98: Hard-Won Lessons Learned, Starting And Growing GreenPal
Gain insights and ideas for your side hustle from GreenPal’s Bryan Clayton as he shares sage business advice and hard-won lessons learned through growing his company from $0 to annual revenues of $30 million.
This episode is replete with hard-won lessons learned and sage business advice.
In our last episode (#97), we learned that 14-year-old Bryan Clayton started his lawn care side hustle after being forced by his dad to cut the neighbour’s lawn.
After building that side hustle into a very full-time business with 150 employees and over $10million a year in revenue, he cashed out.
Then together with a couple of partners, he started to build GreenPal, which has been described as “the Uber for lawn care.”
You’ll gain insights and ideas for your side hustle when you hear Bryan talk about;
- the creative way he attracted the first group of users to the platform,
- what he did to finally nab top spot rankings in google organic search results by way of GreenPal’s lawn care contractors,
- why you need to know just enough to be dangerous at about 20 different things in order to get a business from zero to one, and
- so much more.
If you’re thinking about a lawn care side hustle, GreenPal has a free option to help you get started.
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Need a little (and sometimes big) push to start and stay focused to grow your side hustle? Dive into my online Masterclass: How To Turn Your Thoughts Into Wanted Things.
What You'll Hear:
03:06 the idea of creating the “Uber for lawn care”
05:36 now nation-wide in the USA with 300,000 users per week
07:09 why you need to be able to execute in-house
08:18 learned coding through “YouTube” university
09:19 the trap new founders often fall into
10:22 delegating from “abjucation” has never worked for Bryan
11:23 Elon Musk is the gold standard for being able to zoom in/out any corner of his businesses
12:28 the strategy Bryan used to attract the first group of contractors to the platform
16:20 passing out flyers worked for the first consumers needing lawn maintenance - google ads did not work
17:09 how he finally broke into top ranking in google organic searches
18:44 the vetting process and a Stripe account required
21:09 fees paid to GreenPal from contractors start at 5% and go up from there (plus Stripe fees)
22:33 all GreenPal revenues are derived from the lawn care contractors, not the consumers
23:16 TrustPilot review gives a 4.8 rating on almost 800,000 reviews
24:38 the challenges of running a two-sided marketplace
26:58 they always made it easy for users to provide feedback - free R&D!
27:45 social media provides validation more than it does new customers
29:31 you’ve solved 10 problems, but then there are another 10 to be solved
29:43 why GreenPal has been successful
31:17 Bryan’s best tip for side hustle success
Wrap-Up
33:18 expanding on Bryan’s video game analogy
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