How to Grow a $10 Million Landscaping Business with Bryan Clayton

In this episode, I had the pleasure of interviewing Bryan Clayton – founder and CEO of GreenPal.

I loved this interview because Bryan breaks down some essential skills that all entrepreneurs need – whether you have your sights on growing a massive landscaping business or are happy keeping things small.

Here’s a sample of what we discussed…

• How Bryan went from mowing lawns to growing one of the largest landscaping businesses in Tennessee.
• What Bryan’s most profitable services were and why (one of my favorite parts).
• How to maintain motivation while working toward big goals.
• The difference between hard work and difficult work.
• The best untapped resource to find ideas to grow your business.
• The importance of leaning on technology to save time, make more money, and “beat the pants off the competition.”

About Bryan Clayton

Bryan started his landscaping business after his dad kicked him out of the house for playing too many video games. Over the next ten years, he built a small lawn-mowing business into a large company with over 150 employees and $10 Million in revenue per year. That business was called Peachtree.

In 2013, he sold his landscaping business and set his sights on an even bigger undertaking – starting a tech company. He is now the co-founder and CEO of GreenPal – an online platform that connects homeowners with local lawn care pros.

Both of Bryan’s companies have been tremendous successes. In fact, GreenPal now serves over 200,000 active users. This kind of success if unusual for an entirely self-funded startup.

Bryan is passionate about helping other entrepreneurs succeed, which is why he was so gracious with his time by joining me on this podcast.

What is GreenPal?

GreenPal is like Uber for getting your lawn mowed.

It solves the headache of finding reliable lawn care companies for homeowners while making it easier for small landscaping companies to run their businesses.

From the homeowner’s perspective, it makes getting your lawn mowed as easy as a few clicks of a button. You submit a job request and then receive several bids (usually five within 24 hours). You can view the business’s reliability rating and reviews and choose which company you want to go with. You then schedule jobs and pay through the GreenPal platform – no need to deal with the contractor directly.

From the contractor’s perspective, you can bid on jobs like you would with Angie Leads or Thumbtack, with a couple of key differences. First, you don’t pay for the lead. You pay a percentage of the job if you get it. Additionally, with GreenPal, you can’t take your leads off the platform. You must maintain that customer through the GreenPal platform using their payment and scheduling systems. GreenPal handles all of the scheduling, billing, marketing automation, and more. This is perfect for the contractor who hates dealing with paperwork or creating systems and just wants to mow lawns. However, GreenPal is NOT a good fit for a bigger contractor with their own systems in place for communicating, billing, and scheduling jobs.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• GreenPal.com
• Bryan’s Instagram: @BryanMClayton

Notes on motivation:

• Bryan mentioned that he wasn’t great at sports and wasn’t the cool kid in high school, but he had a fire in his belly to grow a huge landscaping company. According to Bryan, this was essential.
• Always start with the end in mind (10 years from now) and work backward from there. Where do you want to be in ten years, and how will your business be a vehicle to get you there?
• Set small, challenging (but achievable) goals and celebrate them like big victories.
• Manage your psychology by managing your expectations. You can succeed and still feel unsuccessful if your expectations are too high.

Notes on growing a business:

• Focus time working on your business, not just in your business. Otherwise, you will find yourself in the same place ten years from now.
• Think like a tech company to “beat the pants off of the competition,” make your life easier, and make more money.
• Growing a business unfolds like a video game. You start on level one, and at any given moment, your only goal is to get to the next level. What does the next level look like and what do you need to get there? Don’t solve “bowser problems” when you are on level one or two.
• Getting to the first million is revenue is far more difficult than going from one million to ten million. Business gets easier and more fun once you get past the first million or two. At that point you become more of an allocator of capital.