Podcast interview with Mark Bradley, founder of Leanscaper and former CEO of LMN (Landscape Management Network), hosted by Paul Giannamore and recorded at the NALP Elevate Conference 2024 in Charlotte, NC. Topics include applying lean principles to scale a landscaping business, building leadership and company culture, systemization for operational efficiency, aligning employee and owner goals, commercializing LMN, selling that business, using AI for project management and industry efficiency, the Leanscaper Mastermind program, and balancing personal purpose with business growth. # Channel Presentation Observations — Mark Bradley / LeanScaper Interview ## Video Format & Presentation Style - **Interview format**: Host-led conversational interview with a guest founder, structured around a chronological career narrative ("I want to talk software… let's take a stroll down memory lane") and closing with reflective/personal questions. - **Audience-facing close**: Episodes end with a direct call-to-action for the audience — the guest shares how viewers can engage: "they can just come to the website lanscape.com." - **Host framing**: The host positions the guest as an authority, e.g., "well you're driving force in this space and I can't wait to see what you're going to do." ## Demonstrated Audience Addressed - **Business owners and operators in the trades/field-service sector** — specifically landscaping — evidenced by discussion of scaling landscape companies from "$500,000 businesses" through "30 to 100" million tiers, and references to "thousands of 1 and 2 million businesses out there." - **Leaders and founders interested in growth, systems, and leadership development**, evidenced by extended discussion of becoming a "leader of leaders," mentorship, and the guest's personal goal framework. - **People interested in software/SaaS and entrepreneurship**, evidenced by questions like "do you find it particularly challenging now with the AI bent to get your arms around what's possible six months from now?" ## Claimed Scope (Guest Self-Descriptions, Not Channel Claims) - Guest claims an industry-wide mission: "we're going to build a huge community and we're going to change this industry through the community The Mastermind programs and the software." - Guest describes his offering's scope: a mastermind program covering "individuals, companies, vendors, suppliers, software companies — anybody in the industry can join." - Guest claims deep market connection: "I spend 100 days a year in the room with my customers" and cites "3,300 companies that trust my product today." > Note: These are the **guest's claims about himself**, not statements by the channel about itself. No explicit channel self-description appears in the transcript. ## Observable Presentation Patterns - **Promotional function**: The episode functions partly as a launch announcement — the merger with Single Ops and the new company LeanScaper are discussed in the opening minutes, suggesting the channel surfaces industry news and new ventures. - **Educational orientation**: Long segments walk through business-systems methodology (lean, kaizen, balanced scorecards, operating systems), indicating the channel presents substantive operational content to its audience. - **Values-forward framing**: The interview opens and closes on purpose and legacy — "I don't do what I do for them… I do it for their children" — indicating a presentation style that emphasizes personal purpose alongside business content. ## Identity Evidence Gaps - **No channel self-description present**: Neither the title nor transcript contains an explicit statement by the host/channel about who the channel is or serves; audience and scope are inferred from demonstrated content only. - **No curated metadata was supplied** for this video. # Delivery Observation: Mark Bradley Interview ## Overall Format - **Interview/conversation format** with an off-screen interviewer asking structured questions; the guest delivers long, detailed narrative answers. - The video appears to open with a **cold-open teaser** — the guest's closing statement about leadership loneliness is replayed at [1966–2013], framing the conversation. ## Tone & Register - **Reflective and earnest**: heavy use of personal disclosure, e.g. > "I was 120 lbs overweight I ruined a marriage I didn't spend enough time with my kids but I had a lot of money but I wasn't happy" - **Conversational, unpolished delivery**: frequent filler and self-corrections — "uh," "um," "that that was really why," "I I I think over the years" — suggesting unscripted, spontaneous answers. - Warm and appreciative toward the industry: > "an unbelievably beautiful group of people who truly love the people that work for them" ## Recurring Phrases & Verbal Habits - **"Turnkey"** repeated as a signature term: "turnkey operating system," "a turnkey management operating system," "turnkey tools" ([121], [1050], [1095], [1963]). - **"Flow interruptions"** as a repeated diagnostic phrase: [958], [970], [1334], [1430]. - **Repeated purpose statement** — nearly verbatim at open and close: > "I just really want to help others avoid the pain and the struggles that I endured" ([33] and [2011]). - Frequent **"really" as an intensifier** ("really why I decided," "really fortunate," "really clear to me") throughout. - Repeated three-part lists: "safety quality and efficiency"; "labor material equipment subcontractors"; "waiting… logistical problems… shortage of awareness." ## Teaching Habits - **Analogy-based explanation**: compares his system to Toyota — > "at Toyota it would be called the Toyota production system in my Landscape Company it was called the landscape production system" - **"Think of…" framing** for new concepts: > "so think of a community where landscapers can uh join" - **Concrete numbers as evidence**: "$50 million landscape company," "we went from 5 to 50 million in 10 years," "run 300 employees with one operations manager," "I spend 100 days a year in the room with my customers." - **Storytelling structure**: chronologically narrates career (nuclear internship → landscaping at 23 → software at year seven → 2018 exit), often citing named mentors ("Charles vandercoy," the BlackBerry founder anecdote, the Sony Canada CEO anecdote). - **Repeats question keywords** back to the interviewer before answering ("yeah definitely big week," "no not at all I uh purely Landscaping"). ## Communication Patterns - **Self-deprecation paired with credibility claims**: "I was good at doing the work but I was horrible at running a business" alongside "$50 million company." - **Delegation-of-vision framing**: > "I don't understand artificial intelligence I just understand what I want it to do other people figure out how to make it happen" - **Numbered/ordered frameworks**: personal goals listed "first… second… third… fourth"; business goals in "those five buckets." - Willingness to name specific constraints: "I'm usually working on three to five things." ## Uncertainty Note - Patterns above rest on a single ~33-minute interview; repeated phrases ("turnkey," "flow interruptions," the purpose statement) are well-attested within it, but whether they extend beyond this video cannot be confirmed. # Position Record: Mark Bradley on LeanScaper, LMN, and Balancing Life & Leadership **Video ID:** 01a168c8-257d-781f-b038-64d40269ebac **Primary Speaker:** Mark Bradley (interviewee; identified by name in transcript and title) **Secondary Speaker:** Interviewer (unidentified in transcript; asks questions) --- ## 1. Career Origins & Landscape Business - Mark Bradley states he came from a **purely landscaping** background with **no software background**. - After high school he entered a **nuclear program apprenticeship** (four-year internship), but found the work *"uninspiring"* and lacking purpose, so he returned to landscaping at **age 23**. - Claims he did **$1 million in sales in his first year**, which he attributes to trade skill learned from being *"raised by a Tradesman"* — but states he was *"good at doing the work but horrible at running a business."* - Describes being mentored by **luxury landscaping customers** who saw him struggling and "took me under their wing." ## 2. Founding LMN (Software) - **Timing:** Decided to build software in **year seven** of the landscape business. No off-the-shelf option existed at the time; mobile devices were just coming to market. - States he was doing a project for **a founder of BlackBerry** and had access to beta devices, which let him foresee device-driven field tools. - **Co-founder:** Hired Mike Lysi (CTO), who originally came to pitch him outdated software. Bradley says they remain partners; Bradley describes himself as a **"non-technical CEO"** handling strategy and vision while Lysi ran technical operations day-to-day. - **Key metric:** *Estimated versus actual hours* — his stated reasoning: if crews understood what the estimate allowed and could track it in real time, they could **self-monitor**, which he saw as the leading indicator of success. - **Commercialization:** Beta-tested for a few years; began selling publicly in **2010** as a device-agnostic web app. Attributes the decision partly to advice from the CEO of Sony Canada: *"find a way to make a little bit of money off of a lot of people."* - **Development:** All in Canada until 2014, then an **offshore team in Ukraine**, which he says has been with them for 10 years. ## 3. Lean Operating System & Dual-Company Growth - Says he learned **lean principles in the nuclear industry** and applied them to the landscape business — calling it the **"landscape production system"** (analogous to the Toyota Production System; Kaizen). - Time allocation during the dual-build: **80% landscaping, 20% software**, with Lysi running LMN day-to-day. - Claims the landscape company grew **from $5M to $50M in 10 years**; he retired from landscaping in **2018** after 21 years. - Claims his rudimentary workflow tools let him run **300 employees with one operations manager**. ## 4. LeanScaper (New Company) - Launched alongside the LMN/SingleOps merger announcement (deal closed the prior Wednesday; announced that Monday). - Describes it as a **community leading into a mastermind program** backed by a **turnkey management operating system** — "every system, every process that you would ever develop in a business already built for you." - Pricing/structure: annual fee, tiered by company size ($0–500K; $500K–3M; $3–10M; $10–30M; $30–100M), because "you need a different system at each size." - Includes training for sales and operations leaders, plus forms, documents, workflows, and spreadsheets — to be powered by the new AI-driven software he describes building. ## 5. Rationale for Selling LMN - Had **private equity partners**; when they were ready to sell, he chose among finding another sponsor, buying them out, or selling. - Calls it a "hard decision," but says his industry impact work is "just getting started." - Position: **field service management "has been done"** (including by LMN); the industry now needs tools that **remove flow interruptions** and give field staff real-time information to work autonomously. ## 6. Claims About AI & Industry Efficiency - Claims the industry operates at **~60% of potential build hours vs. unbuild hours**, mainly due to flow interruptions (waiting on information, logistics, lack of awareness of next steps). - Envisions AI combining his estimating templates (labor, material, equipment, subcontractors) with **automated takeoff software** to generate step-by-step project workflows automatically. - Claims he previously did this manually — building a million-dollar backyard in **6 weeks vs. the typical 16** — with crews following engineered page-by-page instructions. - On timeline to market: **"not very long."** - Claims credibility from **3,300 customer companies** and spending **100 days a year in rooms with customers**. ## 7. Employee Alignment & Compensation Philosophy - Argues hourly-only pay **misaligns employees and owners**: "when the project takes longer the employees make more and when the project goes faster the owner makes more." - Advocates motivating employees to finish on time while focusing on **safety, quality, efficiency**, and creating opportunities for them to **earn more** through waste elimination. ## 8. Leadership Development & Mentorship - Claims he spent **20% of his time building systems** and another **20% evolving as a leader**; states that beyond $10M, "you really truly do need to become a leader of leaders." - Principle stated: *"anytime there's a problem in the business it's a direct reflection of my leadership."* - Mentorship practices: 5–6 mentors at a time; currently spends **at least $1 million/year on personal development**; works on only 3–5 problems at a time. - Named early mentor: **Charles Vandercoy** (industry "guru," now deceased) who taught him budgeting and estimating. Also describes "hiring your mentors" — accountants and specialists. - Currently sits in a **marketing mastermind** and a **SaaS mastermind**, and seeks AI mentors. - On AI capability: *"I don't understand artificial intelligence. I just understand what I want it to do — other people figure out how to make it happen."* ## 9. Personal Goals & Purpose - States four personal goals, reset quarterly with a coach: (1) optimize mind and body, (2) optimize love life, (3) optimize relationships, (4) optimize self as leader. - **Open admission of past failure:** In early years his goals prioritized business growth; he was *"120 lbs overweight,"* "ruined a marriage," and didn't spend enough time with his kids — "I had a lot of money but I wasn't happy." - **Stated purpose:** To help others avoid the pain and struggles he endured. - Claims motivation extends to employees' children: *"I don't do what I do for them and I don't really even do it for their employees — I do it for their children."* - Believes **the middle class is "falling apart"** and that eliminating waste via technology creates "more for everybody at the table." ## 10. Call to Action - Directs interested parties to the website **leanscaper.com** — open to individuals, companies, vendors, suppliers, and software companies. --- ## Preserved Qualifications & Tensions - Bradley characterizes his earlier AI-era workflow tools as *"very rudimentary"* — the claimed outcomes (300 employees/one manager; 6-week builds) are his own retrospective claims about his company, not independently verified. - His statement that **LMN is among the "antiquated systems"** (implicitly, in the interviewer's framing about legacy systems) stands alongside his role as LMN's founder — a tension the interviewer highlighted, not resolved in the interview. - No timeline specifics were given for the AI product beyond "not very long"; the interviewer pressed ("we should see this soon") and Bradley only said "I hope." # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record **Video:** Personal Purpose, Industry Impact: Mark Bradley on LeanScaper and Balancing Life & Leadership **Video ID:** `01a168c8-257d-781f-b038-64d40269ebac` ## Speakers & Roles | Speaker | Role | Evidence | |---|---|---| | **Mark Bradley** | Guest / primary interviewee | Founder of LMN; founder of new company "LeanScaper"; former landscape company owner; self-described "non-technical CEO" | | **Unnamed interviewer** | Host / creator | Conducts the interview; opens with "all right Mark it's great to sit down with you"; closes with "thank you thanks Mark" | No narrator or other identified speakers are present. ## Third-Party People & Entities Referenced (not speakers) - **Single Ops** — merger partner; deal closed "Wednesday last week," announced Monday. - **Mike Lysi** — CTO and co-founder of LMN; unnamed in speech mostly, referenced as co-founder hired from another software company. - **Charles Vandercoy** — industry mentor (deceased), taught budgeting/estimating, per Bradley. - **Blackberry founder** — former landscaping customer; provided beta devices. - **Sony Canada CEO** — former customer; advised "make a little bit of money off of a lot of people." - **Private equity partners** — motivated the LMN sale (unnamed). - **Toyota** — cited for Toyota Production System / lean methodology; **Fortune 500** companies referenced generally. - **Offshore development team in Ukraine** — hired ~2014, still retained. ## Promotional Segments (Flagged) - **LeanScaper launch announcement** — new company, mastermind program with annual fee, community, and bundled "turnkey management operating system" sized by revenue tiers. - **Closing call-to-action** — interviewee directs viewers to the LeanScaper website ("leanscaper.com") for individuals, companies, vendors, suppliers, and software companies to join. - **LMN customer-base claims** — "3,300 companies that trust my product today"; "100 days a year" spent with customers. - **Upcoming AI product tease** — predicted project workflow automation to launch "over the coming year." ## Unverified / First-Party Claims (no independent source in transcript) - $1 million first-year landscaping revenue; $50M landscape company ("top 100"). - Growth from 5M to 50M in 10 years; 21 years in landscaping; retirement from landscaping in 2018. - LMN public sales began 2010; 300 employees run by one operations manager. - Industry operating at "around 60% of potential" build hours. - "$1 million a year on personal development"; five to six mentors at a time. ## Metadata & Availability Gaps - **No curated metadata supplied** — no channel name, publication date, comment availability, or external source list was provided. - **Comment availability:** Unknown / not stated. - **Timestamps:** None present in transcript; all timing references ("Wednesday last week," "2024") are approximate from speech. - Interviewer identity is **not named** in the transcript. what I've seen in this industry is an unbelievably beautiful group of people who truly love the people that work for them and they want to provide more but they don't have the skills and the knowhow to make it happen and that's a really painful thing to live with as a leader and Leadership becomes incredibly lonely and the tools that I aim to build remove that they help people align and they help people create more for everybody who's at the table and I just really want to help others avoid the pain and the struggles that I endured in that process and that's why I do what I do all right Mark it's great to sit down with you yeah great thanks having me I want to talk software and I guess today is an interesting week for you closing deals start new companies let's let's talk about that yeah definitely big week um the deal closed uh on the merger with uh single Ops uh Wednesday last week and uh we made the official announcement Monday this week and alongside with that I launched a new company uh called leans scaper okay yeah so congratulations so it's interesting you know usually guys that sell their businesses take some time before they jump in and do something and you wasted no time so yesterday was the founding of lanscaping is that what you call it leans skaper leans skaper okay let's what's that going to be what is this uh so think of a community where landscapers can uh join and and just interact with others but really the the community leads into a mastermind program that is backed with a turnkey operating system I built to develop everything I needed when I built my $50 million landscape company so I had this top 100 landscape company that sort of forced me to build software which became LMN and as I left the landscape industry to focus on LMN I really planned on building what will become leans scaper which is really all the systems that I needed to build that top 100 company all bottled up in a mastermind program with software that will actually power the systems integration and really run the management operating system that I created to run my company and I want to delve a little bit deeper into that before I do that though I want to let's let's take a stroll down memory lane you were building a landscape business and you needed software so you decided I'm going to build my own and do you come from a software background no not at all I uh purely Landscaping so right out of high school I joined a nuclear program as a as an apprentiship intern and I went through a a four-year internship and uh as I kind of finished up that internship I was finding the work a little bit uninspiring I couldn't really find much purpose in the work and I decided to go back to Landscaping which is what I had been doing uh throughout high school so that I was 20 3 started the landscape company I did a million dollars in my first year so the business kind of took off and I quickly realized how little I knew about business I I was very fortunate uh to have been raised by a Tradesman and I was I think I had the 10,000 hour rule on the trade side so that was probably why I hit the million dollars so fast I was good at doing the work but I was horrible at running a business and so as the uh the the bumps in the road got bigger and bigger I always found myself seeking mentors and I was really fortunate along the way I found myself being mentored by my customers I was doing luxury uh landscaping and so I had some great customers and they could see me struggling with the business and many of them just kind of took me under their wing and helped me out that way so over as the business started to grow I really started to realize that I needed technology to really automate a lot of the systems that I had been developing to drive efficiency and really Cascade the goals that were so clear to me down throughout the company as I started to scale and that that was really why I decided to build software and the key metric for me was estimated versus actual hours I knew that if I could explain that clearly to my employees and they understood what the estimate allowed for and they could track that in real time they could kind of self-monitor and that that would be the leading indicator of success and so I built software to enable my Crews to work more autonomously with that key metric in their hand all the time and that is what LMN sort of started out as so how long had you been building the landscape business before you decided to embark on software uh that was year seven I decided to do that and was there nothing available off the shelf to you at the time no I that keep in mind the devices were just coming to Market I was a little bit maybe fortunate in the sense that at the time I was doing a project for uh one of the founders of well the founder of blackberry and I knew the devices were coming knew what was coming to Market uh even had some beta uh devices um their original tablet and whatnot and so I could sort of see what the future had in terms of devices and I started to build just a simple web application a that would allow us to to manage all of the data um that we were looking to to manage prior to that we were just using simple time tracking uh which was um offline time tracking that was managed by key tags at the time so so you're running a land stap business you had nothing you had no idea how to do that but you kind of learned on the job you were mentored by some customers and then you decide to get into software and of course you knew nothing about that so I'm really interested what were your first steps like how do how to how did you go about doing this uh I've hired uh my co-founder um he was uh working for another software company he came in actually to pitch me on software but the software was not good it was very old and out of date uh but I could see that he understood what I was looking for and so I offered him a job and uh he joined me and we're still together to this day so he's always uh managed the the technical side and I've always kind of managed the strategy and the vision and we've uh had a fabulous relationship so I always say I'm a non-technical CEO so as you're simultaneously building the landscape business and you're building what would ultimately be become LMN correct yeah yeah and so how did you then allocate your time over the years were you focused on landscape focused on software split between the two yeah it was interesting building software made me a better landscaper uh as I was building out all of the systems and processes for software you had to think about your business I had to think about it yeah and so it just started to uh almost Force continuous Improvement and I had learned about lean back in the nuclear industry and so I really put the lean principles in place into my landscape business so I built a lean operating system for my landscape business so as we were building LMN I was building the data that would be needed to power a balanced scorecard a lean Balan scorecard so that I could look at each perspective of the business really accurately and as I really focused on building the tools it forced us to build more efficiency in the field and so the business actually took off as a result so I was putting about 80% of my time into landscape 20% into software uh but Mike lysi my CTO and co-founder was incredibly capable um could have been the CEO easily so he was really running that company dayto day as the landscape company scaled and we went from 5 to 50 million in 10 years alongside the growth of LMN and eventually I decided to retire from landscaping and and focus on LMN in 2018 after after 21 years in the landscape business I'm curious at what point did you believe that Ln was mature enough to commercialize it outside of use in your own business well we we actually decided to build for the entire Market out of the gate so we beta tested for a few years um but really 2010 we started selling LMN publicly um and uh that was really when it was fully ready for us as well up until that point it was it was bits and pieces I guess you could say it was a web app that we were always testing and working with um for the first 2 years and then when it was completely built we decided to start selling it right away in 2010 I I as I started building software I had kind of the Good Fortune I was doing a project for uh the CEO of Sony Canada at the time and I was telling him what I was building and he said you should find a way to make a little bit of money off of a lot of people with that it was a gift it kind of stuck with me so we were just building for ourselves at the time and that really started to resonate and it as the cost of building software started to really stack up that little voice in my head kept reminding me to charge a little bit of money to a lot of people so we decided to start selling it almost right away when it was when it was finished and so we built it in a way where it could run on any device just as a web application in 2010 because the app stores weren't out yet and uh and it started to sell really quickly and did you do all your development for that in Canada we uh we did all of the development in Canada up until about 2014 and then we hired an offshore team um in the Ukraine and they're still working with us to this day so we've had the same team for the past 10 years in the Ukraine um and they've been marvelous Partners okay so you sold the landscape business you focused on the software per for a period of time and then now you've recently closed this transaction so why did you decide to do that uh I had uh uh private Equity partners and like all private Equity Partners when the the deal comes uh to fruition they're ready to sell and I had a choice uh to find another sponsor or uh buy them out or uh sell and it was a hard decision for me but I my work is nowhere near in the industry the impact that I really want to truly have on the industry is is just getting started and so I felt that the exit was a great uh decision for me to really fuel my purpose and continue on building the products that I want to build that I think are really needed in the industry at this point I felt like field service management is uh has been done there's some great companies uh LMN being one of them and the products that I think the industry needs right now more than than anything are products that enable uh the field staff to work more efficiently and remove the flow interruptions that they deal with daytoday and really provide the information in real time that they need to work more autonomously and with all the advancements that we've seen in AI I believe now is the time to build that product and I've built that product before and used that product before in my own Landscape Company in a very rud way and uh we're ready to build that right now and and launch that in the industry uh over the coming year what will AI allow you to do differently predict the needs of the project so when I would do a design build project what I would do is I would I had a value engineering team and so we would estimate the project build a very detailed estimate which is why I built LMN and so the estimating software that is lemen today is my old templates that I that I developed to to bid those templates break down the project in a way where you have labor material equipment subcontractors and that dictates the needs of the project now with AI you can take that those needs and overlay that with automated takeoff software and then create a stepbystep process to to do the project we used used to actually do that manually we would build let's say step one to 250 to build a million dooll backyard and I could build those backyards in 6 weeks when most people would take 16 weeks and so just simply automating the workflow using a set of drawings that we would create with my engineering team we would engineer so the team would just flip a page and each time they finished a page they'd flip to the next and they knew what to build this software is going to do that on its own and how long will it take you guys to ultimately get something like that to Market not very long okay so we should we should see this soon I hope yeah that's great yeah okay so you're I'm I'm guessing you have the feeling this is going to be far bigger and have much more dramatic impact on the industry than kind of the antiqu systems L and being one of them yeah I I believe that U the world has changed over the past few years and we've been talking about uh AI for 10 years and I think we were all patiently waiting for it to become a reality but today I think the way that we code the way that we uh enable uh software to operate and the the machine learning tools that we have today um that are actually in the hands of the development teams are are very much real and very capable and I think what we can build and what we can develop and the pace that we can build and develop and the cost in which we can build and develop is uh changed exponentially and I know what the needs of the industry are because I'm very connected with uh the 3,300 companies that that trust my product today and I I know exactly what they need because I spend 100 days a year in the room with my customers uh teaching them how to run their businesses and listening to what their biggest problems are and I know that their biggest problem is efficiency right now the industry is operating at around 60% of the potential that they could be in terms of build hours versus unbuild hours um mainly just due to flow interruptions that exist um in the common types of waste waiting and waiting on information logistical problems shortage of of awareness in terms of what step is coming next and oft times all that waiting is just slowing down the project to the point where a lot of the opportunity for profit and higher wages are really taken up with all these flow interruptions and in my business I was able to eliminate all of those with the systems that I mentioned earlier which were very much people driven but once I created the workflow tools that I created just in a very rudimentary web app we were able to actually run 300 employees with one operations manager and so that's really what ends up happening is we have a very small management team and a really enabled Workforce and all of those day-to-day interruptions around labor material equipment subcontractors information are really gathered and served up in one platform in a way where employees don't have to make a lot of decisions the decisions are made for them and that's really what uh what we're building I want to talk a little bit about the Mastermind that you mentioned and how this will be tied into it so what's what's the the thesis there yeah so The Mastermind program is very much an educational program so with the Mastermind program when people sign up for the lanscape or Mastermind what they get is a turnkey management operating system so make sure every system every process that you would ever develop in a business already built for you so if you were out buying a a turnkey business and you would expect when you walk into that business that if you went to hire somebody there would be a job ad and a prean job description and there'd be a prean set of kpis and metrics and there would be a balance scorecard for that individual and an onboarding plan you would expect that that's all in place if you were buying that business and really that's where all of the value is when you are out buying businesses well what I'm doing is taking the turnkey management operating system that I developed to build my $50 million company and I'm plugging that into the Mastermind system so you buy into the Mastermind program it's an annual fee and you get a turnkey management system for whatever size company you're running so the system is set based on up to $500,000 businesses 500,000 to 3 million 3 million to 10 10 to 30 30 to 100 because you need a different system at each size and so you get all of the forms and documents and systems and workflows and spreadsheets that you would need to operate the business that way but more importantly we also give the training to develop salese operations people sales leaders operations leaders and we build the leadership team around this system so landscapers typically talk about Building Systems but they're too busy to get around to building them and this is a turnkey management operating system that we call a mastermind program because we work the education and the tools into the program and then we're going to power that with the software that I'm describing so it's effectively integrated in a certain way with the software absolutely yeah and this was this Opera system so to speak that you'll be helping folks implement this is something that you designed or you and your team designed while you were building your landscape business absolutely that was that was how it was developed and it it was out of a need so every position every um system that you would need to run labor material equipment or subcontractors efficiently along with uh gold setting system that really allows the owner to create a balanced scorecard approach a lean company and then all of the lean tools that allow you to really deploy a lean methodology in your company and use those principles to drive continuous Improvement deep into the organization and build a continuous Improvement culture so that each employee is truly aware of what success looks like and that allows the owners to actually align with the employees in a very different way because they get the opportunity to earn and they earn in a similar way and I believe that landscapers that are paid by the hour and only paid by the hour are not really aligned with an owner because when the project takes longer the employees make more and when the project goes faster the owner makes more what I really developed was a system where we don't want to rush anything we want to make sure everybody understands what good looks like and how to succeed and we want to focus on safety quality and efficiency at all times but we want to motivate our employees to get projects done on time and we want to unlock opportunity for them to earn more in the process and so that is really what this system allows a company to do using the lean methodologies that you know many forun 500 companies like Toyota for example have used so at Toyota it would be called the Toyota production system in my Landscape Company it was called the landscape production system and so this is just a way of thinking and it's a lean way of thinking and there's a set of tools that you use to drive that continuous Improvement deep into the organization and that's really what the system is built around is the lean methodology is the Japanese word is Kaizen is kaen yeah so did you spend you know back when you were building the landscape business did you spend a lot of time studying this absolutely I would spend about a fifth of my time I 20% of my time each week Building Systems and I would focus every week on Building Systems that were causing the biggest flow interruptions and so as my journey evolved the systems evolved and so when I went from three to 10 million there was a very distinct set of problems that I had to overcome many of which being my own leadership skills as you can imagine because I think this is where many landscapers really suffer just like I did you really don't realize that you reach the limit of your true potential as a leader and in turn your business is just nothing more than a reflection of you and so when that business stalls it's because your leadership skills have stalled and so I really started to spend about 20% of my time Building Systems and about 20% of my time trying to learn how to evolve as a leader and be the leader that would be needed in the future really becoming a leader of leaders because to get past 10 million in the landscape company you really truly do need to become a leader of leaders and so I I I think over the years my time really shifted and once I got past 10 million I was really at that point just leading the leaders and really driving strategy and building Partnerships you know there's thousands of1 and2 million businesses out there most owners and managers never sit down and think we need to develop our leadership skills we need to think about Building Systems and processes what was it for you I mean how did you originally start to do this sort of stuff I mean you're building a landscape business you didn't know anything about Landscaping so when did you really start to focus on building those processes I I think really quickly because I hit a million dollars in sales in the first year I felt all of the flow interruptions and I really felt the limitations of not only my leadership but also my business knowledge and so early in my career I just really had to seek mentorship I started to go to night school four days a week I started every customer I worked for I would ask them for advice on whatever problem I was facing and I just never stopped looking for mentors and the way that I've always kind of decided where I should learn it was really where I was feeling the most resistance or the most pain so wherever I was finding my limit I could see that the reflection of my self was the problem and so I worked on myself more than I worked on the business and I've tried to do that ever since anytime there's a problem in the business it's a direct reflection of my leadership and my ability to see the problem so I seek mentors I find somebody who has done what I am attempting to do and I learn from them so what what sort of mentors did you find in the early years obviously your talking to your clients but is there anyone in particular you could talk about that was particularly helpful yeah I mean there unlimited really I I I would always have five or six mentors at a time and I still do to this day at this point I spend at least a million dollars a year on personal development uh I have coaches for just about everything um that is how I continue to grow and that is how my businesses have continued to succeed and so I've just never stopped early in my career it was uh Charles vandercoy he was an industry Guru back in the day he's passed away unfortunately but he taught me how to budget and estimate um then I I moved on to to learning more about financial management and so it was the accountant that I hired I said to the accountant Hey listen I'm going to hire you to be my accountant and I don't care what it costs but I want to know everything that you know and so over the years the best part about growing a business is you get to hire your mentors and so I also started hiring people to work in my companies who were specialists in each area and they became my mentors and so the bigger my businesses have become the better my mentors are and so my executive team today I could say would be my team of mentors because they know far more about each area in their business than I do I said the strategy they help me figure out how to make it happen um but mentorship for me has just been one of those things that never ends and so five or six people at a time are always helping me solve my five or six biggest problems and I don't like to try to solve more than five things at a time typically the sixth is usually the next thing I'm usually working on three to five things which means I'm seeking mentorship from three to five people who have solved those problems clearly in the past so now in 2024 what sort of problems are you trying to solve that you've sought coaches or mentorship for uh personal coach is always helping me with um being more self-aware sometimes you you don't see your own um gaps so that might be an hour a month it's a it's a conversation around my personal goals and I believe that personal goals really set the tone for your life uh my personal goals are pretty simple uh first it's to optimize my mind and my body so that I my life force is strong second optimize my love life third optimize my relationships uh with my children with my family with my friends my co-workers the community that I serve and fourth optimize myself as a leader and uh my coaches helped me see what I should be doing what key results I should be working on in each of those four areas and I kind of reset those each quarter and I'm just constantly trying to improve in those areas and having a coach to keep you accountable and help you understand what those gaps truly are somebody who really is going to tell you the truth because I think we all tell ourselves stories it uh it is a is a great way to to to guide that side of the business um when it comes to or that side of my my life sorry then when it comes to business I set goals as well and so if I have goals in my business which are typically grow Revenue grow brand grow people make sure that I have the best customer service possible and make sure that we're doing it all efficiently and those five buckets I need to seek mentors to help me do that in the business and so as I said that could be people on my executive team and it could be people within the company doesn't have to be all sea levels um or it could be Consultants or experts or advis ERS and so I sit in two masterminds a marketing Mastermind and a SAS Mastermind where I learn about Marketing in SAS because there's always more to learn and it's ever changing um and then when I want to build products that are Beyond me I want to build AI driven products that the world has never seen before I have to seek mentors who understand that and so I have the vision but I need to find people who can advise me and Mentor me so that I can actually make that Vision a reality for the industry that I serve you know you've got a lot of experience obviously in software over the last couple of decades um do you find it particularly challenging now with the AI bent to get your arms around what's possible six months from now a year from now right so I like to just begin with the end in mind and this kind of drives people crazy by times but I don't really consider what is possible I just begin with end in mind and I explain what that looks like very clearly I have very clear Vision I'm able to focus very well I've been mentored on how to do that when I explain my vision clear enough other people figure out how to make it happen I don't understand artificial intelligence I just understand what I want it to do other people figure out how to make it happen and I trust in that process I guess in closing today it it it sounds like you're a pretty purposeful guy right what is your purpose I believe that when we set purpose in our lives often times people over complicate it and I think sometimes people chase purpose far too much mine is very simple I just want to help others avoid void the pain and struggles that I endured in my life and the pain and struggle that I endured most was trying to learn how to run a business trying to scale a business in the landscape industry uh I was very driven and I shared my goals my goals were not always in that order uh in the early years my goals were to grow the business and I somehow forgot about myself I was 120 lbs overweight I ruined a marriage I didn't spend enough time with my kids but I had a lot of money but I wasn't happy that realization was a hard thing to come about and to change and so my purpose today is to make people's lives better and what I do is I build products that allow them to avoid all of the pain and struggles that I endured and I want to make it easier for them and I don't want to do that just for the business owners I want to do that for their employees in this industry there's millions of employees who are underpaid and I believe that the middle class is falling apart very quickly in this country and I think that when we eliminate waste using technology there's more there's more for everybody there's more for the business owner there's more for the employees and ultimately I'm very forward about this with my customers I don't do what I do for them and I don't really even do it for their employees I do it for their children because their children deserve the same life that my children deserve and I truly believe that if we make this industry more efficient and business owners more educated and we give them TurnKey tools so that their businesses can operate properly they can eliminate the waste earn higher profits pay higher wages and really treat their employees the way that they truly want to treat them because what I've seen in this industry is an an unbelievably beautiful group of people who truly love the people that work for them and they want to provide more but they don't have the skills and the knowhow to make it happen and that's a really painful thing to live with as a leader and Leadership becomes incredibly lonely and the tools that I aim to build remove that they help people align and they help people create more for everybody who's at the table and I just really want to help others avoid the pain and the struggles that I endured in that process and that's why I do what I do well for folks that want to get involved in that and join your Mastermind how do they do it they can just come to the website lanscape docomo for individuals for companies for vendors suppliers software companies anybody in the industry can join we're going to build a huge community and we're going to change this industry through the community The Mastermind programs and the software that we're building that's going to enable field workers to work autonomously and really have the careers that they really wished for that's awesome well you're driving force in the space and I can't wait to see what you're going to do here thank you thanks Mark you