‘My business then and now was my vehicle to level up in life. If you’re doing business correctly, every 3 or 4 years, you should evolve completely into a different person because the business is going to require things of you.’
Bryan Clayton cofounded GreenPal, a mobile app and online freelancing platform for lawn care providers. Having gone through humble beginnings, he knows the value of consistent hard work. Find out how he got started and grew ‘the Uber of lawn care.’
‘There is no one move on the chessboard that wins the game.’
Tune in to get business success tips, as well as gain insights on
– business opportunities
– entrepreneurship characteristics
– scaling in business
Connect with Bryan here:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-clayton-a96b33214/
GreenPal: https://www.yourgreenpal.com/
John: Thanks for listening today, don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode. My guest today is Brian Clayton, the co-founder at GreenPal. GreenPal is a mobile app and online freelancing platform for lawn care providers. Thanks for joining me today, Brian.
Bryan: John, thanks for having me on your show. Great to be here buddy.
John: So, I know that you’re in Mexico the weather looks amazing back there, how are you enjoying it so far?
Bryan: Man, it’s awesome. That’s one of the cool things about running an online business is that you can run it from anywhere with an internet connection, so I’ve been traveling down in Mexico for the last two or three weeks and all over South America, so that’s one of the things I love about running this company is that my team is all over the world, so I can be anywhere in the world and travel is kind of a big passion of mine.
John: That’s amazing! So we already started because you resonate with me, you get me because I started this digital agency, vagabond kind of person you know curious so let’s get right into it. I wanted to ask, tell us the listeners about how you got into GreenPal? And maybe your back story and you can go as far back as you would like and share what got you started motivated to start your own company.
Bryan: Awesome! Yeah, so today I’m the co-founder and CEO of GreenPower like you said it is the mobile app that works like Uber for lawn care. So if you’re a homeowner you need to get your grass cut rather than calling around on craigslist, or Yelp, or Facebook you can just download our app, somebody comes out and takes care of the lawn mowing for you. We are an eight-year overnight success, my two co-founders and I have been at the business for almost a decade. And the first few years were really tough getting this business going but here we are eight years in and we’ve got several hundred thousand people using the app to get their lawn mowed doing multiple eight figures a year in revenue and it started off very humbly, and very small but we kind of stuck it out, and got the marketplace going. Now we’ve got a good profitable business, we haven’t raised any outside capital either so we’re self-funded and bootstrapped which is kind of rare for local marketplaces like ours but before GreenPower actually had a landscaping company. I started mowing grass in high school as a way to make extra cash. I was actually forced into the business by my father who said, get off your butt I got a gig for you to do, you’re gonna go mow the neighbor’s yard. Luckily he made me go cut the neighbor’s grass because something about just making 20 bucks for an hour’s work stuck with me and so I just kept at that business all through high school, all through college and over a 15-year period of time built that little lawn mowing business into one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee and got it over 150 employees, over 10 million a year in revenue. In 2013, that business was acquired by one of the largest landscaping companies in the United States. So growing that first company in the long lean business just me to push more like me, and 90 trucks, and learning how to do that from scratch along the way just through trial and error. I learned kind of the hard way of how to build a business and then after I sold it I retired, and I got bored, and I thought okay, well now I want to do something easier. I want to do a tech startup and I guess it was kind of naivete as an asset but I didn’t know, luckily I was naive because if I know how hard it was gonna be I never would have done it and so that’s 22 years in one industry. I’ve never had a job. I’ve always worked for myself and I’ve seen this seeing the lawn care business from every angle you can see from.
John: That’s amazing! Well, that’s your expertise, right? That’s your wheelhouse, 22 years of doing something. So, well you know the ins and out of every facet, right? From the products, the people, the clients, the questions, the objections, the pricing you know it, and that’s what I mean becoming an expert in whatever profession, every niche, or everything that you’re in just know it inside, out so I love hearing that.
Bryan: I agree, I think it can be helpful to solve your own problem too you know when I started GreenPal I was kind of solving my own problem. I had spent 15 years in the lawn business so then the ability to approach it and understand. Okay, this is how you build the mobile app to make it run smoother, it’s how you build the Uber for lawn care. I see a lot of folks you know try to try to start a business, or try or try to innovate in an industry, they have no real experience in and so it’s like well, let’s take two or three years and maybe start work in that industry and then emerge into it like I saw an interview the other day with a guy who’s a CEO of a company called a slice, which is like a marketplace for pizzerias, small pizzerias and he worked in a pizzeria for two or three years. Before he started the slice I think that can be helpful. I think it’d be helpful to be solving your own problem and spend time in an industry kind of like I did.
John: No, that’s amazing! I wanted to ask even prior to starting this business. I know you mentioned your dad push you into getting kind of a job and doing something, right? Instead of hanging out with friends and playing sports or whatever it was, were your parents entrepreneurial themselves like did you have mentors and you have people that push you to start this on your own?
Bryan: That’s a great question. The first entrepreneur in my family ever and for me, for my dad it was less like hey, go start a business and more, get off your butt because I was what I was. Actually, playing Nintendo was playing Super Mario brothers maybe Super Mario Kart, come to think of it and he said, get off your ass you’re gonna go mow the neighbor’s grass and it was more or less, my dad was like you’re gonna earn the value of hard work and luckily he did that for me because telling how my life would have turned out differently had he not. And then for me like one other beneficial thing about starting a lawn mowing business that I was working for a lot of wealthy clientele, so at a very young age I was exposed to people who own businesses, to people who were Doctors, Lawyers CPA’s you name it. People who could afford lawn care services like at a young age they were my clients and so I always like admired them and was serving them and these beautiful homes and like I thought to myself that’s gonna be me one day and I’m gonna live in this very neighborhood that I’m cutting grass in and I made a goal to move into the neighborhood that I was mowing yards in by the age of 30. And I was able to do that and I did it all just in the landscaping business so I think there’s a correlation between the least sexy and alluring, your idea the better, your chances of success because the idea is that the businesses that aren’t very sexy and aren’t very appealing to go into a lot of times are the ones that aren’t, as competitive and that not everybody’s looking at.
John: Exactly! So the blue-collar worked hard grinded out kind of businesses are the ones that a lot of people don’t want to do so there’s a lot more need, there’s a lot easier barriers to entry but also tons of opportunity for you to actually make a difference, right? So you early age was able to vision you know have a vision in terms of goals and have a mindset to shift say, “I want to be like them” so that’s amazing to hear.
Bryan: Exactly! The business can be your vehicle to that kind of stuff. For me, the way I’ve looked at the last 22 years of business is that my business then and now was like the vehicle for me to level up in life, for the vehicle from for me to achieve prosperity, for the vehicle to meet it for me to make something of myself and that I could like pour my soul in to pour my life’s energy into and it kind of take me places I never would have gone. And also me personally evolve if you’re doing business correctly every three or four years, you should evolve into a completely new person because the business is going to require things of you. It’s going to require you to read all of these books that you have back here. It’s going to require you to become a better leader, a better manager like when I started GreenPower I had to learn how to code. I had to learn how to build software, never in a million years would have watched a tutorial on Youtube on how to write software but I did for like three years because I had to because the business required that of me. So that’s one of the cool things like it extracts these things from you that you otherwise may not have ever done and done with your life because the marketplace requires that of you.
John: But that also means different people, different folks like we’re wired, differently as entrepreneurs because we know that what it takes is time, growth, learning, and commitment. And it’s that daily habit of getting better, right? Not everyone’s willing to do, put in the time effort because they see a social post or Youtube video saying they can make hundreds or millions of dollars like that.
Bryan: There’s no one move on the chess board that wins the game.
John: All that time, right? That you committed early days making twenty dollars an hour to then eventually, making a hundred and maybe a thousand dollars an hour it took years to harvest these foundations of building a team, understanding client demands, pricing it well, taking care of your customers you know equipping them with insurance and all this stuff. It’s not an overnight success because it takes years to develop these systems, processes the foundation, so I love hearing that you started from just hard work.
Bryan: Yeah and I think a superpower can be consistent like if I had one superpower it’s consistency day in, day out doing the small things over and over again for a long period of time because those things do build up and everything that is big, starts very small like entrepreneurship’s full of all these dichotomies like things that you have to hold in your head, that don’t necessarily add up and one of them is you have to have this huge audacious goal like this big vision and that could be you want to have a million-dollar business or a 10 million dollar business or a billion-dollar business. Whatever it is a big goal but you also have to think and act very small and execute at a small level for a very long period of time and which is it like do the small stuff, do these little small things or does it make big moves. It’s really both and I think business teaches you how compound interest works and how all of these things add up over time and like it’s almost a snowball and next thing you know five-ten years goes by and you actually have something, so it likes to your point. Yeah, it’s it there is no overnight success but like I mean very very rarely and even when you do, see one that is an overnight success. What you don’t realize is a lot of times that founder has crashed and burned on two or three other things before they started that thing and so you’re not really looking at one or two years, you’re really looking at like most times 5, 10, or 15 years because they’ve already tried and failed on two or three other ventures and they took all those learnings and put them into the one that looked like an overnight success.
John: That’s amazing! I love hearing how you mentioned and said, that because just like sports athletes you know NBA Football Soccer Stars. Yes, they hit the peak at 25, 30 but no one talks about those 20 years of fall 14 hour days eating. Well, coaches, training, commitment, sacrifice but they see that MVP all-star or whatever and they’re like I want to be like them but no one’s willing to put in that time and effort and work right there’s a skill yes they’re like keep performing, there’s one in millions of them that can hit that specific goal but it’s like business ownership you don’t have to be an all-star winning. A championship you can just make it to the NBA, it’s like entrepreneurship if you make it after 10 years that’s a success on its own, right? A lot of them can’t even meet it.
Bryan: That is the NFL and like that, the thing is we all have access to this I mean athletes are gifted. They’re born with a talent like professional athletes but as entrepreneurs, we all can get in the game and use the analogy, one to extract it, one layer forward. I’ve read an article this coach was interviewing Kobe Bryant and he said I just want to watch you practice. I just want to sit, observe and watch your practice, see what you do to be Kobe and so he watches Kobe Bryant practice for like an hour and like Kobe is doing the easiest lay-ups over and over and over again. He’s shooting free throws over and over and over again like it’s just the fundamentals the same stuff that high school kids do and he literally just did the fundamentals over and over for an hour straight. He’s not doing 360 slam dunks and all of these things, he’s literally just doing the fundamentals and I think that’s the key to success is the fundamentals consistently is how you achieve greatness and these are fundamental principles of the universe that apply to pretty much everything in life.
John: So this is interesting that you mentioned that because I truly believe very similar to you. It’s consistent daily activities with those similar habits, right? A lot of people are always looking for both hacks, fastest ways to scale, there’s a magical pill out there to make hundreds of thousands of subscribers with one click of the button, right? What would you say to those people because they’re not in the game, they don’t really understand business ownership. How long it takes, how hard it is to actually run a business, let alone click on a social ad that guarantees a millionaire in a month.
Bryan: Yeah, until you get into the game and you start to see it for yourself because we all want to be seduced by that, we all like it a lot. I get a lot of people to ask me like well, I don’t want to start a business because I hate my job and I work my butt off at my job and I don’t want to work that hard anymore and I want your life like that’s what they tell me like I want to travel you and I want to. I want your life so I want to start a business because it will be an easier life and the reality is it’s nice, no it’s not. You’re going to work 10 times harder for half the money for like a long time because your business is going to require all the extra cash that you can make and put back into it and so it takes a long time but at least you have ownership in it. It’s your thing and it can almost be like your expression into life in general like it can be an extension of you and it can be your baby and to me that’s invaluable and it does take a long time to get these things going and there is no one move on the chessboard that wins the game and there really isn’t any shortcuts. Yeah, you can work efficiently, smarter, and leverage you can like there’s you don’t leap, you leverage like you can leverage outsourcing delegation. You know investing in yourself learning skills like there’s all these sorts of things you can do to leverage to get there but there is no shortcut, there is no one way to grow, hack your way to success it’s a lot of little things done day in, day out for a long time.
John: Definitely, so a couple of questions I want to ask you, did you ever hire coaches, mentors throughout this business journey of yours from your previous company to this company?
Bryan: So, one of my favorite quotes is from Mark Cuban he says, never take advice from somebody who hasn’t done or is doing what it is you want to do. So that’s a trap, a lot of people fall into is that they’ll pay these online coaches or they’ll pay these mentors or consultants and they’ve never done anything, they’ve never built a business, they’ve never hell, they never made any money in their life. How they gonna teach you, how to make money and so that’s step one in my book it never really seeks counsel from somebody who hasn’t done. What it is you’re trying to do so that’s step one for me you know my co-founders and I built a consumer mobile app in Nashville Tennessee. I don’t believe there’s any other consumer-facing tech company to come out of Nashville. Now Nashville is known for country music, we’ve got a good healthcare industry, we’ve got a good automobile industry, we got a lot of good industries in Nashville but consumer internet is not one of them so the first thing I did is like I was trying to find mentors and stuff, people to coach me on how to build a mobile app and I couldn’t find anybody who’s done what it is. I was trying to do so I quickly thought okay well, this is a waste of my time and so what I started doing was I went to Youtube university. I literally sought out every single entrepreneur. I could online to learn from them and so I have probably a hundred mentors, most of them have never met me but over the years they have guided me and mentored me too. So I can learn from them and learn how they did, what they did so one guy got like Andrew Chen you got, another guy named Casey Winters, another guy named Brian Bedford, these guys are like they were growth leads at fast-growing tech startups and so they talk about how they do things like SEO, how content, how they do A B testing, how they think about ways to achieve growth with their businesses and like these are guys that nobody’s ever heard of like 99.9 people never heard of them but they are the people who are doing what it is that I want to do. So that’s who I learned from and over a decade I’ve consumed everything that probably 50 people have put out and some of them do have some premium courses like Brian Dean. For example, I’ve bought his premium course and it was worth every penny, so sometimes I will put down for the premium course or the premium coaching but in most cases 90 of what I’ve learned has just been passively asynchronously from people who are writing blog posts, doing video interviews, talking at conferences, and it’s all free what a great. what a time to be alive, what a time to start a business.
John: So, that’s great advice, Bryan. By the way, you’re someone that seeks out information and you’re actually gonna consume it and take action. A lot of people are very passive and they don’t even know that for you to then grow and scale and then sell your business, you know what it takes to then start your own company, to then understand that there’s people that have already gone through certain things and you just want to use them, their knowledge inside, skill set, gain, and absorb as much as you can from them to utilize it for your own purpose, for your own business, right? That’s a skill set on its own like a lot of people don’t even think that way and because you’ve already built a business that strives and got sold, you think differently than the newbie kind of entrepreneurs that don’t get it yet.
Bryan: Yeah, it’s like the marketplace. Is the marketplace is an unrelenting purveyor of feedback and so the marketplace is always going to tell you where you suck, is always going to tell you where you got to improve, it’s always going to tell you what you have to level up and if you want to play the game you’re going to have too. you’re going to have to seek out the knowledge and apply it for me. One of the big unlock in 20 years of business was that when I realized that I could pretty much learn anything I had to learn if I was sufficiently motivated I could learn how to do enough statistical analysis. I could learn how to do enough coding. I could learn how to do enough product design, enough photoshop. I could learn how to do just enough to be able to build a team around me and once I learned that I could pretty much learn anything I had to do, that was a big unlock for me and a quote from Mark Zuckerberg that I like is he says you don’t want to be a know-it-all. You want to learn it all and so you look at Mark Zuckerberg probably the youngest CEO in history to run a billion-dollar business and I think probably at the age of 21, 22 was running a multi-multi-billion dollar entry business. This dude sought out as much knowledge as he could, he was a sponge and he literally learned as much as he could and was able to run one of the biggest businesses in the world at such a young age so I think business like teaches you that you can if you’re motivated enough, you can seek out and learn whatever it is. You got to learn to be successful and that’s one of the cool things about it and it forces you to do that. I’m not the most motivated dude without the business I wouldn’t do this stuff but the business requires it of me that’s one of the things I love about it.
John: So, let’s go back to when you retired for the first time after you exit your first business, how long did you retire? And what got your bug back into doing the startup?
Bryan: Yeah, it was a growth period for me because I took some time off and I really thought that was it. I was just going to invest my money and travel. I think it hit me like I was in Costa Rica and the biggest problem I had faced that week was the bar ran out of my favorite type of tequila and I thought, wow, I am wired to be able to solve bigger problems of this. I am wired to do more and be more in life and so I thought and the other thing was like there was something missing. I don’t think follow your passion is a good advice because I’ve never been passionate about grass cutting but I think your business can be the purpose, your life’s purpose and for me, my business has always been the purpose behind what it is I’m doing, so whether it be like being a good steward of my employees or my stakeholders or building a good product for my customers to get value from that’s important to me that’s why I get out of bed in the morning and the business is the purpose for why I’m doing, what I’m doing and when I sold the company I didn’t have that anymore. So it was almost like a melancholy there was something missing and so it was like okay I need to be able to throw my creative energy and my life force into a new project and so the idea for GreenPower was a pretty straightforward one because I was kind of solving my own problem. Am I going to sit here and tell you I love the grind, love the slog, love starting a business from scratch. Hell, no. It sucks bad but for me it’s like I love the success. I love the progress. I love creating opportunities. I love seeing get my baby grow up it’s just a lot of fun like I think Ernest Hemingway said, I hate writing but I love having written and for me that’s like a business. I hate starting a business from scratch but I love having the business grow and see it succeed so that’s what it means to me.
John: I think that’s ultimately what everyone’s after, right? Writing their own kind of version of whatever the business is but a lot of people get caught up with BC startup money, and a lot of the silicon valley all these shows and the whole gamification of million-dollar, billion-dollar back businesses. The reality is those million-dollar businesses or even a couple hundred thousand dollar businesses easier to achieve gets you moving, growing, learning, and that success can be a stepping stone to your next venture. So you don’t have to go huge right and this is where a lot of people get caught upright, so I started this thing this agency not knowing anything about business, either bootstrapped everything but it’s like my baby, right? Like you grow it, you have a team, you enjoy it, you help them develop as a leader, you build systems, processes, learning, and that’s why you own it, you enjoy it more because you have some sort of success. Therefore, you’re taking it to that next level, when if you exit or not or you continue doing what you love.
Bryan: I agree. You literally read my mind it’s like a lot of people want to swing for the fences and do the 100 million, billion-dollar company. When they never ran a lemonade stand literally like start the small business, cut your teeth on that. It could be hell, it could be a home cleaning service, it could be a lawn mowing service like I had it could be a construction company, it could be a marketing agency. You could do anything you want but start a small business that takes no money and cut your teeth on business ownership get a track record maybe put a hundred thousand or five hundred thousand dollars in the bank, then do the big one it’s like a baby step your way and hit a single or a double then try to hit the grand slam. I think a lot of people like tell me is when I’m doing coaching and mentoring I do that as a hobby in Nashville, a lot of people say well, I can’t start my business. I can’t like you because I don’t have access to capital anybody will give me any money. Well, listen to this 10 million idea you want to start that, you need like 5 million dollars for let’s get a small business going for a few years and let’s get some money in the bank, then we can do that big one. So I love how you put that it’s like ease into it with something approachable, get a track record then go after the big idea.
John: But not everyone’s cut out for business ownership, entrepreneurship as well, they have to realize and acknowledge it because if they’re frustrated stressed and they’re not feeling it, right? Like it’s not for them, they get up miserable every single day. Yes, it’s the grind but how long can they endure to grind so it also depends on your situation, your life situation. You have a family, you have obligations, you’re caring for elderly families in different regions of the world as well. So understand that it may be timing someone in their 20’s might not be able to start something until they’re 30 or 40. When they have everything in order, right? Like don’t force things and you also mentioned starting small that means just like if you’re getting a job any career, right? Professional career it doesn’t just happen that you’re now the highest position as a CEO, as a company you move up from janitor to part-time to full-time customer service and you move up so it’s the same thing as business ownership, you don’t just jump in and say look I want to manage a 5 or 10 million company without even starting from the ground up.
Bryan: Exactly! It’s like when was the best time to plant an oak tree, 20 years ago the second-best time is today. So it’s in another one of my favorite success, coaches of all time a guy named Jim Rohn who was the predecessor to, he was a Tony Robbins before, Tony robbins and one thing Jim Rohn says, is that five years from now you will arrive the only question is where and the business can be the answer to that question. If you start today five years from now you will arrive and the business will get you there what you don’t want to do is be in that same cubicle that you’re sitting in today at the same job or maybe one level up with the same pay and the same crappy, work schedule in the same two weeks a year like five years from now you don’t want to be there, you want to be somewhere else let the business be the vehicle to get you there but on the other hand, like I’m saying it’s like get in the game. I’m trying to encourage people to start their own business but on the other hand Mark Cuban says, if you have to ask the answer is probably no. If you have to ask should I be an entrepreneur the answer is probably no because if you are an entrepreneur, you’re already working on it nights and weekends, you’re already working on it Sunday, you’re already thinking about it when you hit, when you’re in the shower in the morning you’re already staying up till 1 am, working on whatever it is you just already doing that nobody can talk you out of it so on the one hand. Yes, anybody can do it but on the other hand, you like if you are an entrepreneur you’re kind of by default taking action on the ideas so like literally hold yourself accountable to understand the difference.
John: Totally agree. I mean it’s weird but you and me we’re different because I take notes all the time throughout the day, the middle of the night. I wouldn’t wake up jot things out because my mind’s always thinking, right? People think I’m crazy but that’s the reality but we think differently, we’re always looking to grow, we’re looking at different ideas, marketing, tactics, and then we think of something and we’re like okay, we got to put that in writing and see when I can actually try it, right? And nothing is going to be perfect and yes you’re going to make a lot of mistakes, it’s more about growing, learning, and making mistakes, right?
Bryan: I agree. Success is a lousy teacher.
John: Exactly! So, where do you see yourself like I know you’ve been running this company GreenPal for a while, what’s your plans like what’s your five, ten year. Where do you see yourself right because I know you travel a lot, you have a lot of staff remotely you have a fairly great company, client and software like what’s going on in your next future.
Bryan: Yeah, we’re eight years in and so in many ways like it you can look back like we ended our first year in 2013 with 12 to 24 customers and half of my friends and family. Now we have several hundred thousand so it’s easy you can look back and say, wow, look how far we’ve come but it never feels that way, it always feels like day one and the interesting thing about business is it’s almost like a video game and every level is a new set of challenges. There’s a new final boss and there’s a new interesting level and you don’t want to play level three over and over again. You want to get to level 9, 10 and so for me you know eight years in what does the next five years look like we’ve got so much further to go in terms of being the default way people get their grass cut in the United States. At the instacart or the door dash or the postmates or uber eats and so we got a long way to go so to use the Jeff Bezos quote, it’s still day one. It always feels like day one. So actually, this business is starting now it’s fun to run like I’m having fun doing it so I’m going to keep doing it as long as I’m having fun.
John: And that’s a great answer because it shows that evolution you putting in the time and effort that the great perseverance early-stage days and you’re probably bleeding money, putting a lot of time in Africa. Why am I doing, what I’m doing when I just retired, right? You’re like what did I think why and now you’re actually enjoying it and that’s where you know you’ve hit a good stride and you’re actually enjoying life, right? Being able to do things that you love, having a great leadership team and people that you look forward to wanting to help and talk to and evolve and develop as well. So, i love hearing that it’s amazing, Bryan.
Bryan: Give it five hard years that’s my advice, five hard years that’s what it was for us to get the business going and it was ten dollars a day, food budget it was every dime. We could get to put back in the business my co-founder drove for back in those days, you could make like thirty dollars an hour driving for uber and so he would drive for uber he didn’t know how to code but we figured out that we could hire good developers in Pakistan for like 30 an hour. So he would drive for uber and like every hour of driving time was an hour of developer time and so literally the money would come from that uber account and it would go into the company bank account and he’s like I can’t code but I can drive and that’s how we like Bree, we got the business going from scratch by doing scrappy stuff that for many years.
John: But that’s a side hustle and that’s entrepreneurial, right? And that’s how you think creatively and that’s how you get through challenging times, right? You do what you have to do, it keeps me just buying stuff on Gigi and craigslist and selling it at a markup. Whatever it is whatever your service, your skillset is going sell it and hopefully that will help you get closer to your bigger goal, right?
Bryan: That’s right. I watched the interview with Rick Ross the other day and he said, I got my start at a car wash and they wouldn’t pay us anything but we worked for tips and I would tell you this is what Rick Ross said, I would tell these people listen I’ll go fill your car up, I’ll clean it as well, I mean I’ll do whatever. If you say give me enough time I’ll organize your cassette tapes in alphabetical order, he’s like you do whatever it is, you gotta do and you literally script by make as much money as you can and put that money back to work do that over and over again and you’ll get a snowball effect going but if Rick Ross I mean come on. I’ll organize your cassette tapes, is what he said.
John: That’s what it takes, right? Entrepreneurial have something different in them that 99 of the population doesn’t have and that’s what it takes, right? To be overnight success after 20 years.
Bryan: Yeah, that’s exactly right but you don’t want to do the same, you don’t want to be organizing the cassette tapes for 10 years in a row but be willing to do that for a few years. And get the ball rolling that’s my point and a lot of times people will get seduced by the grind and the hustle and they get stuck in that. Like hold yourself accountable to little goals and make sure those goals grow to knock them down so it’s the hustle, it’s the grind but it’s also that you gotta like you gotta measure the progress, you got to do both and if you’re willing to do both you know what a great time to be alive because you know you can literally chart your way through life by with your business I know I have.
John: That’s amazing! So outside of Mexico is there any other great destinations that you’re planning on travelling too.
Bryan: You know I want to get to Europe. I want to get to Greece. I want to get to Spain but they’re still not letting anybody in so I’ve been down in Latin America quite a bit love Colombia, love Mexico, love Argentina and so I speak pretty decent Spanish so that’s what’s in the internet’s great down here so I know anywhere where the internet connection. I can do what I got to do and I literally only put in probably three or four hard hours a day maybe sometimes as little as two and but anybody listening to this I don’t want you to think that you can like do that in the early days where it’s like very much seven days a week, very much like 12-hour days, 13-hour days but once we got some momentum going I was able to pull back and kind of enjoy the ride a little bit better.
John: That’s amazing! I mean it’s already an eight-year overnight success in this company and now you’re finally having the freedom to kind of enjoy it and that’s what the whole purpose of life is, right? Like, spend time doing things that you love, that you’re passionate with and grow along the way, right? Yes, mistakes you’re gonna find struggle but it’s how you endure that struggle, how you move along and progress right and interesting people along the way and learn and grasp and self-educate like what you did I absorb a lot of content this way but that’s fun and it seems like you’re loving it. So I love that whole persona of what you are living, Bryan. So definitely if you’re ever in Toronto give me a holler because we’ll for sure hang on.
Bryan: Absolutely, John. I would love that.
John: So how can the listeners either reach out to you, check you out or contact you?
Bryan: Yeah, anybody United States that doesn’t want to mow your own yard just download Green Pile in the app store or play store you’ll get hooked up with a good lawn mowing service in less than a minute. Does anybody wants to hit me up I spend most of my time on Instagram so you can follow me shoot me @bryanmclayton.
John: Awesome. Well, I share that in the show notes, Bryan. Thanks a lot I really appreciate your time. I know you’re probably on vacation at sun, sand, beach water but I know you’re committing a lot of time here, so I do want to thank you. Ultra grateful for that and for sure if you’re ever in Canada hit me up. Thanks a lot, Bryan.
Bryan: Awesome, John. Thanks for having me on the show.
