This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Welcome back to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau. I hope you enjoyed yesterday's story about Bruno's Bark and Biscuits, the homemade dog treat hustle. I saw a note from somebody online. He said, "My dog is so awesome.
"I threw a stick and he brought it back "from three miles away." I said, "I don't know, that sounds a little far-fetched, "but I suppose anything's possible." Now speaking of anything being possible, today you're gonna hear about a seven-figure side hustle. Usually I have one of these about once a week or at least every 10 days or so. Love featuring projects that make $500 a month or $1,000 a month or whatever the number is, but it's also pretty cool to see what else a side hustle can do. Now as I was reviewing the notes for today's story and writing hilarious jokes, I kept thinking, you know, this sounds more like a startup story, which is not really the point of Side Hustle School. A side hustle is qualitatively different from a traditional startup.
But then I realized that even though this project has grown tremendously, as you'll hear, it's actually still being mostly run by a guy with a regular full-time job, at least for now. So it does in fact qualify, and I'll bring that story to you right after this. [Music]
Gene Caballero is no stranger to hard work. He spends most of his days working as a corporate sales coach for a Fortune 50 company. But when he isn't in the corporate world, he's building an empire of his own, or at least with three of his friends, revolutionizing the lawn care industry.
A few years ago, Gene's childhood friend, Brian, approached him with an idea. Brian had been in the landscaping business his entire life, starting with mowing lawns in high school. And over the course of about 15 years, he had grown his business into a large landscape construction company. And then the company was acquired by a national organization. When Brian left that company, he walked away with a thorough understanding of the ins and outs of the industry, and he also knew what could be improved.
The process for a lot of people was inconvenient for both homeowners and vendors. Each day, he had worked alongside multiple hardworking lawn care professionals, but he recognized that they didn't have the time to market themselves or complete the bookkeeping and consumer outreach that was required for them to be successful in the industry. And meanwhile, for homeowners, it was just as challenging. If you wanted to have your lawn mowed or you needed some landscaping service, you'd have to call around and leave a bunch of voicemails, wait for somebody to call you back at the end of the day. And even if you are efficient in this process, it still might take a week or more to get quotes.
And it's not just that. How do you know you're actually getting the best price and the best quality possible? You really have no idea. And so for a lot of homeowners, it's really kind of like taking a blind leap of faith. The analog process of finding a lawn care provider was problematic, and Brian knew that it could be solved by technology.
He noticed that the crowdsourcing movement led by Airbnb was working well, and he thought a similar type of platform could solve many of the problems he'd observed every day in the lawn care industry, especially for smaller providers. Jean and Brian wanted to create a website that would easily allow homeowners to post their job details and then choose from a list of trusted vendors to find a fit that was best for all parties involved. Not only would customers not have to call around and spend time researching, vendors would no longer have to go door to door seeking out business. Jean and Brian could bridge the gap and connect customers and vendors without all that hassle. Unfortunately, neither of them had built a website before, so they decided to hire another company to build it for them.
This ended up being one of the biggest mistakes they made along the way. They ended up paying way too much money for a customized website that was barely usable. And the studio that built it also ended up going out of business. So they went back to the drawing board, they decided what they really needed to do was bring someone in who could build the website and manage it as a co-founder. So they brought on two other team members.
This newly formed quartet decided to call their service GreenPal. They ended up developing both a website and a mobile app. And while the new founders were working on that, Jean and Brian got to work finding vendors to feature on it. They started in their hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, and they personally met with any vendor who was interested in participating. It was designed to be somewhat exclusive.
Not just anyone could be a GreenPal vendor, there was an interview process, potential applicants had to have commercial grade equipment in good condition, positive references from previous customers and current insurance. And the network operates by letting vendors set the prices of their services, however they see fit. When a homeowner signs up, those vendors are sent any info that the homeowner provides as well as images from Google Maps, including aerial and street views of their property. That way the vendor can provide a good quote without actually being on site. The homeowner then receives a series of bids from the vendors in their area and they're free to pick whoever they'd like to work with based on the ratings, reviews, and prices.
This practice encourages vendors to do as good a job as possible in order to keep their ratings up and be competitive within their market. And it also brings them a lot more business. GreenPal started with a small team of vendors in 2013, but their numbers have now grown to include almost 600 vendors over the past four years. They've also expanded beyond Nashville to five other cities and they're keeping wait lists for lots of other cities once they're ready to introduce the platform there. So how does GreenPal make money?
Well, the service charges a 5% fee from everything that goes through their platform. And with 600 vendors and lots of customers, that percentage really adds up. In 2016, the service brought in more than a million dollars. And Gene predicts that the growth they're experiencing pretty much 300% every year will more than triple that number by the end of 2017. So even though Gene has been working on this project on the side while working his full-time job for the past four years, this will probably be his last year at that corporate job.
Since the growth trend shows no sign of slowing, he's thinking at some point soon he's gonna go all in. Naturally, the extra income has been awesome for Gene and the other three guys. It's a lot of extra income, of course, but they've worked hard for it. And it's also very fulfilling to see how their vendors' lives have been positively affected. Gene says they regularly get emails and texts from vendors saying they've been able to hire more people, buy better equipment, take their families on vacation, and help pay their mortgages.
So it truly is a win-win for everyone involved, the vendors, the homeowners, and of course Green Pal. It is sometimes said that the grass is always greener on the other side, but for Green Pal, they like the view right where they are. [Music]
So congratulations, Green Pal. Way to mow down the competition. As I said, it really is a win-win for everyone.
And like so many of our stories, their side hustle, which is now getting quite large, all comes from finding a problem and thinking about what might be a good solution for it. And when you think about a big problem like this, there are essentially two different ways to solve it. And one is focusing hyper-locally and saying, okay, this is my market, this town, this city, whatever it is, and I'm gonna start a lawn care business and provide much better service than everybody else. I'm gonna solve this problem of voicemail and calling people back and not having accountability. And a few weeks ago, I did this episode, number 87, with a young graduate named Christopher who is making $20,000 a month cleaning houses.
And he also set out to solve a similar problem, as what we heard in this story, but he's focusing on his local market, the Potomac area of Washington, DC, and has obviously been very successful with that. Well, the Green Pal guys have a similar origin, but a different approach. The origin is the problem, and for their solution, they have the intent to not just work in one area, but create this technology that will work throughout the United States, and maybe even beyond at some point. So they are, of course, very successful too. And you might wonder, why doesn't everyone do it that way?
Well, it's not necessarily that one way is better than the other, because to do it this way is a lot more expensive. It requires partnership like we saw in this story. It does require a certain amount of startup capital or investment to build that technology. And speaking of technology, it's just a much more technologically intensive approach. So if you have those skills, or if you have the money to pay for those skills, that's great, but a lot of us don't, which is why you could do something like what Christopher did in episode 87, and still create a tremendous success for yourself.
So different approaches, there's always pros and cons to everything, but it all starts when you have an intention, and of course, when you get to work. I hope you enjoyed this story today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration combined with action is so much better. Show notes for today are at sidehustleschool.com/123. That's for episode 123.
You can also send me a note from there, or you can leave a voicemail for the show. And we won't call you back to give you a quote on mowing your lawn, but we might use your comment or question on the show. Thank you for listening. I'm Chris Guillebeau, this is Side Hustle School. [Music]
