From Overwhelmed to Organized: How Admin Support and Systems Saves Your Sanity – Advanced Admins

00:00
Robert
Hi, everyone and welcome to the I Am Landscape Growth podcast, where entrepreneurs help entrepreneurs grow faster, better and stronger in the green industry. From leadership to sales to recruiting and operational excellence, we cover the topics holding entrepreneurs back and share how to get past those bottlenecks with the best in the industry. I’m your host, Rob Murray, co founder and CEO of Intrigue, a digital marketing company focused on helping landscape companies grow. So sit back and enjoy the show.

00:28
Johnny
Everybody.

00:28
Robert
Welcome back to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth podcast. It’s kind of a cool call. Today we got two guests on the show which doesn’t happen very often. Hope to have you both. We got Angelica Day and John Day. So thanks so much for being a part of it.

00:40
Angelica
Yeah, thank you for having us.

00:43
Robert
Pretty unique perspective coming from Advanced Administrations, essentially a company they founded three years ago serving landscapers in the green industry. But I don’t want to do a mis justice. So why don’t you give us a bit of a breakdown in terms of what inspired you to start it and what’s the core focus of the business?

01:03
Angelica
Yeah, so we actually. I love this story. I’ve told it so many times. I love being asked it because it started out of like, obviously like any other business. Right. You’re not really start like you’re not going into something like with that maybe like the. That’s the goal. I’m going to start a business. But you know, that’s what happened. We moved to the other side of the country where, oh, away from family, you know, didn’t have that support around us where we moved to. So were like, if I want to contribute and I want to work, we don’t have like daycare help. So whatever it was we did or I did, it had to be from home. Right. So that was number one. Number two, what am I good at? Where are my strengths? So admin organizing that were. That’s where my strengths lie.

01:53
Angelica
And then just being able to be home and be remote, obviously, you know, now with the technology you’re able to do that. So, so did. Started just, hey, I want to work from home. Found a position where I was able to do that for a contractor in Minnesota. And then my husband was actually. So Johnny’s my husband and he was like, he saw what were doing with the softwares and the systems and the processes and he’s like, you can take this and expand it, right? Like, so just apply the process to multiple companies. We can train other admins, other people that are remotely working, set them up on the systems and set up other companies on the systems and. And that’s what we did.

02:36
Angelica
So three years ago we started expanding on, you know, the companies that we had, the admins that we had, the processes and. Yeah, so that’s kind of where it started. And I like the story because I’m like, you know, I was always struggling with what am I going to do? Like, what is going to be the thing that helps our family. That was really important to me. And yeah, out of that, out of, well, I’ll just make some extra side money and take care of the kids. And out of that came advanced administration. So it’s just a cool story.

03:10
Robert
And so we had a chance to meet up at the Synced up summit in Dayton of all places. I remember when I was coming across border, the border agent. What’s in Dayton? I was like this amazing landscape conference no one’s ever heard about. Anyway, we got a chance to meet there and a really cool crew synced up and Weston does such a good job of curating a community. And so we got a chance to like kind of realize that you’re kind of niched and focused in on the landscapers. So when it comes to like we work with hundreds of landscapers and some of them are very organized and most of them aren’t. So getting them to follow processes or even develop them, let alone follow them can be a struggle.

03:53
Robert
So like when it comes into what you see on a day to day, when you take on a new customer, what do you see as like the primary constraint holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry?

04:06
Angelica
Yeah, John, I feel like you would you have some good input.

04:10
Johnny
Yeah, typically. So there’s different types of owners. Right. You have the owner that is more chill, laid back, that’s kind of like, hey man, if it comes to me. I’m not too worried about it. Then you have the owner that’s like hyper focused and kind of almost paranoid about things. And then sometimes then you have the owner that’s like trying to scale something and has so many ideas that they want to implement and they implement a new idea before they fully flush out the previous one before. So we, that’s like typical traits. Right. And I think every owner has, you know, experienced that and because obviously we’re all freaked out most of the time because we got to employ people and we got to pay them and you know, and we got to feed our children and then.

05:10
Johnny
But you also want to like somehow get out of the company. So you’re always like, okay, how can I scale this and make this easier on myself and hand off the baton to someone? So with that being said, going back to your question, like, the clients that we have success with that get into the processes, and this has been us formulating this over the years too, is they have to be willing, right? And they have to at least try it. And then they also have to be willing to go through the weeds with us a little bit, right? Because when we onboard somebody with our company, we come with all the packages because as any landscaper knows, or green industry, you know, company hardscaper. One of the biggest challenges is not like going out and doing the job.

06:03
Johnny
It’s like communicating everything back to the office, right. And making sure everything is streamlined. Usually their most pain point that the thing that they hate the most is having to. Having to communicate everything with the office, right? Like, and that could be something like as simple as like a discovery call. It all starts there, right? That initial sales call they have with somebody. So, yeah, we find that the most successful companies, like with implementing processes are the one the owners that are like, hey, I’m down to try this. I’ll let you know what works and what doesn’t work. And they’re willing to adapt to it a bit. And they have to be willing and there also has to be an end goal for them as well.

06:47
Johnny
Like, if their goal isn’t to scale their company and eventually hand off the reins to other people to do it, you’re kind of like, it’s kind of pointless implementing a bunch of processes because there’s going to be things that they want to do themselves and they’re never going to let go of.

07:04
Robert
Right?

07:05
Johnny
But if your goal is to actually like, get out of that company and have it run without you having to babysit it all the time, then you have to take, start taking those steps. And for us, that’s something that we really prided ourselves in and you know, taken ownership of and developed a lot of these processes for all of our clients that we work with, the ones that are willing, right? So there’s. You can only.

07:28
Robert
No, that’s cool. So when someone reaches out to you or before they work with you, what are some of the common symptoms that they’re experiencing that they’re just like, this is. I don’t want this anymore. Like, what are they banging their head against the wall? So that if people listening to this can start to identify whether or not they’re in that position.

07:46
Johnny
Yeah, go ahead.

07:48
Angelica
Yeah, I mean it’s the overload. You know, it’s just like the overwhelm. Like not being able to obviously like answer calls, you’re missing calls, you’re not returning calls is number one. Whether that’s because you don’t want to answer the calls or because you know, you’re so busy. But that’s definitely a symptom. Overwhelmed having to miss, you know, games and things with your, you know, going to kids games and things like that.

08:27
Johnny
Yeah, I mean, just job costing. Yeah, job like job not being able.

08:32
Angelica
To keep up on paperwork.

08:34
Johnny
Typically they have to come home and they’ll be doing all the work at home after they worked all day on the job site. So they got to go back home, invoice the client. If they’re going to job cost them theirselves, then they got to go through gathering all the receipts, inputting it into their job costing software, running reports on it, doing the financials. Right. Bouncing the books, doing the coding. Like you all after 9:00pm exactly. So it’s like that’s what the typical person’s telling us when they want to come on And Anything else in Helica?

09:13
Angelica
Yeah, no, just. Right. Just somebody trying to buy back a little bit of time.

09:17
Johnny
Yeah. Buybacks.

09:18
Robert
Yeah. Okay. So great book, by the way.

09:22
Johnny
So the.

09:23
Robert
What are some of the kind of like core processes that some people usually or most people don’t have in place when you jump in that you kind of start at? Like, how does it work when you come in to help streamline the stuff?

09:33
Johnny
Most people don’t have like a sales pipeline, believe it or not, like, or like a way of tracking it and a written down like step by step what needs to happen at each stage. Right. Nobody has that when we come in and we start working with them and so we actually develop that with them while we’re onboarding them on with their admin. And the nice thing now is that everything’s like technology has gotten so great, is we can program in like, hey, if, you know, so and so’s job or opportunity, whatever you want to call it, goes into this stage of the pipeline, it automatically tasks our admin. Hey, go see if they sent that proposal off to them and if they haven’t yet, ask them if they need any help, you know, putting takeoffs on or anything like that. Right.

10:27
Johnny
So that’s a huge one. Right. Just knowing what needs to happen and then also having that laid out because most guys have this on Their brain. Right. They know if someone calls me, they want a paver patio. Okay, I’m going to need to go on site, get some measurements. Might need to get a survey, depending on which state I’m in. Okay, sweet. Well, if I need to get a survey, I need to call this guy, you know, all the different cobwebs of steps that need to happen next. So it’s like, for us is, okay, how do we get that out of your brain and put it into a system that then someone else can execute consistently to where you don’t have to be saying the same things over and over?

11:04
Johnny
Like, that’s what stinks when you hire an admin or you hire a new guy on your crew is like, okay, we hired this new person, but now we have to spend all this time telling him the same stuff I’ve been telling everybody else, you know, for the past 10 years. And that is exhausting. Unless you like teaching. Right?

11:24
Robert
So, well, and even if you do like teaching, isn’t it better to teach a process that can be seen and delivered and the workflow is laid out and like, it’s. You can visualize it. It’s not just, you know, coming from someone’s head to someone’s ears?

11:36
Johnny
Yep, exactly.

11:36
Robert
Okay. Yeah, that’s. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. So, like, when you see people start experiencing the symptoms, like, what’s the size of business that’s typically running into these issues that you’re like, okay, you know what? These people are ready to start onboarding. They’re willing, they’re experiencing the headaches, they’re banging their head against the wall and voicing at 9pm like, where’s the. Where does that start showing up in.

11:58
Johnny
Terms of, like, size once they start working with someone like you? Typically, yeah.

12:06
Robert
The flood starts coming in. But what’s the size of business typically, though? Someone will see this. Like, you know what I am, I think I need these guys. I’m not sure, like, where would you typically see the size of a company?

12:18
Johnny
Go ahead.

12:19
Angelica
Yeah, I mean, so typically it’d be around 500k. Like, so gross that you’re grossing. Right. When we’re coming back to the volume of tasks that, you know, our company has a healthy number volume of tasks that we can. And also, you know, the volumes there, the income’s there. We can bring somebody on to assist with the incoming calls. And, you know, obviously it’s calls, but it’s other things. Like Johnny was saying, it’s entering takeoffs, it’s prepping estimates. It’s, you know, there’s so many different things that an admin could be doing to help give the owner back some of their time. And so, yeah, so we think that like, or, you know, we’ve seen that the industry, in order to be able to afford an admin and be able to, you know, have that be like a healthy, be in a healthy place is 500K.

13:10
Angelica
So that’s kind of.

13:10
Robert
Yeah, that’s cool. We, we talk about this all the time when we’re at these different shows about, like, how many missed calls do you think you’ve had in the last, you know, 30 days or last year or whatever it might be. And inevitably it’s always more than 10. Even if it’s like a, you know, $5 million company, they’re still not answering all the calls. And theory of constraints, if anybody’s had a chance to read a. Eli Gorat, is just an unbelievable book and it’s called the Goal. But this idea of like, the bottleneck is the constraint of the throughput of a system. And if somebody is missing phone calls, like, if you imagine you spend, let’s say, 40 grand a year on people, that’s going to help with admin.

13:48
Robert
I’m not saying that’s the investment for working with you guys, but let’s say just the sake of argument, and they answer one of those missed calls and it turns into a $100,000 project because you picked up the phone. Well, that resource has paid for itself time, like time and time again. So if you’re not answering your phone, like, that is a great opportunity to have anybody come and help support that because it’s just missed opportunities left, right and center. And we talk about, we’ve almost. We’re starting to build a call center because we have people not answering their phones. And so we’re like, well, why don’t we decentralize during the peak season? Because we generate leads and if those leads don’t turn into deals, people aren’t happy because they’re not making more money.

14:31
Robert
And so it’s like, what can we do to make sure that they’re, you know, capturing these leads and getting the money out of them, they’re investing in generating them, and then how do we get them closed? So you talked a little bit about the sales process being like one of the big things that you help people understand the stages and the pipeline management, different parts of the process. One information you need to collect. So what does that look like for somebody who’s listening to this, who doesn’t necessarily have an under? Like they might have a sales process in their head or they’ve got a way that they do things every time because they’re the ones selling all the time. What does the sales process look like when you help them kind of layer it, like lay it out?

15:04
Johnny
Yeah, like a template. One that we typically start with for a sales process. And it changes for. It changes for each hardscape company depending on which state you’re in. Right. Like some states might require site plans for things. Like in Georgia they do that. But typically it always starts off and there’s two. We’ve done a lot of research into this. Right. So typically your sales process, someone doesn’t like enter into your sales process until there’s a meeting that happens. Right. Like a straight up meeting. They’re really actually interested. So until that happens, you’re kind of prospecting, which is what you were kind of talking about, Robert. Like just answering the phone, kind of do that pre screening call, see if they’re even in your service area.

15:49
Johnny
But once you find out, like, hey, this person is, you know, they’re good, like it’s a good person to talk to. Typically how we set it up is we then will, what we’ll do is we’ll have a discovery call stage. I’m going to try and go like okay here. So discovery.

16:05
Robert
Most people are going to listen to this more than watch it.

16:07
Johnny
Yeah. Okay. So typically it goes discovery call scheduled stage and then it goes an on hold stage. And then there’s an on site scheduled stage. And then typically after that there’s a proposal development stage or a sent to design team stage. Right. Depending on how, you know, depending on what the job needs. And then after that there’s a proposal sent stage. Right. Or a design presentation stage. Those, those kind of like group in together. The proposal sent, design presentation. Some people do design presentations, some don’t. And then once the proposal is sent, then it’s either closed won or closed lost. Right. So to simplify things, you either have a discovery call with them, you then go do an on site with them. You then create a design and a proposal at the same time and present that to them.

16:57
Johnny
Or you don’t do a design and you just do a proposal, send that off to them and then they’re either one or they’re closed. Right. That’s probably pretty basic sales pipeline process for any hardscape company.

17:09
Robert
Sure.

17:10
Johnny
But yeah, like I said, there can be some Weird things in there. And it’s knowing, okay, hey, so when an on site consultation is scheduled, what needs to happen after that? And that is a very. If you just ask yourself that question within your company, you’ll start to see all of the different things that are happening that are in your brain and how, honestly how pretty extraordinary the human brain is. Because, okay, we know there’s an on site. They want this, they want, you know, they want a paver patio, right? Pretty easy. Sounds easy. But like when you go and actually like write this all down, it’s like, whoa, this is kind of overwhelming, right?

17:49
Johnny
So like what you were saying with workflows, what we do is we go in there and hey, like if someone wants this, okay, this and this and this need to happen and then this can happen, right? So that’s really how we set it up for people. And one of the big things that we do is we send forms, right? We’re big, we use, utilize forms a ton in the automation of forms. So typically what will happen is if you, if someone was to come on with us and we booked a discovery call for you would then get a form to fill out within a text message. You get sent a text message and tell you, hey, this person is Joe Bob. Here’s their phone number. They’re interested in this. This is their budget range. This is when they want to start.

18:36
Johnny
These are weird notes that they have about the project. And then you’re going to click a little link below that and then you’re going to fill out this form, right? And it’s going to ask you, okay, hey, what was the discovery call outcome? Do you need to send a proposal? Is a design needed? You know, or they, are they a bad lead? Are they on hold? Do they need to, you know, get some financing together to do this project, right? And then typically what, depending on what button you push on that, it then automatically updates that person in your sales pipeline and then shoots a task over to the admin and saying, hey, do this right, do this next. And that’s how we make it super efficient. Because at the end of the day, every company is just trying to become more efficient, right?

19:27
Johnny
Efficient efficiency is key to growth and making these. That leads me to my next point. Like being able to implement successful processes within a company. You have to make them easy. If stuff is too hard or too complicated, like it can be complicated on the back end when you’re setting it up, but if it’s too hard for them to do out on their cell phone or in the field. Like you’re good luck, I’m gonna get done.

19:53
Robert
Yeah, yeah, well, and the cool thing, I think with what you’re talking about using forms to, you know, essentially like dot the eyes across the T’s is you’re making it really straightforward on what’s the critical factors of information that needs to be collected in order to move a deal along to different stages.

20:08
Johnny
Yep.

20:08
Robert
And you having structured data in the form of a form to make it really simple for people. Right. And, and having to go through the onboarding process with you guys, it must be a cool exercise to help people. Like, well, first of all, help them understand what is the critical information they need at each stage, but then also probably guide them because you’re doing it with so many people. Kind of make it easier for them to like, okay, well this is what we see everybody else doing. You might want to consider doing the same thing.

20:35
Johnny
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then you kind of dial it in like some guys are. Everyone’s a little bit different. Right. On how they do business. And that’s what makes everyone so cool in business. So interesting because one guy might schedule the on site while he’s on the call with the person. And then we got to figure out a way to work it around. Okay, hey, okay. As soon as he submits this form, okay, it’s got a task, the admin. Hey, go schedule that on site consultation real quick before you schedule anything else, you know, because we need to get that on schedule. So it’s like, yeah, a lot of that’s, it’s all just dependent on the person.

21:07
Johnny
But yeah, like you said, we’ve done it so many times at this point and it went from like having it in a nice system to where it’s all automated. But before that it was all written down on a piece of paper, you know, so we literally just went down and wrote through every single stage and got it to the point where we’re like, okay, we understand what needs to happen with a hardscape company, landscape company, green industry company. We know what the typical pipeline is. You know, you start throwing in pool companies now you’re getting a little different. Right now we got to do a bunch of, you know, deposits and payment scheduling.

21:40
Robert
So fun stuff, permit stages, whatever it might be.

21:43
Johnny
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yep.

21:46
Robert
So then what does it look like for somebody when they’ve gotten through it? So they onboard with you? It’s been say six months, like what’s the change in their day.

21:53
Johnny
To day, if it’s working good and they’re participating, their life should become a lot easier. Like, they. What we, like some of the feedback we get from these guys is like, wow, I didn’t know this could be this easy. You know, these admins come prepared with this stuff, right? Like, they’re trained on how to use the system. They’re trained on where to check their tasks. We work hand in hand with them developing some of these processes too, because, like I said before, some owners are a little bit more particular on how they want things done. So we work with them. We work with them to, like, you know, make sure it’s set up and good. And, you know, we’ve all. We. Obviously we’re a company, right? We’ve. We’ve had some failures and that we’ve had to, you know, overcome.

22:40
Johnny
But with all of our current clients now, it’s like, man, I can’t believe it was this easy. You know, that’s what we hear. I can’t believe it could have been this easy. It was hard at the front or.

22:51
Angelica
Oh, go ahead, finish your thought.

22:53
Johnny
It’s always hard at the front. It’s always hard at that onboarding stage because you’re like, oh, my gosh. Like, it’s an exercise going through all this stuff. It’s not easy. It’s very draining. But once you get it down and it’s just trucking, guys are like, okay, I’m telling it. And that’s how we’ve gotten our business. We don’t have, like, a lot of marketing. Right. We should talk to you, Robert, about it. But it’s all word about, you know, it’s all word of mouth and they just, they’re like, dude, you got to try this. You got to try this. You got to try this. And that’s how we’ve grown our company.

23:27
Angelica
Yeah.

23:27
Robert
Yeah. I mean, that’s on the back of doing great work and making people pumped with the, you know, outcome. So good on you. Like, it’s. If you can put gas on the fire, you want, you know, working with someone like us. But that’s the foundational components is, you know, delivering the service of clients that are just like, this is amazing.

23:46
Johnny
Thanks.

23:47
Robert
You’re going to add to that?

23:48
Angelica
Yeah. Well, just the other one was I didn’t realize all an admin could be doing. You know, there’s another thing. Like, it’s. I think that’s something that holds business owners back is, oh, well, there’s just not enough or, you know, I don’t know what I’d pass on. So it’s like, oh, I didn’t realize. That’s all they, that they could be doing all that, you know. So that’s another one that we’ve gotten to that’s like, oh, yeah. Like, they can do a lot more than just answer calls.

24:15
Johnny
Yeah. One of our admins down in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, she’s like, she knows how to submit permits better than I do. Like, Right. Like, it’s crazy. Like, I’m sitting there asking her how to submit permits and like, I’m like, what is going on here? Like, it’s so. Well.

24:32
Robert
And like, how many business owners have you ever talked to? Is just my favorite job. My favorite part of everything I do is submitting permits. My favorite thing.

24:39
Johnny
Yeah, yeah. It’s like, no, that nobody ever.

24:42
Robert
Right.

24:43
Johnny
Nobody ever says that.

24:45
Robert
So. So if somebody wanted to, like, what would just walk through the situation that someone’s in that is like a perfect fit for you guys? Like, if they’re. You just, you know, what’s the situation they’re in? They’re 500k. They’re not at home for dinner. They’re doing invoicing at 9 o’ clock. Their sales process in their head. No one else is doing it. Like, what else is going on with these folks?

25:07
Johnny
Yeah, go ahead and elk. I’ve talked a lot.

25:10
Angelica
No, you’re good. What else is going on with these folks? In. In the sense of. Can you ask your question?

25:17
Robert
Yeah. The position that they’re in to come work with you. Like, what is the perfect. Like, okay, it’s the time. Stop beating your head against the wall. You don’t need to. There is a solution for you. It’s us. Like, there’s a bunch of people listening to this and I’m just trying to see. I’m trying to help them see in their own mind if they’re one of these people that need to talk to you.

25:33
Angelica
Yeah. No, I mean, and I think too, it comes back to like, maybe they’ve had an experience in the past with an admin, whether it was in house or remotely. You know, they. I feel like that kind of maybe has some. It affects somebody wanting to reach out because they’re like, oh, well, I haven’t had a good experience in the past or, you know, I had an in house admin and. And, you know, what have you. I think, you know, just not being, you know, or how does the whole remote thing work? Having concerns about That I think every business owner needs an admin, needs an assistant, needs somebody to organize their thoughts, need somebody to take, you know, even just documenting, like, there’s the processes that, you know, having a company like ours, you know, can come with.

26:21
Angelica
But even just having somebody there just to take down thoughts, you know, unload your thoughts and then move on to the next thing, I think that’s something that’s, you know, it’s a small thing, but it’s an important thing. And so, yeah, everybody needs some somebody there, you know, and, you know, having the right systems in place and having, you know, the thing that sets us apart too, is that we do have like, the hiring and the training piece. And so the fact that they don’t, like, you know, a business owner wouldn’t have to worry about those. Those factors as well, of like, you know, now I have an admin, now I have to manage them or now I have to train them. Right. So those things are taken out too.

26:58
Angelica
So that could be a hesitation that we see too is, you know, having to invest that time into having this person come on. But, you know, we. We handle that piece. So it’s like without. Without having to worry about that. It’s like, you know, what are you. What are you waiting for? You know, that’s cool system. Yeah. Get an assistant. Because I think everybody, business. Every. Every business owner needs somebody there.

27:22
Robert
So supporting. Go ahead, sir.

27:24
Johnny
Oh, yeah, just. And just to like, piggyback off of that, I think if you’re finding yourself to where you’re completely stressed out about your day, like, if you’re running a company and you got all your guys and you’re trying, if you’re like, falling behind on invoicing your clients, you need to definitely reach out to us. Like, if you can’t keep track of what bills you’ve received from your clients and you haven’t been tracking, like, accounts receivable and, you know, if you have, if that’s not going well, definitely hit us up.

27:57
Robert
Right?

27:58
Johnny
That usually happens once you start getting to that point where you’re like, holy mackerel, man, I’m busy. I can’t even keep track of the invoices that I’ve sent out. Like, what is going on here? That definitely reach out to us because that’s huge. And that we, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the sales pipeline, but that kind of dips into another. I created like, another one called the project pipeline, and that looks different for each company. Company and each service that they provide. Right. And that kind of gets more into like, you know, automating and putting processes in for your crew as well. Like, hey, as soon as this job starts for some companies we work with, they automatically all their crew members get a text message saying, hey, submit pictures, end of day photos. Right?

28:38
Johnny
And like that’s huge having that documentation, especially for legal purposes and things like that. So if you’re finding yourself in that point where you don’t have time to send invoices or you’re losing track of what invoices you’ve sent, definitely call us because that’s not a good place to be in.

28:54
Robert
Well, and you’ll be able to make them their money back fast. Like if someone’s not getting the time to get an invoice out or doesn’t know where they’re at, you know.

29:04
Johnny
Man, if you got a pile of past due invoices, you need to call somebody. Even if it’s not us, just call somebody so you can get money coming in. Because that’s just. Man, it’s just kill you. It’ll kill you. Yeah, exactly. It’ll kill you. Other than that, like you said, leads, that’s the easy one. Obviously if you’re missing leads and you’re not answering the phone, like half of the business is just answer the phone. Right. One of the, some of the best business advice I ever got was answer the phone, you know, just answer the dang phone. You know, and if you answer the phone, you’re gonna grow. So if you’re not answering the phone, call us. If you don’t like to talk to people, call us.

29:41
Robert
Cool. So then here. We only have a couple minutes left. I want, there’s one pass. I wanted to because. Go ahead. You’re helping people with, from a technology platform and you help people with admins and giving them the support they need to be able to, you know, make their sales funnel better, make their project pipeline better, you know, the full cycle. Right. From lead intake to collecting cash.

30:01
Johnny
Yep.

30:02
Robert
Technology is a big part of like the framework with which you support these folks. So what are you seeing with AI? You know, like I was at the NALP leaders forum and Jim Carrel was a futurist talking about the impacts of AI. And I gotta tell you, like 70 to 80% of the people in the room of 400 people, all leading entrepreneurs all across the states all put their head down, which is like, Jesus F. I don’t even want to deal with this. However, that’s insane because we need to deal with it. It’s in front of us. So what do you say to folks around like, what’s the revolution of AI and how maybe they can embrace it, man.

30:33
Johnny
So here real quick and I’ll let in hell could go on AI. I plugged in my whole, so advanced administrations, I plugged in the whole business plan, how much money we make, you know, how much we spend on employing people, all of our expenses, everything like that. And said, hey, how do I get to the point where I’m only spending 10 hours a week on this company? I spent like four hours putting that in. I think I was using Grok and it spat out in like a second a insane game plan to me of what to do with the company and strategies to use moving forward. So that’s, that was, yeah, that was wild. But as far as like within our company, I mean we use AI constantly.

31:17
Johnny
Like it’s just, I mean when we’re doing spreadsheets, like when we have to update a pricing list for, you know, for a synced up client, like they need, they got a Teco block, they just updated all their prices. They need to update their synced up catalog. We throw that into chat GPT and chat GPT. Chat GPT does it in 10 seconds, you know.

31:36
Robert
Yeah.

31:36
Johnny
And so we use it all the time and we honestly as management and stuff like that, we’re like, before people come and like ask us a million questions, we’re like, okay, have you googled it? Have you Chad GPT it? Have you done your research on it? Because, because it’s just a huge tool. And as far as like the systems that we use, we have a CRM, right. That we sell separately. It’s like it’s a, you know, monthly subscription and you could have all this stuff were talking about. We go through the whole onboarding process. But within that there’s also AI now. Like, and you could pay for an AI assistant. It can’t do everything that a human can do, obviously because it’s just the systems. Not everything’s intertwined yet.

32:16
Johnny
Once everything is connected, like we don’t have to use Zapier all the time for these, you know, CRMs to connect. Like once it’s all connected, which I’m assuming it’s going to be eventually, like there’s going to be a way to route this stuff a lot easier. Once that happens, AI is going to be, it’s going to be able to do a lot. A lot. So that’s kind of, that’s my take on it.

32:41
Angelica
Cool.

32:41
Robert
Any you want to add to that one?

32:43
Angelica
No, I mean, yeah, I think there’s definitely a lot you can do. And I heard you use the term like embrace it. Because I, I think that’s all you can do. Right. Like, it’s one of those things where I’m always like, oh, I’m afraid, I don’t like to use it. I’m afraid, I’m afraid. But you know, it’s either you embrace it or you get left behind kind of. I think that’s like the mindset that I’ve had. It’s like, you know, it’s there and it’s super useful, man. It saved us a lot of time constructing templates and you know, just like Johnny said, processes and. But yeah, I think definitely embrace it. And I don’t even know what your original question was, but AI is.

33:24
Robert
Well, just, it’s just these landscapers. Yeah. They’re trying to put their heads in the sand around it. I don’t think it’s going to work out. Just a couple of use cases. Like one of the clients we worked with, they had one of their sales, so they have four people on their sales team. One of them was outperforming the other three by whatever, 2, 3x. So we took all their call recordings from the top performer and I’m talking like 100 call recordings of like, you know, 20 to 30 minute conversation, discovery calls, qualification calls, that type of thing. Took the entire transcript, dumped it all into chat. CBT said, come up with a best practice discovery call process and then use it as a checklist to then bring to the other three people, you know, 20% lift in opportunity, close rates from the other three.

34:07
Johnny
Right, yeah. Incredible process.

34:09
Robert
Process took 10 to 12 minutes. You know, it’s, it is pretty amazing. Even walking around. I was taking my dog for a walk with my son. He’s just wicked into like Navy, World War II Navy. And so he’s like, dad, okay, you got like a, a budget of 100 points. Aircraft carriers are with 25, heavy battleships were 15, so on and so forth. Destroyers, battleships or submarines, patrol boats, whatever. And so we’re just walking the dog. I tell him what I would do. He, he says what he would do and he’s like, oh my. He told me that his Navy fleet would. Don’t mind. All right, whatever.

34:39
Robert
We’re walking around, we get home, he takes out a piece of paper, he’s like, all right, let’s do this on a piece of paper with these points I was like, well, why don’t we do it in a spreadsheet so we can like change up the scenarios easier instead of having to write it down. All right, cool. So we’re doing it a couple times. It’s fun. Like, why don’t we just load one of these tables into ChatGPT and see if it can like discern whether or not these Navy fleets would actually win or lose. And so we upload this thing, give it the context of World War II naval battle, and it just goes, naval battle, World War II scenario. Heck yeah, let’s do this.

35:07
Robert
And starts to fill out line by line, like, what are the odds of what scenarios each fleet’s going to win and what are the odds overall for each fleet to win? We built a naval battle scenario game on the fly and this 10 year old is just blown away by how cool and detailed this is. And so the reason I’m sharing this with you guys get it. But for anybody listening, the use cases for these things are really only limited to your brain’s ability to figure out how to leverage it. And you’ll never figure it out unless you start to dabble and play into your point in Jellica. Like you just use it a little bit and it might start off with random questions, looking for random things, but eventually you start to see how powerful it can really be.

35:51
Johnny
And going back to one of your previous questions, Rob, like, if you want to know if you need an admin, just go do what I did. Plug in your whole company plan into Chad GPT. Tell it. Tell everything you got going on right now. Tell it where you want to be. And I bet nine times out of 10 it’s going to tell you, okay, well, you’re going to need an office admin and then you’re going to need a foreman, you know, and that’s what it’s just going to tell you. And so yeah, wait.

36:19
Angelica
Yeah.

36:20
Robert
Okay, one last question. Resource speaker, author, something that you follow that’s kind of like been a bit of an inspiration or aha, light bulb moment that you’d want to share with the audience that they should check out.

36:33
Johnny
Man.

36:36
Angelica
I mean, I’m a big fan of Dan Martell. I know that he’s like, you know, he’s kind of like, you know, buy back your time. I. That’s one that I go back to. I feel like that was just because. And also the reason that book’s always stuck out to me is because I read it around the time that, you know, the com that we were really starting the company. So I just feel like that.

36:53
Robert
Well, it’s like an inspiration. Inspiration to your whole existence as a business, right?

36:58
Angelica
Yeah. So I think that’s why I like that one. Always just boom, right there every time that, you know, we talk about that. So Dan Martell, I like to follow him on, you know, social media and that sort of thing.

37:09
Robert
Yeah, awesome.

37:10
Johnny
Yeah, one for me lately, I think I was just watching it yesterday and some people might get weird because it’s kind of political, but Patrick bet David like some of his old, you know, business videos on, like, scaling companies and things like that are just so interesting in his mindset on how to grow company and growth. And actually the video I was watching was, you know, when to fire someone yesterday. So like, and that’s a big skill, like knowing when to fire someone and.

37:40
Robert
And how to do it well and.

37:42
Johnny
How to do it well and putting the right people in the right position. Because one of the things that might be holding you back is the person you have leading your crew, you know, like, that’s, it’s huge. And so, yeah, that’s one. That’s a big inspiration for me because that at the point in our company, it’s like, okay, hey, it’s. It’s chess now. It’s like, hey, we got to put this person here, this person here. And if we do that correctly, we’re going to be the most efficient as possible. Right? So I love that.

38:09
Robert
Well, inefficiency, full circle, kind of the name of the game. Working with advanced administration. So if someone wanted to reach out to you, what’s the best way for them to get a hold of you.

38:18
Johnny
Website?

38:19
Angelica
They could just check out our website, advanced administrations.com. We have a contact page on there that asks, you know, those questions as far as like, the. What’s, what’s your budget? What’s the volume? Not budget. I’m thinking of a contractor’s contact form. What’s your gross revenue? Like, how much are you bringing in for that volume? You know, as far as the, the volumes there for the company. So, yeah, just checking out our website or advanced admin on social media as well. Yeah.

38:47
Johnny
And as soon as you submit that form, it’ll allow you to book a consultation with us and you can get up on a, a zoom call with us and do a little introductory meeting and we’ll tell you all about the company and show you some of the processes and the systems that we use and how we go about creating all this stuff. You’ve been hearing about.

39:03
Robert
So epic. Well, thank you so much for doing this, Angelica. John, appreciate you and everybody else listening to another episode of the I Am Landscape Growth podcast.

39:11
Johnny
Yes, sir. Thank you, guys.

39:13
Robert
Yep.39:13
Angelica
Thank you.