Automation: The Ultimate Inflation Buster

OVerview

If there was a way to cut down cost while also increasing profits, would you consider incorporating it into your business? Joe Langton, CEO of Automated Outdoor Solutions, joins Angelique to discuss how the use of automation, especially robotic mowers, is a profitable solution for the landscaping industry. 

If you are interested in hearing more about automation and calculating ROI, while also earning CEU credits, listen to Joe Langton's presentation on the subject from our SYNKD Live 2023 event here.

Angelique
Welcome to SYNKD On Air with Angelique Rob and today my guest is Joe Langton. Welcome, Joe. How are you?

Joe
I'm doing fantastic. How are you?

Angelique
I am doing great. Anyone who's been to our events, or has been reading our publication have seen you in some form. But you do a lot of things. So maybe we should just start with, you know, how you you started in this business, just a brief interview. I mean, I don't, you know, we don't have to go back too far to 20 years.

Joe
Well, alright, so I'll give the bullet points. So I got into the business and the most unique kind of backwards way for most people. And the way I got in was, I started the snow removal company. At the same time I was a union electrician going to school for small circuitry and analysis at first became a union electrician did a side job for a guy, he was impressed with my work ethic and said, Hey, man, you should start helping me run my snow removal company did that for a few years. And I quickly realized that I just wanted to be able to do it my own way. And I started Langton Snow Solutions at first and actually it's funny Angelique looking back, our tagline was "A Snows Your Problem Where Your Solution Thought Tt Was." He made all these sweatshirts, you know, and then realized quickly that there was a need for the same customers who were plowing snow for to do their landscaping.

So in 2005, I went from snow plowing only to snow and landscaping. And ironically, cool part of the story. Tanner Lindahl, who's my general manager now was my first employee, and he's been promoted within and is now running the ship for me and my brother. Real cool kind of story there that we have, you know, more than fan we have, I could probably do a whole episode on 10. Company. But you know, I started building a team.

And you know, Angelique, one of the things that makes me so passionate about where I am, you know, and I'll get into automation quickly. But, you know, I, we did snow, good profit margin, did the landscaping, and was losing money. And at first I thought it was something to do with our leadership, something to do with us quickly realize it's an industry pandemic, we haul under our lawn mowing just to get the other verticals. But we can get into that later if you want to take a dive into that.

But so automation in 2016, so to go from, oh, five to 16, we had gone from basically nothing grew the company to roughly between five and $6 million. You know, at that point, it went from nothing to about 75 team members full time. And then, you know, it's no season had 150 to 200, depending on the year. So just kind of the evolution from oh, five to 16 2016, I saw my first robotic lawnmower with Husqvarna at a booth at the time, Husqvarna was selling their robots for about $3,600 A robot. It was kind of an interesting interaction with one of the people from Husqvarna. I thought it was a vacuum cleaner. Then, and I you know, but through that kind of interaction, him and I kind of started to talk started undressed the cost a little bit. And what I identified time was you know, divide that one robot that does an acre and a quarter was gonna put the cost per acre of mowing higher than at least I knew Langton Group was doing it. Yeah. So. Yeah. So I figured, okay, I don't make it work. So, you know, one of the things that's made us different in the space is, you know, Angelique, it's why you invite me to talk to your as a guest at some of your shows, and even in your publications is, you know, I looked at automation, as you know, how do I compare it to the costs with people on a machine, and I went to ask Husqvarna, talked about some stuff found out about their fleet program, and realized man, I could start to sell to professional landscapers in the sleep program. So you think it was as simple as that Angelique, but then what I realized is, a lot of landscaping professionals couldn't do what my brother and I had been doing, which is we'll buy the equipment. They didn't know, you know, some of them don't know their numbers very well. So they didn't even know how much it was per acre for them to mow grass. So now I've kind of settled into kind of being that person that can help people understand their numbers. I offer a very unique service model where a landscaper can just get a robot through us. I mean, for instance, I'll just plug the fact that like I can get him in an eco 16 acre machine. And it basically when all the dust settles per month, it'll be about 25 acres, or $25 per acre with that machine. Same thing a Husqvarna car so that's what we're doing here. Not to get too into the business side of it. I'm I'm going to basically be the groundskeeper and golf, the landscape professional, all those people's path of least resistance. So yeah, that's me that kind of gets me caught up, you know?

Angelique
Well, and I think what what is different is making a step change in the industry. And that's what it seems like you figured out how automation can make a step change, not just, you know, doing it faster, you know, because doing it faster doesn't always give you good results. It's not always possible. You know, I think in your presentation that you showed St. Live, it was really interesting. What automation can do for a business? In the the way, you know, the way that you presented it, how your cost per per acre, can be so much more manageable.

Joe
Yeah, well, Angelique, I'm glad you brought that up. I mean, it doesn't make a difference what industry I mean, even my own podcast, I've been in success, I just had a guest that is doing window cleaning, automated, right. And it doesn't make a difference, who I talked to what space is getting automated. At the end of the day, it comes down to a cost per square foot or cost per acre, right. All different markets have different labor rate.

Angelique
Different states have different labor. Yeah.

Joe
yeah. You know, but what, what it comes down to is this there, there's, especially when you're working with national suppliers, the purchasing managers have a certain cost in their mind for what the cost per acre or square foot is going to be to maintain those mulch beds, cut that grass plow that smell. And, you know, what's happened is in inflation and inflation, for labor, inflation, for machinery, inflation, for the vehicles, we drive, all those costs have increased. But the the purchasing manager, their job is to keep costs down. So in our industry, we're seen as a kind of almost like a necessary evil. I mean, at the end of the day, if, if these major, you know, developers or property managers could just let the grass grow while they would. I mean, they don't really, after the unit's get built, they see that as an expense it's on it's on a spreadsheet, it's an expense. So it's an expense they want to fix. So I tell professionals, listen, how can we still provide a level of service that makes our business look the way we want it to look right when our truck and trailer pulls up? How can we fit in that crunch? Right at the end of the day, we're getting crunched on two sides, purchasing managers don't want to spend more money, but everybody else expects us to spend more money for it expects us to spend more money shoving, labor markets, minimum wages increasing. So automation, it's an inflation Buster, it can stop that and it can offer that level of service that consumer expects from the professional landscaper, while allowing us more time to spend time on the details. And at the end of the day, that's what I'm most passionate about. You know, one of the things that upsets me and it's Andrews gonna say it how it is It upsets me because sometimes manufacturers, you know, they don't embrace who I am or what I'm doing for them. I could have been, I could have been somebody that just said, Okay, I gotta figure it out. I'm only doing it with me, I'm not going to tell anybody. Instead, I go to shows like yours. I do shows like this. I talk about it. And you know, there's very little reward for someone like me to do it, but I love our industry. I want our industry to be seen professionally. I get so upset when you know, Angelique, hang on ventured off, and you probably are worried. You know, it's like, it's like, I mean, I live in a pretty nice subdivision, right? With very wealthy people. Some people are private equity, you know, book managers and people are bankers. And when I moved into this subdivision, they were like, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm a landscaper, who like you're a landscaper? You know? And, and I get so tired of hearing people say that, right? Because I think our industry has some of the most intelligent, hardworking, diverse group of people in any marketplace, yet. None of us are respected. And I believe I can make our industry our respect respected by automating? Yeah.

Angelique
Well, no, I hope that you would bring this up, because it's something that you mentioned, you know, when we had you in our publication, I have it right here September, October 2022. And you said that I love this industry. I think it's an undervalued industry. And I think, you know, I think the same thing our industry has so much to it. And we have the complications that Mother Nature is had us. And you know, on top of the things that you're talking about with the pressures of costing, that we're always driven to do things faster, but yet all our costs are increasing year on year. And as you know, you have a rainy season, you're still expected to get the grass cut and keep it cut, you know, and get out there and not have divots in the grass while getting it cut. And, you know, it's a big challenge to get things done sometimes. And yet, our costs are going up, and we're being driven to, to bring it down. And really, if you start lowering your costs, to meet clients expectations, you're in a race to the bottom. So really, to elevate the industry, the only way is to change the game. And, you know, I think it's great that, you know, I had somebody say to me, Joe has given away all his secrets at your event. Like, why is he doing that? And I was like, well, it's for the benefit of everyone. It's the benefit of the industry, that you're doing this?

Joe
I mean, so here's the thing, you know, a couple of things, and I hope I should have almost said, you know, it's I made sure I kind of unwrap the few things you said, but so so okay, why do I do it? Here's the reality. I right now, some people don't know this, but with certain manufacturers, you know, depending on the manufacturer, aos and lengthen group, because you know, the thing that never gets talked about, and even as we talk, I'm wearing my aos shirt. I've got automating success in the background, but the, you know, lengthen group is my proving grounds for automation. We have hundreds and hundreds of robots. And when when I look at from the start, I mean, there were times when I was probably 20 to 25% of Husqvarna sales, there's times when I'm 40% of echo robotic sales. And why would I want to tell people? Well, Angelique, because at the end of the day, it's $100 billion industry, okay. And I can never be a part. And it's unrealistic to think that I'm going to net all 100 100 billion, right. So so how can I? How can I be a part of it the most well, by hoping to inspire the industry, to embrace my desire and passion to help us all change. And then and then to be recognized as the person that has the last mile figured out. Right. So sometimes I get upset when I find out manufacturers are going to sell direct, right. But on the flip side, I have over 50,000, here, you'll probably know this better, Anjali, you know how many people the synced thing are in the landscaping industry? Like where companies?

Angelique
Oh, goodness, I think I have something on my wall. 600,000 firms.

Joe
I was gonna say 550,000 600,000 firms. We those are just the ones that report. I mean, anything that doesn't even account for the people that, you know, since there's such a low barrier of entry in our industry that don't even count taxes.

Angelique
Yeah. I mean, there are so much side hustle, or

Joe
yeah, there are still people that this is a side hustle for them, they get paid cash. And that's just how it is. Right. So so let's say just for compensation is 750,000 people, I have managed to grow a fantastic team of people be a top 30 to 40 in the snow and ice business. And you know, I'm probably I don't even know where we are because we don't report to any landscaping one, but many are probably in the 150. And under. Right. So that being said, was 700,000 people. I'm still happy. Yeah. So so when you look at this, when people are like, Well, why is he given this way? Well, because here's what's going to happen. 700,000 People aren't going to adapt automation. I don't even think 100,000 People will adapt automation in the next decade. Okay, but if I can partner with people and I'll say it out there like like the Reinhardt's Okay, Todd Reinhart, great guy, you should interview his company. Okay, you should reach out to them and say right on the podcast, okay, great company equal values to a company like mine. If I can partner with landscape professionals like that. Okay. We're all rising together. Yeah, we're all on our ship rising together with the same tide. Okay. And we'll be able to start to enjoy our lives more. You brought up environmental pressures and constraints. You know, it's like, I always hate that. I've always hated Angelique that my construction, Design and Build Team typically gets to work Monday through Friday. If it rains Monday, they work for 10 hour days, and then they make up for and they still get their 40 Right or Yeah, 45 Whatever it is, right. My poor people that do maintenance and we have a lot of maintenance. crews and in the way we do it at Lincoln is its maintenance is maintenance construction is construction. irrigation is irrigation. Sometimes those guys are working Saturday and Sunday. And because if it rains three days, it's like, like roll this through this if it rains three days in a week, well, if we're only working eight hour days, which everybody in the industry knows you're not working at least him, we just lost 30 hours of operational time. I can't make up 30 hours in two days possible. So then Angelique, what's the next thing that happens, we don't pull the weeds, because then they don't pull the weeds. So so. So it's like I as a landscape professional, when I go past an account, and I see like a big national account that use the national brand, that doesn't really care, because they send it out to three different people. But if I see weeds in the bed, it's one of two things. It's been sub two, A sub two a sub that nobody really cares, because they just do what they do, because they don't care if they lose the book, or it's someone that doesn't have enough people and they're operationally strained. So they neglect the weeding. I don't have to do that. And I'm only 20% automated right now, actually, you know, every year I say, Okay, we're automated, we keep getting more business, right? It's like, it's like, if I stopped taking new clients today, it probably be 40% automated, but the reality of it is, you're seeing my workload, you know, I have more employees now than when I started automating in 2016. But I have hundreds of robots. So it's something I want to put out there to to people, if people are listening to your show, Angelique, that maybe are just workers in the industry, the reality of it is I've been able to pay my people more money, my employee retention is high. Because at the more profitable I become, it's easier to give my people raises our company, I'm very proud of the fact we offer health insurance at LinkedIn group. Okay, so, so, so how was I able to do that? Well, profits, you know, it's amazing to me that, like, you know, I listen to a lot of podcasts and stuff. And you know, the thing that everybody you always want us to talk about his culture, culture, culture, but you know, breeds great culture. When companies treating people what they're worth, and correct, when companies are profiting, they can pay the people what they're worth, they're a nice equipment, they're there, they're operating the best of the best, right? And I wouldn't be able to be in that position. Had I not had people in my past that were willing to operate some real clunkers. I mean, I look back on some of the equipment and the trucks I have now versus what I used to have. And I think of the people that operated that, I just want to give them hugs, no, seriously, knowing that they would go out and work all night and an old Michigan front end loader, you guys, because you know, me and my brother, we didn't take any capital or private equity. We had a building, you know, so one of the things I want to bring up on this is like, I sometimes hate when I go on LinkedIn, and I see people being like, yeah, you could have your type of equipment, but this is our equipment. Sometimes I think that those people, where did you start? Nobody started with brand new caterpillars. But like, they started buying some new stuff, right? So so even an automation Angelique, it's like, like when I'm talking to people, like start with, start with what you can start with, and become profitable with that with that little section, and then just start to build it because, you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint in business. So So anyways, I just went way off track, but but, you know, I, this is what I do. But, I mean, I mean, it's like when I come on a show like yours, and we only have an hour, I wish we had 10 hours.

Angelique
We can do a follow up. Don't worry. Don't worry. I know. Go ahead. Yeah.

Joe
But I think but I mean, here's the thing about it is like for me, I you know, I want to be the guy that one day is remembered as the person that was willing to share. You know, there's a lot of great people in our industry that are part, you know, part of now. I mean, people people know, I mean, Frank's been on my podcast, Frank Mariani, you know, does, has done some great design work, great stuff like that, you know, and when there's awards given in our industry with a certain person in mind, one day, when they start giving out an automation award, maybe it'll be the Joe Langton automation award, because at the end of the day, I do feel like I am an automation innovator in our industry right now. And that's what I'm very proud of.

Angelique
Well, and I think, you know, sharing and helping people along the journey, it opens people's eyes to what could be seen as very scary, you know, it's a big change, possibly when, when what you know, is what you've done for so long. Automation is a step change, but I think, you know, this is what our industry needs to become more Professional to not have, you know, we talked about the health and safety issues of people, I'm in South Louisiana, you know, over 100 degrees, over 100% humidity, you know, who wants to be out there, you know, getting dehydrated, and you know, and pushing a mower when you could have automation doing that. And it actually saves people's Well, it might be too dramatic, but saves their lives, you know, from not overworking in the heat. You know, there's a lot of a lot of benefits to that. But it is, you know, just so different than what people are used to. But tell us a little bit about the new partnership with site one because that it came out just recently, let me see the date may 19, that just got announced. So how is that gonna affect AOS and how you're doing things.

Joe
So that's, that's an announcement I'm very proud of. So you know, the reason that it's kind of it's really a strategic partnership, there's there was no monies exchanged, nothing like that what it was, was me realizing we're going to focus on what I know we are great at which in my opinion, is the last mile and I do want to say, I want to credit drill Northrup with the blonde for that Joel Joel has identified that in us from the beginning, when we first started to work with the blonde is the fact that that we I have identified the last mile and that last mile is, you know, anybody can set somebody up with a robot, but who's going to keep it running, you know, who's going to know how to deal with the problems of it, and who's going to deal with the architecture of it, you know, my daughter, Julia, might be one of the best robotic architects in the business, you know, and there will be like, in my opinion, there could almost be automation architecture, like added to college curriculum for for landscape degrees, right? Because at the end of the day, we are building an industry, okay. And if I'm going to build an industry, I have to build an industry with people that already have the context. So site one landscape supply has 30 30,000 landscapers that are already purchasing seed, fertilizer, and landscape materials. Matter of fact, LinkedIn group is a customer of site one. This was like this was pretty easy. Now, ironically, site one is actually purchasing my ball management solution for golf. So, you know, people have listened to your show, you know, know me as the guy that automates lawns, but I also automate golf, and I automate driving ranges, in particular, something that typically doesn't get talked about, honestly, it's been pretty nice. I fly under the radar with that. But I have control of the ball management system. So I, I brought that solution over from the UK. And St. One, agreed to distribute it, so I could get it in more people's hands. Okay, so, so, so that's where it's a strategic partnership. I'm supplying them some of the innovation that we have at AOS. And they are supplying me with a great group of salespeople that have been hesitant to sell automation up until now. Oh, okay. Oh, that they have somewhere to back them up, then maintain it.

Angelique
And troubleshoot it. And I guess it is, it's not just a drop it on your lawn and walk away, it's a little bit more complicated. Anything is

Joe
I wasn't I'm going to bring up and I'll bring it, I'll bring up I'll leave the person's name out of it, just to make sure, you know, they're not offended by me bringing this up. But, you know, there's a certain personnel industry, and if you're an industry, you're gonna know probably who it is. But it's been like a very thought after customer relationship. Right. And they're big, they're a big player in the game, they're going to continue to be a big player in the game. But all the people that they were working with were, were frontline people, they could get them the product, they could, they could work on other things. But the last mile was not their specialty. So they would put this equipment out into the into the marketplace as long as the marketplace. And they wouldn't they wouldn't work. They wouldn't know the parkway, they wouldn't mow the left side of the driveway. Right? Well, one of the things that people don't know that Julie and I developed in our app is we have a cable laying tool that in what it is, it's you put it on the cable layer when you're laying cable, and it'll actually show where all the wires are. And it'll show where the guide wires are. Now, why is that important? Because most people most robotic issues are not the actual hardware. It's the way that it was installed. And how can anybody troubleshoot that if they don't actually see how the system was actually installed? If I can't see a map, I can't begin to start to troubleshoot for you Angelique.

Angelique
So what we do then it records so you have the ability to record all that information from the start.

Joe
Correct. And then so when I can do with sight Mine is the people that partner with us can have access to our app. And then and then and then so they can sell that for me, okay, because me and Julie have this answers with no tool to sell it. And it's very cheap. And it's not, it won't be expensive when you actually think about it, it'll pay for itself probably in the first install, because what I was able to do is just by talking on the phone, and troubleshooting, once we had this relationship, I've realized that, you know, probably 60% of their problems are as simple as this. And I'll say this, it's as simple as a lot of these manufacturers don't make it easy to area map the robot. And most people don't even know how to area that though. So I can pretty much if I have the measurements and the details, I can area, map it from a laptop for them. And within a day not even be in there. Okay, the robot is cutting properly. So So the partnership was site one was US proving to them, the things that we could do exceptionally that other people don't even know, can be done yet. So you know, so that's what we're doing with them. And I believe that it will change the space as we know it. There'll be so many more people that can get the robots in their hands, and it'll start to clean up, honestly. It'll make the manufacturers manufacture. And it'll allow distributors distribute, and it'll let end service providers like ALS, providing service, and I really hope that it'll start to do what I think should happen. And it'll kind of take away the automation ADHD is it's happening with Who should we use? What What company should redirect setup, whatever, because at the end of the day, any person that says, yeah, it's a robot, it's good, they've watched too many episodes of Terminator these robots themselves. You know, one of the analogies I like to use Angelica, it's their second automatic dishwasher. I mean, if you load the plate upside down in a dishwasher, and you open up the dishwasher, and it's full of water, it's not the dishwashers fault, you loaded it. So So in automation, if you do wiring wrong, and the robot doesn't work, I see all this stuff, fine line, these things don't work. And I hate it. Well, unfortunately, look in the mirror. Because if it doesn't work, you probably did the install wrong. And if you didn't do the install yourself, you hired the wrong installer, they likely had the opportunity to use a Alas, they just didn't like my price. But if they did use me, it would already be working. So you know, that's my shameless plug.

Angelique
Well, it's funny, because, you know, I've been in the UK before now. And so I have in my own landscape business, you know, started 15 years ago, and we were robotic mowers have existed for a long time, like way before vacuum cleaners. But I find that when I talk to people in the US about a robotic mower, they're like, oh, like a, you know, robotic vacuum cleaner when I was like, Yeah, but the lawn mowers actually came out way before robotic vacuum cleaners. And that's, that's how experienced the robots are for lawns. You know, I mean, it's, it's been in place for a long time, but it's, it's the application and troubleshooting that has been quite a stumbling block. I think for a lot of people.

Joe
Yeah, so listen, the American market is so different compared to those, the European and you get in trouble if you tell the UK European because they remind you, they exited from that stuff a long time ago. So so let's just say across the pond, anybody on the other side of the Atlantic, you know, it's different, but But here's what's different about it. They value landscapers. Like, we value electricians and carpenters in the United States. In out there, a landscaping professional is just as professional as an electrician. Okay, so like, let's look at it like this. I used to be a union electrician. When I left that career, I left for a pay decrease. Right. And quite frankly, you know, I think electricians are probably making if you're a union electrician, and you're making 65 bucks an hour now, you know, there's no landscaper making 65 bucks an hour. But here's the reality. It is a craft. You're doing great paint, painting walls, and you're doing irrigation systems and in but it's just not appreciated, right? There's no appreciation to what to what landscape professionals do. Only in the United States. You go across the pond, there's only a couple of big landscapers and they charge what they charge. And if you don't like it, you do it. You're stuck. Why did automation take over so quickly out there, Angelique? Because even at full price, even if 3600 bucks for that robot, it was half as expensive as their gardener. Yeah, because in Europe, they don't call them landscapers. They call them gardeners. And the gardeners didn't care because they have more work than they know what to do with Slack. You out and they're out there, you know, small yards 5000 to 10,000 square feet. So robot works perfect. Now every one of these little robots that the professionals in the United States look at are like, Yeah, I'll never work. They work perfect out there. So, so they did it. Now, manufacturers, those European manufacturers come over the United States think it's gonna be a slam dunk, they try to focus on residential well, doesn't work. Why? Because 50% of residential in the United States is actually molded by professional landscaper. And, and since the cost of the professional landscape are so cheap, versus the cost of the equipment. The consumer says, I'm just going to keep my person. Yeah, there's no reason to change. Now. Here's what I can tell the industry. And this is why I'm so passionate about it. If we don't wake up, if I can't shake us all out of the coma, and wake us up, the manufacturers will take that market, they will take that 50% of people and they will sell direct to them, and you will lose that customer forever.

Angelique
Okay. Wow. That's a big, that's a big problem for the industry.

Joe
Right? This is why I'm so passionate to share. I thought we had 15 or 20 years. I would just do it all myself. I'm 44. So I got plenty of time. Right. But we don't have time. So So what do I'm trying to get the landscaping professionals to realize? Same thing I got Frank to realize when I talked to Frank Mariani, it's not a customer, why are we going to let somebody else take our customer? We have the customer put out the robot. Right, but not the robot, you're good to go. Now, what nobody expected was the level of success LinkedIn group was going to have doing it in the commercial space with the small robots. But here is the thing. Angelique, the reason you see when you're a gap, and you go to all these shows, and even when you're selling booth space at your shows, probably people will come with these big battling mowers and the mowers have all gotten bigger. And why have they gotten bigger? Because labor rates have gone up? The cost demo hasn't. So if you can make more ones, that's great. But anybody that's listened on the show that's professional landscaper then knows what that comes. Does it fit through the gate?

Angelique
Yeah. Okay. Joe So how many? How many? How many people as you're listening to this podcast right now say, yet? Somebody's been an account. It wasn't me. The people showed up in the zero turn doesn't fit through the gate. We had to push them over. Hold on. We lost 100 bucks. Yeah. I don't have to worry about that. With the automation. It fits through everything. Second, don't have any scalping. Because the reason yards get scalped is a cutting deck is too big. And he has thought that scouts it. So all those scouting complaints go away. If you listen to this show, and somebody has called to complain you because your guys or girls blue grass into a freshly mulch bed. Doesn't happen with that doesn't happen. Yeah, yeah. So. So you know, going back to your original thing, or people saying Joe has given away all the secrets. Honestly, there are secrets. I mean, there's a lot of things that I do in the landscaping space that I learned from reading a magazine like yours, Angelique. Right. I mean, I mean, I mean, at the end of the day, we are all sharing information for the greater good about industry. So yeah, so you know, I just hope when people hear this, they don't hear it as like, Oh, that guy and they hear it more like, oh, wow, that's something we really need to take a look at. Because, because that's the reason I talked so much.

Angelique
Yeah, well, and your passion shows, you know, and we love that you're so willing to share and that you're doing so many innovative things. Another thing that you're doing that's innovative, we're running out of time, but I wanted to make sure that we did this because these green magic homes, you're actually getting your landscapers to build houses to give us a little bit of an update on that. That's so cool.

Joe
Okay, so here's the thing I answer first, I'll start with, hopefully, enough people will think this is cool for my brother to think it's cool, because my brother John, just doesn't see the vision. But I am doing this. Okay. And sorry, John, that I'm calling you out on that. But oh, but, but a lot of people think it's cool. He just doesn't see it, but he hasn't seen the house yet either. So just you know, in all fairness, but so so Angelique, when, when I started to automate, you have to realize since I was one of the first people, I had a lot of people saying some pretty, pretty stupid stuff on social media, you know, sending me a message saying, Oh, you're gonna ruin our industry. You know, you're a loser. You're nobody. I mean, I got some of those. Right. And what it said was, though, I kind of looked at it that okay, what is the fear here? What's the fear? The fear is I'm gonna take jobs away. So what can I do? Who to not only not get rid of my people, but to make that let them level up. Now, I go back full circle to the respect factor. We respect Lance. We, we don't respect landscapers or respect carpenters and electricians and plumbers, okay. Those are the trades people that keep our world world running. Except, I've always know my people can do anything. Yeah, I mean, seriously, my people that work with us are the most passionate, hard working people. I mean, like people are attracted to like people. So like, I know, every person at LinkedIn group is willing to tackle any challenge I have a vision for so i A few years ago, Angelique went up to Door County, Wisconsin for my first time, and I see these moss covered rats by Baileys harbor, and indoor County. If you haven't been there, you should definitely go and I think men and then build a tall Hobbit house for anybody who hasn't had the six foot four q&a. And I saw I Googled tall Hobbit houses and and this company comes up out in Mexico, I call them ask them if I can, if they can build me this house, I didn't plan on building it myself. Anjali, definitely can build me this house. And they said they don't have any certified builders. And I have another aha moment. And that aha moment is I will get the rights to build these houses. I will serve people from my team down to Mexico and learn how to build these things. And then I will train them to do this so that as I start to get more and more automated, I can start to fill those people into this space, and then pay them more money, because building a house is a trade and tradesmen just get paid more money. So we started doing it. Now here's what has just been so inspiring to me. My general manager was like, man, Joe, you're making these guys drive three and a half hours. Nobody's gonna want to go up there. And I'm like, Tanner. I think our people would go anywhere. For me. Like, I know, I'm a good leader. I know I treated them right. I think they will. Well, I've had people upset that I haven't asked them to go yet. So I mean, I mean, seriously, Anjali. The only thing we did not do on this house, which we could have done as landscapers I just didn't have the time. I didn't do the concrete slab. And I didn't do the plumbing, okay, because you need to be licensed. And I'm not, I don't have anything to do with that trade. But everything else we've done was done by a guy that plows snow for me in the winter. So you know, so that's kind of my cheat there because that wasn't done by the landscapers. But the tile work and the showers done by Beyonce is amazing all and actually a new guy I was able to hire that came from the trains. Now he's doing like tile in Rio de his Mercado has been has been running the crew with Oscar and Sammy and so Angelique, it's like, Sunday's I just step back. And I look at the stuff we can do together at length and group. And I just know, all I have to do is keep on being open for the opportunities, taking the opportunities as they're presented to me. Okay, and then learning how to do it myself. Because the thing that's important to know about this, and you know, this, I've been doing that house if I'm doing automation with site one and Reinhard and LinkedIn group, Monday through Friday, Friday night, and I drive up the door Academy and up there at about 11 o'clock at night. And then I do I work Saturday and Sunday. And then I leave my guys little notes all over the house. The things I want them to do, and then take videos of me doing it once. So like if anybody follows me and you should follow me on Instagram and Joe LinkedIn 73 on Tik Tok and automated outdoor Facebook and just your LinkedIn right, you know, my companies have had those too. But honestly, I post a lot like personally and said on my business I marketing and people would tell me how bad I am at that. But But So now to say through this, there's a window, and I stumped the first window. Okay, me do I get the first window. Here's what I'm so proud of as a leader. My window sucks. The first one I did is the worst window in the house. Oh, my people did such a better job on the windows. But that's okay with me. Because I'm a visionary entrepreneur. I'm not a Mason. Right? Yeah. Carl and Enrique. I can say if a mason looked at the work they've done, they would bring them into their circle and say, Oh, wow. So So you know, it's really cool for me to see my people grow with me. And I'd actually rather than outgrow, like, like growth surpass me when it comes to that stuff. That makes me that that's, that's just a rewarding moment. It's every one of those moments is worth a million dollars to me, you know, so just They're just seeing what they're doing. Then then down to if you see any pictures and I know we're running short on time but but hopefully people stay with us just long enough, the so even down to the rock, so every rock on this house Anjali came from the property. And we were delicate even to the point where if if a rack had a cedar tree growing in it, we moved the rack with the cedar tree and put it around the house. Like it's been there forever. And then we took the racks that we found with moss, I didn't want any of the moss on the racks to die. So we literally separated rocks with moss on them, and faced all the rock covered moss is like the rocks with moss. We strategically faced them north. So the moss stays on state. Okay. Okay. And then and then the rocks we found without Moss, those are the rocks we put on the retaining walls that face south. Now, I will say there's a couple of numbers that just get intermixed. I mean, we had a lot of moss covered rocks, but but the reality is, that's how cool this project has been, is it's it's allowed me to use my like, my spreadsheet business owner mind to crunch the details and figure it out. Oh, and then lastly, talking about building industries. Like I say all the time with robotics. I'm an industry builder with this Angelique. I'm an industry builder also. And to the point where the reason these houses nobody's seen one in the United States is you can't get a mortgage on them. So people see them right now. And they're like, Joe, we need to build one of those houses, but you can't get a mortgage on it. Because there's no cops. There's no comps, you can pull because they just don't exist. So it's very strategic. It's important for listeners, and just so they understand the type of mind the person I am business wise, I had to basically say, Okay, where can I build it while building it in Illinois won't work and won't work because there's no Airbnb market in Illinois. And rental prices are not good in Illinois compared to other parts of the country. So I found an area that has a very high Airbnb market, so that I could basically take and show that I have weekly, weekly rentals, so that I could actually make a value for the house. So I think within a couple of years of being able to show cashflow on this house, I'll be able to show that that house has a million dollar valuation, just like the house next door to me, because then I know what I need to do annually. So you know, my vision, I need to build at least three more of these, always have them on the market. And actually I'll probably build 10. Okay, and then once I have 10 dealt, hopefully three will sell and then that's three arm's length transactions. And once I have three arm's length transactions, there'll be a value on one of those buildings. And once I can get them valued, then away we go.

Angelique
Great to hear what's coming down the line too. So thanks for again, sharing all your secrets. That's us. We've been with Joe Langton today. Thanks for tuning in and look forward to having you on again sometime.

Joe.
Thank you, Angelique. Anytime. All right.