41 : Going Green with Bryan Clayton

The Kevin Shee Show

Bryan Clayton is the Co-Founder and CEO of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 100,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day.

Before starting GreenPal, Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc., one of the largest landscaping companies in the state of Tennessee, growing it to over $10 million a year in annual revenue before it was acquired by Lusa holdings in 2013. Bryan‘s interest and expertise are related to entrepreneurism, small business growth, marketing, and bootstrapping businesses from zero revenue to profitability and exit.

Links:

• GreenPal
• Bryan Clayton (@bryanmclayton)

Show Notes:

• 00:46 - Can you tell us about your background and how you got into landscaping?
• 02:46 - In your first business how did you separate from your competitors?
• 04:47 - Why did you decide to sell the business?
• 07:28 - What did you learn from selling the business?
• 10:02 - What then motivated you to start this new business?
• 12:50 - How tough was it to get started?
• 15:20 - What are the benefits of using your product instead of traditional methods?
• 20:12 - How do you stop the contractors from “Cutting out” you and working directly with the customers?
• 21:54 - What was the next challenge after scaling up with both customers and contractors?
• 24:44 - How did you learn about digital marketing?
• 27:25 - Are there plans to expand internationally?
• 28:35 - Do you have any regrets about not having any investors in your businesses?
• 30:45 - Any advice for entrepreneurs and startups?