Ep 041 – Tech-Driven Evolution: Building Landscape Success with Greg Cole

Greg Cole [00:00:00] The Roots of Success podcast is for the landscape professional who's looking to up their game. We're not talking lawns or grass here. We're talking about people, process, and profits. The things deep within the business that need focus to scale a successful company from hiring the right people and managing your team to improving your operations and mastering your finances. We've got a brain trust of experts to help you nurture the roots of a successful business and grow to the next level. This is The Roots of Success. Hey guys, it's Tommy with Roots of Success podcast and I've got an amazing guest today and I will tell you he's so Amazing that him and I have the same last name. That's why this guy Greg Cole is amazing. How are you Greg? Greg Cole: I'm doing great. Brother from another mother. Tommy Cole: This is an easy sell right? Oh, this is great when we met well, it's been a couple years we met It's been really fun. And immediately you sent me some swag here from your office. And I got, I got the hoodie, I got everything. And they're like, wow, man, you, you represent your name real well. And I'm like, yeah, you have no idea. Right. I just kind of [00:01:00] fit right in. Greg is, is the owner of Cole landscaping out of the Boston, Massachusetts area. Super great guy, super great team. I I've been, he's been on our list for, for quite some time to get in here, but. He's been doing a lot of great things out there and his company and his team. And we're just really fortunate to have you on Greg. This Greg Cole: appreciate it. I'm super excited to be here with you. I just love your podcast. Tommy Cole: is great. Awesome. Start of Cole Landscaping Tommy Cole: You can you can listen to yourself here, here shortly. It'll be great. So let's get into this coal landscaping. What the heck happened? How did it get started? You know, tell me a little bit of background and we'll jump into all sorts of great stuff that we've got off on store for this. Greg Cole: Awesome. Thanks again. And yeah, Greg Cole, owner of Cole Landscape Inc. We're about 30 miles north of Boston, Mass. It's funny in Boston, kind of, we have our own language here. So if you don't know what Uba is, Ka, or Lobster, just take [00:02:00] off the R and put on an A, and that, that's kind of how we talk. Tommy Cole: It. Okay. Hey, hey, Greg Cole: A, A, we're not in Canada, but we'll take the R on a lobster and put an A there. It's, it's funny, I went to school for carpentry, and I soon learned that I didn't like it, and I went to work for two different landscape companies. And out of the two different landscape companies to this day, I've learned two valuable lessons by them. My first boss that I worked for never paid us on time. And I had a lot of IOUs for our older people, right? IOUs. So to this day, 34 years in business I joke around, it's taken me 27 years to figure out how to run it. But 34 years and I haven't missed one paycheck. So I'm very proud of that. Tommy Cole: That's motivation. I will tell you that right now, right? That's just like me My motivation as a project manager it was to never have a day where they couldn't show up in work. Greg Cole: Exactly. You take care of your people that take care of you. [00:03:00] We've grown, I mean, this year we're just under 10 million and we're on our way to 20. And we really scaled when we brought on our software platform and we went tech in 2019. We actually 3x the company back from 2019 till today. Tommy Cole: So great. So what was the second thing you learned at your old landscape company? Was there two? Greg Cole: Real, real simple. I mean, my, my last boss was just not a nice person. You would yell and scream and demote people. And to this day, I use that as a driver for myself to treat my, my staff with full respect. And the person on the rake is just as important as a person in the excavator. They're all doing the same job, trying to make money for them, themselves, their families and the company. Tommy Cole: It's nice to have those experiences, although they were really hard at the time But you didn't know what's going to turn out of those experiences in your own company, right? And now look at you Yeah, that's [00:04:00] great. Key Operational Software Tommy Cole: So let's jump right into this, Greg. We've got tons of stuff to get through. Um, one of the things that is fascinating to me is about this software thing, this operational software. I'll tee it up. You talked about, we're going to talk about some losses. Wins and losses that got started around 2019 pre COVID and I'm sure COVID hit and probably threw a wrench into everything and everyone wanted to bail out and figure, you know, something else. But, you know, like I always say they always say, Tommy, what's the best software? And I said, the best software is the one that you implement and use 100 percent of it. Like, I don't care. Just use it. Right. And so landscapers are just. adamant about finding all the reasons what it can't do. But 98 percent of it is what it can do. And so take, take me through that. So you, you're thinking of a software, you're figuring it out. And then you, I mean, you're scratching the surface to take me back to those days. Greg Cole: So 2018, we were, we were interviewing three different software companies and I ended up going with aspire. Actually Kevin Kehoe was my first Tommy Cole: [00:05:00] Yeah, Greg Cole: seminar ever seen and he was all numbers driven and I'm like, why do I need to know these numbers? I'm not, I'm just, I cut grass, right? I'm not, I don't even know the numbers. Tommy Cole: in this business for numbers. Greg Cole: Exactly. And now, and now today it, it drives me more than ever with all the matrices, but backing up, 2009, 2018, we started to implement Aspire software. We made the decision to go with Aspire. It was probably the best decision I've made in my life. From there, my tech just took off, but we made, we made a ton of mistakes on implementation. A lot of floundering. I think the biggest thing that we floundered on was we said, and Tommy, you just picked it up. You said, you know, they want it to do everything. Well, we tried to bend the software to call. And no one listened to the implementers and say, Hey, Greg, do it this way. And I think that was our biggest mistake. And we probably took six months to figure that out. And when we went to their methods and we held true to their methods, we just rocked and rolled. It was, it was very [00:06:00] fast. To get over that hump. And then our biggest success was we had a team of five people that were on, we called our Aspire team. And we met every week for two hours, wins, losses, and we just kept a notebook. We didn't even put it on, on pay on digital at that point. We just kept a notebook and we said, Hey, what are we winning? What are we losing? The wins we learned from them, the losses we tried to fix. And then we just put it out to our teams and we said, Hey, find holes in this thing. Yeah. Punch the crap out of it. Tell us what's wrong and we'll fix it and we'll fix it and aspire has been a great partner to us since 2019. So it's at 5 years in. I was down at ignite. I just spoke at the conference. And absolutely loved it. Absolutely loved everybody that's with Aspire and everything we do with Aspire, Tommy Cole: Yeah, so take me back. So the mistake was thinking we know how to be the engineers and we're going to build it our way. Right? Greg Cole: just saw me ID personality, Tommy Cole: Yeah, totally. Greg Cole: way or no Tommy Cole: Yeah, [00:07:00] and most people are right. We learn how to do landscaping and we want to be the software gurus that have spent millions of hours figuring it out. It's like building the rocket ship. Also, this is the coal rocket ship to go to Mars. Right? And we want to we want to argue with the system. How to be leader through change Tommy Cole: How as a leader tell me about the spirits. How is a leader? able to get the team through that experience and out of it in a positive way. What helped? Greg Cole: Real simple is us as owners. We understand the end result and anybody that's implementing any software, the owner or the, the head GM manager, whatever you classify it as, you know, Has to be the driver of the bus doesn't know how to drive, you know, know every nook and cranny, but know the end goal. And that's I knew the end goal. And I just said, hey, team for the people, this is what I'm trying to accomplish. Let's work on it. And I just stepped back and let them do it. They, they, they came back to me and said, this is, this is good. This isn't good. And we work together, letting the people do what [00:08:00] they do best. Because trust me, it's for me to type I'm I'm old school. I'm the hen and peck method. So yeah, it's not, it's not me. Tommy Cole: Yeah. And I hear a lot of times, most owners, a lot of owners will try to implement it themselves. They're the head guy that will just kind of run from it. And, 99 times out of 100 that is not gonna work. The owner can't do that. So you have to sort of what coach and mentor them along and pick them up when they fall down because it's going to happen and they're going to scrape their leg and they're going to, it's going to, they're going to fight. It's, it's a normal procedure in life, right? So you're there to motivate and pick them up and keep them along the journey. Greg Cole: just let them go. Let them do what they're, they've been hired to do. And it's funny because I say, Hey, manage your people, but don't micromanage them. There's a huge difference in that between manager and micromanager. You can manage and say, Hey, listen, I'm going to do it this. I want you to do it this way. Tell me if you have any roadblocks, come back and see me. Instead of hanging over their shoulder and, and micromanaging [00:09:00] demotivates people immensely. It's, it's, it's horrendous. Yeah. Tommy Cole: Yeah, love it. So you talked about, the, the success. The importance of Consistency Tommy Cole: This is just amazing, Greg, but the consistency of a meeting every single week to drive it. I've, I've traveled the last several weeks as I do. And I talk about consistency in anything you do, whether it's, you know, this, you know, where I'm gonna say, working out and exercising, it's Greg Cole: my God. Yeah. Tommy Cole: teeth every day. It's putting the seatbelt on in the truck every day. It's, But what happens a lot of times is we get started and then we just don't want to do and it's always the software's fault For not doing it, but when you create a sense of consistency of every single week all the time That's a whole momentum. So for you to say that that's that's massive anything to elaborate there. Greg Cole: hold the P hold the team accountable. We are, we're an EOS company, entrepreneurial operating systems. It's, it's basically a way we communicate to each other. It's the way we set goals. So we set a [00:10:00] 90 day world hold to it. If you're driving the bus, you've got to hold people accountable. In order to, to, to make this transition to, it's, it's not an easy transition. I, it's funny, I probably shouldn't even say this, but I call software implementation, a root canal with no Novocain. So let's just think about this, right? So you have a toothache, right? And you're in pain, you know, I don't have a ton of pain, but you're in pain. Tommy Cole: I need it now Greg Cole: You go to get the root canal. There's, there's no, there's no Novocain. Right. And you're in a ton of pain and then all of a sudden, boom, you're eating candy apples. You're out of, you're out of, you're out of the issue and you're, you're rocking and rolling. You've got to stay the line. No difference with, with working out. If you miss a day, that's great. If you miss two days in a row, there's a problem. You just keep going. Consistency throughout every meeting. Same meeting agenda, same time, same place. And the only reason why you miss is you're on vacation or you're dead. One of the, Tommy Cole: Love [00:11:00] it. Love it. Consistency is the key. That's my recommendation to everybody out there in anything you do It's got to be over and over and over and over. And where it lacks most times is there's no consistency at the end. And at the end of the day, the team should hold you Greg accountable as well. It kind of works back up to the top of the, and if you're not consistent with it, then this is a fantasy world that Greg is proposing, but doesn't really care about it after a couple of months, Greg Cole: I think we call that what? Yes, men. Oh, yes, people. You know, you don't want yes, people on the team. They want, you want them to come back at you and say, Greg, Tommy, this isn't working. What are we going to do? You know, and not say, Hey, you know, it's okay, Greg, we'll, we'll work through it. No, it's not okay. Let's fix it. Benefits of Aspire Tommy Cole: love it. Benefits of Aspire. What do you love about that software? Greg Cole: Oh my God, I could go on for hours. It is, I don't want you to edit this, but anyway, I could go on for hours, right? I kind of call it a cult. It's an Aspire cult, right? We all chant Aspire. I joke around with some of my good friends with that. But within three minutes of looking at everything that I have built out in Aspire, I see where the company is.[00:12:00] I see where my goals, my dashboards, my gross profit on maintenance, My gross profit on design build, where we stand as a company. What do we have sold? We don't have in the pipeline, not sold in the pipeline. If we're doing a 400, 000 project and we're in the middle of it, are we on track? Are we off track? Materials, labor and subs. I mean, that's, that's what they're in control of. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Those three things. Greg Cole: Yeah. They control how many materials, who they put on the job site. If they're overspending, underspending. It's, it's, it's super fast. to see if we're on track or off track. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Greg Cole: And one of the biggest things that I do is, is, is, oh my God, I just love issues. Everything in my company is an issue. And we close somewhere in the lines 150 to 200 issues a month. And every single call that comes in is an issue. If somebody sends me an email and says, Hey, Greg, you know, Tommy called and you got to call him back. I just respond issue, [00:13:00] put it in there. Cause we track it. And that's the most powerful tool that if it can be done, right. When it's done, right. You add like the client experience, it's, it's, it's one to 3 percent of the bottom line. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. You know, we talk about this often, but we always want to know how the company's doing. And a lot of times we were like, okay, what's in my bank account? What projects I'm I'm embedding? What cool equipment did I buy? And I'll look at the books every now and then to see if they're, they look decent and we'll go from there. That's kind of how we mostly run a business. It's no different than let's take a mid level person, right? Project manager and account manager. Well, I go see some properties, I check on it, I sell some work I install some work, but I'm not sure, but we're, we're making money, but we don't know if we're making money. But at the end of the day, everyone has a dashboard for the most part, right? Including yourself. You can see is behind the curtain that we can't see. Right? Greg Cole: everybody has good and bad [00:14:00] days, right? You're not going to, you might have a crew that has a bad day and you say, Hey, you know, Jose, make it up tomorrow or make it up next week, however it be. So we measure daily, weekly and monthly God, I think we had 11, 11 TVs right now throughout the company and everything's, you know, a spy is posted on almost everything. Why posting on TVs is important Tommy Cole: Explain the importance of TVs. I just had this conversation a couple of weeks ago. What does that mean we have TVs? Greg Cole: So everything's Chrome casted and we have two different computers that Chromecast throughout all the different TVs. And we put a company update. So people's birthdays super important. I'm huge on culture. We wanna recognize birthdays, anniversaries, those go on it, upcoming events. So it just scrolls. It's, it's really, really pretty cool when you come down to it. And then we have dashboards to say on the maintenance, Hey, are you coming in today? Good on the dashboard. How's your week looking? And how's your month looking? So if they're kicking butt, you know, they're gonna kick some of butt. If they're not, then somebody [00:15:00] that's kicking butt is looking at that and saying, Hey, Joe, what's going on? How come you're falling behind? So there's a ton of competition and it's healthy. Tommy Cole: Yeah, what gets measured gets improved, right? Greg Cole: And then even with us, if I wanted to cast to a TV, I got a, I got a 70 inch in front of me right here. I just hit a button and cast to it. Everybody can see it. Tommy Cole: Yeah, It's great. That's the new technology now is casting dashboards and metrics on TV. So it's real time information, right? That lets us know how we're doing on a daily basis. It's terrible to know that you could go six months or year. And not really know how you're doing. Right. So it's frustrating at the end of the day. And some people are scared to even post the ones that, you know, need some help or need some more training, but that's how we all get better at the end of the day. Greg Cole: was just in Aspen, Colorado at good earth. With my, my peer group and we had some heated debate in our, in our meeting and I'm not going to mention names, but [00:16:00] one person didn't know where they stand on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. And he says, I'm just going to look at the end of the year and see if I made money. And you just saw everybody's face kind of cringe and like, what is going on? Why would you do that? You can correct it now. Tommy Cole: yeah, yeah. In the middle of the game, right? Greg Cole: Yeah. And sometimes, and sometimes it could be, you know, you could be a day into a 20 day project and you're making corrections. I mean, you're a, you're a construction guy, right? You know, you know how volatile that is. That world is that Tommy Cole: of the day. And then all of a sudden you're looking back and go, what happened? We shoulda, we shoulda, we shoulda, we shoulda. Greg Cole: where it should be taken out of the goddamn dictionary. Tommy Cole: get that out of here. I'm so over it. We shoulda. With all this technology and all these things that we have, embrace it. A hundred percent. And if you don't embrace it now, I'm telling you, the bus is gone. Greg Cole: It's funny to say that because if I look and I look at the, everybody that I deal with [00:17:00] 25 to 30 year old business owners, They understand tech. They grew up with it, right? Boom. I'm getting tech. I'm going to run the best software, whatever that software be, right? And I'm not tagging any people, but anybody really over 30, they second guess it. They would rather buy, as Kevin would say, an excavator versus a piece of software. And I can make, I don't know, an extra 10 or 15 percent just on the software end, if I run my business correctly. And I can buy 10 excavators. Tommy Cole: I love it. Software is sexy. So get it and install it and use it every day. It's Greg Cole: Music. Tommy Cole: all the things that you have. A hundred percent. Um, I love it. Greg Cole: one thing that I will say is don't make it perfect. Tommy Cole: Yes. Greg Cole: is a killer. Tommy Cole: Progress. Greg Cole: perfect. You're not going to make it perfect. Tommy Cole: Love it. Benefits of Comapny Cam Tommy Cole: There's a thing that you use called company cam. I'm a huge fan of it I I know it very well. You guys It's something that's awesome. It's really dominant in the construction [00:18:00] Home building gc general contracting world. It's amazing Tell me a couple of benefits of of having that software Greg Cole: Oh my God, I can't even know where to start on that. So we're 14 months in, we just crossed 100, 000 pictures, 100, 000 pictures and videos, 14 months. Think about that. We have documentation on every single project, every single maintenance account, and we're just going to keep on building it. So it's an app that goes on somebody's phone or your employee's phone, and as fast as they can push the button with their thumb, It's as fast as it's uploaded to the cloud. There's no data on their phone. There's no storage on their phone. Everything goes up. And they can see other projects within, within the company. We started about six months ago. We're running all of our pre and post checklists through that all our punch lists, we are running our sales handoff from sales to [00:19:00] production through that, where there's a 10 point checklist and it timestamps it. And excuse me, it timestamps it and says, Tommy approve this. Today, and we know exactly who approved it and it's total accountability because if somebody doesn't do their role, we just go back and look and say, well, you signed off on this. I'll come Tommy Cole: a system that you guys have built that pushes every human being into the future which we're all vulnerable as human beings, but it follows that process along the way. So checks and balances and you can't skip all the steps to get to. You know to the very end. Greg Cole: Plus a picture is what picture is worth. They say what a thousand Tommy Cole: yeah, so how many pictures have you done? Greg Cole: we're just over a hundred thousand. Tommy Cole: hundred thousand pictures times a thousand Greg Cole: Yeah. Tommy Cole: broke my calculator. Okay, a thousand words a picture Greg Cole: You should know that math, Tommy Cole: Yeah, it that is incredible because you have documentation of everything whether it be issues on the job Whether it be pre pictures, post pictures warranty control how to build things You It's a paper trail of everything. Greg Cole: plus and above and beyond that. We have our sales staff on it. So we have everything starred. So when they're talking to you, [00:20:00] Tommy, as a salesperson, they just pull up pools, boom, here's all my pools, plantings, here's all my nightscaping, here's all my nightscaping. Everything's there. If I want to change it as the owner, one place to change it, send it out to all my sales. simple. It's probably the easiest software anybody will implement. It's that easy. Tommy Cole: It's very easy. I love those guys a lot. I see them every year at the conferences and shake their hands and thank them for, for all the work that they do. That's, that's good. The use of 90 IO Software Tommy Cole: You did mention earlier the EOS, system, the 9010. The 90 O I I O. Explain the importance and let's, let's back that. Why did you do this? Greg Cole: Everybody knows, I'm just going to say it, meetings suck, right? You get into a meeting, you get into a meeting, you hear about, you know, you know, Samantha's dog and, and, and, you know, what they did last weekend. And they ramble on for, you know, three minutes. And then you get to some work and nobody takes notes. And [00:21:00] so 90. io is a platform with a strict meeting agenda. Just as I said, a spy is a cult. E I O, E O S is a cult. It's, it's a way to report matrices to each other and share amongst teams. I think currently we have 14 different teams within call and meetings. No, I haven't part of that. I can see the meeting. So it forms a strict cadence. You share a Segway. You only have a minute each to share a Segway, which is a personal best. and a company best for the last week. We go into data, which data is just a large excel sheet that's on the 90, 90 IO platform. And if it's green, you're on track. If it's red, it's off track. It's an issue. We go through headlines and then we cascade messages to other teams. So. If Tommy had a win on, on the construction project this week, hey, the construction team is putting that up to the, all the other teams. So they can see it's a win. So if camaraderie, on our meetings, it's, it's, I don't know. [00:22:00] It's, how can I put it to you? Tommy Cole: structure. Greg Cole: it's so structured in, I'm going to say fun. People might disagree. People might disagree with me. Tommy Cole: don't suck as much anymore or at all. Greg Cole: They don't, they, they suck, but not as bad. So, so in your world on the design build. It's, it's funny because one person runs the meeting, so it runs 90. io. One person takes notes and to dos. One person runs company cam because you have to remember is your office staff and somebody, maybe an owner or somebody else doesn't know what these projects look like. And it brings the physical project with the data together. And then one person runs a spire and we'll run through 750 to a million dollars worth of production in 90 minutes. And we'll have, I don't know, 20 to 80 takeaways from that to dues. And it's all one platform. Tommy Cole: love it, Greg. So is there any other platforms that you use that we haven't [00:23:00] mentioned? Greg Cole: We use a lot we're fully cloud based Tommy Cole: Okay. Greg Cole: I, I drop about 200, 000 a year on subscriptions. So it tells you how much we use. Tommy Cole: And so the benefits of all this. The benefits of all the different softwares Tommy Cole: I would, let me ask you this. Is it too much for coal landscaping to have that, tell me the benefits of having that many in all togetherness, Greg Cole: So not one software, even if you build the software yourself, it's not going to be what you want. So we just take bits and parts, and then we've been writing, not myself, but I'm not a coder. We've been writing open APIs together between different softwares, so now they're all starting to talk to each other, which has been phenomenal. You know, we run a CRM, and it's piggybacked with a Spire so everything flows back and forth to and from. We're gonna, we're gonna open up CompanyCam to Aspire so we can click right in through CompanyCam and get in there. So, there's a lot of good stuff happening, but the best part about being cloud based is if you come to Cole. [00:24:00] give you a Surface Pro, it takes me 8 to 10 minutes to liven you up to every single software platform that you need. And if you leave us, it takes me 30 seconds to kill every single software program. It's the benefit of that is tremendous. I can't express it enough. Tommy Cole: you know, this is a tool, no different than an excavator and a truck and a, and a shovel, right? But this is, if this is the most important tool, because you're taking the truck, the excavator, the crew member, and the shovel, and you're putting it all in the surface. Right? With all the applications and say, here you go, Tommy. Welcome to Coal Landscaping. This is everything you need to know of how to run your job efficiently. And that's what I like about it. Greg Cole: what we've done above and beyond that is we've just done, we have a whole loom library. So what we've been doing is we've been creating loom videos just a little under everything under two minutes [00:25:00] Hey, here's how to enter a client or spire. Here's how to star a project and company cam. Here's how to use 90 Io so it's Cole's version of how we want them to use it And let, let me just say that, you know, 2019 till today, it's been five year process. It does not happen overnight. It did not happen overnight for us. and we've had, I've gone to some of these grow conferences and ACE conferences, and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm going to buy that software. And I buy it and we run it for like three weeks and we'll throw it out. And I'm guilty as an owner of that. So we've been through a lot of programs, Tommy Cole: And that happens. Listen, you're trying different things. You're getting new ideas. That's kind of what the owner does. But at the end of the day, you've got to do something and stay with it and go all the way. The software and these apps are your tools to be successful. Coal Landscaping Why? Because they communicate within the entire team to communicate with the client. They keep everything in one system. So you have dashboards built and you have the photos [00:26:00] to back everything up. It's a collection of everything. Greg Cole: hands down. And I don't think, I don't know where I would be without that. I w I w I probably still be at, you know, a million and a half to a million dollars. Tommy Cole: would still have a dry erase board write Greg Cole: I miss, I miss, I miss the dry erase boards. I was just talking about that today in a meeting. He said, we need to bring back the dryer, the, the, the mockup boards. We called them. Tommy Cole: why you miss is because you go in at night when people are gone and you race stuff with your wrist And say, we're going to this job that I sold. Yeah. Greg Cole: the post its and Tommy Cole: Yeah. Greg Cole: that person doesn't need the excavate. I'm going to put it to this crew. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Because I want them all on my projects, you know, and I want this client to be happy because I'm best friends with him. Yeah. That's why you want it. You know, that's fascinating that you mentioned, Greg was, I believe this younger generation is willing to, it very embraces the technology. I, it's just my world that I live, living in currently, and even you're at your age, we didn't embrace any of that. I'm going to figure it out myself. [00:27:00] I'm going to do it. And I'm going to fail 75 times before I figure it out. And maybe 35 years later, right? Whereas this new generation goes, you Forget it, Greg, and forget it, Tommy. I'm not wasting my time with you two guys. Greg Cole: Yeah. Tommy Cole: going to with people that are smarter than me. They embrace the technology and they just go and hit it. That's it. Greg Cole: It's exactly, you said it right on the head, Tommy Cole: yeah, there we go. There you go. Man, you listen, let's, let's move into something else, Greg. Building a new facility Tommy Cole: You built a fascinating facility and that is another, that is another This is like in a software discussion. Second to that is this facility thing. Everyone talks about it all the time and you went through it. I'm sure it was a, you know, a piece of cake from start to Greg Cole: course it Tommy Cole: super smooth, Greg Cole: was course. Yep. Tommy Cole: about some wins and losses in that category. Greg Cole: Well, let me, let me start, you know, back in the day I had seven people [00:28:00] in a 19 by 15 foot office. One room and that was it. When we left that facility, there was mushrooms growing on the floor. There was old in the ceiling. And we moved to our second facility, which was, there's only 20, 000 square feet. And we were doing 5 million out of that. So 20, 000 square feet of yard shop. It was all together. You couldn't move. And we were just, we were just clustered in there like sardines. So when we searched for a new facility, we wanted the acreage and we got five acres. And we moved just as in 2019, we went tech, we went tech here. With five acres, we're 8, 000 square feet of shop, 6, 000 square feet of office. Currently, we're probably 90 percent grown into it. We're going to outgrow this probably in the next couple of years. So we're looking for a satellite. Tommy Cole: Okay. Greg Cole: I don't know, five acres. We have full wireless on any point in the five acres. Like I said, we have a ton of TV scattered all around. We have no [00:29:00] desktop computers. Period. Everything's Surface Pro. They dock in. They have three monitors. Everybody gets three monitors. They dock in. They can be at Cole. They can be with a client. They can be at Starbucks and they have the same look that they, that they had at their office. No keys. Now, let me, let me say this. No keys, no keys, right? So keys drive me crazy because I give you a key, you lose it. Then who has the key? So everything here is fob. Tommy Cole: okay. Greg Cole: Thanks, Bob. It's funny. I was on my way to, I think it was an ace group meeting and somebody locked themselves out of the office and I got right on my phone and unlocked it from whatever, 30, 000 feet up. awesome. Tommy Cole: That's so great. That's technology at the day. I mean, keys are so outdated. You know, and then you can turn on and off the fob, right Greg Cole: Oh yeah. Tommy Cole: hoarding, you get a fob exiting the company, it's shut off, whatever, so total control, you can see who comes in and out. So Greg Cole: But perfect example is our cleaners. Our cleaners come in at 5. 30 every Tuesday. So they can get [00:30:00] in only from 5 to 7 on a Tuesday morning. They can't come in on a Sunday afternoon. Won't allow them in. So I set all those parameters in the background, which is, which is such a peace of mind for myself. Tommy Cole: love it. Biggest stuggles of moving to larger facilities Tommy Cole: What are some things that you struggled with in getting the facility from, from the 19 by 15, all the way to the 5 acres? Greg Cole: Financing was tough because I wanted to build it a certain way, and it cost a lot of money to build it. Example, we dumped about a quarter million just into tech. So 250k just into tech. And some of the town ordinances were very hard to overcome. But when we did, we rock and rolled. I think we were shut down three times here. By the building department. And it was something simple as, Hey, you didn't give me my permit for this. And I said, okay, I said, how much is the permit? He said, two 50. And I said, I'll give you the two 50 right now. He's like, no, you need to design. Well, the design was 15, 000. The job was already done and I had to spend 15, 000. So some of the things like that were tough. You'd be [00:31:00] surprised how much stuff you accumulate. Tommy Cole: Oh boy. Greg Cole: Well, it was disgusting. It was disgusting. So a lot of the exam, a lot of the lessons learned from our old were brought into this. One of the lessons that we learned was everybody didn't like bright lights in their office. So they will unscrew the bulbs and and that I would walk into somebody's office and there would be a light hanging with no light bulbs and it would drive me crazy. So now we have no light bulbs in the place and everything's on the, everything's led beads. There's not one light bulb, Tommy Cole: Yeah. Greg Cole: but my biggest, I don't know, my biggest takeaway or my biggest nugget to give out on this is do your homework upfront, make sure all your ducks in a row. And when the ducks are in a row, just go, don't go as fast as you possibly can, because you have to remember it's such a disruptor to myself as an owner. Tommy Cole: Yeah. And the entire team. Greg Cole: You're trying to run the business and run a facility at the same, you know, build a facility at the same time. It's tough. Tommy Cole: Well, now, now you've, I think one of the experiences that is a good takeaway from [00:32:00] this is embrace the technology in your new place. Right? Greg Cole: Hands down, hands down, Tommy Cole: Yep. I think that's the, one of the biggest takeaways that we don't look into. I think we look at, you know, the square footage of the building and the shop and the acreage type deal, you know, the, the, the physical things I would compare it to. Yeah. I'm going to install a landscape here in Texas, but I won't put the irrigation. Greg Cole: hands Tommy Cole: Well, it's not the sexy thing, right? It, you bury it all. You don't get to see it at all, right? And it's like, what is going on? But by God, when you need it, you need it. Greg Cole: Oh, I got, I got comments left and right. Oh my God, you're nuts. What are you doing that for? And then we moved in and we had a hard deadline of April 1st and boy, you know, construction, right? Tommy, Tommy Cole: yeah, Greg Cole: the deadlines. Tommy Cole: you don't miss them. Greg Cole: my, I ran it as a military op and we, we moved in the day before. everybody's like, now I know why you did that. Tommy Cole: Yep. Yep. I love it. Advice to live by Tommy Cole: So we got a few more things to wrap up, but what are some three pieces of advice you could leave [00:33:00] our audience that. The Mr. Greg Cole has experienced in life and you live and die by it or whatever. What, what are some words of wisdom? Greg Cole: Oh God. It's going to sound cliche, Tommy Cole: many, right? Greg Cole: right? Yeah. I mean, this way I, I fail more than I win. So, you know, you don't try, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take, right? Wayne, was it Wayne Gretzky or something like that? Said that. And, and it's kind of sonic, it's kind of sound cliche, but know your numbers. Everybody says that, but I'm going to piggyback it a little bit. You know, if you're, if you're under a million, have QuickBooks, QuickBooks online, QuickBooks test, whatever you want to classify it as. Right. And know how to run a, know how to read a P and L profit and loss and a balance sheet. If you don't know how to read it, find somebody that can teach you or Google it hands down. And then I think the biggest, the biggest, if you're over a million, get a good piece of software. There's so many out there, Aspire, LMN, the list goes on. Difference between invoiced and earned revenue Greg Cole: And know the difference and understand the difference between [00:34:00] invoiced revenue and earned revenue. That is a huge game changer in our industry. Tommy Cole: So what is that? Greg Cole: So invoice is pretty simple. You send out an invoice, whether you've done the job or not, it should be a liability, right? Because you haven't been working on the property, but it could be false. I could bill Tommy out for 20 grand, but I did 10, 000 worth of work. Earned is exactly what it says. If we have a 100, 000 job and we bill you 10, 000 a month. There's going to be a point in that contract that you are ahead and behind if you're invoiced. With earned, if you, if you month one have 20, 000 worth of work that you performed, that's true earned income. Even though you haven't gotten the invoiced, it's, you know, what you're earning per week, per day, per month. It's a game changer. It took us, we didn't listen to aspire. And it took us two years to figure that out. And when we did, oh my God, it was, it's a game changer. Tommy Cole: [00:35:00] game changer. Greg Cole: Yeah. Tommy Cole: What we think is just the invoice went out. We're good, right? Greg Cole: just funny. My staff right now is trained. Oh my God. We just, we build that. I can say we build a hundred thousand dollars this week and they'll say, nope, we didn't, we didn't earn it. Tommy Cole: Yeah. In the most fascinating world in construction, I know it best. Look at the top line revenue. We're like, man, we're killing it. Like, you know, we're at the towards the end of the month. Life's looking great. And then what happens that concrete invoice miraculously appears the seventh day of the following month and bam, puts you right back in your spot. The most frustrating, well, concrete XYZ, you know, is a small mom and pop. They don't get it out on time. Greg Cole: times Tommy Cole: I've heard it all. We experienced it. We celebrated too early for years and years and years. And that is, I feel like that's the difference between. Invoice revenue versus earned revenue. You haven't earned [00:36:00] anything until all the expenses are in Greg Cole: hands down, hands down. Tommy Cole: Great. Great. Great. Great advice anything experiences out there in the world. You've learned. Greg Cole: Yeah, there's a couple other, I mean, every, I'm going to go right back to it, you know, surround yourself with the best people. I'm going to give kudos to my staff. You know, we're, I think, 60 some odd people right now. I can't do this by myself. I don't want to do it by myself. And, and my people make this company look good. It's not me. And I give them, Tommy Cole: than greg cole, right? Greg Cole: I'm a high D. So I want to, just like you told me, you want to jump in. You want to get in the excavator. You want to, you want to drive the truck. You can't. Let your people do their job and just get out of their way. I mean, I think Marty said it the best. The minute he got out of the way, boom, he scaled. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Love it. Love it. What else? Greg Cole: And then software, right? Software is not a set and forget model. And I thought about this, right? Hey, you buy a truck, you buy a mower, your mechanics are working on the change in the oil, the [00:37:00] guys are greasing them, right? There's no difference between software. You need somebody to manage your platforms because when you get into it with even with a spy or a company camera LMN, people aren't going to know what's happening. There's going to be a lot of training and have new people coming aboard. You need one person to manage that software and keep everybody up to date. Like your mechanics keep your trucks up to date. Tommy Cole: you know that That hits me pretty hard it's not a set it forget it Let's think about that for a minute, Greg. That's the business we're in. You can't plant a shrub and walk away forever. So what happens? You got to nurture it. You got to water it. You got to prune it. You got to take care of it. You, you got to prevent, you know, treat the diseases and sicknesses. It's no different than your facility and your fleet and most importantly your people, right? You can't put someone out in a project manager account manager role and go you're gonna need nothing for me Good luck, and you gotta sink or swim because that's the that's the construct. That's where we [00:38:00] live in So I love not a set and forget it mantra good. Great. Great. Great. Great. Let me recap. I got tommy's takeaways. I'm gonna run through these. There's so many Greg I've got four pages of notes here You Let's run through this two things. You learn back in the day at the company. Never, never stop payment to your team. These IOUs for these young people out there never get involved in that. And always be a nice person, take the high road at all times. Greg Cole: a nice person. Be fair and treat everybody with respect. Tommy Cole: Love it. Software, whoo. Don't bend it to your own way, right? Accept the software. Let's move on. Assign a team or individual to run it and have consistent weekly meetings every single week. Rain or shine, busy or slow times, it doesn't matter. But consistency is the name of the game. Focus on the end result. When you're the owner, hold them accountable. The [00:39:00] benefits in the Spire and company cam is the dashboards. I love dashboards that show progress daily, weekly, and monthly use the TVs, the Chromecast, you've got 11 of them, love it. Company can punch lists, sales, production, handoff, checklists. You name it and the biggest thing of all accountability for everyone. Greg Cole: No place to hide. Tommy Cole: Nope. No one died Greg Cole: bad. It Tommy Cole: EOS is great. Your meetings used to suck now. They don't suck as bad, right? You've got a structure an Agenda, let's get in and let's get the hell out and let's go do what we love to do in the landscape world Love it facility wins and losses Listen, I love the no keys. Just get rid of the keys. I've got clients that still wear The thing off their belt loop dangling around. I'm like, are we, are we, what world are we living in here? So, do your homework, you know, study things about lights and get rid of old junk and move on [00:40:00] and, and we're so emotionally attached to the, to the. One shovel that we had 25 years ago and oh man. Greg Cole: I just got rid of my first walker. It was a sad day. They were all out there. They were kind of like going like this. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Greg Cole: like 1997. So that tells you, it was like four engines ago. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Forever. Greg Cole: this thing away. We're Tommy Cole: Forever. Last but not least, experiences is surround yourself with really good amazing people. I, I swear by that. One of my favorites about the software is it's not a set and forget. You've got to nurture it, grow it, train it, coach it, mentor everything, and along the way. Greg, next week is our ACE Summit. It's our super fun trip. End of the year, all of our ACEs get together, ACE alumni get together, our spouses get together. It is a super fun trip. Super fun time. Share an experience with ACEs or Summit that you're just like, this is awesome. Greg Cole: I, I don't know where to start on that one. We've been, [00:41:00] we're going into our third year. And, and we're, we're known as ACEs wild, but we lost a couple of people and that we call it, we're called ACEs miles. And now I think we're all old, right? So it's, it's, it's an ongoing joke, but some of the people or all the people that I met in there, it's like college, they are brothers and sisters. A couple of people that I can give a shout out to is David Amigo, David Amigo and myself, and you know, David very well that we're, we're good friends and, and. If it wasn't for David, my daughter wouldn't be going to where she is in college. Tommy Cole: Oh, wow. Greg Cole: Transferred to the personal side. And David and seven of his team members are coming up to Cole Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, next week. And, you might want to back that up again. Tommy Cole: Gotcha. Greg Cole: Yeah, David Amigo is David made a great friend of mine. And if it was, it transfers onto the personal side also, as I don't think my daughter would be going to college where she is without David's advice. David's kind of sometimes my little dad and I'm like, Hey, you know, what do you think of this? And they're coming up to see us for three days, him and seven of the staff, and we're going to spend three days together. And then we're going to roll reverse that. And seven of my staff are going down to see him. Tommy Cole: That's great. Greg Cole: You know, Tony from Angelo's unbelievable company. My fuel system came from Tony, Tony, who's got your fuel system. He turned me on to it. [00:42:00] There's, I can't, you think you're alone in this world, in the landscape world, and then you meet these people. And you're like, holy crap, they're doing the same, the same problems that I have, or, you know, you can experience your back to them. So, it's been unbelievable. Tommy Cole: Yeah. 100 percent agree. We met, you know, officially three or four years ago, you and I did. And I think I was the one that helped you get into the ACE program, but you had lots of questions. Lots of comments, lots of suggestions on where you should go and what's group Greg Cole: suggesting, Tommy Cole: and, uh, you're almost telling and but ever since then, ever since then, it's been nothing but great things from Cole landscape and Greg Cole and his entire team. David Amigo was. I visited his place years ago and I thought it might have been one of the top 10 worst places I have visited. Greg Cole: Oh, yeah. Tommy Cole: he's the top 10, almost amazing peer group member I have ever seen completely transformed himself and his business and his son and his team. Absolutely. Give a shout out to that guy. [00:43:00] Amazing. Greg Cole: I have this whole thing that I do, and it's funny because I fly in a day early to all my peer group meetings. And I sneak up on the, on the company and I do a selfie and I sent it to the owner. And I just, and I just did that to Jeff from good earth. Right. And I snuck up, I was there a day or I took up one to his yacht. I took a picture and I'm like, Jeff, look, secret squirrel. And he calls me right up. He's where are you get Tommy Cole: you? Greg Cole: spend time with my team. And I spent time with his partner and his wife on facility development and what we went through. And left that. I was just so, so, so happy, so happy to help. Tommy Cole: That's great, Greg, man. A super pleasure. You might be the coolest guy I've ever met. Greg Cole, Tommy Cole. This is a, this is a match made in heaven. It's awesome. I keep following you all the time. I see you around at the industry events and it's, it's just a blessing to have you guys in your entire team within our, in a little inner circle of, of things and [00:44:00] And nothing but the best for you guys and the entire coal landscape team. Give them my best. They're awesome. I've got your stuff posted here on my other monitor of, of watching all the videos of giving out to the community and the team camaraderie, it just is fascinating. Keep it going, Greg. It's been a pleasure and we'll see you soon down the road. Greg Cole: Thank you, Tommy. Enjoyed it.