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Goat Turf or G.O.A.T. Turf?

March 18, 2021

In this episode of the Green Industry Perspectives Podcast, Ty Deemer welcomes Tyler Burnett to the show. Tyler is the CEO and Founder of Goat Turf. Tyler shares about Goat Turf’s history, how he creates chemistry on his team, and tips on how to develop your people.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

The importance of trust within your leadership.
Who you can build relationships with to move your business forward.
Tyler’s philosophy behind selling.
Why you should consider your branding and how it can impact your business.
How social media – including Instagram – can impact your business’ growth.

LINKS TO LOVE:

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Ty Deemer:

You are listening to The Green Industry Perspectives podcast, presented by SingleOps, a podcast created for green industry professionals looking for best practices, tactics, and tips on running their tree care or landscape business.

All right, everyone. Welcome back to Green Industry Perspectives. I’m your host, Ty Deemer. And today we get to welcome Tyler Burnett to the show. Tyler’s the CEO and founder of Goat Turf in Tennessee. Tyler, welcome to the show.

Tyler Burnett:

Hey, thanks for having me, Ty.

Ty Deemer:

Absolutely. So Tyler we like to start off every episode with the exact same question to provide immediate value for our audience and it’s pretty simple. What do you view the top three things or common threads that have led to Goat Turf’s immense success over the last couple of years?

Tyler Burnett:

I would say first and foremost developing people. And we try to take every experience as a learning experience whether it’s good or bad or indifferent and just continually improve every day. So the first thing that I always focus on with my team is how do I continue to develop them and myself? Then I think the next thing that’s helped us is clear expectations. Expectations create chemistry. Chemistry creates buy-in. So how can we all be successful if we don’t have clear expectations? And then the third thing out of three that I would say is making sure that I provide the resources to where my team can meet those expectations. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t meet expectations, I don’t want it to be because I didn’t provide them the right resources to be successful. So for me, developing people, clear expectations, and making sure they have the resources to achieve them. And I really think people need three things in life. I think they need clear expectations, resources to achieve it, and to feel appreciated. That’s something that I look for from my customers and something that’s been looked for from me when I was in different areas. And that’s really what drives me.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, for sure. And we’ll be able to dive into those things a little later on in the show. I always like at the beginning to just ask the guests to provide their background, not only your personal background, your career up to the date but also the background of your company. What all does Goat Turf do, what do you specialize in, and just your company history, employee count, revenue, milestones, things that have been taking place for you all?

Tyler Burnett:

Well, the story for me is a little bit unique. I grew up my whole life playing baseball and football. I played shortstop in high school and I played shortstop in college. I was drafted my junior year by the Houston Astros and played third base, first base, left field, kind of a corner utility guy. Came back from doing that and opened up an indoor baseball facility training kids and loved it. But the hours, just two to eleven every day were difficult and I knew that I wanted to have a family one day. So I went through a divorce after pro ball and my dad was almost executive level at Nissan manufacturing. And so I took the opportunity to go work there and shortly realized that my degree in entrepreneurship and working corporate America was probably not the perfect alignment for me. And I started selling baseball netting. I had owned a facility. Right? And so I said, well, I love business, I love baseball. How can I merge these two things together? So I started working for a company out of Atlanta, Georgia and selling baseball and netting to facilities across the country. And I really did like that but I knew deep down that I wanted to own a company and I wanted to develop people and I wanted to impact people. And from the sales aspect, you can obviously do that but I wanted to do it a different local level. Obviously, I’d like to take this thing huge but I wanted to impact where we’re at right now.

And so I was on the driving range one day at my local country club and I ran into a guy who used to work with me at Nissan. And we hadn’t seen each other in a little while. And he came up to me and like, man, what are you doing these days? And I said, well, I’m selling netting and turf and stuff like that. And he said, dude, my cousin wants to do turf in his backyard. And I was like, okay. So I’m sitting here thinking he’s wanting to do a baseball cage with one roll of turf. Yeah, we’ll take care of it. So I go meet with him and he shows me the plan. And there’s not many houses in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. There weren’t five years ago that were over a million dollars. And I come up to this 6,200-square foot house that’s going to be over a million dollars in Murfreesboro. And it’s beautiful and it’s modern. And it’s like, wow, this is a crazy opportunity. And he actually hands me the bid from somebody he’s gotten from somebody else. He said, if you can get close to this, I’d rather just go with you. I’d rather go with a Murfreesboro guy. So I looked at it and it was $28,900. And I went, wow, there’s some money in this. I didn’t even know people did it. So I did like anybody else would do. I got on YouTube. I got on Google and searched like crazy and talked to a few guys that I knew in the grading and excavation industry and talked to them about it and they were on board to help me. And then my father flipped some properties on the side. He has some guys that do hardwood and carpet and things like that. And I thought, wow, if you get a carpet guy, this should be easy. Which don’t make that mistake. Carpet and turf for nothing alike. They may be similar but not close enough to be a huge deal.

So I got everybody together and I went down to Dalton, Georgia where all turf and carpet was made in kind of that region. And I went to a few people and landed at Shaw and knew the Shaw name and just said, all right, here we go. So I met with him two days later at the kitchen counter and I said, I’ll do this job for 21 grand. But if you pay up front, I’ll do it for $19,500. And he wrote me a check in full right there. And that was July of 2018 and that’s when we started our company. At the time, I didn’t have a name. I was trying to think, what do I want out of this? And I love golf and this was a putting green. And I’ve always cut grass my whole life from the time I’ve been 12 years old to push mowing my grandmother’s front yard to growing it through high school and doing yards and then college and I even cut grass with a crew of guys when I was playing pro ball. So it was so intriguing to me to begin with. So we did the job and there’s something in this. We finished it in five days. I made a couple grand and I said there’s probably something with this. Then I just learned so much over that course of the month with that one job and the studying and everything that I was doing.

And so I went toured some more turf facilities over the next couple weeks. And I was at one of the manufacturing facilities and there’s this huge gorilla on the wall. And I’ll never forget that gorilla and it’s called Silverback Technology for one of the backings for one of the companies. But I’ll never forget that logo on the wall. And I was like, I’ve got to have something like that that can capture the attention of people and with my brand and what I’m trying to do. So I’m sitting on the back porch one night and I’m just out there kind of hanging out. I’m drinking a little bit of Jack Daniels and just kind of hanging out, just sipping. And I’m just thinking about a name and how I can come up with something so memorable. Right? And I thought, you know, if I did an animal that grazed grass, how ironic would that be that it’s like you have an animal, you have goats in your yard? Right? So I wasn’t thinking goat at the time. I Googled animals that grazed grass. And I can’t remember what was first but it was completely not in the picture. Cows was second I believe and goat was third. And I said Goat Turf. Man, like greatest of all time, like a goat in your yard. And then on top of that, my wife and I met at a restaurant called The Goat in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. So with all three things just coming together. So I did like I would think most people do. I get on GoDaddy and I type in on the domains. You can search is this domain available. And I type in Goat Turf and I hit enter. GoatTurf.com, available, $11.99. Make it happen. So I thought, there’s no way. I get on Instagram GoatTurf handle available. I get on Facebook. GoatTurf handle available. I get on Twitter. GoatTurf. I was like, I met my wife there. I mean it’s like an animal grazing grass. I want to be the greatest of all time at whatever I do. It’s perfect.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, the stars aligned for sure.

Tyler Burnett:

So that’s how Goat Turf came about and that’s kind of how we started our first project. It was pure accident. Like I said, I didn’t even know people did this in their backyard at the time and I don’t know how I didn’t. And that’s part of the reason this this market is growing so much is because there’s no education to the market. People just think oh that’s too expensive. I can’t do that. Or they think of Home Depot astro turf that used to be on back porches in the 90s or they think of football fields. So it’s just been an incredible ride. Like I said, we started in July of ‘18. I still had another full-time job. So I was doing it on the side. We did $100,000 in 2018. In 2019, I still worked that job and we did $867,000 and I think I had five employees, four or five employees in ‘19. Currently, we have 12 employees and we did $3.1 million in 2020. So pretty much grown about 400% year over year so far. I’ve been super blessed to have some incredible people that trust me and get in the boat with me. And I think that’s one of the things that’s helped us. I mean there’s so many things that’s helped us get to where we’ve gotten so far. But having people that are really getting in the boat with me and trust me. And you got to have people that trust you because you ask them to do hard things. And so that trust in me and me and them has helped us go to a whole new level. And just accidentally coming up with the Goat Turf brand and where it’s gone and it’s catchy.

I mean there’s probably 250 of these hats running around in Murfreesboro on any given night. And I might go to dinner and four people may come to the door with Goat Turf hats and then people ask the question and then that’s, you don’t have to cut it? You don’t have to spray fertilizer? You don’t have to spray weed killer? When the dog pees, it doesn’t stain it? The dogs don’t track in mud? I mean there’s so many advantages. So a part of it’s been us being able to educate the market. And I think the fastest way we’ve been able to do that is building relationships with pool builders, with pet facilities, with architects, with custom home builders, with landscape companies and really just running from there. I don’t know how it is across the rest of the country but a lot of stuff starts in the commercial realm and you start seeing these at hotels and apartments. And then landscapers see it and then pool builders see it. And oh wow, well, one of my biggest challenges is grass in the pool and not getting grass to grow around the pool and a customer wants grass up to the coping but it’s going to look terrible. So for all those reasons, it’s just really starting to take off in Nashville and surrounding areas.

Ty Deemer:

That’s really cool. And one thing that I like you touched on is, again, it’s not a massive time period. It’s been three years. It’s 2018 to now. And you touched on it in your top three things that have made you all successful. It’s developing people. I’d love for you to dive into what it looked like to start just you bidding on a project and working with a few friends to get it up and going. And then like three years later, you’ve grown a team to 12 people. How has that looked from a development of people side? What does that look like for you as the founder and CEO?

Tyler Burnett:

It’s been wild. Oh, I remember first starting out and I thought, how in the world am I going to price this? I have no idea. So we started on Excel sheets like most people do and tried to put together cost and you get through the first year and your sheets are showing you made all kinds of money but your bank account’s not. And you’re trying to figure out what in the heck happened. And so I think the biggest thing for me early on is that I had a couple labor guys and I was in the field too. I installed for the first probably 10 to 12 months of this company. So the biggest thing for me was understanding both sides, the sales and the operations sides of things. So knowing it from both things and then from a high level standpoint as an owner or CEO of what direction we want to go, me having all the experience in the different areas has really helped. So really just understanding what kind of people we need and then what we need out of those people. And when an employee comes on, them understanding the role they’re going to play and them buying into that role and then developing them in that role and just developing them in the way they think. Let’s give one example. Right? This morning, if we leave the shop at 8 AM instead of seven o’clock, we’re never going to get that hour back. That’s an hour that’s completely gone.

So that’s just one thing this morning that I was talking to one of my guys. And hey, like you weren’t prepared coming into this morning and you don’t see that it cost you anything? But when you don’t get to the job until 9 AM and you could have been there at 8 AM, that’s an hour that you’re never going to be able to recoup. We’ve got the sun shining, the base is done, it’s ready for turf. You never know if we’re going to have rain tomorrow. You got to take full advantage of today. So it’s little things like that and really just understanding how to be more efficient. I think my time at Nissan helped me learn so much. We built two cars every 58 seconds. So we built over 600,000 cars in I forget 2015 or whenever I was there. So me having that experience of that too and just when I see some of the guys double handling things. And hey, just do it one time the right way. They don’t go out there and shoot grade immediately. They start setting up our nailer board around the perimeter. Hey, just shoot crane and make sure you’re right first and then you can just work. Spend the extra time on prepping. There’s so many different ways that we’ve developed the guys and it really just depends on the role and really just looking at how do we get more efficient.

For instance, every one of my guys has iPads now and we all use SingleOps obviously. And so everybody gets, I have one guy now running the show from a scheduling standpoint and he assigns everybody to where they can just get on their My Day tab and they know exactly where they’re going, what the customer’s name is, what’s on the work order, what materials to load up. As soon as they’re loaded up, they can press it on their GPS and know exactly where they’re going. One guy was talking about, man, we always spend 20 minutes at the gas station. I said, well, why don’t we get a fuel pump here? So now we have 1,000 gallon diesel tank here so we fill up here. Why do we do it? Because we don’t waste time at the gas station. The guys don’t go inside to get Powerades and Snickers. We don’t have the risk of pulling equipment into a gas station that has 30 other cars. So reducing risk and increasing efficiency, all those different reasons. Plus, I was tired of tracking credit card transactions everywhere. So I’m trying to get those guys to think like Goat Turf, not just like, well, what can be easier for me but really just challenging the team to continually think differently.

Ty Deemer:

For sure.

Tyler Burnett:

How do I do this faster? How do I make it easier? And there’s so many different ways, like I said, that we develop people but a lot of it is just created through the culture of Goat Turf and what does it mean to not step over a dollar to pick up a nickel and how do we treat our customers and what kind of customers do we want and what services and products do we use and provide and how are we different and all of those different things put into one and really just trying to be the greatest of all time from the lowest guy all the way up to the top because we’re only as good as our weakest link.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. And what I really loved that you highlighted early on in that answer was that you’ve seen the perspective of every role in the company. It’s pretty fresh on your mind. So you’ve had that experience running the operation, like going out on job sites, implementing turf. So you know what your employees are doing with. You’ve also sold it. You continue to sell it. Like you’re still doing that. And you understand from a high level as a business owner where you want it to go and the metrics of it. Has it been difficult for you at all to like pass the baton on and move past being the one that’s selling every day or being the one that’s operating at all? I know that’s something that we hear a lot of owners, there’s like a hard time to like fully let go and trust your guys. Has that been something that you’ve struggled with at all?

Tyler Burnett:

I mean I think everybody struggles with it, like you said. And if you take my strength, my strength is solving problems. Right? Being a problem solver for the industry, for the architects, for the landscapers, for the pool builders. And my favorite thing to do is sell. But I don’t know. I don’t know if selling is just selling because selling sounds like a used car salesman, like you’re trying to trick somebody into buying something. I don’t think that I ever do that. Matter of fact, we’re doing $140,000 backyard right now and the guy wanted to add more turf yesterday. And it would have been another $20,000 for us. But I said, I honestly don’t think you want turf here and here’s why. And so I think that the biggest struggle is getting other sales guys to think like I do. And I’ll continue working on that. But we don’t just want to sell just to sell. We want the right customers, we want to impact them the right way, and I want to truly offer them something that betters their life. I’m not just trying to sell $5 million this year just to sell $5 million this year. I know there’s at least $5 million worth of opportunity out there that I can improve people’s lives. I know that there’s people playing linebacker at the back door with a towel when their two dogs come in and it’s been raining for three days and they have big oak trees that are nothing but shade in their backyard. Like I know that I can help those people’s lives because I was in that same position. I had that same yard. I had to play the same roles and we had towels all over the house and my dogs, I didn’t want to let them outside. So then it was 30 degrees and I’m walking them at 9:30 at night on the street. I know that people deal with that and I know that there’s a better way to go about it. I know that people care about the aesthetics of their house. I know that people have four kids like I do and it rains in the summer and you feel like you can’t let them out in the backyard to play on the swing set for two days because it’s too muddy. And I know what that looks like on that side and then on the improved side where you can use it and increase usability. So for me, it’s just about educating the customers and really finding the right customers that I can truly help and improve the quality of their life.

Ty Deemer:

Cool. Yeah. So switching topics here, you touched on the branding of your business early on. Goat Turf, anybody that’s listening, look in the episode card. You’ll be able to see their logo. It’s one of our favorites. It really is a cool image. But I don’t think in the green industry or in the turf industry branding is something that’s not, it’s not always prioritized. So I want to be careful how I ask this question because I think it’ll really affect your answer. But if you were talking to another turf owner or another landscape company owner or tree care company owner, how would you like sell really focusing on branding or convince them to say like, hey, you should really think about your branding and how it can impact the growth of your business?

Tyler Burnett:

Everybody looks for something catchy nowadays on Instagram or Facebook or a hat or a shirt. I don’t know if you’ve seen the shirt. This has got little goats all over it.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, it’s awesome.

Tyler Burnett:

So everybody wants that cool, they want to know about the cool things that are happening right now. So for me, when I had that experience of seeing that gorilla on the wall, that captured me. And so it makes you ask, what is that? And when the biggest struggle in this industry is knowing what is that, I wanted people to ask that question. What is that? What do y’all do? Why do you do it? All those things. So especially later on, branding is so important but especially getting going is so important too. Because you want to get people to ask those questions. What is that? Why do you do that? And so for us, that was one of the biggest things that I had the experience of seeing that gorilla and making me ask those questions. And I wanted people to ask the same thing about me. Because I knew the biggest challenge in growing turf in middle of Tennessee was educating the customer.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah.

Tyler Burnett:

It wasn’t, is it going to work or are people going to like it? 95% of time when we get done with projects, people go, I knew I was going to like it but I didn’t know I was going to like it this much. And so that’s so rewarding but at the same time, how many times have you talked to somebody and said, oh man, your floors look great or your cabinets look great or your landscaping looks great. Who did it? And they go, I don’t know. Let me look in my phone. Word of mouth is so important as we all know and I think when you have a brand that’s easy to remember and it’s so catchy, it takes those people from saying, I don’t know who it was to Goat Turf.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, that’s really cool. Because a similar example, and the audience is probably familiar with this, last season we had Kristine from Northwest Tree Huggers on. They’re a tree care company in the Seattle area. And their whole model behind their brand was like, look, we’re a tree care company that doesn’t just want to cut down your trees. We actually want to help you keep them alive. And like that was their brand, tree huggers. Like we’re not like tree removal.

Tyler Burnett:

That’s interesting.

Ty Deemer:

They have a similar logo. It’s a big lumberjack hugging a tree. And like it just conveys the message. And I think in this space so often it’s like, all right, here’s our kind of typical name and then just, yeah, no emphasis.

Tyler Burnett:

Yeah. Burnett’s Turf.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. Burnett’s Turf. Exactly. And it’d be like a little grass, piece of grass off to the side or a piece of turf off to the side as your logo and no one’s going to remember that. But when people see that goat on a hat, they’re like ah. It communicates all the messaging.

Tyler Burnett:

A brand is a promise that is delivered in an experience. And so when you create that experience that’s memorable like we talked about and you got something to go with it, then they won’t forget you. And that’s what I want to do. When I meet with the customer, I don’t want them to forget me. And let’s talk about this too. I mean the time we’re in right now with Tiger Woods, with LeBron James, with all the other great athletes, me being in a sports background, Tom Brady. Right? How many times do people talk about the goat and being the greatest of all time? So it’s a really catchy slogan right now. So that’s another reason I really wanted to take advantage of it. And I am super passionate about what I do and I wanted people that I was trying to recruit as employees to understand that hey, when you come in here, you got to give it the greatest you can possibly give it because that’s what we’re about.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah.

Tyler Burnett:

So that was another huge thing for me is I played on a high school team called the Oakland Patriots and I was the quarterback and I wore number 12. And I think Tom Brady’s the goat. So that was another kind of factor in it too. It’s all just come together.

Ty Deemer:

That’s what I appreciate about it too and you’ve mentioned it a few times throughout our conversation. It also, not only is it a great branding tool for your customers and as you’re going to prospects’ properties and it conveys that message but it more importantly probably, it can conveys the message internally. It lets people know like, look, like we’re not just trying to be the best in Murfreesboro. We’re not just trying to be the best in Tennessee. Like we want to set a standard in the industry and that like takes place on every job site, on every call, and it just holds your team accountable. And you talk about culture. Your culture’s built into your company name and not a lot of people can say that because their company name is probably titled Burnett’s Turf or something like that. So that’s awesome.

Tyler Burnett:

I love that. That’s was a great point.

Ty Deemer:

The next topic that I kind of wanted to talk about with you was your team’s social media presence. Again, it’s something that’s not always invested in in the industry. But your presence is really thought out. It’s pretty impressive. And I know we’ve mentioned in the past that your wife is involved with social media and maybe that’s where you got the inspiration from. But I’d love to talk, for you to talk about why your team invests having a presence on Instagram and how it’s impacted your business and building that brand and that presence in Murfreesboro.

Tyler Burnett:

Yeah. So when I met my wife, she had a business making leather baby moccasins and leather pacifier clips and hair bows. And when we met, it wasn’t like, oh, I want to date this girl. We were, obviously, I was somewhat attracted to her. But my degree is in entrepreneurship and I love impacting people and developing people and developing myself. And she was in a capital issue. She was divorced and had three kids, was a single mother trying to make ends meet. When I met her and I looked at investing in her company, she had 18,000 followers on Instagram and she had never spent a dime. And part of the reason was because she made a great product but part of the reason was because she had a cool story too. So when I started getting on board with her and the business, we weren’t even dating yet and really we were able to, when I first met her, she was six weeks out from when a customer ordered. And I told her that I was interested in investing in the company but she needed to shut the website down and she had one week to get all these orders caught up. And she said, I can’t. There’s no way. I’ve got three kids by myself. I just can’t do this. And I said do not post on Instagram, don’t post on Facebook, shut the website down for a week and get caught up. If you can do that, I’ll invest in the company. And she’s like, I can’t do it. And I just left. So that was on a Monday. On Wednesday, she called me and says, hey, I’m caught up. So I was like, okay, you’re serious.

So there were a few huge bottlenecks in the production. First thing, she was hand cutting all the moccasins out by hand. So I went to a local company that made presses and dies and we’ve got some dyes and presses and we did that and then we she did some embroidery on them. And so we bought an embroidery machine. So she was driving 45 minutes to get stuff embroidered and drive back. And so we improved some of that stuff. But it was just such a unique opportunity because in a year, she took the Instagram from 18,000 followers to 60,000 followers in one year with zero money spent. So during that time, we re-branded too. I mean her name of the company was Sugar Babes Moccasins at the time and when you Googled anything like that, inappropriate stuff came up. So we went through a rebrand and never spent a dime on Instagram. But the biggest thing that changed our Instagram presence, we hadn’t had sales in about four days. And I told her that we were going live on Instagram and I was putting her on it. She had never really showed her face that much and I put her on it that night. And we sold like $5,000 over the course of three hours and she was probably live for a little over an hour. And she got done with that and she was like, oh my God, I was so nervous the whole time. And I was like, people want to buy from you. They don’t want to just buy. And everybody buys from Amazon. Not everybody. A lot of people buy from Amazon right now but it’s not, it’s because it’s so easy. I said, so people want easy but they also want to know what they’re buying and who they’re buying it from. Tell your story.

So the more we did that, the more I realized Instagram is a chance to tell your story, for your customers to know who you are and what you do and how you do it and why they should choose you. And it’s becoming the new Google. And so when we got going with Goat Turf, I knew instantly, honey, you’re going to, you got to do this. So she got to flip the script on me and she’s like, you got to get on live and you got to get on video. It’s got to be your face. Now you’re behind this. So through all those experiences we’ve had with that, I realized how important it was and how we grew and it was an e-commerce business. It was definitely different. But people don’t trust you till they go to their social media. It’s kind of like doing your due diligence. Right? When you’re looking to hire a company, it’s just become part of the new due diligence and they look at your Google reviews and they look at your Instagram. They want pictures of your work. They want to know why I should choose you. I understand that Instagram is a big part of that now. And so I think it’s imperative that you do it.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. I think it’s really cool too because like I follow your page, keep up to date with it. And a few other companies in the space do this but in this industry, people are extremely prideful of their work. You’re proud of the backyards you’re working on. Landscapers that do a big design build project, they love their work. It’s a form of art and they’re prone to share it with their peers and be like, look what we did, like isn’t this awesome? But there’s validation in putting that on a social media platform. Because when what you were talking about where a prospect comes to your site or comes to your Instagram page, they want to see that pride in your work. They want to see the projects you’ve been working on. And I love how your team shows the progression of projects. It’s like day one, like clearing a site. And then like all the way through for the final touch of the backyard. And people get to see like, oh man, that could be my yard. I could have that improvement.

Tyler Burnett:

Well, I think it goes back to educating the customer too, Ty. Because a lot of people think that we show up and roll out this pretty green turf on top of their grass and it’s just perfect and there’s so much more to it. A lot of what we do fixes drainage problems and it fixes drainage problems because we excavate, because we regrade, because we have four inches of rock underneath the turf to kind of slow the water movement down and direct the water where we want it to. So when you can really show them the whole process, and there’s one job we’re on right now, I told you that it’s over 16,000 square feet. And he asked me if we’re going to be able to get it done in five days. And I was like, there’s no chance. If I could get this done in five days, I’d be on top of the world. But I’ll keep striving to where I can figure out how to get it done in five days. But let me educate you on everything that goes through this and then price wasn’t as big of an objection anymore when they understand what equipment has to be used and what trucks have to be used and how much different material. I mean when you tell somebody your yard’s going to cost $20,000, they’re like for some fake grass? But when you educate them on everything you’re going to fix and then all the process and all the different materials that are involved, you kind of get them to understand the value.

Ty Deemer:

For sure. Kind of the next thing I wanted to dive in with you is you’ve mentioned your background at Nissan, about efficiencies, productivity, and how to get the most out of your team. And a huge part of that’s technology and setting your team up with the resources they need to be successful. We’ve talked a lot about sales strategy and we’ve talked a lot about how to brand yourself and kind of all those things. But how has technology played a huge part in your team’s success and why has it been something that you feel like it’s been such a necessary investment?

Tyler Burnett:

I mean the biggest thing that I saw coming in was that if I sold with Excel, how do I get that information that’s in my head and on this piece of paper to my team? And I realized that I couldn’t really do that through Excel without multiple handling and all those different things that had to go into the job. And it just took, you had to go there at the job and you had to, hey, this is what I’m talking about with this and what I’m talking about with that. And I just, I needed something that was all together. And then how do I clock people in and out? And then how do I invoice and how do I get them to accept a proposal to where it’s a contract instead of just, oh hey, Johnny, I’m going to do this for 20 grand. Are you good? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. I wanted to make it something, customers like clear expectations too. And a lot of my customers want to pay as soon as we get done. But if I had a broken process with invoicing and I had it separate from my Excel sheet and I had all those different things, it just made it so difficult. And going back to the efficiency thing, if I got to go home and invoice every night, it’s frustrating. I should have a system that goes from the lead to the proposal to the invoice to the follow-up and communication. I saw a communication gap that hey, you’re on the schedule for tomorrow. And then when I knew there was a software that you could just hit a button that says email and click the template that says your job’s on the schedule for tomorrow, I just really wanted to improve that communication. I wanted the organization. I knew that I couldn’t scale this company if I had to be the one on Excel and the one going to the job.

So I think some of the biggest things for me were double handling, organization, being able to scale. Job costing was humongous for me. I think so many people say, oh, I can do it for ten dollars a square foot. And sometimes that may be a huge win and sometimes that may be a huge loss. So understanding when I give a customer a cost and I have a system that’s a template built where I know I didn’t miss anything and I know exactly what I’m going to have in it and where I need to be, then that’s humongous for me. So there’s been plenty of times that I’ve been $5,000 higher on a job, $8,000 high on a job. And I can explain them line by line why my price is that price. And so the reporting, right, the time sheets and clocking in on a specific job so I know how much labor I’ve got in that job, all the true costs going into a job, the communication with the customer, so many different reasons that I knew that I had to do that if I was going to scale this company. And because think about how frustrating it is for employees that come in every day and go, okay, what are we doing today? I mean I’m not a planner but I still like to have an agenda for what I’m doing the next day. And I know that other people are like that too. So for recruiting people and understanding that this is how many jobs we’ve got on the books, this is where you’re going tomorrow, this is who the customer is, this is the pictures of the job, here’s the pin location of where you need to park and where the area of the turf is. And I couldn’t imagine running a company without it. I mean we would be lost as last year’s Easter egg. And I see people that do it all the time and I’m like, look, you have got to invest. I didn’t say you’ve got to get. I said, you’ve got to invest in software because you are running around like crazy. You don’t even know where you’re going. You’re just running in place. I mean you’re just all over the place. So for me, it’s an investment and it’s such a small investment for such a huge reward.

When I first started with SingleOps, I was probably doing $20,000 a month and there’s some months now we’re doing north of $400,000 a month. And the biggest reason is because I can show up at a job site, I can measure it, I can draw it out, I can plug in my materials, I can plug in my overhead, I can plug in all the things that I know that are going to go into that job, I can leave the right internal notes for my installers, I can put custom notes in for the scope of work for the client notes, and I can present a proposal to them in 20 minutes. It blows them away. So recently, probably in the last six months, we’ve started charging for consultations. And so I’ve lost some opportunity possibly because other people do it for free. But what I realized is that those people are probably not my customer anyways and they’re probably shopping based on price and with no education in this market. They don’t know the difference in the turf I’m using and the turf somebody else may use. And when we have a three color face yarn and they have a two color, we have a 126 ounce product and they have a 70 ounce product and my drainage is over 100 inches an hour and theirs is 30 and they use a crusher run base that won’t drain and it’s going to absorb ammonium in the dust and stink and mine won’t wonk and they’re going to use nails around the perimeter and I’m going to use plastic lumber around the perimeter. I might be $1,500 higher but you’re not going to call me back. We had a tornado coming through Nashville probably about a year ago. I had zero callbacks. So I just want to do it right one time.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah.

Tyler Burnett:

I want the customer to appreciate the value we bring to the table and I want us to both win at the end of the day. Because everything that we do, whether it’s my employees or my vendors or my customers, everything for me is about a win-win relationship.

Ty Deemer:

Cool. Well, I have two final questions for you and then we’ll wrap it up. But I like to ask this question and I think it’ll be interesting just from your perspective of the great growth you all have had over the last couple years. If you could go back in time and tell yourself when you were first starting Goat Turf in 2018 and give yourself one piece of advice that you now know, what would that be?

Tyler Burnett:

I mean honestly, and this is not because we’re on a SingleOps podcast, but I would have invested in software from the very beginning. Because what I didn’t know the first year I was in business is what true cost I had in it and I didn’t really have a template built. And every time I was typing in materials and I spent so much time on trying to develop a proposal and then getting to the end of the job and not making money and not understanding why. I would have really from the very beginning, I would have dove in with software so that I could have I could have grown so much faster because I would have had a letterhead at the top and I would have set a proposal to get e-signed and my guys would have known where the address was instead of me being on a call and them texting me, going, hey, what was the address of that Jones job? And all of those things. I really would have dove into software so much faster. And then like anything else, I would have toured all the manufacturing facilities early on.

And I wish there was somebody in Nashville that I could have gone to and been like, hey, look, I’m doing this turf thing now. What do you do? How do I do it? So I probably would have gone to, I’m with SYNLawn now and if I would have known about them early on, I probably would have gone to them if I understood the value they brought. But I would have tried to go to Texas or California or Arizona for a month and spend some time training. And I think so many times we look at how do I make the money right this second. And sometimes you got to take a step back and you got to say, I’m going to invest and not necessarily spend money but sometimes just not make money and learn more so that I can scale so much faster. So probably some different training would have been on there instead of watching YouTube videos till 2 AM in the morning and not getting the correct information that I needed. But I would say definitely software from day one. And probably the first few months, I would have spent more time just training and not just jumping right into it. Because a few jobs that we did cost us. They cost us but they didn’t because I could have just said, oh no, that’s not our problem and left. But I probably would have had some terrible reviews. Some of those people I built relationships over the mistakes with them. And they said, you know what? This kid cares. This guy cares. He made a mistake, yes, but he fixed it. And for that I respect him. And then I was doing the neighbor’s yard. And I think without that, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

Ty Deemer:

For sure, yeah. So I always like to wrap up every episode with this question. And we spend a lot of time on this podcast reflecting back on what’s taken place up to date but I always like to finish with a forward-thinking question. And it’s pretty simple. It’s just what comes next for you, what comes next for Goat Turf, and what are you most excited about going forward?

Tyler Burnett:

I love business. I love win-win relationships. I love seeing other people be successful. The next thing for me that I really look forward to is expanding outside of middle Tennessee. And with SYNLawn, we own the territory of Tennessee and the panhandle of Florida from Tallahassee West. So right now, I’m trying to build relationships with people in Knoxville, Memphis, Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Mobile, Alabama, Pensacola, Florida, Destin, Florida, Panama City Beach, Florida, Tallahassee, Florida. And I really want to have some partners in those areas that I can help them get from day one of turf to skip ahead to year three, to know how to bid, to know how to do the job, to know all the lessons learned like not getting the software, like all the things we just talked about, and help them progress so fast not just from a money standpoint but just really those hard lessons learned, just learn from me. Learn the mistakes I made. Let me work with you because I want you to win too. And so we’re really, really excited about that.

We have an apparel line coming out. I have a printing company as well called Goat Imprints and we have a printing company. We’re doing custom polos. I’m finalizing all my sizing packages and things right now. So we’re really excited about that and helping people with the branding aspect of things. We talked about how important branding is. I also have a sports facility inside my warehouse that I’m really excited about. It’s called Goat Sports. I have three baseball and softball cages and I have an indoor putting green and I have a Trackman golf simulator with a bar. So we’re excited about continuing to build relationships with our architects and pool builders and landscapers in that space but also for the community to be able to use that. I also have a podcast called The Goat Consulting Podcast and we’re very excited about that and really just sharing our experiences. And really at the end of the day, when I first started this, I asked myself, why do I want to do this? And the biggest reason, I want to live life, not just do business but why am I here. Why have I been put on this earth? And for me, it’s about developing people and really I just want to impact as many people as I possibly can. So that’s really what I look forward to. I look forward to people that are hungry and want to improve their life, both financially and just from a mental standpoint and a life enjoyment standpoint. And I just want to partner with those people and I just want to grab the bull by the horns and just go.

Ty Deemer:

For sure. Well, Tyler, I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. Unpacked a ton of information in the last 45 minutes that I think the audience will get a ton of value out of. Thanks so much for your time. And if anyone out there was interested in Tyler and what everything that Goat Turf is doing, go check out their Instagram. Pretty simple handle, @GoatTurf, like you mentioned earlier. And go see everything that they’re doing. It’s really encouraging to hear. And Tyler, we really appreciate your time and look forward to seeing how you’ll grow across 2021 and beyond.

Tyler Burnett:

Well, Ty, I really appreciate it. Thank you for having me on. Thank you for everything you do with SingleOps and thank you for everything you’ve done for everybody in my organization. I know that we wouldn’t be where we’re at right now without you guys. Like I said, the biggest thing for me is impacting people and with the software that you guys have provided us, it’s helped me impact my employees and my vendors and my family and so many more people. And for that, I’m really appreciative. So thank you guys and look forward to talking to you again soon.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. Thanks, Tyler. Talk soon.

Conclusion:

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