick for me. I ended up leaving high school and going straight into a nuclear apprenticeship program. Became a welder, ended up moving into project management. I really enjoyed it, but had that entrepreneurial bug. And at twenty-three, I started my landscape business. First year in business went incredibly well. I did a million one in my first year.

• 39:03Speaker 05

  How do you do a million one in your first year, Mark? Are you are you a psycho or something like how do you go to a million one first year? I mean, everybody here wonders after a statement like that.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  I think normally founders in their first two to three years are learning how to do the work. I had been doing the work for ten years already. I think I already had the the famous ten thousand hour rule. Growing up in a family of trades, I could build houses, I could build anything. And so it was pretty easy for me to do big jobs and I was doing hundred thousand dollar jobs in my first year.

• 39:40Speaker 04

  So the business grew quick. I did a little bit of snow. The first year I did residential driveways, the first winter, I actually started the business in November.

• 39:52Speaker 04

  I did one hundred and fifty driveways that year. My first year, just off of a newspaper ad and knocking on doors.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  What would you do the the driveways with? What kind of equipment or truck or whatever?

• 40:03Speaker 04

  I did them with a pole plow on a on a Yukon.

• 40:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, okay, sweet.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Yeah, so then, second year in business, I did a million two in snow. Because I went out and got some big utility contracts.

• 40:18Speaker 05

  Just in snow?

• 40:19Speaker 04

  Just in snow.

• 40:20Speaker 05

  Oh, my gosh.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  But yeah, I think I just had the skills to do the work. So I always try to tell people, if you don't have the skills in the first one to three years, you have to get the skills. You have to know how to do the work. Because as you go to scale the business, you have to understand how to do the work so that you can train others to do the work. I was kind of, I had the benefit of already having that when I started the business. And I think that is really what got me to that point. Everything else was a complete failure. I had no idea how to run the finances. Again, I was a grade twelve graduate without any business experience. So pricing, overhead recovery, managing people, training people, teaching others, those things were non-existent.

• 41:06Speaker 04

  And so I was really just kind of working myself to death, truthfully. And I made every mistake you could, other than the fact that I was really good at doing the work and the quality was really good. The business kept scaling over the years.

• 41:23Speaker 04

  I got to five million in my fifth year.

• 41:28Speaker 04

  And then from year five to year twenty, when I retired, I went from five million to fifty million. So I ten x the business in those years.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  Was, I'm getting off track here, but I'm I'm, I've heard a story a lot, but it's hitting me different today for some reason. What was that something you were, you know, you, is that something you were cognizant of that you understood that you knew how to do the work? So you knew just I need to work on sales and other stuff, or is it it just kind of happened? You know what I mean? Like, were you, was it intentional? They're like, okay, I know how to work. What I need to focus on is this, or it's just, that's just what inherently happened. You know what I mean?

• 42:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was kind of a victim of my own success. To be honest, I I was good at doing the work and there was more work around my city than there was contractors. And I've, I would say I was really naturally good at sales, but I was not naturally good at finding and growing. And I think finding and growing people is the secret to success. So although I was really good at the work and I could grow revenue really fast, I wasn't growing people fast enough. And I would say those were my hardest lessons learned, my biggest mistakes in business, all involved growing people. I was always really

• 42:49Speaker 04

  aware of the fact that I needed to seek mentorship. Jonathan mentioned that, you know, anytime you have a problem, you have to find somebody who has solved that problem. And there's physical proof that they have overcome that problem. And so I would go find advice from people who had clearly solved the problems that I had in front of me. But growing people was a hard one. I would ask people for advice and I got a lot of, you know, strange advice, I will say, in in hindsight. And over the years, I I really learned the lessons the hard way. But I think, you know, somewhere in around year five, I really started to focus on only hiring the right people.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  And then I really evolved, I would say, as a leader by then, and you have to, I think, to really even get past three million, you have to learn that your job is really to become the leader of leaders and your job is nothing more than to find the right people and arm them with the right tools and resources and training and systems and equipment to go out and do the work autonomously. And that was a big learning curve for me in those first five years in business. And that's really what set me up for the hyper scaling that that followed.

• 44:05Speaker 05

  Some, you mentioned strange advice. Is that something you still hear, that strange advice, for example, that you still hear being given in the industry? Or is there is that kind of, the industry evolved past this, this maybe bad, bad advice on growing people?

• 44:19Speaker 04

  I mean, I never, I never really comment on other people's advice so much as just what I've heard myself, because I I take it firsthand. But I'll say this, I think many times people are trying to solve their people problems in entirely the wrong way. I think if you want great people, then you have to learn how to attract and hire great people. And then, once they come on, you need to onboard them properly. You need to train them. You need to continuously train them. I'm a huge supporter of apprenticeships for that reason.

• 44:58Speaker 04

  I think people who apply for job ads that say must be able to lift fifty pounds, must have a driver's license and must be willing to work sixty hours a week. I think those people that apply to those jobs are fixed minded people who are just simply looking for a paycheck. And I believe that people who apply for apprenticeships are looking for more. Those are people who have a growth mindset. Those are people who are going to stay with you. When you bring them on in year one and you give them sixty percent of full rate, and then in year two, they get seventy percent, and year three, they get eighty percent. Year four, they get ninety percent, and year five, they get a hundred percent of full rate. You attract some great people.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  And I think the rates have to be much higher than normal, and they can be when you have a really efficient team of growth minded people. And I think there at all starts is hiring people with a growth mindset and learning how to ask a few questions that uncover that. And once I learned how to ask those questions, I surrounded myself with people who were wanting more and who were willing to go just as far as I was to make it happen.

• 46:14Speaker 05

  So the the growth mindset, can you define what a growth mindset is in your your definition of it or whatever? And then also, how is that applicable? And is it just a blanket? You know, is it, can you just blanket that to the guy with a single axle trailer and mower and an F one fifty to the guy that's trying to get to ten mil, you know, the growth mindset? What is a growth mindset?

• 46:41Speaker 04

  The easiest way to describe a growth mindset is it's it's just really a way of thinking. It's it's a belief that there's more out there. And I think it's having the attitude of being able to see that that involves continuous improvement. And so you have to ask people questions to uncover whether or not they see that naturally. Because I think when you're growing a business, it's really hard to try to change people's mindset.

• 47:11Speaker 04

  What ultimately allowed me to grow the business at the pace that I did is that I focused on a continuous improvement culture. And in order to have that culture, culture, in my opinion, is just the way it is. That's my my belief of culture. The way it is in your company is your culture. And so if in my company, I only hire people with growth mindset, and then I train, train, train, train, train forever, then we're always continuously improving. But the key question, when I started to really look at this closer, and again, this was probably year five or so. And like, when you mentioned a guy with a truck and a trailer or pickup truck and a trailer, that's me, right?

• 47:52Speaker 04

  Like, I started my business from my apartment with no money, with a pickup truck and a wheelbarrow. Six hundred square foot apartment and, you know, I had a four foot crawl space under my front porch. So I started just the same as everybody.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  When I started interviewing people properly, when I started asking them good questions to uncover mindset, everything changed. And so those questions usually just involved me understanding how they see failure. I played hockey growing up, and so leadership was pretty natural to me. I was a captain on my hockey team for ten years. One thing that my father taught me, he wasn't an educated person at all. He was a an orphan. He grew up with nothing. He had nothing.

• 48:42Speaker 04

  I taught him how to read and write when I was in seventh grade. But one thing he taught me is that there's always more. And if you work hard, you'll always get more.

• 48:53Speaker 04

  And ultimately, that work ethic was kind of drilled into me. And I didn't really understand how coachable he made me, because every time there was something a setback, he would force me to acknowledge what went wrong and then describe what I was going to do in the future to get better. And he did that over and over and over.

• 49:15Speaker 04

  And I didn't really recognize it as a kid, I don't think. But once I started interviewing people and asking them this question, which I read in a book, to be honest, I didn't even put the two together from him. The question that I always learned to ask people was, hey, can you tell me about a time in your life when you had a major setback or you failed at something?

• 49:40Speaker 04

  And the answer always told me whether or not I wanted to hire that person. If they blamed somebody else when they described the setback, there was no way I was going to hire that person.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  You might write this down, folks.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  If, uh, if they described that setback or that bad result as teaching them a lesson in some way, then I hired them immediately. I didn't care about the resume. If they could say, hey, this happened. Here's what I learned. Here's what I changed and here was the result. Every time I would hire those people. Because when you're surrounded by an entire team of people who think that way, and when you truly do become the leader of leaders and you learn to delegate and you provide systems, then those people can go and make mistakes and you can address them and you

• 50:33Speaker 04

  can talk about them and you can describe exactly what you could do to help fix that problem if they can't come up with a solution. But back to what Jonathan said earlier, when there's a problem, the thing that I would do most often is I would just simply say, hey, here's what happened. Here's our results. We went over on project hours. What would you do next time to get those hours under or on budget? And they would tell me. And you know, 99% of the time it meant I had to invest in training, equipment, systems, processes. It was never their fault. Even when it appeared to be their fault, it was still mine because it was my job to

• 51:18Speaker 04

  train them better. It was my job to equip them with the knowledge. And so, bad results, we have to be able to talk about them together in order to get better and overcome them. And I want people who believe that that process is natural and I want them to come to my company with that.

• 51:36Speaker 05

  That's such, and that's a question that's applicable to, if you're looking for string trimmer guy or guy to carry pavers, you know, whatever, like you look for their own accountability perception, right? Of like, if they are willing to take responsibility or, I mean, we've all hired folks and maybe we've been that person where it's always somebody else's fault, right? And so that's such a great, um, lit, almost, I guess, lit, to you as a litmus test. I mean, it was, if they blame everyone else for a time something went horrible, you wouldn't even hire them. You wouldn't even give them a second, second look.

• 52:12Speaker 04

  No, because like, the most important people in the entire company are the employees. And nobody is just a string trimmer guy, right? At the end of the day, I was a string trimmer guy when I started my business. When I ended, I had 300 employees. And any one of those 300 employees can run a landscape business the same as me. And I know that. I'm not special. None of us are. And if anybody in the room thinks that you're more special than the people that work for you, that's where you need to actually start because the world is filled with brilliant people. And most of the time, we don't take the time to see that brilliance.

• 52:55Speaker 04

  And I think if you want to become the leader of leaders, you have to believe in the goodness of people and you have to believe that they're just as intelligent and capable as you. And it's your job to lead them. It's your job to teach them to be just as capable as you. And if you want to scale a business, you have to learn how to do that systematically.

• 53:15Speaker 05

  And scale can be, uh, can be, like you said, going from one person to, to a couple more to help you run that route so you don't have to be there, right? Or going to 50 million in revenue or whatever the case, right? What, on the personal development end of things, because you've got to become, like you said, whether, whether or not you want to or not, you, you're the, if you own the organization or, you know, whatever, you are the leader of the leaders, right? And so you have to, I believe, you know, you're, you are by default the leader, right? And so you need to work on being the best version of yourself. You know, like, like they say, uh, you know, you know, donkeys don't hang out with racehorses, right?

• 53:57Speaker 05

  And so Mark, what, what advice do you have for folks for personal development to be the best that you can be, the best you understand how to be at the time?

• 54:08Speaker 04

  Oh, we need an hour.

• 54:10Speaker 05

  Well, seven minutes.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, seven minutes. I'll say this.

• 54:16Speaker 04

  If you're going to run a business, you're going to always have to be evolving. The best part about running a business is that it tells you where you need to evolve a little faster than your average person may get that feedback. So when you begin to feel the business and understand the energy that exists in the business should be dictating, um, more than, you know, your smiles and your headaches. When there's problems in the business, that should be telling you where you need to evolve because your business is nothing more than a reflection of you and your leadership. And so every time I felt the struggles in the business and the pain in the business,

• 55:00Speaker 04

  that told me where I needed to evolve as a human. And I don't look at business and, um, personal as two different things. I look at my life as being one life. I experience it from within. And if I'm going to be a great leader, then I have to evolve as a, as a person or as a human. And I believe that the way to do that is by being incredibly aware, self-aware, um, of what's missing. And the business tells you that. It's a feedback loop. When I wasn't able to attract great employees, that told me something. When I wasn't able to put up the profits that I expected, that told me something.

• 55:45Speaker 04

  When I wasn't attracting enough customers, that told me something. And so each time, uh, the business told me something, I would, I would self-reflect and I would look at myself and ask myself what's missing in me as a leader because the business is just simply making that clear to me.

• 56:06Speaker 05

  The, the problems you're experiencing are telling you what you need to work on, essentially.

• 56:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think most of us tend to ignore those problems and we keep doing the things we're comfortable with. We get up in the morning and we go do what we like to do. But what we want is on the other side of the hard stuff. We all know what we need to do to get what we want, but most of us won't do it.

• 56:31Speaker 05

  I, I think I'd heard you say it and it was such a, it was you or, you know, I didn't matter who, but it might've been you, but it was somebody and it was such a punch in the gut. It was like, we all have the companies we deserve. And it's like, oh my heavens, like, I want to go so much farther, but here I am where I'm at now. This is, and another thing you'd said, if you can't tell I'm a fanboy of Mark's here. But, you know, you know, aside from having the companies we deserve, you know, your company in, in life in general is going to grow to the extent of your own capabilities at the moment. And so again, that's where I'm really big on this, the self-development thing now, like trying to develop beyond that.

• 57:10Speaker 05

  So what, what, um, you know, really trying to hammer on again, those, those first people, what's maybe a second question that after we got past the like, okay, they take responsibility and they learn from mistakes. What's like the second thing that we work on then say, if that's like the litmus for hire? What's the second thing we work on with developing that, that right-hand, one of those first key people, first right-hand person, whatever?

• 57:35Speaker 04

  For me, I, I started out, my first employee was a street kid that I hired from the stone yard that I was buying my pavers from. And I quickly could see that he had a lot of limiting beliefs.

• 57:50Speaker 04

  And so with him, what I, what I did very early on was I kind of just tried to figure out what was, what would drive him. And I don't think I quite understood the language at the time, but since I very much understood that we all have a purpose in life and when we're connected with that purpose, a lot of the hard stuff kind of doesn't seem so hard because you align yourself to something a lot more meaningful. And for me, what I quickly realized is my purpose was growing people.

• 58:27Speaker 04

  I wanted to impact others. That's what felt good to me. I think as a kid, I always just wanted to be the most coachable person in the room. And as an adult, I just wanted to, um, continue with that mindset, but then pass on everything that people had taught me. And as I started to hire people, what I started to do is find out what their mission was as an individual. And then I would help serve that purpose. So it was pretty important to me to help all of my employees buy a house within the first five years of working for me. So I had a first time home buyers program. It was pretty important to me that they had benefits.

• 59:11Speaker 04

  It was pretty important to me that they had a pension savings plan. And so I put a lot of effort into helping them create a greater purpose, which for most of us, I believe everybody in the world is an entrepreneur in the sense that we all get out of bed and we go to work for our money so that we can support our families and support ourselves. And, um, in that essence, we kind of all work for ourselves. We decide who we work with. If you're an employee, you just decide where you're going to go and work. And money is really nothing more than a construct that we created to trade our time for helping others. And we should always remember that money is nothing more than a construct.

• 59:55Speaker 04

  It's not something we take with us, um, after this life. And so I really started to focus on making sure that my employees' mission was clear to me. And I built 25 unbelievable people in my first five years that stayed with me for quite a while.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  And those people, I think, really helped me because I helped them. And that's the order, um, that it ended up sort of.

• 1:00:29Speaker 04

  Being in, when I could see that they were willing to help, then I went all in on them. And we were a pretty tight team and they really served my mission while serving their own. Their mission may have been a little more simple in essence, in the sense that they were trying to support themselves and their families. And I was trying to, to build people, to build a company. And in the early years, I don't think I was always entirely clear on that, but as time went on, I really learned that the only thing that I found fulfilling in business, and it's true to this day, is just building people.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  Man, um, that's a little heavy here and it's good stuff. Um, that being said, and solid stuff, Mark. The, what am I going to do here? I got 27 seconds, my guy. Um, I guess we'll wrap it up then. Mark, thank you so much. I appreciate you being here, taking your time to be here. How about that stuff? That was good stuff, huh, folks?

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Um, I want to thank you all for coming. Uh, big thanks again to Naylor for putting us on LCR Media here. We really appreciate it. Paul Jameson with the Greenish Street Podcast coming up next. And, uh, folks, again, Mark, thanks so much. Uh, everybody, I got red lighted here. We're done. We'll catch you on the next one here on the Kid Contractor Podcast. See you, guys. It's, it's great to see everybody. Uh, thanks again Naylor. I remember when Naylor would tell me these ideas he has and looking behold Naylor, a full room. Super cool. Give it up for our host Naylor Talia Farrell. So Naylor said you can interview anybody you want. I said, I want to interview JP. Naylor's like, I got the first pick in the draft.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  So, so Naylor got to interview JP. So I want to interview my friend Tony, and I'm going to tell you why. This is Tony Rudolph, everybody.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  How you doing?

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  So Tony, uh, has, he's been in the lawn business this whole life. His father had a lawn business and he'll share a little bit of his story in a moment. But what intrigues me about you is you're 100% debt free. So your mortgage, you don't have one. I've been to Tony's beautiful home in Lake Accony and it's paid for. Uh, you got a nice, nice Roth IRA?

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:02:53Speaker 00

  All your lawn care equipment's paid off?

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:02:56Speaker 00

  And you got peace in your heart?

• 1:02:57Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  So, hey. So, so I thought Tony was a realistic example because Mark Bradley and JP, they're like, they're like superstars. And if you're just starting out, actually, let's do this. If you're between year one and three, I want you to stand up. If you're in year one and three, stand up if you're in year one and three. I got a gift for you. Well, I don't got a gift for you. Juggernaut, come on up here. Juggernaut's making that YouTube money. Come on up. What do you want to give away today? All right. So, uh, one of you guys between year one and three, I'm sorry, five of you guys, I'm going to go and give you a hundred bucks. I'm going to buy you a steak dinner. Uh, congratulations on making it as far as you did. And, um, I'm going to give away- Pick him right there. Josh, come on up.

• 1:03:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, you pick him. Keep talking, it's the podcast. All right. My bad. All right. So, um, I got another thousand bucks to give away. I'm going to be at the, uh, Toro booth between two to four. Um, I'm going to give a thousand bucks to somebody. So make sure you show up. All right. Thank you, Juggernaut. Now let's see the money. JP don't carry cash, but Juggernaut does. Those are hundred dollar bills.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  I collected this over the last five weeks.

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Amen. All right. Let's give it up. Give them a round of applause. New entrepreneur.

• 1:04:21Speaker 00

  Don't spend that at a casino, Josh. All right. Rick, everyone give it up for Rick.

• 1:04:29Speaker 00

  Brett, congratulations. What's your name?

• 1:04:32Speaker 05

  Ian.

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  Ian, congratulations. And what's your name? Michael. All right. Hundred dollars. Thank you. Thank you, Juggernaut. All righty. I had, uh, I was going to give you guys not cash, but I was going to bring, uh, my books, but we had Hurricane Milton. And so, uh, that didn't happen. But I'll be giving away an audio book for free at the end. If you guys want to listen to my audio book for free, narrated by Mr. Producer, you want to pull that up? Thank you. You can scan the QR code there. When I get back to the sunshine state, I'll email you a, a code where you can get the free audio book on, uh, listen on Audible for free. Again, I wanted to give you the paperback, but because of Hurricane Milton,

• 1:05:16Speaker 00

  the, uh, Amazon guys weren't working. We didn't have gas. So, there you go. Did I cover all the opening ceremony there, rookie? Oh yeah. Thank you to Relco, which is formerly known as Kohler. Uh, is Jamie in the back there? It's her birthday on Saturday. Let's sing her happy birthday really quick. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday. To you. Birthday, dear Jamie. Happy birthday to you. Awesome. Thank you, Jamie. Thank you, Craig. I forget our friend from Italy, but he looks super cool and stylish.

• 1:05:57Speaker 00

  Thank you to Evan and the team in the back with the quip. Thank you very much. Awesome. Awesome show here. All right. We're going to get to your questions in just a moment because Caleb skipped you.

• 1:06:10Speaker 00

  You didn't ask one question. It's interactive Q and A. Don't worry. We'll, we'll, I'll ask you, I'll let Payjack, uh, get, get one queued up. But Tony, go ahead and share your story of how you started a lawn business and paid off your home. You know, invest, you're investing in your Roth IRA. You have a beautiful wife here, uh, two kids, Willow and River. Tell us the story.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was born in 91. My dad started in 86. Uh, mowed our front lawn with his Toro 44 Pro line. Uh, that was, I was eight years old and just any kind of pattern, any kind of way. Um, and starting as a kid, me and my brother, we, I remember one time, one summer, we had watered plant material for my dad's landscape projects at our house for the whole summer. And then at the end of the summer, we spent all that money on TY Beanie Babies. That was my first financial mistake, you know, right there. So, um, and, uh, you know, didn't, didn't really like the business as a kid, uh, growing up, but

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  uh, somewhere around teenager age, um, working my, with my dad's crew, I really started like, to, to like the business, especially the maintenance part of it. Learned how to edge with the trimmer and doing these things. I really enjoyed it. Um, and so that's when I really started to enjoy the business. And then when I started my company, 2012, uh, that's when I started to learn about the lawn care community, just like all of us here, when I started digging online. Uh, and so that, that opened up my whole mind and my whole mindset. You know, I thought, I always thought as a kid that we're a weird landscaping family and like, so I would kind of keep that on the DL that we had a lawn

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  care in landscape business, you know? But then, but I didn't know like all this, you know, existed. You know what I'm saying? And, uh, so what an amazing thing to, uh, to start learning about the online community and to come to a bit like this, where 30,000 people, you know, were all going kind of in the same direction. That's amazing. Um, fast forward a few years, uh, our church hosted a Financial Peace University, Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. I took that class and just when I seen all the numbers break down of what you could do with what you have and what you make on a daily basis and what that could turn into, my life was forever changed. Um, just like all young couples,

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  we start to build our credit, you know, to buy a house and, and I had little payments on trucks and mowers and things. Um, but looking back, you know, I probably, I could have kept that walk behind mower a couple more years that I bought when I started. And, uh, so I would have done things a little different and always, any of you guys out there, feel free to ask me questions, you know, even simple things or even questions that you think would be silly to ask me, you know, I'm, I'm cool with that. Um, so anyway, so we take that course and just, we just started going on the journey, you know, step by step, you know? I'm not a super smart guy, but I just know how to follow a plan. And so that's all I've done. I just followed the plan, um, started investing, you know, as, you know, when it was in the right step to do so, and just started writing down our

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  decks and working hard. And, um, in the last couple of years, we, you know, kind of finished the final destination to have our home mortgage paid off. And so that, that was a huge blessing. And so, you know, last year and this year is really fun to come to the expo because I mean, I have no, no real bills or obligations. Um, I mean, obviously I have a, I have obligations, but I mean, um, I guess like you're saying in my heart, I don't feel like, oh, I don't know what's going to happen, you know, next month or that kind of thing, you know, like financially. And so that, that is a huge, huge blessing. Um, go ahead. I can tell you had a question.

• 1:09:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, it's more of a statement and we're not going to do a raise of hands as Naylor says, this is a safe place. But I think if we, you know, we're honest across the room, there's a lot of people who are stressed out about money and you're not because you, I mean, you don't have a mortgage. You don't, all you got to worry about is, you know, maybe taking your wife out to dinner Friday night, but you have the money to do that. So share that story because I know you as a friend, you are very intentional with, we're going to live frugal. We're going to take the money we're earning in our lawn business and you just start chunking it at the mortgage until now you- You're 100% debt free. So share a little bit about the sacrifice that it took to become debt free.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's, it's not going to magically happen, you know, it took a lot of sacrifice. It took changing my mindset, you know, of how I seen things and even just my day to day life, like, am I packing a lunch with me? Am I stopping to get lunch? Well, certainly during that, you know, during that time, I'm not, you know, not going to get lunch. I really don't like to waste time and stop getting lunch anyway. But anyway, little sacrifices like that, they really, really compound over time. You know, if you think about a few dollars a day, well, if you add that up months and years, like, it just, little things like that really make a huge difference, you know? And, you know, we're at equip expo and this is, this whole thing is kind of about shiny equipment. And I want all of us to have shiny equipment and I think we should.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  I think our business each year, we need to figure out how can we make it a little bit better each year? And so as, as we go through, I just, I just want us to buy it from a place of a firm foundation. And so I want, so that way it's a, it's a blessing, you know, the, the mowers they have, the truck they have, the business they have is a blessing. You know, there's no, there's no bad part, you know, tied to it at all, you know? And so, but the sacrifice was big. It was big, especially for a couple of years. And it just kind of depends on how hardcore do you want to go? Just the more you sacrifice, obviously the quicker you can do it, right? So we chose to do for a couple of years, some big sacrifices and just work weekends.

• 1:12:01Speaker 02

  And, you know, I kind of, you know, I wish I had started the journey even years earlier, but I'm like, well, we can do it. We can do it now, you know, if we buckle down and if we, if we take the necessary steps, we could make this work. And so over the last, you know, this was just in the last two or three years, really hammered down like, hey, we can do this. And then, and I just decided I wasn't going to borrow money anymore.

• 1:12:24Speaker 00

  That's huge.

• 1:12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, so if you take that option off the table, then you just have to work with what's left after that. And having our, you know, our financial investor that's tied with Dave Ramsey, I just did, just like he, he says, and he was a, he's, he's also 100% debt free, has no mortgage paying or anything like that. So the advice that he would give me was extremely solid advice. And so many other people, I, it's not hard to find people that, you know, live this lifestyle, just like Andy Mulder. Like so many people have done it this way. So it's becoming more and more common because the freedom is so good. I, I think it's just kind of, it's spreading, you know?

• 1:13:02Speaker 00

  I absolutely love it. All right, Payjack, let's queue up the first question. And I have some slides up here in, in the new book that I wanted to give you. Again, I live in Florida and we had a hurricane, but how to build a thriving lawn care business. I walked through the three stages. When you start off, you're in this survival mode. You're just doing everything. And then secondly, you go into this growth mode, call it growth mode Greg. And then the third mode is when you're thriving, when you have profit, when you have margin, when you have, Tony's not just successful in a lawn care business, his wife likes him, his wife's there, right? Wave everyone. They're, they're happily married. I've been to their home, their home has peace in it. They have two children, you're, you play the drums at your church, like Tony's got a successful life.

• 1:13:47Speaker 00

  And so all of the areas of our life should be prosperous, including our business, so that the other areas can be successful. JP, can you come up here too? Please? This is my show, Nathan. I want, I want all the, all hands on deck. All right, you can ask any of us a question. Go ahead, Payjack. We're going to do Q and A. What about Mark? Oh, Mark, I didn't see, uh, come on up, Mark. I didn't see him there. I thought he left. Please come on up. We'll get all cozy. Yeah, because Caleb didn't do Q and A. Get up here, Mark. Okay, Mark, come on up. All right, Payjack, first question. Apologize, Mark. I didn't see you.

• 1:14:20Speaker 03

  At your one o'clock over here.

• 1:14:22Speaker 00

  All right, go ahead.

• 1:14:24Speaker 03

  Good morning. I'm, I'm Cliff from Alabama. Paul, I'm a fan. My question is to any other guys, what would you tell your younger self?

• 1:14:35Speaker 00

  And what we'll do is we'll do rapid fire. So I'll, I'll start and then we'll just, we'll just work down. I would tell my younger self, I, I didn't start honoring the Lord with my life until I was older in life. So I would have, I would have started making decisions that honored God, you know, earlier in life. So that's.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Just be patient and ask good advice come to events like this.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  What Mark said, what Mark's, okay, what Mark said about people, like earlier on, just hardcore, invest in people, find the people, train the people, work through people. So much of what we do early on, we take it on ourselves. And really the whole game of business is about building people and then they build the company. So everything he said, just kind of take that to heart and go with it.

• 1:15:29Speaker 00

  In addition to that, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no. I think I took it from you too. So, uh, no, mentorship would, would be the other. So two things, be the most coachable person in the room, in every room you walk into.

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  That's really important. And then seek mentorship and never stop.

• 1:15:50Speaker 00

  To this day, I invest more than my annual salary in personal development. I do not stop working on myself. And the only way to do that is to take advice from people who have been and succeeded where it is that I want to go next. And so always seeking mentorship. I think that is the, the best piece of advice that I could give anybody.

• 1:16:15Speaker 00

  Rookie? I would just like to say that being born means that you are enough. Remember that.

• 1:16:26Speaker 00

  Life is a miracle. Don't take it for granted. You are enough.

• 1:16:34Speaker 05

  And again, if you had to tell your younger self something, uh, listen to your dad's financial advice. That would have been mine. I listened to everything else with dad, but not, I was too smart to listen to him.

• 1:16:44Speaker 00

  Is, is Nick Bartolo in the room, the wealth advisor?

• 1:16:49Speaker 00

  He said he was coming. I don't see him. He, he was on my podcast yesterday. He said that the eighth wonder of the world, or maybe he said Albert Einstein said the eighth wonder of the world is compound interest. So, you know, going back to your story, Tony, what's it been like to, you know, put that $7,000 in your Roth IRA? It's starting to just compound.

• 1:17:10Speaker 02

  It's, it's kind of, especially when I was first getting started, it's hard to, you know, like for me and my wife, it's hard to, to put that money, that chunk of money in there every, every month. And you, like, you're not going to see results from this for the next lot of years. You know, you're 55 and a half, you know, before you pull it out. So, um, and obviously all these things kind of change slightly, but yeah, so it is hard at first. But for me, uh, what we've done is we just, we have it set up on automatic draft. And so it just does it, not that that makes it easier, but, um, I think all this kind of comes together. You know, if you have all kinds of payments and money flying out everywhere, well, then it's going to be hard to have your investment on your automatic draft.

• 1:17:52Speaker 02

  Right? But so it, and I do the same even with my tithing and all kinds of things with like sponsor children, we have the whole thing. So, um, so I think, yes, it was hard and, but, but you will get used to it. It's just hard just for a little bit. As, as you see the account grow, it's like, oh, this is great. I want to put more in there. You know what I mean? Cause money that I spent on a, a truck or whatever else, that's sort of wasted. It's going backwards, you know? But this money is going forward every day. And so these, you know, Roth IRA, so it doesn't help you like any tax wise, like beforehand. But when you pull it out, when you're not old, but when you're eligible age, you know, it's, it's tax free at that point.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  So that, yeah, so it's hard at first, but you will get used to it. Just, uh, contact people that are already doing it and they'll help you to feel more comfortable with it.

• 1:18:43Speaker 00

  Amen. Brittany Alman, I know you got the Roth IRA. Payjack, uh, queue up the next question. And I've been at the John Deere booth, um, all show. I'm going to continue to be there the rest of the show. I interviewed a wealth advisor yesterday. That episode is going to come out next week. It's absolutely fire. Next question.

• 1:19:00Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Josh from Peculiar, Missouri, and I wanted to ask you guys, what's your favorite thing about the lawn care industry? And I also wanted to ask tips to grow a YouTube channel.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  We might have to call in juggernaut for that. All right, we'll, we'll do, uh, what, what you love about the lawn care industry and tips to grow the YouTube channel. That's two different questions, but I'll, I'll just, we'll do rapid fire again, real quick. What I love about this industry is the people. So some of my best friends are in this room. Many of my best friends are in this room. This industry has hard work in, people with integrity, people with character.

• 1:19:38Speaker 02

  I love the people and I'm not, I don't have a big enough YouTube channel to mention on that. So I'll pass on that. Yeah, I almost have the same answer as him, you know, like, I feel like the people, the men and women in our industry are just amazing in general, like even locally, obviously here and, and online and stuff like that, but even locally, like if I see another lawn guy, he'll just come up and talk to me, "Hey, man, blah, blah, blah." Some of the coolest people I've ever met in my life, you know, are, are lawn and landscape people. I mean, that's just my experience. It's just what I've experienced, you know, and I've been around lots and lots of different kinds of people. Um, and yeah, talk to juggernaut about, uh, growth tips.

• 1:20:13Speaker 02

  I'm gonna sound like I'm just repeating you guys. I've been in lots of different circles in life and I do not like fake and I do not like showy. And in this industry, there's a lot of people that every day wake up and do the work and work really hard. And I love people that put their head down and go and build things and work really hard to kind of, I think it was like salt of earth. That's how we built this country. And that's what you find inside this industry and I love it. They're my people.

• 1:20:38Speaker 00

  What'd you learn building lawn care millionaire YouTube back in the day? Five for 50 now?

• 1:20:43Speaker 02

  I didn't learn the lessons I needed to learn because it was just this little bitty thing I did and I did it at a time that YouTube was easy. So now I have this thing called five for 50. I'm about to learn a lot of lessons. I'm trying to figure it out. So I don't think I'm the guy to give advice right now. My strategy right now is just give exceptionally honest, quality feed, uh, information that actually works. And that's not good enough these days to build social media, but that is to me foundational. That's where I start. Now I need to learn all the stuff to go actually turn this into something. So.

• 1:21:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, uh, you know, more of the same probably here, just people. I think, uh, everybody likes a comeback story and I think this industry is chock full of them. I think most of us start with pretty humble beginnings. Uh, my first few months in business, I remember rolling pennies to buy, uh, Christmas gifts. Uh, and I have seen that play out many, many times over the years with my employees and, uh, with the customers that, uh, I serve today at, at LMN. Uh, I hear these stories every day and that fuels me. I think, uh, just hearing people, uh,

• 1:21:59Speaker 04

  hearing people's stories about growth as individuals and, and turning their lives around in different ways has just always motivated me. And, uh, what I do today with, uh, speaking and traveling around, uh, working with contractors is, I say this to every contractor I speak to, it's not about you. It's not about your employees. It's actually about the kids of those employees. And I think, you know, last year, I think we managed 300,000 employees on the LMN platform. That's a lot of kids. And if we can help other people, help themselves and create a better

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  life, that's awfully exciting. So many people in this industry have done that for me and with me. That's what fuels me. That's what I enjoy about the industry and, and that's why I'll never leave this industry.

• 1:22:53Speaker 00

  Love it. Naylor, what have you, what do you like about the industry and what have you learned about content?

• 1:22:59Speaker 00

  Thank you, Paul, um, for the refresher. So what?

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  Excellent in broadcasting, Ricky.

• 1:23:05Speaker 00

  There you go. What, what, what I love about this industry is 10 years ago, um, when I started this industry, I didn't know this industry existed. I was a homeowner that just loved lawn care and kind of figured that out. But I came, I discovered this industry at the worst time of my life in hopes to have a plan to better my life. And now because of all of you, this is the best time of my life. So I just want to thank you all.

• 1:23:32Speaker 00

  And, and as far as YouTube, I'll give you one of the best pieces of advice that Kevin will give you that all of our friends, peers and mentors have given all of us over the years. Not that I'm the juggernaut or anything, but, uh, consistency, right, Kevin? Consistency. You have to put out consistent content in order for you to be found and grow. So consistency, like, don't get caught up in the weeds of all the different things that you can do with YouTube. Like, you know, start putting the content out first and figure it out as you go along and you'll start to know what's getting views, comments, likes, all that on any platform. It's all about consistency. I mean, in life in general, let's be honest. So.

• 1:24:08Speaker 05

  Uh, I don't know anything about YouTube, even though we have a channel. So the one thing I know about that would be to say to grow YouTube channel, if you're on stage with a microphone in front of a bunch of people, you would say, "Go like and subscribe at Almond Landscape YouTube, at Almond Landscape on YouTube. That's the best I got for you." So you better hoist a mic here. So other than that, I don't know. Consistency is what I've always heard, but I have no clue what the algorithm is doing. What I love about the green industry, uh, and what always drew it to me at first was I wanted to be in landscape contracting, landscape, landscape construction. And it was my chance to have my own construction business and, uh, and, you know, you, you get out in the dirt and you, you got your machines out, you're digging, you're building functional landscapes and things that are cool and retaining walls and the horticultural aspect of it and how the, the crazy amount of skills we have to have as professionals in this industry. We've got to

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  know a little bit about plumbing, a little bit about, you know, soils and base, you know, base compaction and equipment. We gotta be freaking mechanics. We gotta be, we gotta understand, you know, once we get past the point of being a, uh, an accountant, we gotta then become a business person to know, okay, I don't know this. We need to hire other people out. So I'm in love with the dirt. I love building stuff and that's what I always have loved about this industry. And then now I love building the business around it. So that's what I love about the green industry.

• 1:25:17Speaker 00

  Awesome. We got time for one more question. And Payjack, as you get, this is the final question, Payjack. So real quick, what I'll say I love about this industry too, is I've been to Tony's house. I've been to JP's house. Mark, I haven't been to your house yet, but I hope one day. Naylor, I've been to your house. Caleb, I've been to your house. Like, these guys are my friends. They've invited me into their homes and other Mark, but, but, uh,

• 1:25:43Speaker 00

  but, but what I'm saying is these relationships are real. Like, these are my friends. I, I love this industry. Last question, rapid fire answers.

• 1:25:51Speaker 02

  Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for everything that you guys do. Uh, my name is Ricky Rodriguez. I'm stationed out in, uh, central Florida. Um, and my question is, and it's sort of a loaded question. I think there's probably-

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  We gotta make it quick, Ricky.

• 1:26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's sort of a loaded question. I, I think only one person might be able to answer and I would love to hear everybody's, uh, opinion on it, but where is your mindset growing right now as you're growing in your entrepreneurship, uh, your entrepreneur, uh, um, journey, right? Because as I've been talking to a lot of people, I, I've noticed that there's been a lot of repetition and answers on growing in certain aspects, like the questions that I'm hearing here, right? But I know that sometimes there isn't time to share a certain thing in our mind that we're growing in, that's actually expanded our mind to, uh, newer and grander horizons. Uh, Mark, uh, when you were speaking, that's what inspired my question. So, um, I guess you can answer it. Where has your

• 1:26:49Speaker 02

  mind opened in, in, in your journey and entrepreneurship, um, that you haven't been able to share that people might be missing the mark? That is a whole nother level.

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  Uh, I think Paul may have already touched on it and I didn't say it explicitly. Uh, they always say not to talk much about religion and politics, but I'll say this. Uh, as I've reached the financial success that I've reached, there becomes a different purpose in life. I think sometimes we chase money. Uh, but I've really come to realize that I am just one with God and it's my job to serve others. And that's really where I focus.

• 1:27:36Speaker 00

  Well, thanks for listening all the way to the end. That was one of my favorite morning shows. Such a great time and, uh, quality men there. Good to learn business from, uh, Tony Rudolph, Mark Bradley, Jonathan Petoshnik. A lot of fun, uh, with that one. Hopefully you'll join us this year at the Equip Expo for the morning show, uh, featuring, uh, Naylor again. He'll be interviewing, uh, Eric Triplett, the Pondigger this year. I'll be interviewing John Payjack. Caleb will be interviewing his wife and, uh, you're invited to join us while coffee, donuts for you, uh, in room B103 on Thursday morning at the Equip Expo, starting bright and early at 8:00 a.m. If you haven't already booked your tickets for Equip Expo, I can save you 50% off those tickets

• 1:28:19Speaker 00

  when you're filling out your form for the ticket. It asks for a promotional code. If you type my name in there, P-A-U-L, your prices for her ticket will go down by half, 50% off. So, uh, I believe tickets right now are 60 bucks a pop. They're going up to 120 bucks a pop soon. So if you, you type in Paul, instead of paying 60 bucks a ticket, that should knock your price down to 30 bucks a ticket or wherever. Whenever you're listening to this, prices are always fluctuating because the closer you get to the show, the higher the price goes. But nevertheless, promo code Paul will still get you half off. But that's why it's always earlier, pardon me. It's always better to get your ticket earlier. So the, the overall price is, is lower, but whatever the overall price is

• 1:29:04Speaker 00

  at, you still get half off when you use the promo code Paul. So don't pay full price. Make sure you save yourself some money on your Equip Expo tickets. And, uh, I hope you can join us in Louisville, uh, for the Equip Expo this year. Well, thanks for listening all the way to the end. That was such a good episode. Have a good day.

• 1:29:38Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry Podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.