Interview recorded at the NALP Elevate Conference 2024 in Charlotte, NC: host Paul Giannamore speaks with Kyle and Zachary Hudson, co-owners of Hudson Bros Lawn Care (Summerville, SC), about growing a teen lawn-mowing side hustle into a leading lawn care company in the Charleston area. Topics include transitioning from field work to working on the business, mindset shifts behind growth, company culture and employee retention, hiring, training, and leadership, building systems for consistency and efficiency, sustainable growth while maintaining brand reputation, and how customer care drives long-term success in service businesses. # Video Identity Observations — Hudson Bros Lawn Care Interview (NALP 2024) ## Video Format & Presentation - **Interview/conversation format** at what is identified as an industry conference: "that's why we're at conferences like like this right now," and the title tags **#NALP2024** and **#ServiceIndustry** indicate an event affiliated with the National Association of Landscape Professionals. - The host conducts a guest interview with two brothers ("Hudson Brothers") running a lawn care company in **South Carolina** ("yeah so South Carolina how'd you guys get into this"). - The episode includes a recurring outro bit: "bring it up now the hudome brothers" repeated at the close. ## Intended Audience - **Owner-operators and small service-business owners**, especially those still working in the field. The host directly addresses them: "to guys that were that are currently in the position now of saying like I work 10 hours a day I got to go home I got to do admin work I got a couple people out in the field." - **Lawn care / landscaping professionals** specifically — discussion of landscaping industry norms, NALP conference context, and industry hiring culture. ## Claimed / Demonstrated Scope of Content - **Founder journey stories**: the brothers recount starting at age 12, working through their father's illness, and scaling from ~35–40 clients ("by the time we were getting out of high school we had about 35 to 40 clients"). - **Business-growth advice**: transitioning "working in the business" to "on the business," hiring a business coach, building systems, and adopting CRM software ("investing in crms... so that way we're we're not going through trees worth of notebook paper"). - **Practical peer-mentorship advice**: "find other folks in your industry that are where you want to be and always be asking the questions just buy them lunch." - **Management and HR practices**: hiring for intangibles, referral-based hiring with bonuses, a 90-day probationary period, ride-along interviews, and internal training programs. - **Company culture philosophy**: the "Chick-fil-A of lawn care" branding claim — "people don't go to Chick-fil-A because they got the cheapest chicken sandwich around... they go for the quality, they go for the service." ## Self-Description Evidence (Creator/Guest Claims) - Guests self-describe as **high-school graduates with no formal business education**: "we had no real business education we were high school graduates that was it." - They claim a **quality-first, employee-centered culture**: "our culture has always been you know quality first above above just about anything else," and claim "a lot lower turnover rate than we see in a lot of other companies in our industry." - They claim deliberate **slow, organic growth**: "we like to grow a little slower uh a little more manageably so things don't get out of control." - They position themselves as a **maintenance-focused company**: "we we're more of a maintenance company than anything else." ## Demonstrated Presentation Patterns (Observable, Not Claimed) - The host models **practitioner-to-practitioner dialogue**, asking process questions ("how'd you guys do that how' you get yourself out of the field") rather than promotional questions. - Guests freely share **specific operational detail** — pay practices ("we pay ourselves last"), photo-documentation apps, checklists, truck-cleaning documentation — consistent with the show's advice-oriented tone. - No product sales pitch appears in the transcript; the conversation centers on experience-sharing and peer advice. # Delivery Observation: Hudson Bros Interview (NALP 2024) ## Overall Format - **Interview/conversation format** with an off-camera host asking questions; two brothers (one addressed as "Zach"/"Kyle") alternate answers. - Delivery is **conversational and unscripted** — filler words and self-corrections appear frequently: *"um," "uh," "you know," "so uh."* - Answers are **long and narrative**, often telling a mini-story rather than giving a short reply. ## Tone - **Casual, folksy, and humorous.** Recurring light jokes and self-deprecation: - > "I uh I was really thinking about having the Mexican sit in for me but decided that wouldn't be the best of ideas he's a hoot" - > "there was one time when we were uh when we were 15 he fired me for the day and uh dad got on the phone and made him hire me back" - > "I will get a wild hair up my behind" - **Candid about weakness** — admits ego, uncertainty, and stress: - > "a lot of it was my own ego that I had to get over" - > "I had no idea what to do with my day" - > "it's something that keeps me up you know in the middle of the night at 3:00 a.m." - **Sincere and values-forward** when discussing employees: - > "we pay ourselves last" / "you pay Zack last second to last" ## Recurring Phrases & Themes - **Chick-fil-A analogy** — repeated nearly verbatim at open and close (likely a soundbite-style bookend, possibly clipped): - > "we like to be the the Chick-fil-A of lawn care... they go for the my pleasure they go for the quality" - **"Working in vs. on the business"** — the interviewer names it; the speaker expands on it. - Repeated references to **"our guys"** (many instances) when describing employees — a consistent, affectionate collective term. - Repeated **"trust but verify"** and **"systems"** language: - > "build repeatable systems and scalable systems" - > "reverse engineering the result that you want" - Recurring **industry openness trope**: - > "just buy them lunch what you will learn from that lunch uh is so much more than that $20" ## Teaching / Advice-Giving Habits - **Direct advice to viewers**, framed imperatively: - > "find other folks in your industry that are where you want to be and always be asking the questions" - > "be humble don't be afraid to ask those questions" - > "80% of what's good enough for you is good enough for 90% of your clients" - **Concrete detail over abstraction** — uses specific numbers and images: "35 to 40 clients," "10-hour days," "two to three hours of admin work," "sheet of notebook paper," "trees worth of notebook paper," "high 90s even 100 degrees." - **Named shout-outs and external references**: "Mike Howton," BNI networks, CRMs, Ring doorbells, Chick-fil-A. - Brothers **tag-team answers**, building on each other: "I'll say to a lot of training is necessary..." and "well and twoo I think..." ## Communication Patterns - **Frequent hedging and restarts** suggest spontaneous recall rather than rehearsed talking points (e.g., "um it's it's it's work ethic at the end of the day"). - **Story-first structure**: origin story → turning point (coach) → current philosophy → future plans. - Interviewer uses **affirmation and reframing**: "that's great advice I mean I think..." ## Uncertainty Notes - Speaker attribution between the two brothers is often ambiguous in the transcript; specific quotes above are attributed only where the interviewer names a speaker ("Zach"). - The transcript's opening and closing segments appear to be **edited promo clips** repeated around the main interview, so the Chick-fil-A "repetition" reflects editing, not necessarily in-interview habit. # Position Record: Hudson Bros Lawn Care — NALP 2024 Interview ## Speakers - **Hudson brother 1** (senior/more verbal on business strategy; references being "the biggest roadblock" coming out of the field — identified by context as the one who stepped out first; also references "my wife and kid at home") - **Hudson brother 2** (identified in transcript as **Zach** via interviewer address; speaks on efficiency, culture, trust dynamic) - **Interviewer** (unidentified host) *Note: transcript does not supply full names or reliable per-line speaker attribution beyond the "Zach" address; attribution below uses contextual cues.* --- ## Core Identity Position - **"The Chick-fil-A of lawn care"** (stated twice, opening and closing): customers choose them for quality, service, and experience — not lowest price. - **Internal care drives external quality**: investing in employees "exudes outward" to customers. ## Origin Story (Hudson Bros, South Carolina) - Brother started cutting grass at **age 12**, encouraged by their father, who had done the same as a kid. - Father became seriously ill during their teenage years — **two brain surgeries for cysts** (clarified: *not* malignant tumors; liquid cysts requiring removal because they kept growing and caused brain damage). He couldn't work for a long time. - Compounded by the **recession**; the brothers worked side jobs and construction to help pay family bills. - By high school graduation: **35–40 clients**; decided to "run with it" rather than sell ("it was worth nothing"). - First year in business they had to hire an employee due to workload. - Roughly **a decade in**, physical toll ("your knees are shot") pushed them to scale via a business coach plan — currently in year 4–5 of that transition. ## Getting Out of the Field - **Business coaching was "the single biggest thing"** — specifically a daylong intensive with executive coach **Mike Howton** (named in transcript), a large investment at the time. - Biggest roadblock: **ego** — the belief that he was the best technician and the company would collapse without him. Coach reframed this as **holding employees back** by denying them room to grow. - **"Working in the business vs. on the business"**: initially no idea what to do with his day post-field; felt "rudderless"; filled time with admin work he'd previously done after 10-hour field days. - Early attempts at commercial growth and "throwing darts" largely **didn't work**. - Remedies cited: peer groups, BNI networking, business coaching, asking good questions, building **repeatable and scalable systems**. - **No formal business education** — high school graduates only; surrounding themselves with other business people was "one of the most critical pieces." ## Systems & Efficiency - Old workflow: worklists handwritten on **notebook paper** daily. - Investment in **CRMs and software** to make work scalable. - Claim: owner-operators often run inefficiently because they **lack time to research available software**. - Leader's role defined as continuous education — reading industry publications, watching videos, attending conferences — because "technology is changing so fast." ## Advice to Owner-Operators (first step) - **No real shortcuts** — candidly admits his own weakness: rushes to "check things off a list" and doesn't always take time to find the best system. - Practical recommendation: **ask people one level above you**; buy them lunch — "what you will learn from that lunch is so much more than that $20." - Landscaping is a **friendly, unguarded industry** because there's more work than people — so advice flows freely. - "Be humble, don't be afraid to ask questions." ## Service Delivery Control After Leaving the Field - **"80% of what's good enough for you is good enough for 90% of your clients"** — blunt framing: "you're not as important as you think you are." - Counterbalance: strict **internal training program**, "trust but verify" — photo documentation via app, property checklists, truck-cleanout documentation. - **Reverse-engineer the desired result** into processes and software enforcement. - Crew leaders were **personally trained** by the brothers in the field and now replicate that standard. - Brothers still **occasionally jump on a crew** — acknowledges this becomes impractical at scale but builds credibility and verifies training standards. ## Hiring Philosophy - **Intangibles over technique** — "this industry is not rocket science"; skills are trainable. - Mandatory **same-day ride-along** in the interview, primarily to test heat tolerance (high 90s–100°F summers). - Looks for: work ethic, speed out of the truck, trainability, mechanical aptitude, eye for detail, ability to adapt to varying properties. - **Referral-based hiring** with paid bonuses after a 90-day probationary period; instruction to employees: "don't bring us your lazy friends." - **Culture-fit screen**: "Would my wife and son be comfortable with this person around their property all day?" ## Culture (per Zach) - **Quality first**, above nearly anything else. - **Protecting the workforce** is central — decisions evaluated by impact on employees (hours, overwork, benefits, healthcare costs). - Claims this yields **lower turnover** than industry peers. - **Brand image obsession**: polo shirts, clean-cut staff, "watch what you say" near Ring doorbells — customer/neighbor perception always considered. ## Growth & Aspiration - Goals shifted over the past 1–2 years toward **organic, managed growth** — deliberately slower; "we've never been the type to leap before we look." - **Career-ladder goal**: long-tenured crew members face the same physical burnout the brothers did; the company wants to create paths out of production (sales, marketing, account management, oversight) so knowledge isn't wasted. - Example: a chief foreman transitioning to account management. - Aspiration: crew leaders "maybe one day… up here doing things like this." - Goal to be a workplace people recommend to friends, "even after their knees are starting to go out." ## Brotherhood Partnership Dynamic - **Candor and free speech without lasting hurt feelings** — "water off a duck's back." - Anecdote: at age 15, one brother **fired the other for a day**; their father made him rehire him. - **Trust as strategic strength**: separate operating "boxes," no micromanagement, disagreements happen but alignment on goals holds. - Knowing each other's strengths/weaknesses eliminates turf battles over responsibilities. ## Weight of Responsibility - Responsibility for employees' families "weighs on us all the time" — keeps him up at 3 a.m. during cash-flow tightness. - **They pay themselves last** — with a self-correcting joke: "you pay Zack last… second to last." - Defends higher pay/benefits as viable when you **know your numbers and margins** — attracts higher-quality people, cuts turnover, stabilizes processes. --- ## Qualifications & Tensions Preserved - Coach's counterintuitive claim initially contradicted the speaker's self-image; the resolution (ego as roadblock) is the speaker's own retrospective framing. - "80% good enough" pragmatism sits in tension with the stated "quality first above anything else" culture — both positions stated without reconciliation. - Admitted failures: early commercial growth attempts and dart-throwing "didn't work"; impatience with checklist completion still a self-acknowledged flaw. - Field visits acknowledged as eventually "absolutely not practical" — a stated limitation on a practice they endorse. - Off-hand joke about "the Mexican" sitting in for the interviewer ("he's a hoot") — recorded as expressed; not elaborated on by speakers. # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record ## Video Identification - **Title:** From Teen Side Hustle to Thriving Lawn Care: The Hudson Bros Story #NALP2024 #ServiceIndustry - **Video ID:** 01a168c8-24ec-7ca4-bf8b-8f8a066b5b53 - **No curated metadata was supplied**; all attributions below are inferred from the transcript itself. ## Speakers & Roles ### Interviewer / Host (creator or event interviewer) - Conducts the interview; asks questions throughout ("South Carolina how'd you guys get into this", "how's it working with your brother"). - Makes an opening remark referencing someone as "the Mexican" who is "a hoot" — speaker identity of that third party is not established in the source. - Addresses the guests collectively as "the Hudson brothers" and closes: "well Hudson Brothers I appreciate you joining me." ### Guest 1 — "Hudson Bros" co-founder (likely the brother who exited the field first) - Describes starting lawn care at age 12, the father's illness, working with an executive coach, and exiting field production. - Identified late in the transcript as "Kyle" (the other brother says "Kyle and I on this specific thing go above and beyond"). - Named a third party: **Mike Howton**, described as an executive/business coach and "still a friend." ### Guest 2 — "Hudson Bros" co-founder (Zach) - Explicitly named by the interviewer ("what do you have to say Zach") and self-context ("Zach last second to last"). - Speaks on culture, hiring referrals, protecting the workforce, and the "Chick-fil-A of lawn care" framing (repeated in the opening clip). > **Note:** The transcript does not label speakers line-by-line; the Kyle/Zach assignments above rest on the two explicit name references and could not be fully disambiguated for every turn. ## Third-Party References & Claims - **Mike Howton** — executive coach; guests credit a day-long intensive with him as the catalyst for scaling (guest claim, unverified). - **Chick-fil-A** — cited as a service-quality analogy; no affiliation claimed. - **NALP 2024** (via title hashtags) — conference where the interview appears to take place; guests mention "we're at conferences like this." - **BNI networks** — guests state involvement in local BNI networking groups. - **CRM/software** — referenced generically; no specific vendor named. - Family/medical history (father's brain surgeries for cysts, recession-era hardship) — guest self-report, unverified. ## Promotional Segments - **None identified.** No product placements, sponsor reads, or calls-to-action appear in the transcript. The Mike Howton mention is a personal acknowledgment, not flagged promotion. ## Availability Limits - **Comment availability:** Not stated (no metadata supplied). - **Curated metadata:** Absent — speaker identity, roles, and publication details unverified beyond transcript. - **End of transcript is garbled** ("bring it up now the hudome brothers…") — appears to be outro music/audio bleed; speaker attribution for that fragment is uncertain. we kind of joke around sometimes we like to be the the Chick-fil-A of lawn care people don't go to Chick-fil-A because they got the cheapest chicken sandwich around they go because it's good and they go for the my pleasure they go for the quality they go for the service and because we focus so much on our internals and taking care of our our people um that just exudes outward um to our customers and they appreciate that quality as well all right outs and brothers in the house how's it going it's good to see you guys I uh I was really thinking about having the Mexican sit in for me but decided that wouldn't be the best of ideas he's a hoot yeah so South Carolina how'd you guys get into this well I started cutting grass when I was 12 for uh some money and um my dad encouraged me to do it cuz that's what he did when he was a kid um then my brother started coming along doing that uh our dad got really sick when we were teenagers he's had two brain surgeries actually with tumors um and so we were just working all the time doing exra side jobs construction whatever we could to help family pay the bills are these malignant tumors no they're they're cysts so they're they're liquid um but they had to actually go in there and remove them because they would just keep keep growing so it was causing them some brain damage and it just it was a mess so he couldn't work for a long time so um it just it was in the middle of session recession too so it was just you know just one thing after another that made it really hard so we went out there just busted our butts and by the time we were getting out of high school we had about 35 to 40 clients and we were like well we don't know what we want to do for work so we can either trash this we can grow it or we can sell it so let's try to figure out something to do was worth nothing so uh we decided to just run with it and uh our first year in we had to hire an employee because we just had so much work and uh before long we just look up we've got all these employees all these guys around us and um we got to a point where we just couldn't do the physical part of the work anymore you know a decade in your knees are just like shot so uh we decided to really uh try to scale it more we had some really good team members in place and we wanted to um just develop ourselves as business people and actually develop an actual business and give our guys room to grow as as well so that's when we developed a plan with a business coach to get ourselves out of the field over the next couple years and then start really scaling the company that's uh we're in about year four or five of doing that and how'd you guys do that how' you get yourself out of the field working with a business coach was critical that was probably the single biggest thing that we did um we actually did this dayong intensive with an executive coach um I'll shout him out Mike Howton is's still a friend of this day um we just did a dayong thing with him it was a big investment for us at the time it felt like a lot of money but he really helped us to see where we were blocked in growing the company and the biggest roadblock was me coming out of the field um because I always felt like I was our best technician I was our best producer it'll all fall apart if I come out the customers are always going to be calling us angry because it doesn't look like how I did it and that really simply wasn't the case but he showed us how we were really holding our own guys back by not giving them Room to Grow if we didn't grow the company so um that clicking in my head was really the Catalyst to help me come to terms uh with that a lot of it was my own ego that I had to get over and a lot of it too was was shifting our mindset from for so long we' been working in the business that we hadn't really worked on the business we hadn't really had that kind of a growth mindset so once we were able to shift that perspective especially with him first we really got to see a lot of growth start to happen really fast um when after he came out of the field for the first time people say that a lot right working in the business versus on the business but what did that mean to you at the time I honestly I had no idea I I remember the first couple months um of me being out of the business or out out of working in production and working on the business I had no idea what to De with my day I I I would start working more on the admin side because uh I would spend like 10 days uh or 10hour days in the field and then I would come home and I'd have like two to three hours of admin work to do every day and that was just miserable so so I just spent all my time doing that admin work that I you know was doing an addition to working in the field um but then I felt very rudderless for a while I tried to grow commercially a little bit I tried just throwing darts out there to do different things to try to get us some bigger contracts uh a lot of that didn't work but we spent a lot more time with business coaching and and talking with peer groups and this and that we started just asking really good questions and I realized we had to build repeatable systems and scalable systems and we spent a lot of time too in like local bnii networks um where we're really involved with that and so I through conversation talking with others started to see problems that your business has as it grows and I spend a lot of time trying to be ahead of those um and you know instead of it hitting us upside the head on the back end being prepared and having good quality vendors and people that we can partner with ahead of time to help us grow the business and so when I did a lot of that uh it really helped me to educate myself on what growing a business really looked like and where we need to take it from there I would say that was one of the most critical pieces was surrounding ourselves with other business people because we had no real business education we were high school graduates that was it um so it it really helped well and twoo I think we got to focus after a little while after getting your barries you're able to f focus a lot on the efficiencies of the company I remember we used to back when we were both in the field for a while our work list was written on a sheet of notebook paper every day and handed out with addresses and phone numbers and so to be a for him to be able to one of the big things he did initially was working on okay how can we make these everyday tasks more efficient so like investing in crms you know building those systems up to make our work more scalable um so that way we're we're not going through trees worth of notebook paper every day one of the things I think a lot of uh technicians who are business owners but they're more like owner operators you know doing the work themselves I think they don't have time to find out what all is out there like software wise um that can really help them to take a lot of those things off their plate so they're just running in efficiently just because they don't have time to educate themselves to know better uh one of the things that I also uh do now is I spend a lot of my time just reading like just reading industry Publications doing research watching videos to learn of all the new things that are going out on out there technolog is changing so fast um I feel one of my main um responsibilities as the leader of a business is to know what's out there that can help move our business forward and so a lot of that is educating ourselves that's why we're at conferences like like this right now I think a lot of people were in are in the position you guys were in and so you know to guys that were that are currently in the position now of saying like I work 10 hours a day I got to go home I got to do admin work I got a couple people out in the field I don't have time to research this there's so many choices there's 15 in softare programs all sorts of stuff what's the first step and getting started a lot of it is knowing yourself and how you negotiate um um it's a really interesting question because I'm not sure there are many shortcuts because my biggest problem is I like to check things off a list so I like I will get a wild hair up my behind and I just want to get it done and I won't always take the time that I need to really to make sure that we're getting the best system in place from the the um from right then and there I'd say the biggest thing that you can do is be asking your friends or the next guy above you um what he's doing and what he's run into find other folks in your industry that are where you want to be and always be asking the questions just buy them lunch what you will learn from that lunch uh is so much more than that $20 um lunch that that you bought somebody that's one of the single biggest things I think someone can do and in the Landscaping industry it's such a friendly industry and and guys are so free with information often because there's so much work to be had out there there's not enough people in the Landscaping industry right so there's more than enough work to go around and so I think folks are always looking to help others as well they're a lot less guarded in this industry I find than some others so just just be humble don't be afraid to ask those questions ask for advice and I think you'll save yourself a lot of time and a lot of headache and they'll they'll really show you where to go that's great advice I mean I think reaching out to somebody who is where you aspire to be and offering them buy them lunch or dinner is a is a great thing to do when we talk about your your current business now you guys have obviously learned a lot over recent years what are your plans now what do you guys aspire to be what do you Aspire for this company to look like we'd like to continue growing it uh we we've been asking ourselves a lot of those questions lately and I think our goals over the past year or two have have changed we've got some guys with us that have been with us for a long time now and they're going to be running into the same uh problems that we ran into about 10 years in to where like your your knees your back can't take it anymore and you've got to have something outside of production outside of the field and we know that with each guy who who uh joins our team there is at least some kind of tick and clock on how long his body can can do this work and so it's also really a waste of resources if they were to just walk away and throw all that knowledge away and so our goal with the company right now is to grow it organically in a way that grows with uh the knowledge of the guys who are with us so that we can grow it at a rate that we can find meaningful things outside of production for them to do whether it's sales whether uh it's it's marketing whether it's um just overseeing the cruise in a more efficient manner we're currently working on that um because we we're more of a maintenance company than anything else and so we've got like a chief Foreman that oversees all those things he's eventually going to come out of the field and do account management stuff like that so uh growing in a way that gives them a place to go and and really try to be a great place to work where they are always telling their friends that uh to to come work here so that's that's something that is really important to us to be a great place to work that everybody wants to stay at even after their knes are starting to go out what do you have to say Zach we put a lot of work and effort into our guys and our team because we got really good groups of of of guys and we've invested a lot in them and so we want to continue to make a ladder for them to be able to grow and uh continue to bring in their friends and grow their friends and then their friends can grow their friends and continue to find ways to just expand the team slowly we we've never been the type of people who you know leap before we look so to speak we uh we like to grow a little slower uh a little more manageably so things don't get out of control but we like to continue that process and hopefully maybe one day our crew our our crew leaders can be up here doing things like this how's it working with your brother it's uh it's a fun Dynamic um there is a lot more can candidness with it sometimes there was one time when we were uh when we were 15 he fired me for the day and uh dad got on the phone and made him hire me back so it's been really good though because there can be a lot of um sometimes with other partners there can be a lot of hesitancy where there's in this relationship there's a lot of freeness of speech there's like you can just say what needs to be said there's no hurt feelings at the end of the day we go back into the next day water off Ducks back and keep going I'd say one of the things that's actually really good strategic strength is the amount of trust that we have so we while we will disagree at times while we will fight at times we also trust that the other one is just as invested and really we're on the same page and have the same mindset on things with same goals uh at least we've been able to stay aligned with that as as we grow because we talk constantly about about all this we've been growing at a similar rate um but there's just that amount of trust there that look you're going to go do your job I'm going to do mine we have very separate boxes that we operate in inside the company and we'll ask for help if we need it but we're also always open with what the problems are what we're working on uh but we also have trust that the other one's going to do their job competently and ask for help when they need it so there's there's not that that looking over the other one's shoulder all the time like what are you doing what are you doing then you know fighting ensuing from that uh so as we've gone on you know uh things have definitely smoothed out more the more we've grown to respect each other and our competencies in our areas of the business I'll say and I'll say there too because you know we're brothers we know each other's strengths and weaknesses really well and so that has afforded us to be able to put ourselves in the right positions and overseeing the right things at the right time uh there's been no bickering there like you know hey who I run this I want want I want to run that it's we know what each other's strengths are and so we can focus on that and truly help make that part of our the business flourish you guys went from mowing lawns together in high school to now being responsible for a lot of families your team members that work for you guys I mean how's that feel it weighs on us all the time um yeah it's always on my mind it's something that we're always always thinking about and always trying to push ourselves to be better for because we know we have that that responsibility on our shoulders uh we've got a lot of young guys who come in not long after high school or maybe right out of high school we've seen them with the amount of time they've been with us you know get married and some of them even have kids um and so that definitely weighs on us and and one of the things that we really try to do is make sure that our guys are taken care of we we really Tred to make sure that we're paying them Fair uh fairly but we also um make sure that we're giving them benefits and things that a lot of our competitors don't do uh to really help them to be able to take care of their families there's a cost involved in that but uh when you really know your numbers know your margins you can price for that accordingly but you can also have higher quality people that you're attracting to the company which makes you want to take care of them all the all all the much more um and it really cuts down on your turnover and uh then you're really able to dial in your processes when you're not having to retrain um all the time but the the weight of that is something that never goes away um it's something that keeps me up you know in the middle of the night at 3:00 a.m. you know if if uh cash is getting tight and you're waiting to get paid on a on a big job and you know you're needing to make sure everybody else is paid uh we pay ourselves last you know um and it's not always fun to do that but you know it is the way it is it's the responsibility that we have is you pay Zack last second to last Okay so with the two of you guys now you migrated out of the field you're running this business how is it when you're attempting to control Service delivery you know you guys are not at the customers's homes anymore you're not at their businesses what's that been like that Journey for you it's interesting and we've we've our process on managing that has changed a lot over time uh I would also say you're software is key for that if you're going to be a business owner that's coming out of the field and you're going to be trusting your guys with that process another thing I would tell um business owners who are trying to make that um that leap is that your eyes are super well trained for all the little details you will have some customers who also see that but the majority of them won't um 80% of what's good enough for you is good enough for 90% of your clients really because you're their eyes just are not trained on those finer details so uh you're not as important as you think you are essentially uh but then you do want to make sure that your training is up to stuff that you're not just turning Crews over to people that you don't really trust that there's time there's processes that need to be built on that we have a a very strict training program internally in our company that everybody has to go through um but then it's trust but verify you know make sure that if you're using some kind of app make sure it makes them take a picture at the end of the day so that you can see exactly what they're doing uh we've got checklists involved at at properties and uh even simple as cleaning out the truck at the end of the day it's they've got to be able to document it so if we go in the truck there's trash you know we know who didn't do their job um so it's just setting up those processes reverse engineering the result that you want and making sure that you have infrastructure software whatever it is to be able to enforce it I'll say to a lot of training is necessary especially when you're with with our biggest thing was when stepping out of the field was finally letting go cuz the whole time that's been your baby and it's hard to do that to finally trust someone else with your name with your business you've been the face of the whole time when you talk to people so really having a good set of of people involved and that's what what's been nice with us is all of our crew leaders we've personally trained those are guys we worked with in the field who we who started with us you know years ago just as you know normal on teexs and we worked with them to our standard and now now that they're in the field leading they can now train that same way to that standard so having those first your first line guys your managers that you can trust in that way and then every once in a while jumping into the field just to remind the guys that you do in fact know what you're doing not just sitting in an office all day but uh really helps keep them up to that same standard thus when you're dealing with that client interaction you're having to let that go you can really trust that the work is getting done as you you want it to I would say uh we randomly from time to time will jump in the field just to just be on a crew just see how it's looking how properties are looking um that's not always practical there there your company will get to a point where that's just absolutely not practical anymore um but for as long as you can do it I think it's good to do it um so that way uh as your company's growing to the newer guys who haven't worked with you in the field um they know that the boss actually knows what he's talking about when he's telling you that you need to mow it a certain way or you need to do this or that uh but it also helps you to make sure that your crews are actually being trained to the standard that you're expecting of your crew leaders when you folks are hiring people what are you looking for so the intangibles anybody can learn this industry is it is not rocket science at all um so it's more the intangibles uh where we live the biggest thing is you got to be able to take the heat uh we actually make all new potential new hires as part of of the interview process they have to uh do a ride along that that day and the main purpose of that ride along more than anything else is to make sure they can actually take the intense heat that we have where we we live Is Not Unusual to be high 90s even 100 degrees in the middle of summer so uh that that's a big thing but again work ethic how fast they get out of the truck how trainable are they like essentially how good are they with their hands can can they figure out equipment easily quickly uh can they see some of those finer details can they understand finished product and the goal of what we're trying to get to and can they kind of figure out how to get there because situations are different properties are different conditions are different um so they've got to be able to figure those things out and that's that's what we look for we can train the rest we can train them technique uh but it's it's it's work ethic at the end of the day and a big thing too with uh way we hire too with is we look for good culture fits and so one of our main one honestly the main way we hire it's actually based off referrals from our current employees from our current guys who already fit the culture we tell them bring us your friends uh don't bring us your lazy friends bring us your hardworking friends because remember you have to work with them so if they're slack you got to pick up that slack um and we you know we pay referral fees based on that and if you if you bring us a good hardworking friend and he gets past his 90-day probationary period you get a bonus uh but what that does too is that helps our guys who you know call them like thoroughbreds you know it helps them to it helps us to find more guys like them so that way we can continue to build that team in that same culture that they're going to get along with that we're going to get along with and that's going to work effectively and efficiently Zach you mentioned culture can you qualify or Define your culture it's a good question um our culture has always been you know quality first above above just about anything else um especially with a lot of our core values and everything that we talk about through our staff meetings but also too even internally um we Kyle and I on this specific thing go above and beyond uh to protect our guys we love our Workforce um and that's why I think it's led to a lot of a lot lower turnover rate than we see in a lot of other companies in our industry uh but everything we do every decision we make goes to the benefit of our guys um what will this job help them get more hours will this overwork them uh what you know what kind of systems can we put in place to give them more benefits to make the job more valuable so that way they when they come to work they don't have to worry about if they're making ends meet they're going to have to worry about if they have to go to a doctor and pay a co-pay that's going to eat you know every last cent of their check um what benefits that are going to affect their families and we've always been very centralized on our team and by doing that it has really helped us to build very quality group of go of young men um to really really grow like we said in in an organic way but also too um but keeping our brand keeping our um you know our name really high in our industry um we we kind of joke around sometimes we like to be the the Chick-fil-A of lawn care uh people don't go to Chick-fil-A because they got the cheapest chicken sandwich around they go because it's good and they go for the my pleasure they go for the quality they go for the service and because we focus so much on our internals and taking care of our our people um that just exudes outward um to our customers and they appreciate that quality as well and we really obsess um a lot about company image so we're always thinking about how does it look to the customer to to Neighbors when when they're they're uh they're looking out we're always reming our guys too you know when you get out of the truck everybody can hear what you say there's ring doorbells going off watch what you say watch what you do um those are the type things that we're always you know instilling in them like you said Chick-fil-A of lawn care that's what we really try to be you know our guys will show up in a polo shirt to cut your grass um so we always are are conscious of brand image and having cleancut individuals that um you're not afraid of to have on your property essentially essentially when we're looking at a guy too as a potential hire you know you have to ask your question like would my wife and son because I've got a wife and kid at home would they be comfortable with this person around their property all day um if if you're not comfortable with it they're not going to be either and so those are the type things that that we always um make sure to look for and hire so that you know everyone including our customers are really comfortable with who they have there well hunson Brothers I appreciate you joining me it's been a great conversation with you today yeah we appreciate you having us thank you for having us right bringing up now the hudome brothers bring it up now the HUD some brothers bring it up now the hudome brothers are