#170 Bryan Clayton's Inspirational Journey: Landscaping to Tech Startup

 Welcome to any episode of the CT O Show with maad. Today I'm very pleased to have with me from the US Brian, who is the c o of Green Pal. Brian, thank you very much for being on the show today. Can you please introduce yourself and what you are up 

to? Sure. Well, thanks for having me on. It's great to be here.

So my name is Brian Clayton. I am the c e o and co-founder of a company called GreenPal. GreenPal in the United States is an app that works like Uber or Diddy or uh, Gojek. But for lawn mowing services. So if you are a homeowner in the United States and need to get a gardener, rather than calling all over the internet, you can just download GreenPal, pop your address in the app, and somebody comes and takes care of the chore for you.

Green Powell is a 10 year overnight success. My two co-founders and I have been at this job, this project for a little over 10 years, and now we are nationwide in the United States with around 300,000 people using the app to get lawn mowing services done. That's 

very cool. Uh, Brian, like, actually, you know, uh, what caught my eyes?

I mean, you know, whenever I, I like to have someone on the show, so there is something that I see. Interesting. And for you, it was like you deciding to venture into tech space, coming from a landscaping background. Can you, like little bit tell us about, you know, how the idea of Green Pal 

came? Sure. Yeah. So, uh, My first business was a landscaping business, a traditional lawn mowing and landscaping business.

So I, I started a small, uh, grass cutting service in, in, uh, my, my neighborhood when I was, uh, 15 years old. And little by little grew that into a, a flourishing business. Uh, eventually. Over a 15 year period of time, uh, getting it to 150 employees and 10 million a year in revenue. And after I sold the company, uh, in 2013, I.

I started exploring what I was going to do with my life next, and quite frankly, I, I got bored and I thought, well, I think it would be cool to start a tech startup. I think that would be interesting and, and I think I can do it. And it was kind of like I was naive. I didn't know. How, how hard it was going to be.

I didn't know the challenges that that awaited me, but, uh, I recruited two co-founders and we started working on the first version of, of the app and what we thought it should look like, and, and we released it into the marketplace. And, and, and we, uh, We learned a hard lesson. If you build it, they will not come.

And, and we didn't let that like discourage us. We just kept working little by little and began solving the problems that I had observed. 15 years in the business of running a landscaping company, uh, through, through technology. And it took about three or four years to build something that. People actually wanted to use that actually solved their problems, but we just made little, uh, incremental progress along the way and didn't give up.

Yeah, that's that's great. Brian. You know, like it's, uh, you actually answered the second questions, but like, what other significant challenges you face as an entrepreneur while building green pile and you know, like how did you overcome them? Like you mentioned few, but is there anything else like, You can highlight.

Absolutely. So a couple of things. So the first thing was, was, was navigating from, uh, A, what I call a blue collar entrepreneur, uh, to a technical entrepreneur. So I was running a landscaping business with over a hundred employees, 90 trucks, you know, going out every day servicing customers. It was a very much a hand-on business.

It was, uh, hand to hand combat, so to speak. And. That's a tough business to run, but there's a very, there's, there's a big difference between running that kind of business versus a technology business where now you're managing engineers, developers, uh, product designers, copywriters, things like that. So they're really two different, uh, two different worlds, so to speak.

And so I didn't know the, the differences between those two worlds until I started. Making the transition from a blue collar business to a tech business. So that was one challenge. Um, the second challenge was, uh, there's a big difference if you're, if you're running a traditional style of business, maybe a, a restaurant, a construction company, a dry cleaning service, a home cleaning service, whatever, versus.

Starting a tech company, most of the time when you're starting a tech business, you are inventing a brand new product from scratch that does not exist in the world. Mm-hmm. And that is very different. Than running a traditional style business that's solving a, a need in the marketplace. Those two, those two are, are almost completely different paths because one, you know, in a traditional business you're just rolling up your sleeves, you're getting to work, you're figuring out.

How to do, how to service customers better than your competition. Maybe you're developing a strategy to do that, but on the second path of, of inventing a new product, there is no roadmap. It's just you going from one, you know, trial and error, going from one failure to the next without like a loss of enthusiasm and just.

Forging your way through the unknown, and, and I didn't, I wasn't, uh, I wasn't ready for that. I didn't know, I didn't know what that was going to look like. I didn't, nobody told me that those was what that looked like. So that was a, that was another challenge that I had to deal with. 

Yeah, that's, that's informative.

But do you think like there are some qualities that we should have in order to be ready to such challenges or do you think it's something for anyone that can learn? I think 

anybody, uh, can, can get through it so long as you. Uh, are, are sufficiently motivated to do it. I think, I think, uh, one, one, you know, if, like one thing that, that, that could be helpful is, is are you an animal for this type of business?

Like, like mm-hmm. What I mean, and I don't mean like. You like, do you have a long neck and you look like a giraffe? I mean, like, like would somebody describe you as an animal? Like, like, man, that that guy or that gal's crazy to get that business going. Like, they're just insane. They're working seven days a week on it.

They're calling customers back. They're, they're figuring out problems. They're solving 'em, they're just, they're, they're an animal. Like if somebody would describe you as an animal, Then this is the right path for you because that's what it's gonna take. It, it really is a never ending series of challenges that you're going from one problem to the next trying to solve these problems.

So that, that's one thing. And anybody can, can, can, can become that. Um, the, the next thing is, uh, I think. If you can look at the whole endeavor as one big experiment, um, because a lot of times when we're in business, we we're, we're, we're putting things in and we, we expect things out. And so, you know, we're, we're doing all of this work and we can like, quantify.

Maybe what it will become. Well, when in a startup, in a new, with a new product, it really is an experiment. And, and the goal, uh, for everything you're doing is just information. So Paul Graham, he has a, he has a, a saying where he says, action produces information. And so really that's all you're after.

You're trying to get information back from users as to what's working, what's not working, what you wish, you know, what you should be focusing on and what doesn't matter. And, and really, if you can look at it, That way it can kind of reduce your expectations in terms of when things are working and when things aren't.

And so that's another thing. Another tip I would give, especially in the early days is, is action produces information. You're just trying to experiment with what's, what's gonna work and what's not. 

That, that's really, uh, very informative. Uh, Brian, now, anyone you know who thinks about starting their own.

Business or their own company, um, they struggle usually in finding, and you touch base kind of on it, but they. Little bit struggle to finding, you know, the, a user base. So for you, in the initial days of Green Pal, how did you go about building a user base and spreading the word about your platform? 

It's the hardest part of it.

It really is. And it doesn't, it, it doesn't get talked about enough, I think. So there's a saying that first time founders worry about product. And second time founders worry about distribution. Mm-hmm. And I, and I think what they mean by that is that the first time founder, which, which I was, even though I had, I had built and sold a company.

When I started Green Pal, I was very much a first time founder all over again because I was starting a tech product and inventing a new product. So, so really I, I was a first time founder, so, So as a first time founder, you obsess over the product and you worry about the product. You know, what does the product look like?

Does the product solve the problems that, that I think my customers need needed to do? And, and, uh, what does the design of it look like? And so on and so on and so on. You obsess over that as a second time founder. You understand that all of those things, while they matter, Are really kind of like table stakes and don't, and, and, and isn't really the hard part.

That the hard part is distribution. And the second time founder won't start a, a, a, a startup if they can kind of have some sort of, uh, intuition around the distribution and, and how they're going to innovate in the distribution because they know that the harder part is actually getting people to use.

The product that you just built. Yeah. And, and, and anybody can, can build a product. And as crazy as it sounds like, you know, pulling off, pulling something like this off and building a technical product that works is hard, hard, hard, hard. But the harder part is, is getting people to find out about it. To use it to, to keep using it.

And that, and that really, that the product itself is, is, is the easy part. You see this a lot with like musicians, right? Uh, you know, I don't know how to play the guitar. I don't know how to play the piano. I don't know, like it's, it's a lifelong endeavor to learn how to play a musical instrument or how to be a good singer.

And that is really hard, but it's, it's, it's a hundred times harder to get a thousand people to show up. At a live concert that you put on. Um, and, and, and so while the, the world is filled with talented musicians, it's filled with even fewer, uh, uh, traveling, uh, live musicians that, that could get people to come to a live show.

And yet even fewer than that, that reach, you know, uh, massive, uh, amounts of fame and success. So, so starting a new product and starting a startup is much like one of, of, of a musician in that sense. And, and so for me, I was, you know, I didn't anticipate all those things. I was, I was confronted by them, uh, And, and I had to, I had to realize that I had to start really, really small and just get and work at one level at a time.

And so, okay, I need, I need 10 customers. How am I gonna get 10 customers? And so I would ask friends and family to use this, this, this app that we had just built. Okay, now I need a, now I need a hundred customers. Okay, well, how am I gonna get a hundred customers? Well, I, I, you know, all, all I can do is just pass out flyers.

Like I'm gonna get some flyers made up and pass 'em out around the neighborhood. And, And, uh, and so that's how I got a hundred customers. And then, so now I need a thousand customers. Well, how am I gonna do that? Well, let's talk to the hundred customers and ask them, you know, ask them how they normally find somebody to, to get, to get their lawn mowed.

And, and one thing we kept coming across was, was, you know, a lot of times after, after. Uh, getting recommendations from friends and family and so on, that they would, that they would just go to Google out of desperation. And so we would, we would keep hearing that and we thought, well, you know, it's really hard to compete in Google search, but maybe that's where we, you know, focus all of our attention.

And, and that's what we did. We just, we focus the entire company. On how to compete in Google organic rankings. And that took two or three years to, to get tra to get traction on. But, uh, but we, we, we just kept focusing on keywords We could compete for, uh, small towns, uh, where, where they weren't super competitive.

And, and got a little bit, a little bit of traction there and, and, and slowly have built the whole company on Google organic search as a means of getting, of getting customers. And, and I think as a new, new startup, you're, you're gonna be good at one channel, you're gonna be good at one means. Right. You're probably not gonna be good at two or three or four at one time.

Yeah. 

That's really, uh, you know, resonates with, uh, what we know usually about startups and you know, how, how it's, um, you know, you need to do multiple things at the same time. Now, this is to lead me to the second question regarding this part of, of building the business. So, We know that when we start something new, our resources are like very scarce, right?

So we, we, we don't have the luxury of having, you know, all what maybe big companies they have. So how do you prioritize your resources and focus, especially, you know, when you are starting up. So what did you do when, when you were in the early stages of Green Park? 

Yeah, I think, I think, uh, Having constrained resources is actually can be a benefit.

Um, it's like nothing clarifies your thinking more than being super hungry. Um, and, and I think it's just a law of, of the universe and it can work to your benefit that if you don't. If you don't have a bunch of resources, then you don't waste time on the things that don't matter. Another saying necessity is the mother of invention and Right.

Yeah. And that certainly, that certainly wa was, was how it unfolded for us. We didn't raise any money to, to build this business, so, so the business had to, had to survive day one, and that caused us to have a. Very, uh, focused mono focus almost on our customers because we needed them to use the product and we needed them to continue to use the product.

So the first. Hundred, maybe even first thousand customers was very much us checking in with them manually. Hey, Mrs. Smith, I noticed you tried Green Powell last week and you got one, one mowing done, but you didn't sign up for war. Why was that? And, and going through like the, the, the putting in the reps, so to speak, of trying to figure out where we were letting people down and where we were making them happy.

So we, if we had raised a million dollars or. Or, or $500,000, we probably. Would've put a customer support rep on that and, and then gone on to doing other things that maybe didn't matter as much as making sure our customers were happy, so that that whole dynamic of not having a bunch of money, it, it forced us to do the right thing.

And so I think if, if, if you're starting a startup, you have to look at it like, uh, almost like how a hospital emergency room looks at like patients. Um, you know, people that come into a hospital emergency room don't get treated in the order in which they came in. They get treated in, in terms of severity and, and, and they triaged around who, whose cases are most important.

In a startup, you have to do much the same. You're just picking the first one, two, or three, uh, most important things that matter in your business at that week, and you're throwing all of your intensity on, on fixing them. And so it could be, where are the constraints? Uh, well, we have zero customers. All right, well, we gotta start getting on the phone.

We gotta start passing out flyers. We gotta go to a trade show. We gotta beat the pavement to get 10 customers. Okay? So nothing else matters until then. And then. And then maybe now, now you got a hundred customers. It's like, okay, well what's the big constraint now? Well, you know, we, it's me and my two co-founders and, and the big constraint now is we got a hundred customers, but the product really sucks and, and we're having to hand crank all these things that we don't have the technical solutions for.

So our big constraint now is dev dev hours. We actually don't have enough development. Uh, bandwidth to, to build these features that people want, they're asking for, okay, well, we need to either upscale ourselves and learn how to, how to code. Uh, somebody on the team has to learn how to code, or maybe, and this is what we did, maybe somebody needs to go drive for Uber, uh, and make $30 an hour, and then we can take that $30 an hour and put it towards a developer.

And, and that's what we did. Like, uh, so it's like whatever. Whatever stage of the game you're at, you know, look at it like a hospital or emergency room. What are the one, two, maximum three things that are most important to the business at this stage of the game? And let's throw all of our intensity into those one, two, or three things.

Wow. But I, I'm sure, like now, Brian, from my discussion with you, I can see how passionate you are about, uh, your company because for someone you know to. Because maybe if someone who, who doesn't, um, thought about having his own company or his own business or his own startup and he thinks like it's easy, maybe now say, oh, this is a lot of pain.

But I want to relate that when you have the passion, For what? What you want to build, what you believe. I think you can see this commitment that we are seeing from, from Ryan. Now, you mentioned something about you decided to bootstrap, so why you decide to bootstrap rather than raising funds maybe from a angel investor or vc.

So why, why was the decision to bootstrap. 

Yeah, for me it was a couple things that happened at once. So the first thing you know, I, I really thought we would go out and raise a bunch of money and do the traditional, uh, Silicon Valley, uh, tech startup path because that was sexy and it was, it seemed glamorous and seemed, seemed like a, like a fun thing to do.

But I kind of dipped my toes in that. For about three months and didn't like anything about it. Uh, because the first thing was I had just built and sold a business, uh, for, for, you know, a, a pretty good sizable sum. And so now, um, me personally as an entrepreneur, I'm having to. I'm having to go on this path of, of schmoozing investors for 25 or $50,000 checks when in my last business, you know, that, that, that, that was a very small, uh, uh, amount of money.

And so I didn't like, personally my ego, you know, I didn't really want to do it and I didn't really want to go down that path. And so there was resistance there. And, and, and the second thing was, I thought, well, if we can just build a business that will make, you know, $50,000 a month, then we can, we'll, we'll, we'll raise a seed fa round every, every six months.

Uh, and we won't have to do all of this crap, like we won't have to spend like a year. Uh, you know, working on a pitch deck and, and going around and, and running a sales process on investors. And so it was very much like a process that I didn't have the appetite to do, and that's why we didn't do it. And I, and I didn't want to, uh, build a.

Product or, and waste time working on things that, that, that investors loved. I just wanted to build something that a hundred people would use and keep using and, and, and I figured if we could solve for that, then the other problem would solve itself. And that's how it worked out. But, but, uh, it took a long time.

It took three or four years of us working on ourselves, getting the skills we needed, working on the product, working on this business, and, and doing all those things at once. Whereas, you know, if, if you, you, if, if I went back in time today, And you, you know, how would I do it differently? I would probably go raise money because I know all the things I know, all the things I know, like I could do.

It took us 10 years to get to where we're at today. I could probably do it, you know, in two or three if I had to do it over again. So it was like, at the time, the right thing to do for me was not raise money because I needed to evolve as a founder. I needed to grow up. Um, and if I had raised a million bucks, I probably would've wasted it all.

But now you know that I'm a second time founder, uh, that I would probably go raise capital. So I, I think my advice is if you're a first time technology founder, um, maybe, maybe hit a single or a double to u to use American baseballs analogy, like try to get on base and, and, and maybe sell a, a, a small business.

Then on the second or third one, Maybe go go the, the, the raising capital route because you don't have to. And I, I think a lot of times outside capital destroys more, most more businesses than it helps create. 

Yeah. And uh, Pedro, this is something that I always discuss, um, with people who thinks about having their tech startups and, you know, they always say, yeah, we need to raise some.

Seed funds, maybe we will do even some multiple rounds and then we will go i p o at the end. I say, okay, fine, but do you really need it? Like, what's your end goal with that? Right. And uh, from, I like to ask this question and I'm happy that you, you answered already, Brian, because now some of my guests, they say, look like you can.

You can keep bootstrapping as long as you are happy with the size of your business, and maybe you would need to go and raise funds if you want to take it, I mean, to scale it up. And you cannot do it with, you know, the current, uh, uh, I would say setup or maybe the, the, the amount of money that is generating for you today.

And this is where you go and for, for having, or sometimes. You would go and raise funds if you are building an idea, which really requires a lot of money to put in even before you have the product. And I think, you know, this is where sometimes also we see a lot of failures because they don't do enough product market fit and all the market research that they want to do.

And this will lead me to ask you like, um, How do you think, you know, like an entrepreneur really if, if they decide, let's say, to go in the route of raising funds, maybe to an angel investor, venture capital, whatever. So what do you think they should at least understand before going and approaching an investor?

Yeah. Couple things. One, I would encourage anybody that, uh, is thinking about raising funds to first try to take it as far as you can, uh, meaning your business before you go to raise funds and what, what I'm like, a lot of people, a lot of new founders will say, well, I will start this business if I can get capital.

If I can get capital, then I'll start the business. And really, it, it should be the other way around. It should be, I've started the business and, and I've gotten it to this point of maybe a prototype or, or some, you've de-risked it in some way. You've validated the idea and you've got. 50 or a hundred people that want the product and you've hustled that up, then go raise capital.

Um, and so that would be the only, the only way I would recommend doing it. I wouldn't recommend saying, okay, I've got this idea and maybe I've, you know, thought about, you know, and then, and then you go try to, try to raise money to bring the idea to life. That's really not the way it works. And, and especially in today's, Today's environment where, where capital markets are, are constraining.

So that's the first thing I would say. The second thing I would say is, for me personally, I would never consider raising money until I've gotten the business to a point where, um, It's kind of like I have a rocket and the only thing I'm missing is rocket fuel. And like I'm sitting there, I'm, look, I'm, I can get in the rocket and I, but I can't go anywhere cause I don't have rocket fuel.

And the capital is the rock rocket fuel. And, and uh, and maybe that's a bad example. Maybe my, uh, what, what, what, what usually is the case is. People have a Toyota Camry and they wanna put rocket fuel on the Toyota Camry and it's just gonna blow apart. And, and so that's what usually happens. So it, it, I would look at it as, okay, I've, I've got all of this customer demand, I've built this thing, it's working, um, at a small scale.

And I know that if I add the rocket fuel, uh, then, then, then I'll be able to take off and go even faster. Um, And, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't go raise money unless, unless you look at it this way. Like I, if you wouldn't take a loan on your, your parents or your mother's home, uh, to, to, to, to, and to start the business.

Um, and if you fail, your mother, uh, loses her home. Like, if you're not that certain about it, then like, if you don't have that kind of conviction, then then I, then I wouldn't recommend like going and trying to raise money because investors are gonna sense that. Um, and you gotta have that level of conviction before you do this.

And then, and then the other thing I would say is it's kinda hard to, once you go down the path of raising a seed, round of funding, uh, you set off this chain reaction of events that's really hard to stop. And it's really hard to, to, to reverse course. And what I mean by that is like you raise the seed, fund a seed round, and that sets you off on a path to where now.

You have to raise a Series A and you're kind of like racing towards the, uh, the cliff. And if you can't prove out certain metrics, then you go off the cliff or you raise the series A, which, which extends the runway a little bit longer. Um, yeah. And, and it's really hard to reverse course on that. And, and investors, you know, have, they have maybe 10, 20, a hundred of, of these investments, you have one.

You know, this is your only company. You're work, hopefully your only company you're working on at the time. And, and so it's, it's the dynamics are, are not in your favor. And so just think about that. If you, if if you're fine with this, kind of get rich or die trying binary outcome, then, then, then go for it.

But if not, uh, you need to think through that because that's what you're signing up for. 

Yeah, that's really, uh, very, uh, again, informative and I advise everyone to, to listen because I, I agree with you, Brian, because I've seen like, you know, from, I like to read a lot about startups and, you know, follow their paths and see which one will succeed, which one will, will fail.

And you know, what you mentioned is exactly, um, seems to be the right, I would say approach to do it. Um, usually now like shifting gears a little bit. Um, I, I'm a little bit like, um, I would say curious to know about how, you know, you had the self-taught journey into software development. Like what resources did you find most helpful?

Yeah, I th I think for me, uh, my, my back was against the wall, so I think that can help. Like, I had no choice. I had to learn just enough to be dangerous to, to get our product built. And my co-founder did also. And so the first thing we did when we launched the, the, the first version of GreenPal, we paid a development shop to build it and we spent like $150,000 for a development shop to build what we thought the app should be.

And then we, we kind of, Tried to get some people to use it, launched it and it was a total failure and it didn't have the features it needed. It was hard to use. It was just, just, it missed the mark on what, what we were trying to do. And we came to the realization that if we were going to be in the tech business, we were going to have to learn.

Enough, uh, uh, coding and enough development to be able to build, rebuild the whole thing from scratch and be, and begin to do the million things, the million iterations that needed to be done that we would never be able to get to where we needed to go. By constantly calling these guys and doing change orders and things like that, we would go broke doing that.

And, and the way I look back at it, like trying to start the tech company without, Without, uh, without learning how to code was kind of like, uh, saying, going back to the music metaphor would be like saying, I have this idea for a song. Uh, now, and maybe I've written the lyrics, but now I just need a musician.

And it's like, it's not the way it works. Like, like the musician, uh, you know, ha it has the song inside of them. And, and so that, that, that was a foolish thing and, and it was a hard lesson. And my back, my team's back was against the wall, and we had to learn enough, uh, about how to code and how, and how to, and how to rebuild the product.

To get to the next level. And so my co-founder spent, uh, his last $6,000 on a, on a bootcamp, uh, uh, where we live in Nashville, Tennessee, and the United States. And, and so he went full-time, uh, in this, uh, software school. It's called Nashville Software School. And for six weeks? No, no, it was, uh, three months, uh, six months.

And he learned enough to, to be dangerous, uh, to, to set up our development environment and, and to, and at the time, Ruby on Rails was really popular. And so that's the language that they taught. Wow. And so that's what, that's what we, uh, that's what we rebuilt everything on. So he started rebuilding it and he, and he's like, man, you know, there's so much to do.

I can't do it all myself. Uh, you're gonna have to coat up. So you, you know, talking to me is like, you're gonna have to like learn how to code up these views and you're gonna have to learn html, CSS, and JavaScript and a, and a and a and enough rails to be able to tie 'em together. And so that's what I did.

And I just, I went, I took every online course I could, like I watched every Envado tuts. A tutorial on, on YouTube, uh, and like, and Learn became the world's worst front end engineer. Um, to work alongside him, to, to meet him where he was working on the back end. And I would take it from there and, and like make, make the, a usable front end interface, um, to, to help him rebuild the whole thing.

And that's what we did. And, and we did that. For a long time, for like two years, him, me and him working back and forth front end and back end. And then as time we, we started getting like a hundred customers, 500 customers, thousand customers, started making a little bit of money. And then we were able to build a dev team around us.

He knew what we needed in terms of backend devs. I knew what we needed in terms of frontend devs. Um, and, and, and we, we were able to build a team based on our experience and our knowledge and what we knew we needed because we were kind of doing it ourselves, but not really good. But we, at least we knew what good looked like and uh, and so that's how we did it.

And it was hard, but it was the right thing to do. 

Wow. This is really inspiring, by the way. And, um, you know, I'm trying to now think about what I would do if I'm built something and, you know, my dev team le leaves me. So what are my options? It's. Yeah, it's really tough because you have to go, as you said, like you need to be like, as they say, start from scratch, learn.

Of course. Like we, I think we're a little bit lucky in this time because you know, you can find a lot of courses, a lot of resources. That's right. But still, yeah, but still it's very challenging. Um, and, and, and personally, like of course, like always I tried, you know, to, to be at some stage in, in, in building apps and all this.

But, um, you know, I like to give, uh, you know, as they say, everyone, his, his own work that he should be supposed to do. But yeah, like, uh, It's really tough and, you know, congratulations on, on really getting to, to hear, you know, passing this. I know like also Brian, you, you, you focus a little bit on, on data analytics and it had like some role in, in the growth of the business, right?

Yeah. You know, you're always, you learn really quick when you're trying to invent a new product that you don't have. You don't know anything like you don't know, you don't know what users want. You don't know. What decisions to make. And so a lot of times you're like going off of gut instinct and a lot of times you're proven wrong.

So it's very, very humbling. Um, and so then you start, even if you're not a data oriented person, and I cer I I certainly wasn't, um, you start, you start understanding that you have to collect data. And even if data is just. Just qualitative data. Talking to 10 customers, talking to 50 customers, and taking the, the, the qualitative data.

Cause a lot of times we, a lot of times we think data, we think spreadsheet, we, you know, we think C S V, we, we think, uh, uh, massive fire hose of data that we're slicing and dicing, but. But really data in the early day, in the early days needs to be, uh, I did 10 usability tests at the coffee shop, and this is where we, this is where the product is confusing to use, and I'm using that data even if it's only 10, 10 data points to improve the product.

And so as a, as a startup and as a founder, no matter what stage of the game you, you are in, you are always using data at different, at different. Stages and, and different amounts to make better decisions. And so even to this day, you know, I still try to, even though we have 300,000 customers, I still try to blend, uh, the gut, the gut instinct from a qualitative data and qualitative research, what people are telling me versus the quantitative data.

What is the, what are the cohort analysis telling me? What, how are people behaving after we make changes and so on. And blending that into, uh, Uh, into a specific knowledge of, of, okay, what is the right decision to make? So if you're not. Using data at all levels and, and even going after the, uh, a, a dozen or 50 data points in the early days, and you're just using your opinion.

Uh, you're one or two things are gonna happen. You're either going to fail or you're going to get lucky and, and like luck. Getting lucky is not a strategy. So, so you really wanna, like, you really want to go after the data as much as you can. 

Yeah. Right. Um, by the way, like, um, this is something also I keep, uh, advising some people.

They come to me, they have ideas, and this is, as Brian mentioned, uh, Data collection and analytics. You should do it at early stages, like even before you start building anything, because you need to build some data points to see like how people are excited about your idea first. Then you start to build and then you start to collect their feedbacks, and the more data you have, the better decisions that you can't have.

So a hundred percent I agree with Brian on this point now, Brian, as we are approaching, you know, the, the, the, the end of our, uh, interview today. What, what some final advices you can give to aspiring entrepreneurs. Someone who's maybe now, um, graduating from college. Someone who just decide to drop out and say, Hey, you know what?

I'm gonna go and do all this by myself. So what you tell these young people who are maybe watching or listening to us today that maybe have an idea, they are hesitant and they want to start, what do you tell them? 

Yeah, especially, you know, if you're thinking about getting started and you haven't yet, you, you, you can look at your, uh, life, uh, you know, how many good years do we get 20, 30, 40, maybe 50 good ones.

You know, like, uh, you know, you're gonna do something. And if you look, I think to like live an interesting life, you have to have an interesting story of some kind. You have to do interesting things. And I think the business can be the. Be the answer to that. The, the business that you start and the journey of starting that business or maybe multiple businesses can be the thing that causes you to live an interesting life and certainly has been for me.

I, I, I've been an entrepreneur for 22 years. I'm not particularly talented at any one thing, and I've lived a so much more. Enriching, interesting life, having start and built one company and started another, uh, that, that I otherwise would have not lived. And so look at it that way. Look at your life in the context of a movie or a story and look at like the, the, the, the highs and lows that are gonna come with that, that make that story interesting.

And the business can be the, the, the, the storyline to your life. So, and, and that can help you get started and it can help you get, get through a lot of the challenges. 

Yeah, that's, that's great. Now, as we come to the end, I have a very famous question, Brian. Uh, uh, the question is, which question you wished that I have asked you and how you would answer it.

Ooh. Uh, well, you've asked some really good questions, so I appreciate that. And I, and I also appreciate you, uh, having me on your show. 

Uh, my pleasure. 

I guess, I guess one, one thing would be, um, that I've always wondered is, you know, did you ever think it wasn't going to work? And how do you know when it's working?

And because a lot, like the first three years of starting Green Powell, I was, I was just like, man, I don't know. I don't know if this is, maybe it was just the first two years, I think by the third year I knew, but the first year or two, it was very much like a leap of faith and, and I didn't know, I didn't know if it was worth, worth spending 10 years of my life on, on the project.

So, so for me, Um, I was looking for like, that, that validation that, uh, that it was working and, and, and I think guess it came at like the end of year one, maybe, maybe 18 months into the, I remember I was working at a, on a Saturday and my, my two co-founders were working with me. We worked seven days a week and I remember something like, 30 people signed up that Saturday for our service.

And, and I, and for the first time, I didn't know who any of them were. And so that was the moment, you know, that I knew that it was gonna work. Now we have a thousand or 2000 people a day signed up, but, but at that moment it was a Saturday and 30 people signed up and I didn't know, I didn't recognize any of the names, so that was like the tipping point from.

Just ground and pound calling people, passing out flyers, pressing the flesh to now a little bit of traction's happening. Word is getting out, we're getting recommendations, referrals, and people are signing up and I don't know who they are. So that was that moment that I knew it was gonna work. 

That's, that's really great.

Uh, Brian, and you know, I can feel this moment, like what you could have. Been feeling at that time, you know, you and your co-founders. Cause Yeah, like, yes, we, we did it like some people coming and they want our service. That's right. It's like, like it's really a moment, uh, you know, like maybe it doesn't, uh, relate a hundred percent, but for example, same for me.

Cause the podcast for me is kind of a startup, right. So absolutely. I rather, I rather as a startup and. You know, the, the first like couple of of times where I start to see messages from people that I don't know, messaging me saying, Hey, like, we listen and we like it. Oh, okay. That I, that means I'm doing something.

Right. So it's good, good sign. 

It's a very rewarding, validating, fulfilling moment. 

Exactly. Exactly. And it, you know, like a couple in, in my career also as well, although like it was not, I mean like in the form of a proper startup, but kind of an intra entrepreneur kind of things. When in the corporate world and you do something, you show it to people and even people you don't know in the company, they say, Hey, we, we listen, we hear that you did it in like in a different way that we used to do like, yeah, we, we wanted to try it.

So really these moments, guys are moments that it will pay off all the pain. The reason I mentioned this, cause it'll. Pay all the pain that you felt. Maybe down the road it might take one year, two years, as Brian mentioned, like until you really start to get so if, if, if you want to go this road, you need to be patient.

You need to give it time guys. It doesn't happen overnight usually. Brian, really thank you very much for, for joining me today. What I will do is also like I will leave, you know, the, the, the company website, green Path website if someone is in the US and they might be interested in, in your services so they can get to know about the company and what you do.

And as usual, uh, this is something I repeat at the end of each episode. If you have any feedback or questions about this episode or the show in general, please reach out to me. Um, available on LinkedIn, Twitter. My email address is also like, uh, the website of the podcast. You can reach out to me. If you are interested to be guests like Brian today, also we can arrange for this.

Just, uh, send me a message we can arrange for that. We can set up the logistics part. Don't worry about it. And you know, I hope that you enjoyed this episode and as usual, we'll meet again in next episode. Thank you very much and see you soon. 

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