Investing in People: Adam Dukes’ Approach to Leadership and Landscape Excellence

Bob Carey Tommy Cole: Welcome to another episode of Roots of Success, and I'm your host Tommy Cole. And wow. We have another amazing guest, my friend from like years ago, Bob Carey. He is now with Crest Outdoor Power Equipment and autonomous battery operated mowing machine. Dude. But man, way before that I knew you. I'm just gonna call you. You didn't know this was gonna happen, Bob, but I'm gonna call you the maintenance man. Bob Carey: I like that, Tommy Cole: I'm gonna call you the maintenance man. Welcome to the show. I'm super stoked to have you, Bob, how are you? Bob Carey: I'm doing great, Tommy. I appreciate you bringing me on. It's really fun just to do this right off the cuff. You know, you [00:01:00] reached out to me and were like, let's do this podcast. I'm like, all right, let's get prepped. And you're like, we do it live. Let's just go. Tommy Cole: Let's just go, you know, that's also the thing. Bob's just kind of funny is just don't overthink it. Let's just jump on and do this thing because that's what's fun about this. I never thought I'd be here in a million years. We're now going two years strong on this, on this show, and we spread out to so many people across the country. It's just been fun to watch and every time I travel I always see someone that says. Man, I love your podcast. Let's keep going. So that, that feels my motivation. A hundred percent. Bob, I'm extremely blessed and fortunate to have met you probably six, seven years ago, is my guess. Back in the early McFarland Stanford days, did some recruiting to get you kind of where you're going. And, and now we're here today, but Bob, tell us. Some of the past, like, what the heck? What? Why did you choose this crazy profession? You sent me some photos last [00:02:00] night that I was like, wow, I cannot believe you saved some photos of a what? A scrawny little kid, right? Like myself, you know, mowing grass. Basically. Bob's early career in Landscpaing Tommy Cole: Tell me about yourself and how you got started. Bob Carey: You know, there's a lot of guys that have gone out and mowed grassed on me in their, in their pickup truck or whatever, and done some lawns. But when I tell people, you know, my wife had mentioned in the past, she's like, you gotta forget about that stuff you did as a little kid. And I'm like, honey, this, this wasn't some little kid thing. You know? I, I, so. Yeah. So my, my mom, I remember you know, I had my first mower, but my mom, I call her, I'm like, Hey mom, I wanna go pick up this mower I found on eBay. It's a 36 inch walk behind mower. We're gonna go, we're gonna go pick it up together. So I have my driver's permit, but I had bought my first truck already just from mowing some lawns with a mower that I had bought when I was 12. So we, we go together, we get down there, the guy puts it in the truck, belt driven, brand new Husqvarna, walk behind mower. We get home. How mom, how are we gonna get this mower out of the truck? Like [00:03:00] the truck's high. Tommy Cole: How do I operate it? Bob Carey: Yeah. And she's like, but she was on board. You know, that's, that's what made it fun. It was like, I'm gonna support him. He is. This is a crazy idea. What is he gonna do with this big mower? You know, people, I'm from West Virginia and the small town that I'm in, I remember one guy having a 36 inch mower at the time of all these landscaping companies. And so. That just grew Tommy, me to the point that we'd have like 65 accounts in high school, in college, that we would do weekly with football, double sessions. College was two hours away. We did a Fri, we would take our classes and Monday through Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays is game on however many hours it took to get the work done. Rain or shine. Tommy Cole: Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, I, I saw some some of the pictures you sent me was the mowing charges, you know, $30 here, $40 here, you know, and had 'em all itemized out. I'm like, we remember those days of charging clients and then go collect the money and all that, that, [00:04:00] that's, Bob Carey: Yeah, Tommy Cole: that's hard work. Bob Carey: yeah. You know, Tom, even back then with those small charges, once you had really high route density. A lot of houses on one street, you could start to to do pretty well. You know, the target would be like a dollar a minute back then I remember I would read Lawn site, Tommy, did you ever read that? Do you know what I'm talking about? Tommy Cole: you got all yours. Bob Carey: yeah. So there was a forum v blog called Lawn Site before, you know, the, my computer was still dial up and I, I would read lawn site. You know, over and over and over get all the tips and tricks and it was like, hey, if you can make a dollar a minute. And so it was like, alright, so you look at all your makeup of all your accounts and you're like, I'm doing this big one, it's $50, but it takes two hours. It's like, let's get more at 25 and do four of 'em in an hour on one street and let's pump up the pump up in, and it's smaller equipment, less total cost of ownership for the small mower. Right? So you're making more profits. Tommy Cole: Yeah, I totally get it. I mean, for you to figure that out at an early age is pretty successful because [00:05:00] quite frankly, I know some companies that still can't figure that out and they've been around for 20 years. So, Bob Carey: Yeah. Tommy Cole: so tell me about prior you had a lot of experience in maintenance, like you started working for companies, so you eventually sold your business or got out, is that correct? Bob Carey: Yeah. I got, I got out. Tommy Cole: Yeah. And then, and then you went to work for a company. So tell me about that experience, and I think you were more in like in, into some operations experience. Tell me about how that went. Bob Carey: you, you know, Tommy, I've always been, I had a pretty big personality and so people kind of knew, they knew who I was from that business back in West Virginia. So I remember I'm in a supermarket. I get a phone call and the guy's like, Hey, Bob. I own a landscaping company down in Charleston, West Virginia. It's been in business for 30 years. I want to open a branch in West Virginia University. I'm in Charleston. They're three and a half hours away, but I wanna open a branch and I want you to, I want you to, I want you to open it. There's nothing there. I'm like, but we have the contract with all the athletic facilities to do all the maintenance except [00:06:00] for the sports field like that, the agronomy stuff, Tommy. And so I'm like, okay, that sounds, that sounds great. I'd love to do that. So I, I'm searching for what we're gonna rent. They send me a brand new truck. They start sending workers up from, from three and a half hours away to stay in hotels. And I'm in charge and it's my, my first job out of having my own business, you know? And so that was really fun, Tommy. And I mean, one of the things that's key I remember was, Hey, you're gonna mulch the whole football stadium for WVU. Oh yeah. By the way, it's a hundred yards and it's all by hand. And there's gonna be two of you. Two of you, Tommy Cole: Oh my gosh. Wow. It's almost starting over completely. Bob Carey: Yeah. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Yeah. So you took off and ran that new branch. Okay. And then what happened? What happened after that? Bob Carey: You know, that was, and I wanna preface it too, like I had gone there for, to landscape market, for landscape architecture at WVU was a phenomenal program. It was so fun working there. After college, you're like still in party mode, so it's like party mode, work mode. This is so fun. Funer.[00:07:00] Tommy Cole: best friends and got a grad, undergrad, and. Bob Carey: Yeah, Tommy Cole: Some story. He was in a fraternity. He told me lots of stories that probably are not appropriate on, on this show, so I know how you mountaineers can party. Bob Carey: yeah. Work should be fun. So I, I have a, I have a really good, my best friend, I talk to him every day. His name's Matt Gris Covich. He works at Wheat Salon and Custom Landscape in Indiana, Virginia. Yeah. And so Matt and I had done a lot of the mowing together back in high school. We had, we had worked with each other. I actually did. I took on half of his accounts, my half, and we, we combined. And that's how I got to know him. So Matt calls me and he is like, Bob, I'm working for this incredible company in Washington, dc You should come. And I'm like, yeah, let's do it. And so Tommy, that's a huge move from a guy in a small town in West Virginia to be like, I'm. Tommy Cole: Yeah. So what was there?[00:08:00] Bob Carey: You know, I get there and really incredible company. All high end residential. I can recall the first day, you know, they send you out. You, I've never punched a time clock, so I go there, I hit a DP time clock with my hand and I. I'm next to a guy. I remember Ernesto Palacios from El Salvador. I had no Spanish background. He, he, he's, you know, his English was limited. My Spanish was limited, but we had a blast together, you know, and, and I enjoyed that more than anything was getting to know Ernesto and more about El Salvador and his culture. And I love the idea of being bicultural. And so I was just totally bought in. I wanted to know everything about, about the people I was working with. Tommy Cole: Yeah, that's fun. You want to get in the field where the action is to learn the most. So if anyone's young up on the show. Get in the trenches and learn. That's there's no, another better way to experience how to be a good operator, how to be a good listener, learner how to problem solve and what, what good looks like on a [00:09:00] maintenance property. Right? All those things are, are a lot. Well, I, I learned in the industry as a. Young, scrawny kid, you know, coming, you know outta school. And I'm working with people that have been in industry for 40 years and they're like, oh, here comes another whipper snapper you know, trying to make his name. And I'm like, listen man, you know, George, I'm just here to learn. Just show me everything. I will listen and all that. So kudos to you. So then took a turn. You went from far East coast and now to West Coast. What happened and who did you work for there? Bob Carey: You know, I, I decided at one point I was like, you know what, I, oh, I did a big bicycle trip and I really hadn't challenged myself to do that. I had worked and worked and worked, and I. I really focused on so much work time. I was working, you know, every other Saturday and I hadn't experienced the world 'cause I had started, in my opinion, I hadn't experienced it because I had started my business so early. So a friend of mine, he asked me to go on a two week trip, mountain biking. We go to Bend Oregon, we go to [00:10:00] Salt Lake City, we go all over. My best friend Matt from Wheat, he's with me. We take, we're out there for 14 days. We bike packed through Utah, 140 miles, self-supported. It was incredible. And I'm like, I'm moving out here. This is, this is it. This is for me. So I fly out here. I don't have a job at all. And I remember back at that time, I, LinkedIn was just starting to pick up and I was like, all right, this is my key to success right here as, as a young man. So I'll, I'll, I'll boost this up. And that's when I started really digging into, that was back in 20 20, 20 14 through 2018. And yeah, I came out here and I got hired by Crystal Green's Landscaping. I saw their tr I just, I'd interviewed with a couple different people. I saw Bob Grover from Pacific Landscape Management. Amazing company. I saw Nathan Dirksen and met with him from Dennis' seventies. They, they've been on the top 100 list forever. And I ended up seeing these trucks at Crystal Greens and I said, wow. I like the way they keep this company. The, the sites look good, the trucks look good. And so I talked to them and they hired me. They said, Bob, what, what role do you want? Or what would you do? And I said, well, [00:11:00] what's the most challenging project you have? What's your biggest pain point? And they said, well. Extra projects is what they called it, you know, enhancements and in irrigation. They said, we need some support on that. They had grown really rapidly, Tommy, from about 4 million to 20 at that time, back in 2018. And so they had an antiquated computer system that was just on the tipping point of, of not being usable, lot of spreadsheets to track everything. And then we were actually switching to asset by include back then. And so somebody needed to clean up all the data. Set up all the iPhones and to get all the information from the irrigation department into asset by include. But it all needed, looked over and cleaned up before it could get imported. And that was, that's what they hired that, so that's what they brought me on, that whatever challenging thing they had, project I'd run the project. Tommy Cole: Nice. Whatever the, the most difficult thing was you said, sign me up. Fine tuning Operations & Sales Tommy Cole: So you're like an operations irrigation guy, so to speak. What are some nuggets that you learned along the way?[00:12:00] Bob Carey: You know, irrigation was a ton of fun. At that time, I, when I was running operations for the five years prior, I was mainly just working with people as my soft skills that I was using and I hadn't done a lot of, you know, data mining. And so I do that and I. I get a guy that's there, still there at, at Crystal Greens today. I really, I look up to this man Lee Durall, and they, you know, they've been purchased by Sperber, but Lee is super organized. He's incredible spreadsheets. So I'm watching this guy and I'm thinking to myself, this guy can do what 10 people can do with this spreadsheet. And so I'm like, Lee, can you, can you teach me how to do this? So we, we start really looking and digging into data and then we. You know, it's funny, we make this big 11 by 17 sheet with, you know, 14 columns. We give it to the irrigators and we're like, get all your maps, physical and digital, and let's fill out the whole sheet. How many zones and clocks does everything have? We have a 850 sites with all this Tommy. We know how many, we know how many zones we have, we know how many controllers we have, and then all of a [00:13:00] sudden Lee builds a dashboard so that every time a job gets done, at the end of the day, we know and we're like, okay, 15%. All the sites have been checked and they're running that can ex get flowers, spring flowers, and it's gotta, irrigation's, gotta be on for these spring flowers, you know? So now we have this visibility that we never had and we're like, okay, now we can go do the flowers at those sites, and so on and so forth. And every day we have this new visibility that we never had. And so that's where that really scaled. And then it was like, okay, take on the next thing. And that was, that was a ton of fun. Tommy Cole: So so operations, efficiency, scalable system that you can, you know, that the entire company could jump in on and rise to the occasion, right? We're used to sort of paper and spreadsheets and things, but there's an automation process in order to improve your maintenance and anything in your landscape business. I love that. Our awesome friend and company Grow Outdoor [00:14:00] Living. One of my favorite, just awesome dudes. Mr. Garrett just a amazing person and amazing company. I've been knowing him for a long time and he's just passionate and loves what he does. Loves the business. And now you're becoming in sales, right? And so you become a set, you know, let's just call it maintenance sales, right? Probably new maintenance, reoccurring maintenance. But one of the fascinating things that I read on your bio was 200% increase in the span of five years in maintenance. Boom. Tell me, what the heck did you crease that so fast in such a short amount of time? Bob Carey: Well, I will say, you know, well first it was incredible to go work with Garrett. He was different than a lot of owners that I had worked with in the past. Really focusing on people on the core values of the company. A lot of companies very focused on profit. Not that any of the last companies weren't really about the people. They, they definitely were, but the way [00:15:00] Garrett approaches things was a bit different than I had seen in the past, and it showed, showed me a lot by the way he treated people and, and just treated people incredible. So. Yeah, Tommy, we go in and I would say, you know, Southwest Washington where they are in Vancouver, Washington, canvas and Ridgefield is really, EXPLO is really exploding, still is at the time. You know, there's a a lot of technology, chips, manufacturing and canvas and so that does help drive people. And the more there was driving people, it made my job fairly easy. Where I came in was, I saw a really big opportunity to get into homeowners associations and like I had mentioned before, you know, doing something hard. I was like, I'll never do a homeowner. Owners association. Everybody's like, that's the hardest thing you could do. And then I, I, I just got stuck. Tommy Cole: Board members, all that. It's tricky. Bob Carey: Yeah. Yeah. Tommy Cole: So how. Bob Carey: So I, I get, I, Garrett, Garrett had partnered with a, a great company where they were installing the landscaping at every front yard. And this company is development company and home builder. They really [00:16:00] cared that the whole aspect of it from the quality build of the home, the quality build of the landscape, and the care after. Was all in alignment and that those homes would sell, sell efficiently and be a great community for people all along the way until it was turned over to the homeowners association. 'cause in the beginning, Tommy, they're managed by a property management company and with the developer in, in that process with the homeowners. So, you know, those are, those were complicated. And I, we had one, well, I got to be successful with that first one. And I, the way I look at everything is, is how can I create a system around this? That can scale, and then how do I make it so if I stepped away, someone else can take the lead and continue to operate this, so. Tommy Cole: Hundred percent. Bob Carey: Mm-hmm. Tommy Cole: So tell me about that. Positioning yourself as a "Landscape Finacial Advisor" Tommy Cole: That's a like a, I feel like you're saying it's an automated. Sales proposal process, so to speak. Is that right? Bob Carey: Well, what it looked at was at Crystal Greens. I'd seen something with commercial that I hadn't seen with my residential [00:17:00] background of weeds. They were doing budget plans with all their commercial clients and I said, well, I need to do a budget plan with the homeowners association. So let's dig in. And one of the first things is, is they have a reserve study. A lot of people may not even be familiar with that, but it's money they set aside for capital improvements, their regular operating budget year to year. And so I had, you know, the financial acumen you need to bring to that, that adds a whole nother layer of value. So I position myself as, I'm your landscape financial advisor. Let's look at your reserve study. So you start to look at these reserve studies and say, who did it? Are they from the area? Because the area here in the Pacific Northwest is different than others. So let's take a, let's take a look at your reserve study together. What, what do you have? What do they have factored in? So we'd look at some of those things and see, you know, big thing was, Hey, do you have storm water maintenance for your storm water swale? Did you know that it's yours to maintain? No, we didn't necessarily know that it was ours. So we, with my [00:18:00] landscape architecture background, we jump on GIS. We'd look at maps and say, yeah, the, that site is yours to maintain. You need to set, set this money aside to maintain that, that facility. And then in the Pacific Northwest with the storm water management principles, they might have underground filters, Tommy. So you have these filters. You need to clean and have changed every five years. It could be 25, $30,000 every five years to do that. But did you know. And so by bringing that conversation and now they've gained trust that, Hey, you know what? We should let Bob review all this and, and give us his feedback on building this budget. Tommy Cole: I love it. So education and knowledge goes a long ways, right? It's not, at the end of the day, just mowing grass. It's much further than that. It is make 'em aware of what's going on the property, the reasons why there is drainage, reason why there are swells, reason why there are weeds, reason why there's. Shipment in the ground due to [00:19:00] bad management of the grounds. You know, aeration, all those practices that us landscapers know it's all in our head, which is kind of easy. But then our clients have no clue. all we do is propose a price with no added value. So you, I love the fact that you became a landscape financial advisor. Wow. That's, that is such a massive takeaway and experience because it's all about the money management and it's all about the property looking good. That's it. There's nothing else. Right? And so if you check those two boxes, you could also make an argument, maybe the third box is just communication, right? Readily available, et cetera. That, that's amazing. Tell me. so, so you were able to grow it. Did you use that sort of terminology of education and knowledge with the client and financial advisor [00:20:00] and then repeat the process to every single person you meet and it started to domino effect to get your massive growth and maintenance. Bob Carey: Yeah. Taught me it did. And, and the big thing was, was I took the data management we were using at, at Crystal Greens that Lee had taught me, and it was like, okay, let's start tracking things from day one when I have one HOA with one house. And that's how we, that's how we, that's how I started it. And so it, for example, it would be how many homes needed an irrigation repair this year? How many calls did we get? Then I'd show 'em, Hey, you had this many service calls. You paid a service call fee at one twenty five every time we came out. Why don't I build it into your maintenance contract at the maintenance contract rate and save you money? And they're like, you, you can do that for us? Yeah, we're partners. Let's do this. And then it's, I, I know I can allocate that resource now I have more reoccurring revenue and then I can ensure I'm staffed to support my clients so that it can scale. Then [00:21:00] what it did is that Tommy was, I could divide that at the end of the year too and say you needed to do this many on average when you do your spring startup next year it was $38 per house that you needed, and then you track the data again because at some point, Tommy, we had reached where we had seven HOAs and some had 800 front yards, and we maintained every front yard at these HOAs. So it got to the point where we were doing 2,500 front doors a week. Tommy Cole: Oh wow, that's amazing. So what I'm hearing is data drives decisions Bob Carey: It supports the client you share, you, you gotta share it with them. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Yeah. It's no different in in, in installation either. You gotta give me. What are we producing out there, right? Whether it be a certain size mower, whether it be a five gallon shrub, how long it takes, how many stops on a route? All that needs to be data pulled from the field into the office, [00:22:00] observed, studied, and then what's the action plan after that, right? Using data to improve client rlationships Tommy Cole: To in order to improve your own company. But most importantly, improve the client experience. And because you're a financial advisor, right? Bob Carey: Yeah. And Tommy, you know, from your financial advisor, you're, you're looking for them to make you successful. So one of the big things is you don't want your client to have a special assessment is where your HOA comes in and says, Hey, we didn't take, we didn't get enough from you every month. You gotta pay 5,000. And additionally, I would go out and fight for the HOAs and say, Hey, I'd go to different, you know, we call it bark dust out here, but mulch providers and say, Hey, I have this volume, volume break. I know you're slow in February. I. Can we get it all in February, put down if I get all the HOAs to sign up by this date, and then I pass that savings along to them and celebrated it with them. They're like, well, I only wanna use Bob. He came up with this creative way to do it. But I scale that throughout the company [00:23:00] and show shows a lot of value, Tommy, me to fight for your customers. I mean, one other example is, is. Hey, you need a bunch of two inch river rock done. Hey, can out here in the Pacific Northwest, we have a conveyor trucks. It's like, can I call that conveyor truck and just get it conveyed in the whole area and just eliminate the labor. And then you show the customer like, Hey, here was the proposal some other guys gave you, and the one we gave you to do it by hand, it was 16,000. I just brought the, the CAD truck, the Convey truck, and we did it. We cleaned it up. We were in it out in half a day and it was eight grand. And they're like, that's my financial advisor. Tommy Cole: Wow, that is just being smart with your resources, right? At the end of the day, there's always a better way to do things, and I love the fact that you like to pass that on to the client and that, you know. Clients only trust their contractors right at the end of the day. So they like knowing trust and then they spend more money and then they want to increase the relationship, and then they want to, you know, see you on the sites, take care of the property. So passing the [00:24:00] savings on is, is phenomenal. The Value of Proper Training Tommy Cole: You also had to train and develop these teams, right? It's, it's this day and age is, has been interesting the last years as far as. Labor. I don't believe we're in a labor shortage. I believe we're in a lack of training and developing people in a, in a, in the trades industry that we are. And we as landscape owners and managers do little to nothing to train everyone to take a certain role in their company. And it's doable. I think we hire people and we say, get on a truck and go after it. And our expectation is here. That person and they come in here and we're like, forget it. He was a total loss. He doesn't know what he's doing. Right. When really we should have the expectation here. Train him here, give him the career ladder, give him the path, give 'em the tools, give 'em the resources, and they will get to that level. Tell me about your sort of couple of nuggets in training and developing, you know, good field people and [00:25:00] maintenance. Bob Carey: Well, I wanna say one thing, Tommy, you know, training and developing people, it, it is massive and a lot of guys don't realize that they're either owners can be working for their business inside it. It, they can be working on it or they think they do landscaping. You know, when you go and talk to people that are working on their business, and I'll, I'll give you a, a really great example is there's an amazing guy I met Neir, Nasim Nasims landscape up in Puyallup, Washington. He's grown his business 900% in the last six years. he does a thing called the culture Index, but when I see him, and I spoke with him about this, he's working on his team and he understands the training and development of his people is how he got it there. And that's the secret sauce everybody wants to know. You know? Did you, did you, is it the software? Is it the measurements? Is it the equipment? No, it's training. And you know, when you walk in a room and, and McFarland, Stanford does this phenomenally and, you know, ask everybody in there at the table, at the executive table, what do you do for business? And, you know, maybe nobody even says it. No. You're in the business of training and developing people to provide service. And so that, that's hits it. That [00:26:00] nails it, right, Tommy? So I've always been, you know, I, I don't do this alone, right? I was in sales, I had an operations manager, Nick McAllister, a grow, phenomenal support and irrigation manager. Jason Kleberg, phenomenal support. We work the three of us together as just inseparable. If I, they'd be CC'd on all my emails with my HOAs. If I missed an email or I didn't get back quick enough, they'd respond, Hey, we saw this. We're getting back to it. It was the three of us supporting the client that made it successful. It wasn't standalone sales, standalone account management. They knew when they needed to step in because we had that type of relationship. That we fostered for collaboration. It wouldn't be like, Hey, the irrigators are the only one supposed to change the clock on the, the irrigation controller. No, no, no. If I see an issue, I call 'em and say, hi, I'm here. Can I change this for you? Yeah. We collaborate. So that's, it's about collaboration. Tommy. That's the biggest thing. Tommy Cole: that's great. You know no one walks in the door, and if they do you're very lucky and [00:27:00] blessed. So I'm believed that you could almost hire anyone that has really good culture that you live and die by, and they then in turn trained for that certain position. And I believe that your number one asset is people. That's it. Not the fancy skid steer. Not the awesome office, not the swag gear. It's the people that operate all of those things. And the more you work on your people, the better the outcomes of your business will be. And you know. You could spend, literally, you should spend a hundred hours a year on training and developing team members per one person. That's my recommendation. You'd be like, oh, Tommy, that's a little bit crazy. I don't know. Take some of the best companies out there in the entire country. You know, whatever it is. Southwest Airlines, Chick-fil-A, you name it. They are constantly training and onboarding and continuously improving along the way. So. Very amazing [00:28:00] stuff at Grow Outdoor Living. Garrett is an awesome person. Love that guy. Love that company. So big shout out to them, man. Switching gears to this sort of crazy topic that we're gonna talk about now. One of 'em was favorite things and I'm starting to dabble into this, is this battery operational equipment. Also autonomous robot. I don't even know what the word right term is for this. But you are now with Crest Outdoor Power Equipment, a huge move in your career. And I think you are the one of the best, if not the best person to run this. And I think you're absolutely excited about this sort of trend. It's happening in the west part of the. States, states, you know, in Northwest and California. Bob's role at Crest Outdoor Power Equipment Tommy Cole: I know some of your clients already has gotten into it, but, oh my gosh. Crest, outdoor power equipment. What do you do for them? And, and give us a little bit of an introduction.[00:29:00] Bob Carey: Tommy, I'm the business developer for Oregon, Washington, and Idaho on the commercial garden side. So our, our, our 60 volt power tools, our cyber system and robotics it's a phenomenal place to work. I, it definitely is exactly what I wanted to do, and, and I, I went for it, you know, a year ago, no, a year and a half ago, Tommy, you know, I was like. This is what I want to do and this is the path that I'm gonna take to get there. And I, I applied what I applied to be successful with. Everything else that I've done with these, these processes and the imple implementation. So I went through my planning process. What am, what am I gonna do? And you know, it was kind of got a funny start. I like was like, I'm gonna go on edX and I'm gonna learn how to code. And then I was like, wait a minute, this is really, this isn't it? This isn't it. And so I take this crazy course, I'm like learning binary and writing notes. I send it to my family. I'm like, look at this stuff. They're like, this guy. I think my par, I think my family thinks I'm completely nuts. And I'm like, I'm writing, I'm writing binary. So I'm like, okay, this isn't it. So then I'm like, I study the next thing and then I'm like, you know what? Everything [00:30:00] I've done, I've been successful with I get a coach. So I, you know, whether it's nutrition, health, you know, weightlifting, I. Grab, grab mentors, grab coaches. It's super important. Like McFarland, Stanford, you know, you guys help people just 10 x the thing, right? And you can do it fast when you have helped. And so I, I reach out to a coach and this woman supports me greatly. We, we design what, what, what I wanna do. These are the three places I wanna work at, or five. And I go for it. And I look back at my notes, Tommy, in my journal just a couple weeks ago, and I was like, crest was at the top of the list. Tommy Cole: No way. Bob Carey: Yes. Tommy Cole: gosh. So you, you visualized it. Bob Carey: Mm-hmm. Tommy Cole: amazing. That's amazing. The power of the, what they call the law of attraction, right? When you think it, you internalize it and you, you repeat it over and over and you can visualize yourself at cress and on the Root Success Podcast with Tommy talking about this thing. Just kidding, just kidding. I went a [00:31:00] little bit off board, off topic, but with you the law of attraction, you know, see it, believe it. Well, congratulations. On, you know, seeing that come full cycle. Wow. That's cool. The difference in Crest Batteries Tommy Cole: Okay. so tell me about all this stuff, right? I'm in Texas, we are all about, you know we like, you know, big trucks and gasoline and steaks and free roaming range. But that's not always gonna be the case. Moving a little bit down the road. Right. I feel like battery equipment is really coming now, right? I feel like five years ago, not so much maybe, but like I, I saw some videos of you in the amount of power and some of those blowers is amazing. Right? So tell me about what, we'll, we'll start with the battery side. Tell me about what the advantages are and some, some nuggets versus [00:32:00] gas and why the technology has gotten way much better. I. Bob Carey: Yeah, well, you know, the owner of Crest, he, he invested a lot of money in, in developing a new technology, a new battery technology, and we rolled it out. We have our Crest cyber system, eight minute charge. It, it's a. A unique chemistry in the battery, proprietary chemistry in the battery that allows it to charge rapidly, discharge rapidly, and have extreme power along that entire duration of its charge and discharge. Some of these traditional lithium ion batteries, as they start to discharge, they start to lo, they lose power. At the end of that, you know, hey, 10%, 15 percent's left, left, 10 percent's left, and when it is, you're only getting 70% of the power out of the unit. Tommy Cole: Gotcha. So tell me about, so that's a quick charge. So does Crest have a full line of small tools, small power equipment, all the way to the mowers? Push right on. Tell me about some of that equipment. Bob Carey: Crest [00:33:00] does. They have pro, we call it prosumer. So that's our, our more homeowner, you know, homeowners with acreage, they can go out, they'll use that. And we also have our commercial garden line of equipment, our 60 volt system as well. And you know, there's some unique approach to it. There's we have our, our cyber tank where you can charge as you go out in the field on that, or you can opt to take all the power with you in the batteries. So those are kind of the two different approaches. And then there's some people that also. Would have routes where they could plug in while they're out on the route and they could charge while they're out. So there's really three approaches, you know rapid charge off of our cyber tank, charge on site with a small charger that works rapidly as well. Plugged in or take it all with you. Tommy Cole: So tell me about the costs. I feel like some people are always going, well, that's way too expensive. Or, where do I start? Like, do I just buy a mower? Do I, is it, is it, is it a small power code? Is it a blower to test it out? It's almost like, we talked about this [00:34:00] earlier, what you and I did. It's like software, right? I think the expectation is just sort of open it up and just use it and it just works, right? But there's, there's a period of testing and observation and awareness. Cost Benefit of Crest Electric Equipment Tommy Cole: So talk about some of the costs, if you would, and then talk about where the hell do I start. If I want to convert my, you know, my landscaping business to go, you know, battery op. We won't talk about autonomous robots, but more to battery for now. Bob Carey: Yeah. Well, let's, let's just start with where you'd start and that that would be the way you'd start any project at your business. Start with your planning process. Sit down with your team, with your executive team or your leadership team and, and decide, you know. What impact is, what are the desired results? First of all, of, of this transition, the desired results, they may look something like, number one, cost savings noise for your clients and for your workers. Health bene health benefits clients and, and your workers. Vibration fatigue. Cost savings is one of the biggest, so, [00:35:00] you know, and, and, and clients. They just, one of the biggest things too is across the country. Is noise bands, right? And that's really what started some of the push to do it. But the real thing to all this, Tommy, is the cost savings on battery electric versus gas once you have it out there in, in operating. So we'll talk about the next, but start with your planning process. What's the desired result? What are, who are your stakeholders? What feedback do you want? What metrics are you gonna measure? And, and take that out there. Communicate that to your team. If your executive leadership team and then, you know, bring us in for a trial, try other equipment, try whatever, try, try some equipment, get, get those metrics filled out. Sometimes people take, sometimes people go through three trials before because they haven't established this before they start, so by the third time now we're creating this process where, you know, we're gonna do a cost savings analysis to start run the crew for two weeks with gas, run the [00:36:00] crew for two weeks with battery. Let's determine. What the differential is in that, and then let's extrapolate it out over the year. Tommy Cole: Love it. Love it. love the fact that you said, let's plan this out. I don't think many landscape companies plan out their gas power. Mowers and equipment as much. Right. So this is gonna sort of take a bit of a moment, and I feel like I'm gonna take a stab at this. Bob is understand what you have currently, right? This is what we have in our entire fleet. So what I envision is a fleet that has the same sort of equipment across all fleets. It's almost like the FedEx truck, the UPS truck. And you can jump in that same truck and everything is the same. The tools are the same. They're in the same spot. The chargers, the, the fuel tanks, whatever it may be. So my first evaluation is evaluate what you have, right? You got [00:37:00] four maintenance trucks, great. Systematize all of those trucks to be the exact same wherever they are. I don't, I don't encourage crews to hop from truck to truck, but you want 'em all the same. So it creates less waste in your business. So start from there. My second step I recommend, based on what you're saying, Bob, is now that you have that, understand where you want to get battery operated, right? And maybe it's one of the four crews to start out. So maybe get us a couple of products, maybe test 'em out. You know, every guy in the field and every woman, it feels like they're always concerned about the battery of a blower, right? Test, use, operate, understand all those types of things, and then maybe retrofit or encourage one fleet to go battery and test all that out and understand it before you go all in on all four trucks. Is that a recommendation kind of.[00:38:00] Bob Carey: You know. Based on the cost savings, Tommy, it's best just to jump right in, do the trial and J and just go. Tommy Cole: Okay. Bob Carey: You know, it's when you see the sa, the cost savings, Tommy, you and you really understand your costs, that's where it's critical. You sit down, crest, we sit down with the CFO, we sit down with the owner, the financial analysts. When you take your cost of fuel. Your cost of off-road repairs, and you add that up and you sum it up, and then you take the differential and you take, crest has finance, has financing, locked in rates to purchase this equipment for over three years. You take the cost of that purchase, the cost of electricity, the cost of those repairs. They're very minimal, and you do that differential. We are seeing that many companies who adopt adopted our equipment, there's companies $109 million. They have a hundred crews they've committed to com to. Everyone is converting to Crest [00:39:00] over over two seasons at these companies. Why? Because they know that the cost of that fuel, plus the cost of offered repairs, exceeds the cost of the financing of the equipment, plus the electricity, and that differential averages around a thousand dollars. A person per year, depending on where you are and how many days out of the year you work. And based on that alone, people are making a hundred percent conversions. Tommy Cole: Wow. So you have people on your staff that can say, tell me what you got and I'll build it, and we'll get it shipped to you, and we will help you operate it. And rock and roll, move on. We'll finance it, pay for it, and let's just go. So you're taking all the guesswork out of the owners and managers of the company. So it's almost like a partnership between Landscape Company and Crest. Work together, figure out what you got. Figure out what you're gonna need. We'll build it. Literally ship it, operate it, and we're here [00:40:00] for you for service. Bob Carey: Absolutely zero downtime. We come in, we support those people, we support the we, we help build the dealer up to get them the training to do it. But it is, it's a unique thing from a manufacturer, and it's very, it's super disruptive to the market right now, Tommy. It's, it's, it's, it's incredibly disruptive. It's, but I, you know, I love that part of it. I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit of a disruptive guy, and so I come in and I, I like to shake it up. But yeah, Tommy, we, I go in these places. We go in these places as a team. We're taking pictures of the breaker panel. We're taking pictures of where the outlets are located and taught me, look, when we that's one thing that I will say, Garrett Herger taught me a grow. Build for capacity. Build for capacity. What does that mean when you go out and do your parking lot repairs? Today, you're gonna go electric in the next five to 10 years. Okay? You are bottom line. What you think you need today to run that crew is not what you really think you're gonna need in five years. Whenever everything's fully autonomous, your mowers. And that mower now needs 14 kilowatts to charge [00:41:00] overnight. Your crew, each crew member maybe needs seven to eight kilowatts, maybe 12 kilowatts per crew to charge overnight. What I'm getting at is the build for capacity. It's not that expensive. Tommy. Throw some conduit in the ground. Get your sleeves in. You don't have to pull the wire. You don't have to set the breakers, just. Put the conduit in the ground with the trench. The trench costs you once, you probably already put 'em in one, in for something else. And then when it comes, you're ready just to stub it up. You stubbed it up, pull, pull the wire, and you're rocking and rolling. But you gotta think ahead, think five years out and, and be ready for this transition. And that's gonna save you a ton of costs, you know, and build for capacity on what I ask people, what, where are you at with battery today? Have you thought about it? What would your co, what's your comp? What is your plan for the next five years with your company? What would your company look like it was, if it was fully electric, and what would you need to do that? Tommy Cole: Wow. It's the way we're going. Bob and [00:42:00] I, I believe in this a lot and I feel like you guys up in the West Northwest are sort of the trend centers. Parts of it are trying to really force you guys to do it and, and landscape companies are getting hit pretty good. It's, it's educating and changing your mindset on this. But I think it's gonna work very, very well. I just think about all the gas cans and the fuel and the repairs and the exhaust and, and it's, it's just become. Our industry where we're just burning and burning and burning constantly. It's dirty, it's messy, it's noisy. Right? And I don't even think you can put a dollar amount on all the health implications that it's causing at the end of the day. And so I'm a huge fan. I, I gotta, I gotta get into this sort of thing. This is great. Tell me, Bob, about robotics. I feel like we're, I know a couple of companies that are jumping into [00:43:00] this fully. I, I know one that is fully invested into it in their maintenance practices. Crest' Robotic Mowers Tommy Cole: Tell me about your robotic mower and why it's one of the best in the industry. And then also tell me about how do you do this? Is it something that you leave at the house? Or the, the, the commercial property? Or do you pick it up and move it to locations? Like tell me about like what someone needs to be aware of, of this sort of robotic thing that does it all for you. Bob Carey: Yeah, I mean, you know, tell me robots have been around for a long time. They really have been 15 years. Errors, minimum, I would say. I don't know. I don't know how far back it goes, but we had ones where we'd bury a wire and they did a random pattern and you were limited to where you could bury the wire and cross across the sidewalk or how intricate it would be with the buried wire. And, and they worked. They worked but they had limited case uses. You were limited by the wire. And then as things evolved, we had robots [00:44:00] that communicate from a ra from a radio signal line of sight. That gets tough because you don't always have line of sight. So then you gotta put more receivers out there. And then Crest developed their own network of antennas that we have throughout the United States that speak Tommy Cole: a cell, like a cell phone coverage? Is that right? Bob Carey: Yes. And yeah, so we have our own network of antennas. If you have a landscape company and you wanna buy robotics, you can have your own antenna. And so. If it makes sense for, you know, what's already in the area. We don't, we don't have double overlap of coverage, but if it triangulates it works so we'll, we'll work that. And so we have that and that's, that makes it really great and easy to map. You don't have to put up all these repeaters. The process to install the robot now just becomes, bring the robot, set the base, and run the mower. And another unique thing is on a lot of these other mowers. To map, you grab your phone and you walk behind it. They call it walking the dog. So you walk behind it real slow and you're [00:45:00] moving it around and fumbling around with it. But Crest has a mapping cart. It's a tool where you take the head off the robot, you stick it on the mapping cart, and you just, you, you know, it's talking to your phone, you, you map around the outside perimeter. The trees, you're not gonna go inside. You map those, the paths you're gonna go on and bam, you know, you can walk away, you start mowing in just a few hours. It, it's pretty incredible. The mowers, they, they mow down to, you know, le inch and a quarter or less. And, and that's just I don't have all the golf metrics if you want to go. I don't, I don't do, I don't do a lot of golf. If you want to do golf and get the golf kit and all that, Tommy, 'cause I'm still pretty new at this is. You can go lower. I don't know. I don't know how, I don't know how low, so I don't wanna be misleading about it. I, I don't, I don't know what the metrics are 'cause I'm a landscape, I'm a landscape guy, so all I care is, is that it, it go, it goes up to 3.54 and, and in the Pacific Northwest, I'm gonna mow it. Two, two and a quarter, two and a half, whatever, you know. So it, it is pretty incredible on, on that front. And then you know, you asked what's the [00:46:00] difference between ours? What makes ours so great? On a lot of the robots I see they, they just have a di a spinning disc and ours has more of a deck design to it that comes down on the edges like skirts and it floats. Everybody wanted a floating deck. We remember the mowers way back when that had a fixed deck. What happens with a fixed deck? You run it into stuff and scalp, right? So. It, it has a floating deck with little, it comes down at an angle, Tommy, so it kind of contours with the ground as it goes. And then as you go up through our product line, you get the ones that have double blades, you know, six instead of three. And they're stacked, one's on top, one's on the bottom. And the quality of cut, in my opinion, is much better on the double bladed units that are stacked. And then when you get to our, to our top robotics at f. Built-in wheel motors and the hubs, you know the traction you get from that I is amazing. The quality of cut. It has two discs with 12 blades, and the quality of cuts incredible. You can see it on some of my LinkedIn posts. I, I know you've seen some of 'em and just [00:47:00] stripe super well. But yeah, Tommy, it's leaving a great quality of cut. People ask, well, what about, what about the clippings? You're mowing it every three days. It's a lawn maintainer. so you're taking off a, you know, just a micro cut. It doesn't tear the edges, so there's a lot of research out there showing now that the, the health of the lawn is much better just from a fungus and pest standpoint. Also just counting how many, you know, leaves or how many stocks are in a certain area. Stock count, like density of the lawn. When you start mowing every three days, the lawn gets much denser. So you have weed, weed, weed competition that increases and then you have moisture retention and you don't have that huge thatch 'cause it's such a micro cutting. It's breaking down really fast with the biology and the, you know, it's all that, it's, it's working super well to, to make this whole system, this whole system gets better. Tommy Cole: Wow. And, and I could, I could see that, you know, it's such a minor cuts of blades of grass, doesn't really create the thatch [00:48:00] 'cause then you have the whole thatch buildup and then you have the raking of the thatch and then you have the aeration. And then you have the, you have all those things, and then you have the, you know, the weight of the mowers and the, the, the ruts and the wetness and all that. I'm a huge fan. Tell me about, one more question about, this is your robotic mower. If I was to, you know, you know, buy one and put it somewhere, right? Is, is that state at the, at the property. And you leave it and then it's got a home base? Or is it something you pick up and go from property to property. Bob Carey: We, we, if you, if you look on OPE plus, we just had a article come out yesterday or the day before, we do have an. New autonomous mower, we call the drop and go. So that mower you take with you, it takes itself out of the truck, it mows the area, it'll get back in the truck. The other that's, that's coming and what we currently have is mowers that you leave on site. And those, you know, Tommy, me, one thing we didn't [00:49:00] talk about was just cost. We talk about, you know, the quality of the cut and, and, and how it works. But the, the major thing is, is we have a global labor shortage. Labor and labor also is ever increasing, and I also see it as how can we give people new, create new positions in companies where people have more upward mobility, where they can choose their purpose? What's your, what's your purpose? What's your mission? Right? That's why companies grow is when they find the purpose in the person that they're training and developing, and they give them that space to do it. And we take 'em out of just a mowing roll. And now I can take a person and say, would you like to be a robot technician? I'd love to train you to do that. Would you like that to be your purpose? And now we elevate people and train them to do that. And that's my, my real vision for why I also wanted to be part of this, was to do that for people. Tommy Cole: You're on the cutting edge of technology and at the forefront of [00:50:00] it right now. Bob, I am not surprised you're here right now talking about this new trend. And actually it's not even a trend, it's just the way that the industry's headed towards. And I'm not shocked that you're here today because you're always on, you're always pushing, you're always pushing further when people are also sort of behind you, right? You're, you're the odd man to jump out and say, this is where I'm headed towards. Unbelievable. Bob. One last quick thing as we wrap up. We talked yesterday and like, Do Hard Things Tommy Cole: Bob, tell me what you are, what's your quote? What's your mantra? What's your lifestyle? What? How do you work and play? Like get what? What do you live and die by? Bob Carey: I would say, you know, I, I like to do things pretty extreme, you know, so I will say like one. You know, one, one thing that'll kind of give you the idea of that was like, I started in 2024 on the first of the year in 2024, I ran 24 miles, and I want to do that every year until I can't do that. So 1, 1, 20, 25, I ran 25 miles. I, I [00:51:00] didn't train, I hadn't been running. I was like, okay, if I can go to work and work for 12 hours five days a week, and then work for three or four hours on Saturday and Sunday. I can go and do anything for five hours. And so I go there and once you chip away the first hour of it, you're like, oh, I got four hours left of this. This is, this is cake. And so you know, 25 miles is easier than the 24 from the year before. And I look forward to doing that. And people would ask like, well, how, how sustainable is that? I don't, I don't know. That's the point. That's fun. Tommy Cole: point. The point is I'm in the now, right now. Yep. Bob Carey: And I, I, you know, by doing that thing the first of the year, you just prove to yourself like, I just got the hardest thing done for my whole year, and everything else is just gonna be like, I can look back at that and say, Hey, I'm having a tough day. But I started out doing that and I, and I didn't even know how it was gonna go, and I just did it. But I thought about that Tommy, just to keep it simple, was build for capacity and keep going. Tommy Cole: Yeah. Love it. Love it. [00:52:00] I love built for capacity. Keep going. That's great. I, I had a post this week that said just do hard things. And we do hard things that builds you to a better person. And when you tackle those difficult things that are meant for you to come into your life, it makes you more accomplishable, let you figure things out. And so I'm with you. I, I'd love to do hard things. I'm a health fitness freak. I, I, I think, I think taking care of yourself and doing the 25 mile run I, I need you to send me some pictures or video of you the next time you're doing that. I, I'm wanna share that on my social feed because that's, that's amazing. Bob, oh my god, there is so much. I think we're in a record length of show here 'cause there's so much to talk about. So I think we need to do another episode in the near future and get really deep into the Crest products and what they mean and some, some advantages. 'cause we just kind of, we sh you know, kind of get a good [00:53:00] 30,000 foot elevation and I think our audience is gonna hear more about it. So we'll have to do that here in the next few months. Have a repeat of you and your face and your awesome energy. Bob Carey: Yeah. Thank you Tommy, as you as well. This has been a been a lot of fun and I look forward to meeting with you again. Tommy Cole: Absolutely. Alright. Bob Carey of Crest Outdoor Power Equipment. Go find him on LinkedIn. His last name is C-A-R-E-Y. He is a trend center. Go give him a follow, watch him on LinkedIn on all his posts. They're fascinating. Also, I wanna give a shout out to. Mr. Garrett, the owner of Grow Outdoor Living up there in Washington, fabulous owner, great ace peer group member. Love that guy. And you can follow us on any social media platform and give us a listen and we'll see you next time. Thanks, Bob. John: Ready to take the next step? Download our free Profitability Scorecard to quickly create your own baseline financial assessment and [00:54:00] uncover the fastest ways to improve your business. Just go to McFarlinStanford.com/scorecard to get yours today To learn more about McFarlin Stanford our best in class peer groups and other services go to our website at McFarlinStanford.com And don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. See you next time on the Roots of Success.