Interview recorded at Pest World 2024 in Denver, CO, in which Paul Giannamore (Managing Director of The Potomac Company) speaks with Jonathan Pototschnik, co-founder of Service Autopilot. Topics include Pototschnik's early ventures starting with a lawn mowing business at age 14, lessons from early business failures, founding and growing CityTurf and Service Autopilot, choosing focus over diversions, hiring strategies and the value of strong operational partners, private equity partnerships and business exits, coaching other entrepreneurs, and the role of mindset in entrepreneurial growth. # Video Identity Observations: #PestWorld2024 Interview — Paul Giannamore & Jonathan Pototschnik ## Explicit Self-Description (Creator Claims) ### Channel Name and Purpose - The host identifies himself and the channel directly: > "hi I'm Paul janor I wanted to welcome our new subscribers to the channel... historically pomac TV has been focused on business operational information and interviews for residential and Commercial Services business owners" - This is the clearest **explicit channel self-description**: "Pomac TV" positioned around **business operations content and interviews** for **residential and commercial services business owners**. ### Stated Content Expansion - The host announces a new content direction driven by audience demand: > "after the publication of the cide m&a master class last month my LinkedIn inbox has been inundated with a variety of different requests so Dylan and I will be sitting down filming more extensive m&a master classes both focusing on the cell side as well as the buy side" - Announced upcoming topics: **choice of process, M&A psychology, buy-side practice approach, and due diligence**. ### Claimed Audience-Driven Model - The creator explicitly frames the channel as viewer-responsive: > "this channel is largely driven by you the viewer and what you want to see from us" - Includes explicit CTAs: **subscribe prompt, email distribution list link, and comment solicitation** ("feel free to put a comment below on the types of things you want to see"). ## Intended Audience (As Presented) - **Primary stated audience**: Owners of residential and commercial service businesses (lawn care, pest control, cleaning, HVAC-adjacent trades are all discussed). - **Secondary audience**: Business owners interested in **M&A, exits, and private equity transactions**, evidenced by the announced M&A master class series. - **New subscribers** are explicitly addressed ("I wanted to welcome our new subscribers to the channel"), indicating active channel growth. ## Claimed Scope | Scope Element | Evidence | |---|---| | Business operational information | Host's opening self-description | | Founder/owner interviews | Entire episode is a long-form founder interview | | M&A education (sell-side and buy-side) | Announced master class expansion | | Home services verticals | Interview covers lawn care, pest control, cleaning, software for "the green industry" | ## Observable Presentation Patterns (Demonstrated, Not Claimed) ### Long-Form Interview Format - The video demonstrates a **conversational, chronological founder-journey interview** structure: origin story (mowing lawns at 14), failures (first software company collapse), pivots (tech consulting, cleaning company), and exits (2019 Service Autopilot private equity deal). ### Host's Demonstrated Expertise Framing - Host Paul demonstrates familiarity with the home services space through **specific, informed questions**: > "you run one of the largest peson and Arbor care businesses in the Dallas Metro Market and you're also the founder of service autopilot" > "right out of the gate you were competing with software like real green for example" > "you've got pest pack and surf suite and rout of all there's a dozen software programs" - He references knowing "a lot of the guys you've coached over the years," demonstrating **embedded industry networks** — consistent with the channel's claimed scope. ### Event-Based Production - The title references **#PestWorld2024**, and closing dialogue ("great to see you here at P[estWorld]") indicates the interview was **filmed at an industry trade event**, positioning the channel at industry gathering points. ### Recurring Themes Demonstrated - **Business focus vs. shiny-object syndrome**: > "what I learned is absolute focus and growing things bigger is where all the speed and all the money's at" - **Operator/visionary pairing**, mindset, and data-driven management as coaching lessons — themes consistent with the channel's stated operational-information scope. ### Value-Oriented Closing - The episode ends without a hard sales pitch; the monetization/engagement structure shown is **subscriptions, email list, and comment-driven content requests** rather than in-video product promotion. ## Host/Guest Roles (Observed) - **Paul Giannamore**: Host, self-identified, conducts interview, controls channel CTAs. - **Jonathan Pototschnak**: Guest, founder of Service Autopilot and City Turf; introduced by host with detailed credentials. - **Dylan**: Referenced as production/collaboration partner for upcoming M&A content ("Dylan and I will be sitting down filming"). ## Claims vs. Demonstration Summary - **Claimed**: Channel focus on business operations + interviews for service business owners; M&A expansion; viewer-driven content. - **Demonstrated**: A deep-dive founder interview within the pest/lawn services vertical, hosted by someone with demonstrable industry deal knowledge, recorded at PestWorld 2024 — fully consistent with the stated scope. - No contradictions between stated identity and demonstrated content were observed in this material. # Delivery Observation: Paul Giannamore Interviews Jonathan Pototschnik | #PestWorld2024 ## Overall Format - **Cold-open hook**: The video opens with a teaser clip of the guest's key insight before the intro: *"absolute focus and growing things bigger is where all the speed and all the money's at."* The same passage reappears later in the conversation, making it a framing device. - **Channel intro**: The host delivers a direct-to-camera welcome and subscription pitch: *"for those of you that have not subscribed you can click below and subscribe to the channel."* - **Long-form chronological interview**: The bulk is a one-on-one Q&A tracing the guest's career from age 14 to present. ## Tone - **Conversational and informal**: Both speakers use casual fillers — the host with *"you know,"* *"I mean,"* *"so,"* and the guest with *"yeah,"* *"okay,"* *"um."* - **Warm and collegial**: The host offers light social validation: *"well good well so how'd you get your started in this let's go all the way back"* and closes with *"it's great to see you at P[estWorld]."* - **Candid, low-gloss delivery**: The guest speaks plainly about failure: *"it was brutal,"* *"total bust,"* *"we had been getting kicked in the face."* ## Interviewing Habits (Host) - **Short, sequencing questions**: *"so you did that for four years and then what made you jump out,"* *"so then what was kind of your next step."* - **Restating facts to confirm**: *"so you're an employee of a software [company]" — "I'm an employee yeah."* - **Anticipating objections on the audience's behalf**: *"did you not stop and think to yourself well why do this cuz does it real green have a lock on the space."* - **Empathetic framing questions**: *"you got two kids you got a wife who can't be happy."* - **Repeating the guest's words back**: after the guest mentions "the right spouse," the host extends it: *"you mentioned the right spouse so many times."* ## Vocabulary & Recurring Phrases (Guest) - **Business jargon**: "runway," "cap table," "break even," "cogs and gross margin," "rollup," "bright shining object," "shiny object syndrome," "guy in a truck." - **Repetition for emphasis**: *"we may not we may not have enough Runway,"* *"really really difficult time,"* *"that's the normal story that's the standard."* - **Numbered structuring**: When listing coaching lessons: *"that's one, two… and then a third one would be looking at your data."* - **Concrete dollar anchors**: "$2,000 car from my grandmother," "$1,500 bucks a month," "$29 and a $47 month offering," "funding it at 20,000 a month out of my pocket." ## Teaching / Communication Patterns (Guest) - **Personal anecdote → generalized lesson**: e.g., running four ventures at once, concluding *"I would say it would have been better to be focused."* - **Self-deprecating honesty about contradiction**: *"I don't necessarily follow my advice."* - **Emphasis through superlatives**: *"that was the best thing I've ever done in my life,"* *"it's the team that's the magic,"* *"it changes the whole game."* ## Uncertainty Notes - **Self-flagged memory gaps**: The guest says *"I might have put all that out of my mind cuz I don't remember"* and *"I think 16 15 or 16 I don't recall which"* — delivery includes explicit uncertainty markers. - The transcript is an auto-generated style text with name misspellings ("Paul janor," "toic TV"); exact pronunciation/prosody features (pauses, laughter, pace) are **not observable** from this source and are not claimed here. # Observation Document: PestWorld 2024 — Paul Giannamore interviews Jonathan Pototschnik ## Participants - **Paul Giannamore** — host, identified by self-introduction ("I'm Paul Giannamore"); also references upcoming M&A masterclass content with Dylan on "Potomac TV." - **Jonathan Pototschnik** — guest; runs a large pest/lawn and arbor care business in Dallas; founder of Service Autopilot; former cleaning-company partner; founder of City Turf. ## Early Life and First Ventures (Pototschnik) - Started mowing lawns at 14; by high school claims he was "making more than my teachers." - Had employees in high school — "kids like whatever kids I could get and they were highly unreliable." - Also bought/sold cars and ran 8–10 vending machines in high school/early college. - Married at 21; took a software job (~age 20) to avoid draining savings during winter while studying computer information systems. ## First Software Company — Failure - After ~4 years as an employee (trucking software: fuel optimization, freight valuation), he convinced his boss John to leave and start a logistics mapping company. - Funded with ~$100K of personal savings plus John's 401(k); "I didn't know there was such a thing as raising capital." - Built pre-Google-Earth freight-flow mapping; major obstacle: incomplete government highway data — "we're literally drawing the highway system of the United States." - **Outcome:** "total bust." Biggest client, Burlington Motor Carriers (11–12,000 trucks), went bankrupt. Shut down after a few years. - Personal toll: burned all savings, sold a car and bought a $2,000 car from his grandmother, wife driving a Nissan Maxima with two kids. "It was brutal... I was lost." - Relationship strain: for years afterward it "was almost hard to talk on the phone" with John because of reliving events. - John took a salaried technology/architecture job; Pototschnik refused employment ("I just knew I didn't want to go work for somebody"). ## Recovery Period - Scrapped together tech consulting. A dinner with a Cinemark IT manager (arranged partly via an old middle-school friendship) led to a $1,500/month arrangement with a cleaning company, later a partnership in it. - Started City Turf part-time "completely on a whim... a very accidental thing." - Also joined a healthcare software application project via a consulting client. - By 2007–08 he had four concurrent ventures — **out of necessity, not design**. In retrospect: "with absolute certainty I would say it would have been better to be focused." ## The Focus Thesis (repeated emphasis) - Around 2009 he gave back all his equity in the cleaning company and the healthcare software "just to get out," keeping only City Turf and the not-yet-launched Service Autopilot idea. - Called it "the best thing I've ever done in my life." - **Core stated position:** > "What I learned is absolute focus and growing things bigger is where all the speed and all the money's at." - Giannamore agreed: "It's easy to chase the bright shining object." - Catalyst for launching Service Autopilot: "The elimination of everything else." ## Service Autopilot - **Origin logic:** Originally intended to target plumbing/HVAC (theorized more money there), but pivoted to the green industry because route-based businesses (20 stops/day) felt the software pain earliest. - Built everything in-house; Pototschnik did sales, marketing, support, training, and product definition; John did all development (Pototschnik wrote no code in this product, unlike the prior company where he "wrote half the code"). - Launched down-market at $29 and $47/month; first 100 customers within the first year. Product was "subpar compared to frankly every other offering" but "we were able to tell a compelling story." - **Competitive reasoning vs. Real Green:** Real Green was desktop-only and "thought the cloud made no sense" — this gave him confidence. He remained nervous, but "I didn't see anybody moving where I thought the future was going." - Timeline: server set up November 2010; confident by end of 2013, "really good" by 2014. Never raised capital, never used debt; funded it at $20,000/month out of pocket for one year; City Turf supported the family in the interim. - Adoption friction: customers worried about cloud data security; some feared he'd steal their data since he owned City Turf. - City Turf used the software as "the guinea pig," but because City Turf grew large, they had to build a down-market offering and City Turf "didn't really get everything they needed." ## Private Equity Exit (2019) - Deal closed at "the very end of August of 2019." - **Trigger:** a rumored valuation on the Real Green transaction. Since Real Green was still heavily desktop, he thought "maybe we should actually start answering some of these private equity calls." - Neither he nor John wanted to sell; he would have preferred considering a sale around 2025. He explored the market, talked to PE firms and investment banks, "got comfortable with the idea." - Post-exit involvement: "only from the cap table standpoint I'm not active on a day-to-day basis." ## Coaching Business - Preceded by paid "roundtables" ($3,000 each, four companies, two days) to fund Service Autopilot — "I did eight of these things in a row." - Launched coaching at end of 2014 / beginning of 2015: event with 120 companies; coaching program capped artificially at 100 companies; "sold it out in 30 days." - Ran until 2021. Stopped because it was lumped into the Service Autopilot deal; he didn't want the complexity of carving it out and expected it would be shut down. - **Internal tension he names:** coaching "can create nice income but it's not a wealth creation event," which "nags on me," yet it's where he had "the absolute most impact." Likely returning to it, "not this year." - Satisfaction driver: clients going "from 300 [thousand] when they joined and then they're doing 7 million... every single thing in your life changes." ## Current and Future Plans - More active in City Turf; building marketing and recruiting teams; the operator there wants faster growth. - Involved in an unannounced tech business; considering another; evaluating investing in a service-delivery deal. - **Stated contradiction he preserves:** "I feel like the smarter play is to come in early stage after it's been started and apply money and expertise... I don't necessarily follow my advice" — he remains "attracted to the starting from nothing phase" for control and love of creating. ## Coaching Lessons (his three key points) 1. **Mindset** — people limit themselves: "there's only so much money in this industry" vs. his view of "unlimited opportunity"; skill gaps can be filled quickly. 2. **Shiny-object syndrome** — the answer is hiring a strong operator; in a rollup, "the first thing I would do is install an operator in every one of the companies." 3. **Know your numbers** — running the business by data makes "everything just gets so much easier." ## On Founders and Operators - "That's the normal story... that's why I said move number one is install an operator." - Founders must reach that realization through pain, not persuasion: "they've got to feel the pain and then they make the change." - Argues for hiring an expensive, experienced operator in a partner role (not necessarily equity) — "if you just go get an operations manager you're still largely influencing what they do." - Applies this to himself: "I'm a fantastic visionary paired with a really strong operator we can go really fast... it's the team that's the magic." ## On Employees and Culture - Draws on memories of his 4-year employment — disliked not knowing strategy, hiring plans, or finances; "all you really live on is rumors." - Fix applied in his companies: monthly all-hands lunches, monthly "state of the union" videos, quarterly roadmap updates — though he admits "there were some mistakes made where we were running so fast that... we stopped communicating as well." - Not fully transparent on financials, "but we were transparent on almost everything else." - Personalized rewards (e.g., sending someone to Japan instead of a bonus), community involvement, and explaining the company's mission in the market. - Claims near-zero voluntary attrition: "we almost never lost people"; City Turf has "incredibly high retention." ## Host Segment (Giannamore) - Channel historically focused on business/operational content for residential and commercial services business owners; after the "Cicide M&A master class," demand led to planned expanded M&A masterclasses (sell-side and buy-side), covering process, M&A psychology, and due diligence. ## Notable Qualifications and Tensions Preserved - Pototschnik's stated risk-aversion advice vs. his own attraction to starting from scratch. - Coaching as low-wealth-creation vs. high-impact activity. - His persistent nervousness during the Service Autopilot launch despite expressed confidence. - City Turf couldn't use the full product built around it due to down-market strategy. # Speaker Attribution & Provenance Record ## Video Identification - **Title:** Turning Setbacks into Success with Jonathan Pototschnik and Paul Giannamore | #PestWorld2024 - **Video ID:** `01a168c8-3071-7b4a-ae58-3728fa994c0f` - **Context:** Recorded in connection with **PestWorld 2024** (Paul references "it's great to see you at P[estWorld]"). ## Speakers & Roles ### Primary Speakers - **Paul Giannamore** — **Host / channel creator** (identifies himself as "Paul"; the channel host of what he calls "Pomac TV" / "toic TV" per transcript rendering, likely *Potomac TV*). Conducts the interview. - **Jonathan Pototschnik** — **Guest / interviewee**. Founder of **Service Autopilot** and **City Turf**; former lawn-mowing and software entrepreneur; coaching business operator (2015–2021). ### Mentioned Third Parties (non-speaking) - **Dylan** — mentioned by Paul as co-host of planned future M&A master class content. - **John** — Jonathan's business partner and lead developer at Service Autopilot (non-speaking). - **Jonathan's wife** — referenced repeatedly; non-speaking. ## Promotional Segments (Flagged) - **Channel intro monologue** (opening of transcript): Paul promotes: - New M&A master classes (sell-side and buy-side) with Dylan, following the "CIA-side M&A master class" (transcript: "cide m&a master class"). - **Subscription call-to-action** ("click below and subscribe"). - **Email distribution list** sign-up link in description. - **Comment solicitation** — viewers invited to comment with content requests. ## Claims About Speakers (from transcript, unverified) - Paul states Jonathan runs "one of the largest pest control and arbor care businesses in the Dallas Metro Market" and founded Service Autopilot, described as then the largest ERP/CRM for the green industry (maintenance focus). - Jonathan states Service Autopilot was sold in a **private equity transaction closed end of August 2019**; he retains involvement "only from the cap table standpoint." ## Sources & Third-Party Claims Referenced - **Real Green** — competitor software; Jonathan cites a "rumored transaction" number (~2018/19) as catalyst for his own sale — explicitly a **rumor**, per Jonathan. - **Burlington Motor Carriers** (Indianapolis) — named as the failed first software venture's largest client; described as bankrupt. - **ArcGIS tools** — cited technology used in the first venture. - Competitor names mentioned: **PestPack, ServiceSuite, Route**, "a dozen software programs." ## Uncertainty Notes - Transcript contains apparent phonetic errors ("Paul janor," "toic TV," "Pomac TV," "CIA-side/cide M&A master class," "service all pip," "my own Lawns," "H C January 10"); identities inferred from context. - Comment availability: comments are **solicited** in the video; actual availability not stated in source material. - No curated metadata supplied; no additional speaker, source, or timestamp verification possible. I really see an excitement on the part of business owners to start the next thing and the next thing especially when they get build a leadership team and get a bit free or when they hit a road when things get hard or growth feels a little more difficult they quickly pivot to this idea of the next thing and what I learned is absolute focus and growing things bigger is where all the speed and all the money's at hi I'm Paul janor I wanted to welcome our new subscribers to the channel you know historically pomac TV has been focused on business operational information and interviews for residential and Commercial Services business owners but after the publication of the cide m&a master class last month my LinkedIn inbox has been inundated with a variety of different requests so Dylan and I will be sitting down filming more extensive m&a master classes both focusing on the cell side as well as the buy side I intend to talk about the choice of process delving deep into m&a psychology as well as extensive buide practice approach and due diligence for those of you who have not subscribed you can click below and subscribe to the channel furthermore we've provided a link here in the description where you can get on our email distribution list and if you do that you'll receive an email right in your inbox with our latest Publications feel free to put a comment below on the types of things you want to see I mean this channel is largely driven by you the viewer and what you want to see from us again thanks for joining us here toic TV Jonathan welcome to the show hey Paul hey so you run one of the largest peson and Arbor care businesses in the Dallas Metro Market and you're also the founder of service autopilot which you know at the time at least when you were running it was the I guess largest um Erp CRM system for the Green Space serving maintenance specifically yeah there were some landscape solutions that we didn't we didn't go after that market that were big and you're still you partner with private equity on that but you're still a participant in that business to a certain degree correct only from the cap table standpoint I'm not active on a day-to-day basis got well good well so how'd you get your started in this let's go all the way back grew up in the middle of nowhere and wanted to figure out how to make money and started moan Lawns when I was 14 and quickly discovered that you can make a lot more money than working at the local grocery store and by the time I was in high school I was making more than my teachers and probably coaches and that changed my worldview I was like oh this is what I want to do the rest of my life I just didn't have any examples of how it's done or know anybody that was really successful or wealthy so I went on a journey to figure it out did you have employees mowing lawns for you or were you doing it all yourself in high Squad to okay yeah they were kids like whatever kids I could get and they were highly unreliable but yeah it was me and then sometimes the help okay so you started my own Lawns you doing this in high school then then from there what so I did that and then I started buying and selling cars in high school I had eight or 10 vending machines this is all kind of that High School freshman year college range and then I got married at the end of 21 and I knew I was going to get married and I had saved all my money since I was 14 and I thought this marriage thing was going to jack up my savings and mowing the LA I was going to college to get a degree in tech computer information systems and so the the point is I took a job at a software company because I didn't want to burn down my savings during the winter you know from the mowing the lawn thing yeah and that was around 20 years old and so I spent four years at a software company and the decision industry which would be kind of similar to what people call AI today kind of s you know rewind 20 years though what kind of software was it TR Transportation so we had a fuel optimization system where we would tell trucks like Long Haul trucks where to stop and buy their fuel and how much to save them money and then we had some Financial systems that would figure out how valuable Freight was and the routing and things of that sort just a whole variety of tools serving the Long Haul industry and and at this point in time you're in a employee of a software I'm an employee yeah okay so you did that for four years and then what made you jump out oh I wanted to work for myself okay so I convinced sort of convinced well I guess I convinced my business partner who later became my business partner service autopilot I convinced him to leave he was essentially my boss 7 years older than me and we started our first software company together so that company I worked for was in the trucking industry and we went more after the logistic space to do um something completely different a mapping based system it was really early at the time there was no Google Earth a mapping based system to track the flow of freight around the country from a logistic standpoint there was more to it than that but we went out and started that business and and so how how'd that go uh it was tough um it was a time before Google Maps and it was just the two of us I didn't know there was such a thing as raising capital and that was never an idea I had saved probably as a 23-year-old I had 100 just over 100,000 saved and he had some money saved in a 401k and we went and our both our wives were stay-at-home moms at this point or no his wife was working and we just went all in and writing code and then getting our client you know trying to get some early clients and really in the end the problem was too complicated without getting into too too much detail back then to map the entire you North American highway system in technology there were gaps in the highway system and so you'd buy this data from the government and it was incomplete and so we're literally drawing using Arc they're called arcgis tools we're literally drawing the highway system of the United States where there are gaps so that when we're plotting your truck it's not floating out in space and between that and some other technical challenges we just didn't have the the money to see that project through so after a few years we had to throw in the tow I mean did you guys make any money on it at all or was it a total bust total bust got L you never did you you had no client we had a couple clients and our biggest client was a company called Burlington motor carriers in Indianapolis and they were more of a carrier than a say a logistics company and they went bankrupt they had 11 or 12,000 trucks and they went bankrupt on us and that was sort of the reconsider the situation moment for us when we thought huh how are we going to how are we going to live how are we going to finance this thing now we've lost the client we've been working with for several years they're gone yep and we were starting to get pretty nervous that we may not we may not have enough Runway to pull this thing off we made real progress it was we were excited but we were also starting to get we we had been getting kicked in the face air a bit and so we were starting to to wear down you know um I'm interested in how the ending was for you guys because a lot of entrepreneurs run into this right they get so gung-ho about a business they put a lot of Blood Sweat and Tears into it dump a lot of resources and then at some point there's a necessary ending which is often times not easy so what was that like for the two of you when it came like the realization the actually shutting it down um it was brutal um I had two little kids at home my wife was a stay-at-home mom we had burned all of our money I sold one of our cars and bought a $2,000 car from my grandmother and my wife is driving like a Nissan maximan would have rather been in a Yukon or sequoia or something you know with the kids it was brutal and I'm sort of lost like what do I that that really defines what happened next for me I was lost I just knew I didn't want to go work for somebody but I was not sure what to do and so I went on this journey of trying to figure out what am I going to do next and I started piecing things together my business partner was pretty beat down as well he had burned down their 401ks everything was essentially gone for them and he went and got a engineering job essentially in technology architectural job and was able to start piecing things back together and their life started to improve pretty quickly because he made a lot of money whereas in my CA it was very hard for him though in fact to to a degree that for a number of years it was almost hard to talk on the phone because we would re he would recite or we'd recite the events prior and I just didn't want to have those conversations it was and so it was a really really difficult time so he went off and got aob job you weren't going to do that so then what was kind of your next step you you got two kids you got a wife who can't be happy no it's it's hard I mean I'm amazed at what she put up with yeah she's been on this whole journey and I just can't you know it's back to you've got to have the right spouse to go on this journey with you and fortunately she was the right one because it was it was a Beatdown and it was stressful for me as well so I just started piecing together whatever I could and I ultimately decided to just start doing Tech Consulting and try to scr together a Client List and start offering to build software or if I had to a website something really Elementary for them whatever I could put together you know you mentioned the right spouse so many times you know a wife would say Jonathan what the hell are you doing like just get a job wait tables do whatever you have to do what sort of conversations did she have with you back in those days you know I might have put all that out of my mind cuz I don't remember remember the main things I remember would have been around the kids like I gave the example she's driving a cheap n on Maximo we' bought she would want to be in a sequoia needs more room for the kids we have i' I started young and so all of our friends have always been seven and 10 years older than us so now in my world UNC compared to they're driving a BMW and a whatever living in a big house doing the vacation thing and we're not doing any of those things we're building and so that is the main thing I remember I remember feeling that pressure and I remember having that conversation of well eventually but we we need to wait we can't do this yet I'm not getting that loan to buy that thing I want to build and that's the main stress she was good about it but I know it was that that moment where that started and for for the next probably six years there was periodic elements of stress like that that I very much remember so after the Fallout from the software company what was the next venture you got into so I'm looking for anything to make money and I approached Cinemark movie theaters I knew a guy that was it manager there and I just wanted to go to dinner with him to see if there was any opportunity for contract work with them in the tech side years earlier I had this really good friend in middle school and he remembered that relationship I hadn't that guy had moved away I never saw him through high school he brought that guy to dinner just because they were friends and he knew I happened to be friends in the past that guy had just started a cleaning company and that guy uh he said hey I need help with bookkeeping I need a website I need all these things I'll give you 1,500 bucks a month it wasn't full time or anything just help me out get these things done I can afford 1,500 bucks a month so I start helping them out and then I start getting these random projects and I start piecing stuff together and not long after working with them they said hey do you want to be our partner in this thing this cleaning company and so I went down that road I kept doing the tech Consulting the whole time and that's when things started to improve but it was you know financially we've been kind of wiped out so it was it was still very very gradual and I'm just working all the time now and what came first for you next was it City turf or was it Serv as autopilot oh City Turf go so I was doing the cleaning thing I was doing the tech Consulting thing and then I started City Turf part-time and then a couple years after that one of my tech Consulting clients brought me in on a healthc care application in the in the health space software related and I was doing that so by 2007 or8 I had four things going and so City turf was this very part-time thing that started while I was doing everything else completely on a whim it wasn't something I had planned to do it was a very accidental thing I ended up back in okay in retrospect did it make sense doing all those things at once or would it have been you think more effective for you to focus on one particular venture or you just did that out of necessity I did out necessity I had always wanted to be in Tech I didn't want to be in any of this other stuff I came to like and find real potential in all these other businesses but I had wanted to be solidly in Tech and that's all I really cared about so I would describe all of that as me just trying to figure it out and to answer your question with out on absolute certainty I would say it would have been better to be focused and that's ultimately what I arrived at so we started having this idea for service autopilot because I've got City Turf I've got the cleaning thing and I'm trying to find software products to run this everything's desktop I know it's all moving to the cloud none of these software products will allow your company to really scale to something big and the ones that would were Silly expensive so I just started thinking there's this real opportunity and so my old business partner John and I started talking about this idea for service autopilot but I was so consumed with all these other businesses that we were just talking about it and it wasn't really moving forward and I arrived at this place around 2009 where I've got two little kids I'm working every minute of the day it's brutal and I decide I have to get this thing down to just a couple things in life and this would be an example of focus and it went down I took it down to basically just the city Turf business which was still a small little total part-time thing and this idea of building service all pip that hadn't even launched yet and in both the software company that was in the health space and in the cleaning company I gave back all My Equity just to get out and be done like that and I walked which was a very very difficult decision because those two things had serious potential and I got it down to the two things I thought would be the most most promising that I had 100% control over and that was the best thing I've ever done in my life and there are so many individuals I know because I've also done coaching in these industries I know so many people that I really see an excitement on the part of business owners to start the next thing and the next thing especially when they get build a leadership team and get a bit free or when they hit a road when things get hard or growth feels a little more difficult they quickly pivot to this idea of the next thing and what I learned is abs abolute focus and growing things bigger is where all the speed and all the money's at 100% I mean I see it all the time it's easy to chase the bright shining object right things slow down you want to do something more interesting but you're right you often lose focus so with regard to so you're running C City Turf and then you surface autopilot was just an idea that had been kind of simmering for a period of time what was the Catalyst that actually made you start to jump into it the elimination of everything else okay so that stuff's gone as soon as it's eliminated we're in and so okay so the founding observers autopilot was it like I'm going to make something I can use my own business and maybe commercialize it or was it like I'm going all in I'm going to try to commercialize this right out out of the gate I built it for the market I I actually thought we were starting Imp pluming in HVAC because I theorized that market had more money whereas in the lawn care pest cleaning those trades while there's money you I was seeing a lot more guy in a truck and you have plenty of that in hbsc but they tend to make more money for one guy in a truck and so I theorized that market was more lucrative Financial they could pay more for technology but pretty quickly as we started to and so that wouldn't have been actually serving any of the businesses I owned but as we started thinking about it I was trying to figure out who has pain really early in their business where they need a solution and the HVAC or Plumbing fella can use Google they can use a calendar in QuickBooks whereas somebody who's running routes that have 20 stops a day it's not working in a calendar and they need billing software maybe credit card software really fast so we decided to actually go into what I was already doing which was the green industry and we decided to make that our first market and so we're going to build in that vertical and then we're going to move the next vertical and so on and so forth eventually get back to HVAC so because we started in green I ended up being able to use the technology in my business City Turf and City Turf is essentially the guinea pig but what happened is because that business started growing quite quickly and became much bigger than the most of the Lawn and landscape companies out there we actually couldn't build a lot of the functionality that my company needed to really get a foothold in the market we had to build kind of down Market offering and so while my company used it they got they didn't really get everything they needed if that makes sense yeah so it was you and one partner working on John yeah John so you and John are working on this I mean are you guys you're referring to service a pilot yes yeah are you guys actually doing the coding yourself or oh we did everything really yeah so I never wrote I never wrote a line of code on that software on the previous software company I wrote half the code on this company I was all sales all marketing I did the early support training I did that side figuring out what needed to be in the product and John did everything development and we started hiring de we hired our first developer in the first year and we started hiring as quickly as we could afford and but I never wrote any code for that software but we built everything in house we didn't license anything we built everything from the ground up so how long did it take you from inception to having your first 100 customers on service autopilot first year okay yeah so we started way down Market with a $29 and a $47 month offering yep quite Elementary and when you have John's a very good developer and when you have a really small development team you can go really fast and so we he was able to knock out a lot of stuff really quickly as you start bringing in more people it's like any business as you start adding more people more complexity everything slows down so the early days went pretty quick where we were able to get something to Market that was subpar compared to frankly every other offering in the market but we were able to tell a compelling story and so we got our first 100 clients that same year and so right out of the gate you were competing with software like real green for example oh yeah real green was the probably the main pest pack uh you just you name any of the the those kind of players they were the known names at the time and there were a bunch of others that are gone today but those would have been the big names you know you you guys turn out to be phenomenally successful at this but I I I often scratch my head when entrepreneurs look at like tick Pest Control you've got pest pack and surf suite and rout of all there's a dozen software programs and it seems like every year somebody else says okay I'm going to create a new one yeah I mean did you not stop and think to yourself well why do this cuz does it real green have a lock on the space I mean what sort of thoughts went your head sure of course all those things made me nervous the one thing that gave me Comfort on real green specifically was I actually when I had City turf or started City Turf I wanted to use real green but real green was fully Des top and they thought the cloud made no sense and I thought to myself okay that doesn't make any that just I didn't get it yeah and so I ended up using a different desktop software solution and I wrote my own little software to work with it myself at night Y and had real green been awesome and they had been heading in the direction of cloud there's a chance I would have thought maybe there isn't as much opportunity here but that gave me a lot of confidence I wasn't seeing anybody going where I thought Tech was going and I was still nervous about it I didn't feel like this was certainty that this would work out but I had a pretty high level of confidence that we could be Scrappy and figure it out and I and the confidence came from I didn't see anybody moving where I thought the future was going and John and I say me John and I had the same belief so you started doing this in 2009 you get your first H C January 10 I guess we're really talking about it and starting to flesh out the design we set up a server in November of 10 we have nothing yet or nine so very end of nine but 10 is really when we started going and and at what point in time did you sit back and say okay I've actually got a real business that's scaling by the end of 13 we felt pretty confident by 14 I felt really good but it took a bit because we were it was a diff different time than today the people even in 2012 and 13 were worried about this Cloud thing they thought I could lose their data or steal their data cuz I had this city Turf business so some people thought I was going to log in and look at all their information and steal it right I it just made no sense to me but there are lots of things like that a lot of things we had to overcome to convince people that we were the direction but we were now getting enough traction by 14 and we were past break even took a while for us to get to break even because I never raised capital and never used debt and we knew we from 14 on I was certain we were going to do good but it took a number of years to get there it was touch and go at times so basically up until 2014 roughly City Turf has made your bills for the most part City Turf would have it it was supporting the family yes by that time it would have been I was still yes I would have been making money for the first five years of City Turf I put all the money back into it I was trying to think about that yes I would have been making money at that time and I had rebuilt my savings so we could subsidize our lifestyle with savings at that time and I had used a at one point in service l i was funding it at 20,000 a month out of my pocket but that only was for one calendar year and so yeah you're right that's that's probably how I was living at that time okay so what was the so as you continued to scale service autopilot you ultimately ended up partnering with a private Equity Firm in what year was that that was we the deal was closed right 19 the end of 19 August right yeah we I wish it we've talked about this I wish it had been so yeah we closed the deal at the very end of August of 19 and and what what took you down that path ultimately back to real green actually that's funny so real green is the very same reason I had confidence cuz I thought they were good I that I don't I'm not being I'm not diminishing them I thought they had the best technology at the time they just weren't heading towards cloud and so I thought there was an opport opportunity and they only did fertilization Le control and I needed more very same thing in 19 18 or 19 I heard about this rumored transaction I knew about the transaction but I heard a rumor of the number on the real green deal and I knew real green was still heavily desktop with their foot in the door of cloud some number of users on the cloud software and I thought man if they got that for still a desktop heavily desktop software solution maybe we should actually start answering some of these private Equity calls that were coming in all the time and that led me to say well just I asked John CU neither one of us wanted to sell we wanted to keep building I would have if I were to have put a date to I would have said around 2025 we would have considered selling we it wasn't even something we entertained so I went to him and said hey what do you think of me just looking at the market because this is interesting and I went on this exploration of talking to tons of private Equity companies and Al ultimately talking to investment Banks and I got comfortable with the idea uh that this could be something interesting and maybe we should should see if it has legs okay so you did that transaction in 2019 but when did you along the way you started a very robust coaching and Consulting business yes so you're doing service autopilot you're running City Turf but of course I know a lot of folks who kind of grown their businesses under your wing over the years yeah so where'd that come in yeah so I wasn't running City Turf I hadn't ran I had there was a team a person who's now a partner in the company but back then he was running the whole company so I had complete Freedom there I didn't have to do anything ever for that business service autopilot Now call it I think I started we started coaching in I think 16 15 or 16 I don't recall which 15 beginning at 15 service autopilot is now doing pretty good I don't have a full leadership team but we're really moving in a direction where I'm getting more and more time we're bu that team and to try to fund service autopilot years earlier I did these things called roundtables where four companies could fly in they'd pay 3,000 bucks each we'd sit in my office for two days go out and have cool dinners and I'd just help them with their business I didn't have to do any prep it was super easy this is the very beginning I did eight of these things in a row it just generate a little bit of marketing money for the service autopilot business and I really like that and and all of those individuals became even better service autopilot members and so then this idea was brewing in my mind because I didn't see any there were a couple people in the green industry helping other companies but I didn't see a lot and so I had this idea and in at the end of 14 we threw our first I threw an event to try to sell my coaching program had 120 companies come and basically within but between that event and 30 days after we sold out we put an artificial 100 cap uh limit on 100 companies can join our coaching program we sold it out in 30 days and that was the launch of the coaching business and it's just something I did in parallel with service autopilot and frankly I did it because I just wanted to there wasn't a great strong argument for why I was doing it I just wanted to and then I ended up really liking it so you did that how many years did you do that for you're not doing that now no I did that up until 21 okay and what made you quit it was lumped into the surface autopilot deal it was too comp I didn't want to mess with the deal and try to carve that back out I knew that nobody was really interested in that part of the business in terms of somebody acquiring it and I knew it was going to probably just end it would be shut down when I left the business just as it essentially was but to have a conversation and try to carve that back out of it and then try to separate fin it just I didn't want to mess with it so there was no way to separate it and it got sold with the business and so for that reason I didn't continue it but now that this is back on your radar again doing this sort of stuff so let's talk about I think I was going to do it again but it's coming back around yeah yeah I want to talk about so you made a you had a phenomenal exit from service autopilot you've got your city tur business now you're you've got five for 50 it's a next startup where are you going with this well City Turf will I'm I'm a little more active in City Turf I hadn't been active forever getting back involved in the business we're building on a marketing team a recruiting team there's some different things we're going to do um the fellow that's running it is also interested in it getting bigger and bigger and more quickly and so that excites me that sort of gets my brain back in the game as well I'm still there's a high probability I end up doing another tech business I could go either way okay um I am actually involved in a tech business that just hasn't been announced yet a little bit and then there's another one I might potentially do but the thing and then there's uh unlimited opportunities to invest in other Service delivery companies in fact Friday when I get home I'm working on a deal potentially there that I may or may not do so there's a lot of lot of things of that sort coming but the what you're alluding to that just nags on my brain is the coaching thing I've been so programmed around wealth creation you build something you can build a leadership it runs without you that is it can generate really extraord AR income but also extraordinary wealth coaching is none of that coaching can create nice income but it doesn't it's not a wealth creation event and so that nags on me but I'm I'm probably heading back that direction at some point not not this year but I'm super passionate about it because of everything I've ever done that's the place I feel like I've had the absolute most impact so it's not it it's not from a building a business perspective it's the fact that you actually really really enjoy doing this I got a tremendous amount of satisfaction out of it it's really satisfying to talk to somebody that was doing 300 when they joined and then they're doing 7 million when those numbers happen every single thing in your life changes and then with all the opportunity that's coming for there to be exit potential for some of these guys in gals it just becomes even more exciting that somebody that had a $300,000 business might eventually have a 10 or $20 million business with a legitimate High valuation exit that's transformational not for just them but their families absolutely and so I find that to be quite exciting as you start to think about other opportunities you talked about investment are you more focused on starting something from scratch yourself or actually investing in pre-existing operations wow this is my battle I feel like the smarter play is to come in early stage after it's been started and apply money and expertise but I also struggle in that I love creating things that's what I'm most passionate about it's a slower process but I also like I get to have more control on it even if I don't run it I can exert more control over that thing than say investing in another leader who has already got a million dollar business there you can apply influence but you really can't in my belief you can't really control that right and so I struggle with that I think the prudent game would be to come into a business that's already a 7 figureure business and apply money and expertise essentially fire to go faster that's I think that's the best play but that's not likely what you're going to do uh no I don't necessarily follow my advice so uh so I struggle with this one it it there's a whole lot of things happening right now we'll see kind of whatever closes and what comes together we'll sort of decide the direction I'm going but I I continue to be attracted to the starting from nothing phase I'm really interested you know so I know a lot of the guys you've coached over the years and I know a lot of these guys had these three four 500 businesses and now they've got significant operations what are you know what would you say are some of the more pivotal or the more important lessons you were able to help them with everything at the end day goes back to mindset it's what do you which isn't really the funnest thing to talk about for most people but what do you think you're even capable or deserving of getting have you even seen a vision of what's possible a lot of people look around and say there's only so much money in this industry they don't see tons of examp examp of people that are extremely wealthy and I'm saying what are you talking about you I we're not we're not seeing the same world here because there is unlimited opportunity and so it's partially showing them what that opportunity is and getting to them to believe that whatever Gap in their skill set exists at this moment that can very quickly be filled and they're just as deserving capable as anyone else that's one two traditional entrepreneur has got that squirrel problem like oh squirrel squirrel you know it said next shiny object syndrome I do too and I've learned the hard way that that's not how you build something big and so it's getting individuals to say who am I missing on my team that I need to partner with it's almost always operational somebody that's a really great operator and that Gap just filling that one thing if I were to do a rollup which at one time I thought I'd go around just buy companies whether or not I ever sold them because I like the money that spins off these businesses the first thing I would do is install an operator in every one of the companies it's almost always the Gap and not just any oper a really strong operator that is the game changer so it's that and then a third one would be looking at your data do you even know your numbers like do you yeah you can tell me what cogs and gross margin is you can tell me all these things but do you really know them are you looking at them all the time are you running your business by that data and if you get to a place where you are everything just gets so much easier and so those would be three of the really big ones that I just found we were there's so much more but we're just going over that over that and that that's the low hanging fruit as soon as you come into in my case my world those are the things we need to get done you know all these guys that you were working with are entrepreneurs and sometimes entrepreneurs you know they tend to be Visionaries um but they're not always the best operators yeah and so with some of your coaching clients did you ever run across the issue where the founder had a brilliant idea and he put together built a nice business but is not the right guy to continue running it that's the normal story that's the standard yeah that's why I said move number one is install and operator so you just I mean if you ever sat down and suggested to your clients like hey why don't you remove yourself from the orb chart yes but it takes a while to get to that realization for example I realized for myself that I'm in the very same camp if I start another business the very first most important hire for me if they're not my business partner is that operational individual I imp paired I'm a fantastic team paired with a really strong operator we can go really fast but if it's just me it's not going to be as good if it's just them they're going to be way too slow it's the team that's the magic so you're now you're the owner you're the oper the owner of this business you created it you got it to where it's at you're the guy or the gal it's a weird thing to say I'm a little less important in this deal somebody else could maybe do better than me I can say that but you have to eventually arrive at a place where you can internalize it because you're so frustrated you're willing to say okay what's what what should I do you it's hard to just explain that to somebody and they immediately get it and they immediately make that change you've got to they've got to feel the pain and then they make the change and then generally what we all do in our businesses is we build our businesses from from a people standpoint from the ground up so I don't have a lot of money so I'll get the $50,000 employee I'll invest in them over 3 years I'll build them into a more capable individual versus at some point these businesses actually have the money to go get a top level person that builds down and it's getting them to if you're going to hire this operational person to spend enough money that maybe it feels scary to get the right person that's a real partner because if you just go get an operations manager you're still largely influencing what they do and giving them ideas helping them hire helping them fire you're still helping them do that's not really somebody in a partner role and I don't mean Equity partner just a partner role that's really running things and so to really solve this operational challenge I'm referring to you have to go hire somebody that's done it they're expensive but when you get that right person it changes the whole game and you as the owner often times can really take a step back focus on the your areas of expertise the things that give you energy get you excited and then that thing just takes off I see it all the time so you're a guy who held a job for a small handful of years during the course of almost four years right so how is it though that you know when you're building a team you're hiring employees if you yourself don't want to work for anyone you're not comfortable with that you want to own things how is that you get your mind to be able to relate to the mind of somebody who's actually very comfortable being an employee right cuz I think about it from like an incentive structure perspective I think about it like a mindset perspective right you're going out trying to hire a manager for your business well you're trying to hire for a job that you would never take yourself so how do you put yourself in the mind of a team member the first thing that comes to mind because I did have a role at a company for 4 years I very much remember thinking about back on all the things I hated at that job I liked it but just what are the things I didn't like one example would be that it felt like the team never knew what was going on we weren't in the know we never had a seat at the table and I carried a lot of those little this is so this is where it started carried those little learnings of what did I like what did I not like how do I apply that to my business to make people feel more part of this thing feel like they have more influence on where this is going they have more control on their over their future how do I then when you said we never really knew what was going on what were you talking about like we never knew what the strategy was we didn't never do change all the time or you would there would be three people in a meeting and you're not in that meeting which is fine you not everybody needs to be in the meeting but what is the plan for the year where uh who are we hiring how are we growing what's improving what are we changing how are we doing Financial we knew nothing you know You' know nothing about the company and so all you really live on is rumors and what I noticed that I I had a craving cuz I I would have been the kind of employee you'd want I want if I knew more I felt like I could do more to help and I wanted to feel more like an Insider than just a robot performing the work to generate owner money for the owner and I remember really internalizing and say okay when I have a business how do I make people feel like they are part of this thing and we're all marching in the same direction on a mission to build and that that's just one example and I feel like when you bring people in like that they never like we don't Serv all we never lost people oh mean almost never we moved them out of the organization but almost never did somebody leave there are a few examples City Turf incredibly High retention because I think when you make people feel like they're really part of a thing it's a game Cher both in terms of retention them referring bringing their friends and other people in and uh the ability to recruit when the word spreads so that wasn't exactly what you were asking but that's sort of where my brain first goes is like okay how do we create something that people want to live in this world how do we help them get what they want in their life cuz if I help them get what they want they're staying how did you you know at City ter for Ser autopilot how did you make them feel that way I mean were you particularly transparent with them about financial performance for example not as much on financial but we were transparent on almost everything else I felt like that was going on as we got bigger there were some mistakes made where we were running so fast that I felt we stopped communicating as well for example I used to all we do lunches and every month I'd stand up in front of the company and talk about what's going on while everybody has lunch and every month I gave a state of the union video to the team every quarter I gave an update on where we're at what's the road map where we're going I did that and then there were times where that stuff kind of fizzled and me we were just so busy and I felt that I could feel that but we did all kinds of other stuff if if you know you were on our team and we knew that you wanted to go to Japan well instead of giving you a bonus how could I get you to Japan a things like that um we did a lot of involvement in our community and people love that people would volunteer and be part of that stuff and then in the software business this is probably what led to the coaching we talked about we're not just a software company our we would explain what our role is in the market to help grow the industry and help grow these companies and I had I would describe exactly what somebody's life is like working inside one of these Lawn Care Pest Control business what does it feel like to be running a 200 million2 200,000 our company what are they dealing with we would try to help our team really understand that and then show them how we're impacting that and so then they're more bought in is it's it's a lot of things and it's a fair bit of work but I think that's how you build a really interesting business well Jonathan I appreciate you stopping in here today it's great to see you at P thanks John you bet are