The Innovative Spirit of Granum (LMN, Greenius and Single Ops) with new CEO Mark Sedgley

Welcome to the Ultimate Landscape CEO. I'm your host, Jeffrey Scott. I'm an investor, entrepreneur, coach and author and I am passionate about helping landscape entrepreneurs to think outside the box and build scalable businesses and truly live the life of their dreams. Personally, I'm a barbecue experimenter, a fast car driver and a jazz and blues buff living in New Orleans. Are you ready? Follow me and let's go. Go. Today's guest, Mark Sedgley, the new or relatively new CEO of Granum, which is the combination of LMN software, Greenius, which is a training software, and single ops software for the tree care and related industries. Mark is an interesting fellow. He's very entrepreneurial, which you don't always see that often you see more of a caretaker CEO come into a company like this company here. But you're going to be surprised to and pleased to learn about his entrepreneurial spirit and how it's going to impact LMN and Greenius and single Ops. He shares a very interesting vision that he has for Greenius in becoming a marketplace for labor. Very, very interesting. And he also shares his sight, his insights on AI and you're going to learn a lot about his entrepreneurial background. So if you're a user of one of those softwares, you'll definitely want to listen. And if you want to learn from a successful entrepreneur, he says landscaping is more difficult than running a software company. And he's going to share why we recorded this at the end of last year. 25. We're going to put it out now, kind of the kickoff of 26. This is also the kickoff of our peer groups for the season. So if you've been thinking about getting involved with a group of peers to have a safe, exciting place to share everything sensitive going on in your business, but also share your aspirations, your dreams and your goals and get help from people to achieve those and to get a group of peers that are going to kind of rally you along the way and help you avoid some of the pitfalls and give you some tools and experiences that they have to help you get where you want to go quicker with more assurity then our Leaders Edge peer group can definitely help you. And if you're interested in one on one coaching to get there quicker, reach out to us at jeffreyscott Biz, check out our coaching and consulting or you can apply for our peer groups online on our website. So if that's one of your resolutions to really get where you want to go and make fewer mistakes, we can help you. We can be a big Support for you. Okay, enough of that. Let's jump in. And here's Mark. Welcome to the ultimate landscape. CEO Mark, glad to have you.

Awesome. Yes. Appreciate the title too. Thank you, Jeffrey.

Yeah, you're welcome. So Mark Sejely is the CEO sometimes known as El Jefe of Granum, which is a what, a conglomeration of lmn, Greenius and Single Ops.

I think of it as like one company, one mission, you know, with a suite of products to serve the green

industry and hence the new name and the branding.

Correct. You nailed it.

Yeah. So tell us a bit, give us a little bit of background, like, where did you come from before you joined the green industry?

Sure. First of all, thanks for having me, Jeffrey. I really appreciate being on the podcast. Long time listener, first time caller. So I appreciate the time and the opportunity. I would say my bug in terms of how I got here probably started when I was a teenager for similarly, for lots of folks, I think, across North America, which was just putting a lawnmower and a weed whacker in the back of my car and bungee cording the trunk closed and knocking on doors and selling $20 yard cleanups. Right from there is a long, winding road to getting to where I'm sitting here doing a podcast with Jeffrey Scott, industry legend in the landscaping space. So I knew from a young age I kind of wanted to be entrepreneurial, I guess. Like, I wanted to do my own thing. I wanted to build my own thing. I wanted to, you know, be my own boss. I guess, for lack of better terms, I was very much a rebel growing up as a kid. Always in trouble, very poor student, and probably gave my parents a lot of heartburn. And my dad's hair probably fell out a lot faster because of me. But if I fast forward from those days, just driving around and knocking on doors. I graduated college and my wife, who I've been with since I was 18, is from Krakow, Poland. And so we actually went to go visit her sister for her wedding. And when we tried to come back to America, Jeffrey, the American government said, oh, there's actually a visa stipulation that you have to serve out. Kind of like a two year spent back in your home country based off of the way that you came to America. And so that was kind of a shock. And so we found ourselves, so went through the appeals process. Surely there's a way to appeal this. We're already married. Blah, blah, blah, blah. There is an appeals process. And I was like, great, how long does it typically take? And in good governmental fashion somewhere between 18 and 24 months. So we were stuck, you know, in air quotes in Krakow, Poland. And I had to figure out how to get a job, because there was no way I was just going to sit around in Dorota, my wife's parents, flat hanging out and eating pierogies and, you know, drinking Juggettes for the next two years. And so I met a guy in a gym. He was wearing a Florida state hat and a Home Depot shirt. And I was like, this guy's got to be American. So went up and introduced myself, and he was actually trying to start a school for English. And I said, I can help. So we did. We started a school for English in Krakow, Poland. It was called Atkins Academy. And from the moment we met to launch was about four months and a ton of learning lessons. And I kind of knew then I was like, oh, all right. Do your own thing. It's fun, it's stressful, it's exciting. We moved back to the States. That was very successful, by the way. We had 300 students on day one of launch. And you had to do all the things that are necessary, like stand in shopping malls and give out free, you know, a tv, a chance to win a tv, to, like, give us your information, or a free semester, et cetera.

What year was this again?

This was 1999.

Okay,

so I'm dating myself, obviously, and did that for two years. We served our, you know, we served out our penance, you know, and came back to America. And I happened to know a guy that worked with for Cardinal Health. Cardinal Health is a Fortune 15 company. 60,000 employees at the time, many billions in revenue. He was like, well, do you want a job? I was like, great, I'll take a job. I need income. And I quickly got put into the Rising Stars program. I started to take over the entire southeastern distribution center for sales. I was always really good at sales, Knocking door to door, talking people into taking classes at Atkins Academy, buying pharmaceutical distribution, whatever. It doesn't matter, right? And so a sell is a sell is a sell. And I was really good at that, but hated every minute up. I got promoted twice. And then once I got promoted, I started to try and I guess leverage that entrepreneurial bone in me. And that was frowned upon in a large organization like Cardinal. And I was asked to leave. And that's so nice of terms. And so I was fired. And I think. I think at the moment, Jeffrey, I was like, this is devastating. I'm not going to. How am I going to. How am I going to Go home and tell my wife was the first thought I thought. I got home and I told her and I was like, maybe we should, you know, move back to Poland and start a company again. Because it was easy there. Essentially the playbook was anything that America or the western, you know, countries did five to 10 years ago do that because they're just now catching up. And then I got a call from a guy that I knew at Wake Forest where I went to school. You said, hey, we have this kind of startup. We can't figure out what to do or how to distribute the software cells. And there was like five or six of them. Would you come take a look? Like, sure. So I came and took a look. The company was called Numberclicks and that started my software journey. And that's really kind of like long story short or short story long, whichever your perception of it is how I got to software. We grew member clicks from $0 in revenue, pre revenue, actually, to many, many millions in revenue. I took on growth equity capital around the 5 million mark and the founders left. I stayed as the CEO and grew it again and sold it to a strategic. And when I did that, I went and worked for the strategic and, you know, assimilated their acquisitions. They did five acquisitions and put them all together. And I was like, working for someone again, Jeffrey. And I was like, this isn't for me. That's not who I am. It's not how I'm wired. It's not good for them, it's not good for me. Nobody's happy, right? And I did not get asked to leave this time. I preempted that strike.

I was going to ask if you got fired.

Yeah, it was coming for sure. You know, I'm sure if I asked the CEO, he would be. I did him a favor, right, by saying it's time for me to go. And since then I've taken over for founder. So I did it. I took over for a tower towing management software platform before single ops, and I helped those two companies come together. And right around that time, I got a call from the former investors and memberclicks and they were an investor, a minority investor and single offset company that serves basically the tree care space. You know it well, but generally speaking, the overwhelming majority of the customers are tree care operations. We do have some landscape customers on the platform for sure.

Where were you before the phone call?

Yeah, so I was at a company called Traxero, which served the towing industry. Okay, Jeffrey, you have not lived until you've been to the Las Vegas tow show. It is actually quite the experience. I loved that gig because it continued to teach me and really drive my fuel and passion for small businesses. That's something that's been a through line for me my whole life. Like, I've. I love.

Is towing a solopreneur business or other companies?

No, there's both. It's very similar to landscape. It's just much smaller, you know what I mean, in terms of the size of the marketplace. But yeah, you have, you know, one, one, one hook, you know, guys, Right. But you also have really big towing operations that are 30, 40, 50, $60 million and more. Right. In terms of size, the towing industry is really fragmented. It's also driven heavily. Most people think about towing, Jeffrey is like, I'm broken down. I need to call AAA or my insurance company, and they'll, they'll send someone, they'll dispatch somebody out to me. That's a facet of towing. But towing, the towing industry, that's like 20% of the towing industry. The other 80% is much, much different than that.

Right.

You know, there's municipal tows. Most people don't realize on interstates, the first people, the first responders are actually typically the towers. They get there on. They get there faster. And when I. When I say that, I mean, like when a tractor trailer crashes and spills, it's typically a towing company that's the cleanup crew. Right?

Like, move it off the road.

Move it off the road. But also if it's like toxic chemicals to clean all that up, right. If the car goes off into a lake, it's a towing company that's doing the salvage, like the divers and all that stuff. Right, Got it. And so, you know, it's a. It's a really fascinating industry. It taught me it kept driving that, like, insatiable curiosity have about how businesses run. Like, what are their P. Ls look like, what are they spending money on? Where are they wasting time? Like, how can I get more efficient? And so I was doing that, and then I got a call from, you know, an investor, say, like, hey, we've got single ops. The founder wants to make a transition. Sean McCormick at the time, would you be willing to take a look at the business? And so I took a look at the business. I absolutely loved the customer. I loved the market. I loved how Greenfield it was and Greenfield and our world, software world is a lot of people just don't use software today to run their operations still, you know, which is pretty fascinating to me. And I took it and so Sean transitioned out and as I got to understand the marketplace more and I went and spent a ton of time with customers and I sat in trucks and went to facilities and asked a ton of questions, it became pretty clear to me that the tree care market was small, smaller than we had thought. Right.

By the way, I want to give you credit. I really have seen you out on the road. Well, I haven't like physically seen you.

Yeah, right. We didn't wave to each other on

the interstate, but you really have done a great job. I'm sure I'm cutting ahead, but you've done a great job of just really connecting with the end user. So I don't want to spoil the punchline here if there is one. So let's go back.

No, I appreciate that. And so I asked a lot of questions and it became pretty clear to me that the tree care marketplace is really small. A lot of times marketplaces are like, there's like a small segment of really big customers and then a real big middle section where there's like mid sized customers. Mid sized customers in landscape you would say is like kind of in that 1 to 10 million range. Like those are the mid sized, you know, landscape companies. And then there's like a whole bunch of like micro. Right. Like from zero down. Well, the way the tree care marketplace shakes out is there are really big tree care companies, there's some mid sized companies and then a ton of micro sized companies. A lot of like one person operator doing the cutting, the failing, the treatment, all that good stuff, the pruning. And so that's hard to sell to. Right. And so I said to the investors we should really look at the landscape marketplace. And we were trying to build landscape management software, Jeffrey. And we were doing it very poorly, frankly.

I know that, but I wasn't going to say anything.

Yeah, it's okay. One of our core values that we instituted is to be unconditionally transparent. And so. And if you're doing something poorly, you can. There's like a decisions that any owner, operator, CEO, whatever you want to call us makes. This is like, well, should I continue to waste money doing that or should I look for a different way? And so in software there's this like build, partner or buy. It would be really tough to partner. We weren't doing great at building, so the only alternative that came to fruition was to buy. And so I started looking around in the marketplace. I love small to mid sized business.

You know, you were already on board.

Just to be clear, that's Right, Yeah. I was already CEO. Yeah.

Yeah.

And the business was growing well, like, it was a very good business. Like, Singapore is a really good business. And so. But it wasn't growing fast enough. Right. For the investment thesis, that's kind of my job is like, well, tell me what your investment thesis is. Let me kind of take that and like sync up where the rubber meets the road.

Now there is one or more other tree software companies, one I can think of. Did you think about, oh, we'll just get bigger, we'll merge or buy them.

So the answer is always yes to that question. It's like, yeah, you can consolidate the marketplace. And I looked at those companies in terms of like, hey, is this interesting or not interesting? Not in terms of like a formal engagement, but just my general research and understanding. And the answer was like, that's another interesting conversation. Everybody's like, you can decide to try and consolidate the marketplace or you can make the assessment that, oh, I can just beat them. Like, it's going to be cheaper for me just to go win more customers than them and take their customers over time out, innovate them.

Yeah.

And that was the assessment that I made of our competition at the time. That's not a, like a negative on them. It's just, you know, a vote of confidence, I guess, for what I saw that we were able to do. Right.

So they were, they were growing slowly and buying them would be, oh, I just bought a slow growing company.

Correct. Yeah. That's kind of the calculus you always do is like, oh, that's going to slow me down too. Right.

Yeah, yeah, right.

And so I looked at landscape and there was one company that was like right in that, that middle, that one to $10 million. And it was pretty clear, it was LMN. And I just reached out to Mark Bradley and said like, hey, you know, I'm new to the industry. You seem to be keen on educating. Would you be willing to meet with me for an hour or two and kind of tell me what you've learned about your journey and tell me about your story? I'm just really curious. He said, yes. So we did a call and you know, we got, we got along well. And so then I made up a reason Jeffrey to be in Toronto and I said, hey, do you like steak and wine? I've told the story a million times. It's like, do you like steak and wine? You know, I happen to be here to visit customers. He's like, sure. He's like, well, do you want to meet for dinner? It's on me. And so we met for dinner, you know, we talked about how we like to run companies and the things that we like to focus on and what, what drives success, all the things that I guess CEOs talk about. And we stayed in touch. And then fast forward six months later, it was the summer of last year. He decided to take his company to market. He also had private equity money in his business. And he asked if I wanted to participate. And I said yes. And so Fast forward to October 31st of last year. We acquired Element. And so that's how. That's kind of the long story short of how we got here today.

Okay, and did you look at greenius as being a big advantage or something you would just have to sort of figure out and deal with?

So. Great question. I have a lot of experience with learning and professional development because MemberClix was a association management platform. Associations are typically today, up until today were looked at as kind of the educators and the, you know, certification bodies of industries, national association of Landscape Professionals, Tree Care, Industries of America and Industries of America. And so I had bought and built an LMS out of. It was an lms, a learning management system. Okay, yeah, sorry. And so I had a high familiarity with like, what it took to like, develop a learning management platform, what it took, like, who would be the buyers. And so I saw greenius, to answer your question directly, as a very strategic asset and one that was probably 17 years too early. I make the joke to Matt Crinkle all the time. I was like, God, you know, you had such a great idea. Too bad it was 17 years too early. It's like, because timing matters with software. And I think now you hear so much, Jeffrey. And peer networks are a huge proponent of this. The professionalization of the industry is a huge kind of proponent of this. But people are talking about how do we train and equip and empower our employees. And there's a lot of traction around that. And so I think greenius, because we're rewriting it from the ground up, like we're going to launch a totally new Greenist next year. And I think I saw it as a hugely strategic opportunity for us to realize the vision of granite, which is to become synonymous with the green industry, because it bridges arborists, it bridges irrigation specialists, it bridges commercial residential maintenance or design, build or snow and ice, all those kind of components that make up the green industry. Greenist can do all can contribute to each one of those sub segments.

Kevin Kehoe, you know him or you know his Name, right? Co founder of Aspire. Right before he passed, I read a quote from him. It was like literally kind of maybe one of the last things he published. And he said, the biggest challenge in our industry is educating the middle management.

And so, I mean, you see that every day, right? It's like, because so many people are owner operators and by hook or by crook, they've just done everything themselves. They figured it out, they started to grow a big business. And by the way, I went through this same metamorphosis and now you have people that you have to depend on. That's really hard. Like, that is not an easy transition period.

Doing, doing doesn't mean you can teach at all.

That's right. It's like the age old, you know, mistake people make. It's like, wow, that person's a great salesperson. You know, we should do. Yeah, make them a sales manager. You know, it's like, like kiss of death gone. You're going to fire them in the

next six months, as an aside, and maybe you're working on this, but I notice in our industry that there's this built in false assumption with the Latino workforce that if, if they're good at doing it, they're going to be great at teaching it. I don't know why that assumption is there, but I just see it sort of inherently in people's actions. Maybe not explicitly, but it's implicitly there and it's not correct. I don't know.

I think where people fall victim to that is the actual day to day operation. I hear you loud and clear. And what I mean by that is, first of all, there is such a thing as craftsmanship. Like there's great carpenters and there's just somebody's taught them how to be a carpenter, but they're just okay at it. Right? But there's the, you know, kind of the Picassos and the, you know, Michelangelos of carpentry. You can't teach that. It's just something that somebody's developed over a course of time. But there's also this little, you know, special something that's been sprinkled on the, to them that's like, yeah, I'm just like really, really good at this. Like, I'm precise, I pay attention to detail. I have like an artistic flair too. I can solve problems on the fly. You can't teach any of that stuff. You can't teach DNA. Like, I say that all the time to my executive team. Like, you can't coach DNA. You just can't. Right. And so I think the mistake that people make is not necessarily assuming that they can teach is because language barriers, they're really good at it. They can translate and communicate it really quickly and efficiently. So it's almost like a dependency.

They need and want that.

That's right. And so they fall in love with that idea really quickly and it's like, okay, well, that's easy. I'm going to make that decision. And that's one of the hardest things I've had.

A little aha here as we're talking. If you think back to apprenticeships in the olden days, they would go on for years and years. And maybe it's because the master just wasn't a great teacher. So you just have to sit at his side. Yeah.

And do. Observe and do. And make mistakes. And practice. And practice. And practice. And practice.

So what's the plan with Greenus given?

So, yeah, I mean, so I have a vision for greenius. So there's a big issue in our industry with regards to labor in general. Like, I'm just going to put labor, like, what's, what's the hardest thing on your job? If you ask that of 9 of 10 landscaping or tree care companies, the first answer is going to be yeah, both access to and qualification of. Yeah, right.

Training of everything.

Correct. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I do envision a world where greenius reimagines itself to be like, yes, we're going to have all kinds of content where people can log on and you know, companies come by and say like, hey, watch this, watch this, watch this, take this quiz and then take it out to the field and a project manager, which is all stuff it does today, by the way, but I imagine a world later, you know, two, three, four years down the road is not only is it a empowerment platform, right, for the operators, it actually becomes a empowerment platform for the labor force, the green industry labor force. I. E. I envision a world where anybody, anybody from a labor perspective can log, can have a greeniest id log in and start to consume content and put themselves in the group like, hey, I'm a stonemason, you know, or hey, I'm a carpenter, or hey, I'm a lawn and turf care specialist. Right. And I only want content like that's catered to that. Right. And so they would go through those mechanisms and they, they would be able to show to people, hey, I've taken these courses and we're going to update the content and create highly specialized content for irrigation as an example, or highly special content for stonework. And like laying patios, et cetera. And so they could go in and get all that content, go through and take a certification experience and then put on their resume, Right. Hey, I'm greeniest certified in the following key areas. And then secondarily, if I'm an owner operator and I'm in a zip code that works four different zip codes or two counties, right. I imagine where we can go in and say like, hey, I need someone who's highly specialized in tech O block. Right. You know, because I've got a techoblock project, I don't have anybody on my staff. I really need labor augmentation. They could go into Greenius, look up those skill sets and bing bang, boom, it'll surface up two or three people in your area that hey, look, they've actually taken the Teco block certification right now that's a world that's going to require a ton of partnerships, a ton of marketing, a ton of everything. But it's a world that I think can actually happen. And there's a good example of this today in the professional realm and it's called handshake. And handshake is for college kids that are graduating PhDs, MBAs, all that stuff.

Yeah.

And they've created the single largest database pool of college graduates. Forget LinkedIn, you know, like this is the most highly concentrated pool of BA, BS, PhD, MBAs, you name it. Masters candidates that are in an, in a collective online community consuming content that's geared towards them. Hey, I'm a finance person, hey, I'm a operations person, whatever. And then there's employers in there as well. And so it's like this great two sided marketplace of employers and employee base. There's content and education and there's no reason why that can't exist for the green industry. And I plan on making it for through green is.

So does that make. And so tell me, give me the movie pitch. Greenies is going to be like this plus this and this.

Yeah, you know, the movie page. Like I don't, I get a little nervous about comparisons, but Greenus is essentially going to become, you know, the number one destination for both labor and employers to come together and meet.

Okay.

And does that make it a recruit?

Does that make it.

It's a labor marketplace. Yeah, it's a two sided labor marketplace for sure in the end.

Okay.

Yeah. Because I think that solves the biggest problem that our customers have is like I want access to not just labor, right. Like I want access to technicians, I want access to people who are trying to build an apprentice ship, you know, for their professional career. And so. And then it also gives a platform for those folks who are trying to develop their career, a formalized place for them to go in and bilingually, like learn and grow and educate and certify themselves, which I don't think anybody's doing a very good job in a very

concentrated NALP started and then sort of stopped or dropped. I don't, I have no idea why. But they had this thing going and then maybe it was Covid or before COVID but they just sort of, they had momentum and then stopped.

Well, the way associations make money is events and vendors. Right. And that's typically 50 to 60% of an event of associations kind of revenue generation. So think of, you know, elevate and the tech show and for malp. And then the other kind of part is they spend a lot of money on lobbying, which they should, by the way, for the industry. And so everything else starts to become side projects in associations world. And in associations you get boards that change over every two to five years. You get executive directors who are moving from, you know, like building their careers. And so strategic initiatives change and I don't know the backstory of this particular initiative for now, but it's hard for associations. It's, it's much easier for the private industry to come in and say, like, hey, there's a problem to solve here. I've got the resources and the ability to invest in it, so I'm going to do it. Like the other leg up that I have, Jeffrey, is I have a couple hundred thousand folks in my element database that are, you know, techn, you know, burgeoning technician and apprentices, like it's a labor force and I've got their data in my, you know, database today, which is an unfair advantage.

Yeah, interesting.

A very cool advantage for me.

Yeah. So in the tree industry, and you're going to correct me here, but let me, let me pull some dust off the cobwebs here. As I understand it, there's like two associations and one's for companies, tcia, but one's for individuals. What's the other one?

ISA International.

Isaac.

Yeah.

And so is that sort of how are you thinking along that same line that Greenius is going to like be for companies but also individuals.

That's right, yeah. The software for both of those platforms, I mean, it is literally what Handshake has done and to a certain degree what LinkedIn has done. Right. LinkedIn. Employers go on there all the time to recruit people. Right. People go on all the time individually to consume content that's relative to their professional industry. Right. And so I think I would think of it that way. It's just, I think since it's the green industry and it's so highly specialized, it has a much more potent effect. It's like, oh, wow. There's like kind of like six categories of like, things that we need to be able to be really good at from an education and development perspective. And then we need to be able to connect people to employers.

It's interesting that the green industry really has struggled and tried in different forms and fashions to get government to demand certifications. Like, I guess in plumbing or electrical, there's been this over reliance or over hope that somehow government would create the certifications or the barriers or the structure. And that just never happened. I don't. I mean, maybe it does for. I mean it did for maybe chemical applications, but for sure.

Yeah.

And I guess for irrigation, in terms of when you need your plumbing license in different states, do it all differently, but very haphazard.

Yeah. And also for the tree industry, there's definitely like way more kind of education and like demand on the. A arborist to know. Right. Because there's a lot more municipal laws and codes with regards to trees, et cetera, et cetera, and also the types of trees that you can cut down, the types of trees you shouldn't cut down, you know, what's a pollinator versus what's not all that good stuff. Right. And so the requirements from an education perspective are much, much higher on arborist. Right. It's much more demanding. And so I think that's kind of the push in the industry though, is like, hey, the stuff we're doing though is like, really? I. Jeffrey, I've visited with thousands of customers, like across events and like, experiences, but I've been to at least 15 to 20 locations now, you know, over the last 12 months. The work that landscapers do is highly complicated. It's very, very. Like there's not a single. I haven't been to a landscaping company yet that's like, oh, yeah, all I do is mobile and go. That's all. I haven't been. Now that's a nature of the size and demographic of the customers that we serve. So what? There's this huge swath of tens of thousands of companies out there that are doing highly precise work that are, yes, they're doing chemical applications, sure. But they're also having to figure out water flow in a yard and they're making sure. That they're creating a better experience for the outdoor living space for 10, hundreds of thousands of people across North America. And then all of a sudden they're doing, you know, sidewalks and driveway installs and then backyard patios and all that stuff requires a tremendous amount of skill and precision. And I think that's part of the problem is the skill and precision comes, gets pulled in from other industries. And so there's, there feels, it feels like there's like some level of, like they've already been handled somewhere else. We don't need to do it ourselves. And I think that's, that's probably it. Right. It's like there needs to be a little bit more formalization around. No, no, no. This is the landscape industry. And I hear this all the time now when I travel. And peer groups, the pundits, like the folks that are really on the cutting edge of where landscaping should go, the green industry should go. Education is the key. We have to equip and empower and formalize in some way, shape or form how these businesses operate. And so I think that's, I think that's a good thing, actually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to say it's not rocket science, but it's darn close.

It is hard. It's really hard.

I literally had a client, I was coaching a company where the co owner, the husband, it was a wife's business, was a rocket scientist and he did not find it easy, let me tell you.

No, it's complicated. And I always make the jokes like I date myself when I say this, but there was a, a great movie was Rodney Dangerfield called Back to School years ago. And the degree of difficulty is similar to the triple Lundy in terms of the, you know, the dive that he had to pull off at the end. And it's like, I just feel like the degree of difficulty for like executing on a really well run landscaping business is very high. It's very.

So I have a great sort of quick, you know, 10 second story that I think really explains it. I had a client who hired an ops manager out of the roofing industry. And the, and he was great and was a big company and he totally failed in landscape. And when you think about it, the roofing industry, you're managing, to borrow a phrase, just a few different SKUs, you only have a few variables. And in the landscape world, in a diversified landscape company, there's a huge number of SKUs or variables. And so when you're recruiting somebody in operations, you know, he thought, oh look, they'll transfer right over. But there's a lot of variables to manage in our.

I mean roofing is such a different business than landscaping. It's unbelievable to me. Like, I also think that's kind of what the, you know, because private equity is trying to eat the world. It's like tons of roofers got rolled up in private equity. Tons of H5 guys got rolled up in private equity. A roofing business is a one and done. Like you're never going, you're not going back to the person's roof for 10 to 12 years, you know, or a major, you know, just.

But operationally it's very simple. There's only a few SKUs.

That's my point. It's like all you got to do is manage a relationship. Yeah, exactly. It's like, great. You've got submarishing shingles to choose from. You know, the, the vapor barrier and like the underlying stuff that goes underneath the shingles is like you make your choice. It's like I'm partnered with X and then it's just a day and a half to two day gig every time. Like, and I'm oversimplifying this. Rivers businesses are, I know a lot of roofers and they're great businesses. But like in terms of like the diversification, thousands of SKUs in a landscape business, thousands, like just go to site one's Cadillac, thousands of skis. Like, also the varying degrees of like, especially if you're doing design build for residential, it's like, okay, well now you've just entered the world of like if some buts and candy and nuts as my dad would say, right? And it's like that's really hard to manage, execute on and you have to like realize a vision and you have to do the same thing with maintenance. Like I have a vision of what my outside space should look like and you need to execute on that. And so there's a lot to that. And I give a tremendous amount of kudos to our customers because their job is not easy.

So your role is similar to the role of an owner CEO who's got three divisions?

Yeah, I guess, for sure.

And we even see this, even just with two divisions, like you see where somebody comes out of the design build worlds, oh, we have to start maintenance. I'll have this person running for me, you know, and, and they, you know, and they may or may not pay attention to that maintenance division at all. I mean now they're like, oh, private equity, maybe I should, but. But it's hard because their joy Is in one division.

Sure. And so expertise, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you manage that? What, what's, what do you do? Give us give the audience some tips. Because almost everybody listening probably has multiple divisions. Almost everybody.

So I think I'll get to tips. But I also draw a line in the sand and the differences between our businesses, right. Which is I'm managing multiple products, but at the end of the day it's all software. And so I think that's the kind of continuity line. Design build residential versus commercial maintenance. They both operate out of a landscaping business, but they are two different businesses actually. Actually like, and the reason why I say that is I can have just a commercial maintenance business and I can have just a design build residential business. And so I actually think of them as actually two different businesses versus two different divisions. And I think that's the first tip is if you think of these as divisions, I think you've already missed the boat because divisions, it feels like it's interchangeable. Right. It's like, oh, I can put somebody over here that's a great people manager. Sure. But they have to understand like the ins and outs and the nuances of the commercial maintenance business, like cash flow, totally different how you sell it, totally different. So you would have to recruit different types of people. Right. The way that you maintain it, the customer expectation, you're typically not talking to the owner, you're talking to a procurement specialist or someone who's in charge of accounts payable. Whereas in Design Build you're talking to the homeowner. Right. The chief executive officer of the home. So my business though is like, yes, it's three different products, but it's all software. And the reason why I say that is software is software. In order to run a really good software organization, you just have to ask a ton of questions, listen to the customer, implement small bite sized chunks of what you have synthesized that their asks are solving the pain points and then deliver it and take feedback. And if you do that over and over and over and over and over again, whether it's greenius or single ops or lmn, whether it's landscape, tree care or all of it, you're building good software. Right. And you do need different types of salespeople by the way, to sell a smaller ticket price product than a bigger ticket price product. For sure. Yeah. But in order to like actually be very, very successful, it's much more similar than it sounds than, you know, three different divisions. I empathize, but go ahead.

Can I play Devil's Devil's advocate, please.

Yeah, I love that.

So if I'm the owner of a landscape company and I hear you talk about your different software companies, it's kind of resonating with me. Yeah, no, no, that's. That's my landscape company. We have trucks, you know, we have guys working with their hands. You know, we have. We all have to work out in the hot sun. We'll have. We have similar safety issues. So underline the difference because I'm hearing what you're saying. So. But I want the audience to grasp what you see is the, really the difference so that they can do a better job managing their different companies.

Yeah. So I think the best way to put it is like, the differences in my particular business is nuance. The difference in your divisions is stark. And so when you think about it that way, yes, you're all using your hand. Yes, I'm out in the hot sun. Yes, there are safety issues, but there are very different and distinct safety issues with snow and ice and different types of people and different types of equipment than there is with changing the chain on a chainsaw. Right. If you're, if you're failing trees. And so if you think about it in those terms of. The differences are not nuanced. They're starked. In terms of the end result, then you would think about people kind of like operations around that more starkly. It's like, yeah, it's not just interchangeable parts here. It's actually like, no, no, no. I need somebody who's highly skilled at that. And I go back to our previous, you know, conversation earlier is like, wow, there's a high degree of difficulty in executing this stuff. Right. And so someone who's really great at managing a design build project of half a million dollars is not going to be the same skill set of somebody who's running, you know, 100 truck maintenance program. Yeah. Very different skill sets. Totally like stark. And so to go back to your point is like, yeah, are they going out in the field and making sure the projects are getting done? Sure. But the skill sets required in order to do that and facilitate it are very, very different. And so I think that's probably the area, like, if I were talking to. Which I do all the time, but if I were talking to an owner operator is like, do not think of these as interchangeable parts from a people perspective. Right.

So you're saying that your job is easier than somebody who, who owns this.

Yeah.

Diversified company.

I can, I can categorically tell you that my job is much Easier than someone who owns a $5 million landscape business that has design, build and maintenance. I can 100% guarantee that.

I do agree with you. And I'm thinking about the recurring example that I run into is one of the toughest positions to hire for is account manager. And I see often where people will. They get produced more readily out of commercial companies. So you see them on the market more often. And I don't think I have maybe once. I have only seen a commercial account manager actually succeed in residential because they're training so different. Yeah, whatever made them good in commercial, the speed, the, you know, whatever.

Those things are highly transactional, highly efficient, highly, like, motivated to get a bunch of moving parts as efficiently through the process as humanly possible. Whereas a residential account manager is like, high touch, high empathy, like fastest slow and slowest or fastest smooth or slowest smooth and smoothest fast. Right. It's a totally different type of mentality. And so, yeah, I mean, and humans, totally different humans that would be required to do that.

So do you. How do you. How do you divide your passion up? Okay, you've. You've told us, and we're going to choose to believe you, that it's all sort of similar businesses. And yet how do you divide your passions up? I mean, I'm thinking about green as it's like, ooh, okay, we're first to market in that thing, or, you know, more or less. And we've got a unique vision and then we got single ops and lmn, and we've got to keep up with some competitors and, you know, whatever you tell us. So how do you divide your passions on those two things?

So it's such a good question. We talk a lot about. I'll take your terms of, like, how do you divide your passion and make it a very kind of like, sterile term. But it's something that I learned very early on in my career is like your chip allocation. Because I love to. I love poker, I like gambling, I like all that stuff. I don't do it, but I really love the idea. But chip allocation, I think is so important in running a successful business. Right. And I used to watch those World Series of Poker tournaments all the time. And I would just watch time and time again chip allocation. Like, the really good players would always know exactly how much their stack is against the rest of the table. And what you learn really quickly is if you watch it long enough is like, once you get a pretty big stack, it's hard to get it back for the rest of the table to get it back because now you can kind of control the experience regardless of what the cards do. And that's a really interesting concept because people think it's gambling. The best players in the world aren't gambling. They're just doing chip allocation and math. And so I think that's a really important lesson that I learned really early on. One of the questions you sent over to me is like, what's the lesson? It's like I'm an English East Asian studies major. I had zero business classes, zero in college. I had to learn very quickly the importance of the levers, the financial levers, metrics, measurements, whatever you want to call that were really important in my business. And this is one of them. It's like this single hardest part of running a software company like you've like literally laser focused on to. The hardest part about running a software company is prioritizing what you do next. Because there's so many demands, there's so many opportunities and a finite amount of resources and so you've got to be really good at where you allocate your chips. And so in my world, the world of Granum, right, the most important thing is the system of record, right? That is the thing that gives you leverage into all things else. Greenius and other things. By the way, I will build or acquire or partner with people that do other things. For example, we have a very strong integration that's about to launch with Beam AI, formerly known as the Artist Attentive. And so that's a really good example of okay, cool. There's other things that my customers are using every single day, you know, that flow through their P and L that are really important to their operation. And so that system of record, Jeffrey, is like the single most important thing, that system of action, I. E. Like I want to do an estimate, I want to convert that to a proposal, I want to then convert that into a job that I manage and schedule and execute and then I want to build for it. That is the number one thing in Granum's world is how do we make that core platform amazing and second to none, right? And then everything else gets easier. It's like, okay, cool, well then you can integrate something like Greenius or Beam AI or marketing automation or reputation management, like can I get a quick review or communication, etc. So like when we talk about ship allocation for Grantham in my world, it's like I have to make that, that, that that foundational system that they rely on for kind of like their end to end experience. With our customer, from the moment that the customer says like, hey, I'm interested to billing them, we have to make that unbelievable. And that's where we're investing a ton of time, money, effort, resources and energy.

And so how do you, I have got two sets of questions or three sets. But what about your past? What about your chip allocation between Granum and Greenus?

So this is a perfect example. Greenius, that long term vision of it being a two sided labor marketplace is a big bet, right? And so the way you attack big bets and software is you don't take 60% of your expense profile and put it on that big bet. You take a tiger team. And I learned this from Airbnb whenever they open, I read about it years ago, whenever they want to open a new marketplace, Jeffrey, like they actually create project, you know, Team Cuba, right? So when they wanted to open up Cuba and what they do is they take like a cross segment of exactly how Airbnb operates today, like marketing, sales, customer experience, operations and R and D. And they put a tiger team together and they say like you, you seven people across all those domains, you're going to go build Project Cuba. That's how we're treating Greenius is you take a tiger team, a small, kind of think of it as a Navy SEAL like team. It's like, okay, you've got this great big army, which is the most powerful army in the world. If you're like in America, right as tiger, like great, that's awesome. But then you have this Navy SEAL team which is like, I don't know, a couple hundred folks are the most highly trained, like lethal humans on the face of the planet. You guys are going to go do this special project that's really, really important to us. That's kind of how you think about it in software is like, that's a big bet. It's not core to how we win the marketplace, but it is core to how we grow the marketplace. And then you put that, that SEAL team, right? We'll call it Seal Team G2, right? And they go to work and they start building stuff and building stuff. And we have a customer base that we call the trailblazers. And we said, hey, you're going to build this with us. So there's like seven to nine customers that we bring onto that team as well. And we say, hey, every, every step of the way, as we rebuild this, we're going to show you what we're rebuilding and you're going to give us direct feedback. It's like an Alpha team. And so that's how you do it is you, you start small and then as it starts to get traction, you start to allocate more and more chips to it.

Interesting. That would mean that you probably have other SEAL teams underway and doing other things.

We do, yeah. For sure. We will continue to do that. I will say, like this one is like another great example of your question. It's like, hey, Greenus is like so important. We probably need to put the majority of our SEAL team efforts on that.

And yet there must be another SEAL team, some in the skunk works, maybe doing something.

Yeah, if only I would tell the rest of the world. Right, exactly, exactly. More to come. Yeah.

So the you mentioned priorities. Where do you put your chips? I have to imagine it's harder than ever because right now, like if I was on that board with you, the, the trailblazer board, man, there's so many different needs I could imagine getting solved with AI. And so I imagine it's super hard to set priorities around all these emerging potential technology or actual. But yeah, whatever potential actual applications of the technology. How do you decide which rapid trail to go down?

Yeah, I mean it is more complicated now than ever for sure. You know, AI is a unbelievable, you know, force of nature at this point and it's been brewing for a long time. I've been studying AI for three or four years and it really started to take off with the consumer facing experience of ChatGPT. We've been using AI for years. You know, if you went to Amazon or Walmart or Google, like Google's the literally the original, most experience people's experiences with AI without them even knowing that they were using it.

Is that machine language?

Yeah. Machine learning? Yeah. Also too, most of the folks that kind of spawned out into these point solutions of AI came from Google think tanks and experiences. And Google really leapfrogged again over everybody with their new Gemini 3 launch. Your point though is really well made. There's tons of solutions that are coming out that are point solutions and this kind of keeps me grounded. Jeffrey is like, that's why being the end to end system of action for our customers and system of record for our customers. And I say system of action because the system of record is what we are today. It's like, okay, cool, they go in there, I log stuff in our element or single ops platform, I build an estimate in our LMN or single ops platform. That'll evolve though through the power of AI to a system of action. It will be able to do stuff for you over the next one to two years. Right. And we'll start to layer examples of that onto the platform shortly in the next quarter. And so we still stay focused on, you have a mission, you have a vision, you have to equip and empower the team to accomplish that mission and vision. And I see AI as just a, as a tooling mechanism to accelerate that. Right. And if you get start, if you start to get caught up in all these point solutions that are coming out there, which by the way, I've been through two examples of this already in my software career. AI is different just because there's a ton of money behind it. But there is going to be a fallout from AI, right? There's not all these point solutions are worth it because they're going to. The point solutions are going to be consumed by the bigger entities. These, I. E. The things that you were getting that were quicker to market from a point solution perspective will be way easier to use. For example, Google has this broad infrastructure from a workspace perspective. Tons of people use Gmail, tons of people use the Calendar, tons of people use Docs and you know, Drive and all that good stuff. So therefore if they do launch the best AI consumer experience, their infrastructure wins. Like, I don't want to have to go to a separate solution, a separate software, do all my thinking over there and then copy and paste it and build Docs and all that stuff like when I can just do it in the infrastructure, like land matters. Right. And so I think that's the way I think about it for us is like AI should be a tool to accelerate everything that we're doing and people will be able to consume all the things they want from us over time. I think AI for the very first time ever in the history of my software career gives the bigger kind of more legacy incumbent software platforms a leg up because it's actual tools that allow you to leverage all the stuff that you've built a mode around which is data and experience and infrastructure in a much more sincere and meaningful way. Whereas previously software was very disruptive to say you aren't doing it this way. For example, on premise management of your, you know, day to day operations, like you never went to the Internet, like it was on a server infrastructure in your operation, right? And it was like whenever you got updates, you got a disk and put it in there. Well, the cloud infrastructure changed all that. So all those on prem folks were forced to like either go extinct or abandon their business model and build again. It's one example, right SaaS software subscription. Now all of a sudden you can subscribe to that cloud service that completely changed the game as well. And so a lot of point solutions came up. It's like that's the old way of doing it, this is the new way of doing it. AI actually allows all those kind of older legacy platforms. Like in our case, We're a big SaaS software infrastructure. We're not an AI native experience. We can actually bring a bunch of AI right through our experience to make our already, you know, well established infrastructure all the better. And so that's to me incredibly exciting because it's, it's a force multiplier.

Wow, that's exciting. You mentioned this is a little bit ago, but you mentioned the estimate as being the core process, used the different term.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a control point for sure.

And that's true for design build, for maintenance. You might look at the schedule as being like the core process.

Correct. You're absolutely right.

So what are you guys doing on that side of the business?

So I think the point is very well made. And the way that we think about software development is a little different than the way that it was being done before, both in single ops and in element. And this is the way that myself and Andrew Myers, who's our head of product thinks about it. The more experiences we had with our customers when they told us what they wanted the software to do, they were really telling us what they wanted their customers to experience, which I think you just nailed, right, which is building an estimate for a residential design build, end user customer is really, really important. Building a estimate for 1,000 parking lots for Walmart, it's like, okay, well the procurement proposal and getting it scheduled and getting people there is way more important. And so we've actually built pod structures, engineers and product and designers around the customer's experience. So there's a CRM POD now. And this is all over the last year, Jeffrey. Like we've made these big investments in back ends of the company. So there's a CRM. So like when a customer says, hey, I'm interested in learning, great. You go into this tool and then now you can manage that customer's experience from start to finish, right? So that pot is spinning up and getting ready to work. There's budgeting and estimating, which by the way, element, I would contend, I don't really care. You know what folks say is the single best budgeting and estimating tool for the small to mid sized landscaping industry. So we have a pot around that and then once you do that, you convert it to proposal and job. We have a pot around that. And then once you do that, it's invoicing and accounting. Right? And we have a pot around that. And then you have this great mobile experience which we've launched. And the mobile platform's just getting bigger and bigger. You can do way more stuff through it, which I think is probably the way of the world. Eventually most people are just going to be managing their operations and our customers in particular manage their operations mobile and so making that more robust. So we have a mobile team delivering goodness through that. And so I think about what you just said in terms of along the customer's journey, whether it be a commercial maintenance customer or design build an irrigation customer, what are the things that are like connective tissue that everybody needs? And then prioritize that. And then scheduling is like a perfect example. Scheduling for a tree care company is totally different than a residential maintenance landscape company. Totally different. Like tree care companies are way more concerned about scheduling equipment, large bucket trucks, cranes, etc. Than they are about scheduling crews. Where, you know, residential maintenance is. No, I'm, I want crew A and crew B and crew C going out to these particular areas and hitting these hundred yards, right. And so you have to think about that differently. And so you hire folks to go out and ask a ton of questions and go sit. My product team actually goes out, not, it's not just me, I get featured in social media going out and visiting all these customers. But like my product team has been going out and sitting with all these types of customers asking tons of questions. And so then you find the common ground amongst all those customers. You build that first and make it better first. And then you start to build nuances, modules to say like, oh, are you a commercial maintenance business? Cool. Add on this module, it gives you like, you know, scheduling on steroids for lack of better terms. And so that's kind of how it'll evolve is the platform will just steadily get better along each of those customer journey points. Whether you're a design build, residential maintenance, commercial maintenance, irrigation. Irrigation has a ton of like warranty and emergency work. That's a totally different workflow than just a regular, you know, residential maintenance. So you do it along the customer's journey and then you equip a team to go execute across that and to make keep the product simple. You know, if you're not a commercial maintenance customer, then don't have the commercial maintenance module. You don't have to do that.

Well, listen, let's wrap up here. Sure, we could talk forever, but give us some view, give us some opinions on the future. What do you see coming down the pike?

The easy thing is everything's going to get more automated. Technology is going to be more embedded in your business. Even not through Granom, through just life. Right. You know, the consumer facing experience of ChatGPT and that's really what radically changed the kind of acceleration curve on AI is like, whoa, it got super easy for consumers to consume AI. And once that happened it was like, okay, well then what are all the applications of that? And it's infinite, right? And so I think the easy thing is technology is going to start to deliver more of your kind of day to day operations. You will get more efficient, you'll get slower at first because whenever you're trying new things, it gets slower. It's like, oh, that didn't work. You know what I mean? Autonomous is a thing, especially in landscaping. Like it's here to stay. Like autonomous mowers, autonomous equipment, all that stuff. Deeper insights. Folks will be able to make way better decisions about their business than they've ever been able to make before without them having to think it through. Like technology will start to source up those insights for them just through the connective nature of all things. And I actually think Granum is of course, you know, is very well positioned to capitalize on all of that. Right? Because we have, you know, over 6,000 customers now. We have it across multiple segments of the green industry. And we're focused only on the green industry. Our competitors are focused on construction, home services and oh, by the way, landscape. And so entry care. We're singularly focused on green, which is called vertical software development. It is so much easier for us to develop a really highly potent, sticky, you know, awesome experience for that customer because we're just focused on those customers versus H vac roofers, electricians, maid services, et cetera.

I do have a couple more questions here. So what are you doing differently? And I know this is going to be very sensitive question to answer, but what are you doing differently that the last generations of owners did? Like, what are you saying? You know, that was great, but here's how we're operating that we think is going to make lmn, for example, much more, I don't know, better for lack of a.

Well, I'll give you an example. I'll give you like a perfect example of this. Like, so I'm a software executive experience only, right? Like, that's my main experience as a software executive. And so I've learned very quickly, like, the more of my employees that I get out into the field, especially the folks that are building the products, engineers and product people, the better the product will get. Right. And so I will tell you that, you know, beforehand we had, you know, three product people and a designer or two designers. We have seven product people, four designers, and we have product marketing folks that are all out visiting people across the country. So that's one example.

Okay.

Previously, a lot of the engineering was offshored. I've re on shorted that entire engineering experience. I've hired a ton of people in America and Canada. I'm super proud to say that I don't. I don't care, like, really, you know.

Okay.

And so those engineers are sitting in on customer calls now and they're doing facility tours. And when an engineer, Jeffrey, sees a customer struggling with something that they built, no shot they're going to work until, you know, the cows come home to make it better. Right. And so I think that's one way that we're doing it a little differently.

I like it.

I think two, I've recentered the company around. We are just building for the small to midsize businesses. And so we have customers from, you know, half a million to 25 million plus on the element platform. Right. And there's very few landscaping businesses that get into the upper ranges of 30 million plus. Like, you got. You see the top 100 list, like, it's like, big, big, big, big, big, big, big, big. And then it drops off, like, pretty dramatically. And so there's a lot of commonalities amongst those customers. So I don't want, like, I don't want to build for the very biggest landscape business. So if you're a really, really big landscape business out there, 5200, 300 million, like, we're not the platform for you. If you're, you know, 30 million or less, I don't see a reason for you, you should not have a reason not to be on our platform. Right. And so that's my job. Right. And so getting really focused there. When you talk about, we talked about earlier, like, what. How do you get, like, really good? Like, that's it. It's like this is our ideal customer profile. What are the similarities? Point your gun there, make the product better. People will adopt, they'll retain for longer, so they'll stick on the platform longer. And then as you roll out new things, they'll buy that too. Right. And so I think that's probably like the two biggest Differences. I think the other thing is I don't have any baggage. Like, I don't have any. Like, I'm not from the green industry. Like, Sean kind of, like, started this, like, pine. While I was working with a pine straw company, Mark built this big landscaping juggernaut in tpg. And, like, I don't have any of that. So I'm just like, hey, like, new. I'm the new guy, right? I just want to ask a bunch of questions. And so I think in general, I've instilled this, like, insatiable sense of curiosity into my organization. Not just me. It's like, I'm willing to ask all the dumb questions. I'm willing to ask a million questions. I'm really interested in how our customers make money. And so if you think about software and you look at our customers, P and L, you start to see things. It's like, oh, what is this? Fleet management? What is this? Why are you spending $14,000 a year on fleet management software? And it's like, okay, well, that's a big deal. And, oh, you're also spending a ton of money on mapping and gps. Why are you doing that? You start to learn a ton about your customers and where they operate. And it's like. And that opens the kind of prism. Now, Sean was doing that. Mark was doing that. I just think I've brought a level of emphasis on curiosity and engagement, but I've also brought in a ton of a partner. And this is where growth equity goes, right? That's saying, invest as much money as you possibly can in this because we think you're going to win. And if I can win the marketplace, it becomes a really big payoff for everybody. There is a financial component to all this. I'm an unabashed capitalist. I love, like, success and making money and. So.

Which is why you moved back from Poland.

That's right. Exactly. 100%. Yeah. I can tell you all about socialism. I can go on for hours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been. I've actually been to Krakow. Maybe we mentioned this before. It's the. It's the. Or I was told by my Polish friend, it's the restaurant capital of Poland.

There is a lot of restaurants, and there's more churches and bars. There's more bars and churches. It's something weird. And like, it's like. It's like a tie for how many bars versus churches there can be. It's like thousands.

So you. You prayed well, drank well, and you ate.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Good. Good old Catholic upbringing.

Right. So I have a. I have a feature idea for your software.

Awesome. Love it.

And I have. And then I have something I want to talk about with equipment there as well. But so the feature idea, every client I have, it's sort of a common theme probably in the industry is that you need to have a super user and you might even need one per department. So, Mark, could you, could your company use AI to create each company's super user? So I can go to that AI, ask it questions, and it'll give answers having learned how the company operates.

So I actually think this is where like Mark Bradley, for example, is like really thinking interestingly about this stuff. Right. Is like, yes, the answer is yes. Like, that is what AI should do ultimately is like taking like the business out of somebody's brain and just making it accessible to everybody. Right. The same should be true for LMN and single Ops, Right. It's like you should be able to go through a chat experience and just ask it a bunch of questions like, hey, how am I looking in terms of my estimated versus actual on the Smith project as an example? Or who's my most efficient crew? And so that's what I think people mean when they say my super user. It's like you could ask, but also

how to use the software.

Oh, 100%. That's the quintessential machine learning experience, Jeffrey. And what people need to understand though, is that's a marathon, not a sprint. You have to incorporate AI into your platform and then it has to learn as well. And now it does it at a much more accelerated path than a human brain can do it. Right, Great.

I mean, you probably dedicate an account manager, I'm assuming, to the client multiple. But could each client have their own customized AI agent that you're supplying that over time, everybody in that company relies on?

Yeah, that is definitely a world now you're talking about. And this is where people, I think, differ in terms of their perspectives is like how fast people will be able to get there. Right. And also how fast AI can get there. AI is only as powerful as the underlying infrastructure that's used on. So that's why where like new companies have a leg up, right? It's like, oh, I don't have any of this, like legacy tech debt that I have to go pay off in order for AI to be able to leverage all my stuff. I built it in AI. Right. That's where they have the advantage. Companies like me are like getting all the infrastructure. Right. So AI can like harness it and like leverage it and like, deliver potency. But the good news for us is we have so much data. Think about all the invoice history we have. Think about all the scheduling history we have. Think about all the warranty and change order history we have. Like, why are they making change orders? What's the biggest area of change orders? And so you can imagine a world, you know, two, three years from now where AI's just saying, like, hey, hey, based off of the last 90 projects you've done, don't put that plant in, you know what I mean? Like, as an example, or this particular type of wood continues to have warranty claims. Stop buying it from that vendor. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, things like that. And so. But also, hey, you keep building your budget with X and depreciation. That's not correct, right? Like in terms of how to leverage our platform better. Right. And you know, when you do a search, this would be a better way to term that search. You know, when you processed an invoice, did you know you could click, two clicks ago, you could have processed the invoice here on this screen, right? Making suggestions, you know, a manager, an account manager, a customer support rep, kind of embedded in your experience. That's all going to be the world. And that's what people mean by the way of a software less experience. It's like, will you even need a software? Will you even need a user interface? It's like you just kind of launch your AI companion, copilot, whatever you want to call them, partner, manager, and say like, hey, Grant, I'm copilot, what's on the schedule today? And it's just, bang, there's what's on the schedule today. What's at risk Here are the projects that are at risk. Why? Because the materials didn't show up. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? So do you actually need to go click and point and find that in a user experience or can you just, just have a conversation? And so I think, right, I think, I think people still need visuals. In my personal opinion. Like, people are highly visual. Humans are highly visual because the eyeball is like the single greatest, you know, invention of all time, by God. It's like these eyeballs are amazing from a biological and chemical perspective. The things that they can do and the amount of information they consume to inform your activity. So I don't, I don't envision a UI list world for a very long time, but you could see why. But that's kind of the long answer to your question is like, yeah, the the possibilities are kind of endless in terms of like support, engagement and insights that AI can provide over a course of time.

Oh man. We're getting a peek into the future. One last question, one last question here. So you mentioned fleet management. Are you going to be integrating something to.

Not anytime soon, but yeah, like fleet management. Because I think about our ideal customer profile, Jeffrey. It's like and this is where prioritization chip allocation really starts to happen. The larger our customers get, Fleet management becomes a much bigger deal.

Right?

Like when I get more than 30 trucks and pieces of equipment and all that good stuff. But fleet management is like a perfect example of once we get that core system right of I would look to either partner, acquire or build something along those lines. Because most of our customers like Fleetio. I know Tony Somerville, the guy started Fleetio, awesome software, incredibly powerful for the most part. Almost overkill for every single one of our customers, even our big customers. It's like you don't really need to spend 20 to $30,000 a year for Pleadio. You need something a little bit more paired back. Right. And so if you think about that small to mid sized customer, if you can actually reduce their software footprint, it's better, right? Fewer systems they have to train people on and onboard people on and all that good stuff. And so you kind of start to see like a hub and spoke like strategy to say like okay, the core platform that we use every single day to manage our customers experience and our operations is good. Right. There's like this other stuff that I really need to either integrate into or I need a 70th percentile of what this other software platform offers, offers. And that's where you start to. You make the decision do I build, partner or acquire with that. Right?

Yeah.

So I think beam AI is like a perfect example of like we decided to partner with that. It's like I could go through the time and trouble of trying to build, you know, a takeoff, an AI generated takeoff platform or I could just partner with them and a lot of our customers like them and use them. So we decided to partner. Good.

As a consultant, labor obviously is the biggest variable and the biggest surprise. I mean besides weather within the controllables, labor offers the most volatility. And I would say number two, strangely enough, or maybe it's not strange, but number two is repairs. I see. Well, yeah, I see fleet repairs. The volatility around that line item in a budget is the second most volatile thing that hard to budget for. And so I would think there's a real Opportunity for fleet management with a bit of AI to. To solve that issue.

Yeah, I mean like you can a small example, like input all your fleets into the platform. AI platform. What's the year mileage, you know, and daily usage, I. E. Miles put on or hours used, et cetera. AI would be able to quickly model over a period of time to be like, hey, this one's coming down to life. You might want to do a preemptive strike here. Right?

Yeah.

Or the brakes on a 2014 Ford F150 tend to go out after 18,000 miles, even though it says 25. Right. Based off of your all's driving patterns, like, that's the type of stuff that could get really, really, really good and reduce waste. You know, I hear everybody in the industry talking about reducing waste. Leanscaper talks about it, you guys talk about it. McFarlane, Stanford talks about. Everybody talks about it. It's like, reduce waste, get more efficient. It's like, well, that's a perfect example of like, if you can catch it early, do it, you know, it's like catch it early and really empower the customer to make good decisions. And I think more importantly, not to catch them off guard because there's enough volatility in the business itself, Jeffrey, that if you can mitigate some component of volatility that's hugely beneficial, impactful to the operation.

Yeah, I think you're right about Fleetio. It is, it is.

It's a lot.

And there's definitely is room, I think, for a solution that will be maybe more affordable, but then can do more everything you said, but also really tying in the preventive maintenance and hey, you know, and help people understand, well, both do a better job of it and manage the volatility and cost around it.

I mean, if I've gone to like four and $5 million landscaping operations that have mechanic bays, it's like, you know, once you get to a certain size, it's like it just makes more sense for you to start working on your own stuff. And it's like to help empower that person to be really good at their job. Job equipment is like kind of like numero. When I say I want to become synonymous with the green industry and maybe this is a good area for us to wrap up from a, you know, sedor perspective is when I ask people in the green industry, what are the things, what are the first things that come to your mind in order to be successful? I need great people, of course, but then when I start to think like they immediately people start to immediately think of equipment. Like, if you wanted to start a landscaping company where you really. I really need, like, X. I need a, you know, great skid steer. I need good trucks. And I like. And then brands come to mind like Bobcat, Caterpillar, and if you want to evoke a civil war forward versus Dodge, you know, it's like that type of stuff. I want people to, like, immediately think of, like. Yeah, if you really want to be a successful operation on this industry, you need grant. That's kind of the feeling that I want. Like, when they think of, like, their business, they think of like, Husqvarna, still Bobcat, John Deere, whatever. Right. I want them to also in that pantheon, think granite. Right. And so I, I really, I. I believe that we have the chance to do that over the next three to five years. And I tell people all the time, it's marathon, not sprint. You can't. You can't. You can't go all out for 26 miles. You gotta pace yourself. And so.

Well, on that note, we'll have to have you back on mile marker. Whatever.

That's right. Yeah.

19 and see how you're doing there.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I appreciate the time very much, Jeffrey. It's been an absolute pleasure to chat.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure you subscribe so you automatically get new shows each week. If you want to be part of my community, subscribe to my newsletter at jefferyscott Biz and you will learn about my programs, upcoming events, and new ways to grow your business and improve. Improve your life. You can also find me on social media where you can join the conversation right now. Thank you and see you next time.