SYNKD On Air
Robotic Revolution: Mastering Costs, Options, and Strategy in Outdoor Automation
(upbeat music) - Welcome to "Sinked On Era." I'm your host, Angelique Rob. And today I have a friend and special guest, Joe Langton. Joe, welcome to the podcast again. - Yes, thank you. I'm glad you're actually having me on again. I always enjoy my time with you, Angelique, so. - Well, we've known each other for a few years now and I just really respect what you're doing in the industry and love to share with people how you have really figured things out ahead of many in our industry. And when it comes to robotic moors and automation, and I just can't say enough about the respect I have for you and what you've done to push things forward in our industry and really, as a driver of "Sinked," I love having you involved with what we're doing because I've seen the progress that you've made in our industry nationwide. So welcome, but let's give everybody a brief summary of who you are because you're not just Joe Langton. You run a few things on the side too. - So tell us about the companies that you lead. - Yeah, so yeah, definitely, it's funny, my dad, when I first started the businesses, when I was 20 years old, when I was using electrician, I actually used to say it's good kind of have a side hustle. But now it's definitely Langton, 185 people strong right now. Number 25 in the snow and ice industry right now moved up three spots from last year. So we're slowly getting better and better in the snow and ice removal sector of the market, aiming to be top five, within the next three to five years, that's a goal of nine. As far as landscape construction and maintenance, really growing that side of the company also. And yeah, as you mentioned, 2016, I saw the opportunity to automate and really professionalize what we were doing at Langton Group. And in 2019, I started Automated Outdoor Solutions with the goal to help the industry that served me well, to kind of serve that same industry and start to mentor the space backs. Yeah, to go off what you were saying, Angelique, I always enjoy what you're doing. I, anyone that wants to elevate the professionalism of the industry with others that wanna elevate that professional aspect of the space, I'm always happy to take the time and spend the time with people like you. - Awesome, awesome. Tell us what, I mean, you just kind of touched on it, automated outdoor solutions. Get into a bit more detail about it because I describe your business to some people a certain way, but I want you to describe it here on the channel. - Yeah, so it's been a constant rolling, evolving thing, like many businesses are. I would say to anyone that's a serial entrepreneur, like myself, every business I start, it's almost like a, like having my own child and seeing it grow, right? So for people out there that are entrepreneurs, like myself, I think you'll totally get and understand that. So, you know, when I started Automated Outdoor Solutions, I was kind of going off the premise that I was just gonna sell robots to my customers. I've known all along that lawn mowing was a lost leader and I was really okay with just giving it up, selling the robots and doing all the other verticals. What I realized very quickly was people didn't want me to hand that off to them. They wanted us to continue to do it. From there, I realized quickly there was a real opportunity in the space to work with professional landscapers and really grow the space with automated outdoor solutions. But to grow in more of a way than just someone that sells robots, quite frankly, if you just wanna buy robots, you can go direct to manufacturers, go to your local small dealer, you can buy robots, but what we've done is we've figured out a way and hopefully the wind's not too bad, the ocean breeze just kicked up, that's not a fake background. But so, I hope-- - It doesn't kind of fake, yeah. (laughing) - I hope it sounds okay, I'll do it, but, you know, but basically what I realized with the opportunity was is if people wanna source their automation through AOS, you get a fractional CTO, which if you don't know what that is, that's the Chief Technology Officer. And what we do is we partner with professionals, whether you're a golf professional or a landscape professional, and we help you understand your costs, and we then help figure out your best way forward, and whether that's through a direct sale of equipment or a subscription model, one way or another, we can package a deal that fits your organization the best. And that's it, it's pretty simple. I think sometimes people maybe think it's more complex than it is, but I think it's simple anyways, but go ahead and drag it out to be very angelic, you know? - Well, I mean, robotic mowers, if you've not done it before, it's not just a plop of mening go, is it? I mean, there's a level of maintenance that, and maybe that's why, you know, you said at first, you thought you would supply them to clients, but then, you know, there is, you have to know about them. You have to tweak them, service them, and that's the benefit of somebody like AOS, isn't that right? - Well, yeah, I mean, Angelique, why I get excited to have an opportunity to speak at events like yours at Sync Live this year is, you know, it's part of the education is not just how to install a robot. Look, I'm convinced that any of the professionals that attend your shows can figure how to install a robot. The manufacturers make it easier and easier every year to do the installs. What I'm convinced of is there's a lot of landscape professionals out there that don't actually know how much money they're losing cutting grass. And that's really where my passion lies. I know Angelique, you know this, but some of your listeners may not know. When we first met, you know, I've known the numbers all along. I knew that Langton Group sometimes lost money, especially in the commercial segment to cut grass, but we made up for it when we plowed snow and did all the other enhancements. But what I realized was, all too often-- - If you're losing money, if you're losing money. - Well, here, here's why, because all too often we go to learning events where people say every industry has a lost leader. So I hear this all the time where people will say, like, yeah, you know, grocery stores, they give away the milk to sell the Oreo cookie, okay? Well, here's the reality. When you look at a planogram of a grocery store, milk might be 0.05% of the gross volume or what gets sold in the store. It's probably 0.005% really when you look at it, right? So yeah, who cares if you're losing money on milk? In the landscaping industry, it's 1/3 to 1/2 of what some professional landscapers do. So I'm always appalled when I hear people say, yeah, grass cutting is just your lost leader. Now, this is where I get passionate, is in automation, it's just math. So I go to shows and I see this paralysis by analysis of professionals waiting for larger equipment and, you know, is bigger, better, is smaller, better, and here's what comes down to it. Size makes no difference when there's not a human being on it and this is the kind of stuff if you come to the show and you come with your numbers and you know your numbers, I can pretty much make you realize, doesn't make any difference what piece of automation you pick. It's going to make your company more profitable and you're going to look more professional and you're going to attract bright young talent to come work at your company in the future. And that's what it comes down to at the end of the day is not necessarily what customers you're attracting but what type of talent you're bringing into the business to grow into the next decade. - Well, so great. Thanks for jumping into the talk that you're going to give at SyncLive 2025. What should these business owners, what pieces of information do they need to bring to help you show them what the difference is? What's the pieces? - Yeah, so first you really need to have an understanding of what your fully burdened labor rate is. And if you don't know what that is, I'll kind of give you an elementary way to get there. Let's just assume, break it out per crew. If you have a three-person crew in a truck, figure out the cost of your truck, your trailer, your mowing equipment, that's your hedge trimmers, your mowers, everything. Take that chunk. And what I would assume most of you are going to get to about $100,000 in assets, okay? That are just rolling. - For one crew. - For one crew, right? And when you think about it, $50,000 truck, $16,000 trailer, the zero turns, you're getting close to 100 grand. Maybe in the south, you're only running two-wheel drive trucks. Maybe you're lucky you were down there and you're 70,000, but 70 to 100 grand. I think that if I challenge people to do that, they're going to find that. Now, this is a very elementary way to do it, Angelique, but this is the thing that I think our space is doing wrong. And when I go to events like NELP, there's these big national landscapers. You have spreadsheets and formulas and all stuff, but one of the things that inspires me to speak at your events is everybody has to start someplace. So maybe you don't have that software and the ability to figure this out. So going back to it, 100 grand. Now, if that asset is going to be on your books for five years, you take 100 grand divided by five, okay? You're going to run it for five years. Now you figure out how many weeks you operate in your market with that asset. Let's say it's Atlanta, it's 42 weeks. In Illinois, it's 32 weeks. In Florida, it's 52 weeks. You divide that up, you figure out the weeks. Now, now you have some hard numbers. Then you figure out, hey, if I'm paying somebody $16 an hour, that's not my fully burdened rate. - Vacation. - Workman's comp. - Workman's comp. - But I have to pay. I have FICA, I have my state tax. So I always say, probably somewhere around 25, you take that $25 number, add the assets. That gets you close, right? We don't need to get totally right on the money, but get close. Now, if you get to that point, now you actually start to have an understanding. And then you can say, how many acres does that crew mow in a week? And if you figure out in the acres, that crew mows in a week. Once you know your fully burdened rate, the acres, the crew mows, well, now you know your cost break. The challenge is, figure out what you think your cost per acre is. Once you know that, the automation you choose, it gets so much easier to make the decision because the automation is a fixed cost. Does that make sense? Yeah. And you're comparing apples to apples. So again, I think some people get messed up when they go, my goodness, a robotic mower costs so much more than a mower that we would use for that property. And it's not, you're not comparing apples to apples. Yeah. So I was working with a professional the other day. And they just give you a quick example. You know, this was some resort mowing 30 acres. And when I told, I was actually showing some of my next mows, and those are $400 a month in full subscription. I don't want to sound like an infomercial, but it's easy to do the math here real quick, right? And I know those mowers with one batteries are going to do half an acre, with two batteries, they're going to do an acre, and with three batteries, they're going to do an acre and a half per day, if you want to run a second shift, okay? But let's just keep it two batteries. It's going to do an acre a day. Five days a week, that's five acres, seven days a week, and seven acres. It's easy to know how many acres that each automation is going to do, put it down. So I told the guy in my price, and he was like, oh my god, you're, that's so expensive. And I said, I said, hey, let me ask you a question. What is your cost breaker? And we figured out, it was pretty easy. He knew that he had three people do that mowing in that area, it was a three day thing, and we kind of broke it down. And we got to about $80 an acre. And he saw the math. And he said, yeah, that's the math is the math. It's $80 an acre. And I said, listen, I can do with fully subscribed automation and full subscription, $16 an acre on single cut. If we cross cut it, you know, you're 32 an acre, I'm still half the price. - Yes. - Then it got real crazy, Angelique, because then I said, hey, now you only have two people. Your unproductive time, traveling from site to site, decreases. And honestly, this will be my next thing. If people, you know, pay the price of admission and come hear me and challenge me. I like challenges, Angelique. Like I want people to challenge me at the show. You know, now you start talking about unproductive times. You know, everybody assumes like, yeah, the people are out there and they're producing for the full eight hours. Well, that's true. Don't site to site, they're stopping gas stations, they're doing all the stuff. The robots, when you go to the stationery robots, the numbers get even better. So yeah, so anyways, I'm rambling, Angelique, 'cause you know, it's like, so in my brain, you know. - But that thought process is what people need to hear so that they know how to think of it for their own properties. And I guess, you know, so you said a couple of things. You said, one, the situation with that property manager was a mobile system or a roving system. So you can move it around. So there's that as an option, but there's also a stationary and you said, that's even cheaper, you know, getting a mower that sits on site and stays on site rather than moving it around. So there's lots of options still, I guess, is what I'm hearing, you know, on cost even. - Yeah, it's important to know it's not necessarily cheaper. You get more value out of it. So the ones that stay are like people that come to your show, Frank Mariani, when he did his automation and Frank and I, you know, working together on that project, you know, his thing was every day's a Friday with the stationary mowers. I do in the commercial segment, used to say we're six times better than our competition 'cause we cut the grass every day. So the next thing I would try to inspire and thought for people to come to your events is, say, okay, what if we could provide our customers more service than the competition for the same price? - Yeah. - Now what automation does is it levels you up in your marketplace. You are providing a better form of service for the same price. Now your competition, they can't compete with you. So that's another thing I like to teach, you know, because if you mow the same acre six times in a week with that piece of equipment, but you can still compete competitively in your market space, you're never gonna lose that account. - Well, and you're profiting as well where before it could have been a loss leader. You know, that's a huge thing to bring into. Like if you were, you know, so yeah, it's throwing a lot of normal things into a better place. - Well, yeah, and look, so everyone in the space that's listening to this show knows that what no one talks about at these shows, and honestly, Angelique, you kind of almost brought me out of hiding, you know, because I kind of stopped talking to landscape professionals, you know, because quite frankly, I've been, I don't know, it's hard for me, you know, when you're such a passionate person to not feel discouraged sometimes to the messages that are getting put out, you know, it's like, like people seem to be wanting to just do everything on cost and two-per-two-per-two-per-two-per and that's a race to the bottom, right? Like nobody wants to talk about environmental pressure, you know? Every person listening to the show knows that sometimes in certain markets, right? Rain two to three days a week. And then that means if you're an operator yourself listening to this, you're one of the people in that truck with two other people in the truck with you. That means you're working Saturday and Sunday, you're away from your family on Saturday and Sunday. What is that actually worth to you? It's worth time back with your family if you're a really small operator. And that's priceless, yeah. Correct, flip side for me, I have 185 people right now that if I don't have to ask them to work weekends, but another professional landscaping company forces them to, I have a better chance with them staying with Langford, right? So that's huge. These are the things that I get passionate about and I feel like the industry is missing it in the messaging and I feel like manufacturers can't help themselves. They know they're making a piece of plastic with razor blades on it. So in their mind, they have to go to shows and tell everybody how cheap it is in comparison. It's the wrong approach. They're missing the point. Yes, they're missing the real value in automation. When I go to shows and I see the automatic zero turns, but the automatic zero turns only move four and a half miles an hour, okay? Yes, do they move faster than the smaller piece of automation that I really have become known to endorse? Absolutely, but are they as insurable? Do you feel is safe leaving them out on a property? Do you, I mean, I always look at it as am I less nervous with that piece of plastic on a piece of property than I am with that big piece of metal and not to mention I've got to drive it around every place. This is just who I am in the space and if you like what you're hearing on this episode of your podcast, Angelique, The People Do, this is what should inspire them to come actually see me speak in person because this is the type of conversation we're gonna have together. Well, and it, what I like about it, the approach that you have, like you said, it's not a race to the bottom. It's not when a robotic mower is gonna get cheaper. It's not this talk that again is the race to the bottom. It's about flipping it and knowing the financials from a business owner, point of view, a landscape business owner selling it to the property manager or the client. It's also elevating the industry because like you said, it's doing the things that you can trust a robot or automation to do and you can spend more of that time with your family for your example, your family on the weekend, not having to cut grass on the weekend or maybe you're spending more time with your property managers doing detail work or building relationships where the mowers are doing the work and you're profiting and you didn't have to cheapen anything I'm doing. You know, it's really where we should be. And the other thing that I always get frustrated with and I'm sure you are the same, about 15, maybe 12 years ago, my landscape company in Scotland, we were in homeowners who were buying robotic mowers and we were installing them for them. You know, this is technology that has worked well for a long, long time. And I still have people say it's not there yet. I find that that is the wrong message for the innovators, the entrepreneurs, the business owners in our industry. I feel like it is holding our industry back and it's not what I saw in Europe and these are the same, you know. So yes, there are more bells and whistles now with robotic mowers today, but they've been working for a long time successfully. Why are we as an industry, you know, saying that it's not there yet? - Well, there's a lot to undress though, Angelique. So keep me on track and make sure it's not dangerous. But so look, let me start with number one. The people that keep saying it's not there yet are people that tried it and they want to try it on their own. They don't want to try it with the assistance of an AOS because they go to shows and the landscaper, not the landscapers, the manufacturers tell the landscapers, "You don't need an AOS." So they do it on their own and everything's fine until the robot doesn't work and then they don't have anyone to fall back on. You know, something that I want to talk about and by the way, I'll say it on the show. Like I told Angelique, the only way I have to speak at sync this year is if she doesn't allow manufacturers to come into my segment. And I have no problem laying out this open on open air because I'm kind of tired of manufacturers taking my words and twisting them to their benefit because this should be the professionals industry, not the landscape or not the manufacturers. It should be the landscapers that keep the mowing in their portfolio. And this is one of the things I'm very passionate about and here's why to undress your question. In Europe, first of all, that market's very consolidated. There's not a lot of landscapers there. There's only a few landscapers and those landscapers already know they didn't make any money mowing grass. But if someone had them mowing grass, they were mowing grass at gardener rate, $35, $35 an hour. Okay, now how do I know this? Something else that hasn't been pressed released yet and I guess I just did it on the show, is I am buying a company in the UK right now. And I have a team there. I leave for Belgium Sunday. And why did I make an investment there? Because their technic schisms have been doing this for 15 years already. And there, I don't have to be an evangelist like I do in the United States. The market knows they need robotics, okay? So you're right when you bring up Scotland, you know? And here's the difference there. Greed is not getting in the way of progress. Okay, and now this is gonna be a hot button. People are gonna be like, wait, what did Joe just say? But I will say it again. Greed didn't get in the way of progress. I have been told for years that my service business around automation was actually me being greedy or me charging the industry almost for a cost that didn't need to be charged. Well, that's not true. I just had to tell you to tell your landscape professionals to do a little bit of homework and figure out their fully burdened labor rate. So why do the manufacturers expect those same professionals that are trying to figure out fluctuating commodities with mulch prices and fuel prices and all these different costs. So then also try to figure out how to cost structure all the different pieces of automation. AOS does that for them, okay? And in the UK, the industry is ripe for that type of service because everyone that's gotten involved has realized that they didn't factor in the service. So every person that bought a robot and said, I'm gonna buy it myself and I'm gonna do this, all the consumers that bought them themselves realized, whoa, wheel motors on a CRR, $3,000. Whoa, wheel motors on an Echo are $1,800. And I don't know how to install them. - Yeah. - Okay. That's the kind of thing that slows progress. And that's the kind of thing that keeps a lot of manufacturers keeping AOS at an arm's length because I am the person making the professionals aware of that reality, okay? Now, does that mean you should stay clear from automation? Absolutely not. That doesn't mean it's not ready yet. There's not one person that listens to this show that doesn't buy a zero turn because wheel pumps don't blow seals. We as professionals buy zero turns that have air-cooled engines on them that we know only get 16 to 1,800 hours on them. If you look at the 1,800 hours on borrowed time, you're a professional. You're a professional. It's two years. It's ironic that most zero turns have a tornado warranty on their engines. Does that mean zero turns are not ready for the industry yet? Absolutely not. It's a designed failure. So I'm always confused when I go to shows and it's why I haven't been on a show today. When I have other landscape professionals talk about automation and they'll say things like it's just not there yet because they're upset they have to maintain their automation. That's the most insane thing I've ever heard in my entire life. When I was at Union Electrician Angelique, I used to get paid to install the robots on assembly lines and then maintain them. The industries that have already automated are well aware that automation needs maintained yet for some reason manufacturers come into this industry and try to tell people none of this equipment needs maintained. And actually, I will say not all manufacturers 'cause Echo Robotics, one of the best brands I work with, they will openly tell you a show is their equipment needs maintained. And they will openly tell you you should use a company like an AOS or whatever local dealer because they're very transparent with that, you know? So yeah, sorry, I kind of went down the difference in the United States. It's not that it's not ready yet. The professionals are not ready to provide the maintenance on that equipment. That's what makes it not ready, which is driven already. The question is, is the industry ready to provide maintenance on robotics? That is what the industry is not ready for. - Yeah, yeah. Which is why automated outdoor solutions exist to provide that care? No, and it's funny because I know, you know, like I said, we met years ago and you know, you don't realize what you don't know when you haven't used it, you know? And I think that I just, I've been surprised how reluctant the industry is just in the four years that I've been back in the U.S. And that's what, yeah, I guess it makes sense. If you've had businesses just not understand what they were getting into with the products and what to do. So. - Well, and let me just add something. Going back to what I said about my time as a union electrician, you know? A lot of people don't know this. I've been a hustler my whole life. I mean, I started, I started Lengthen Group while I was still a union electrician. I mean, Lengthen Group started in 1999. I asked my brother to be a part of it several years later, but I didn't take my honorary withdrawal from the union until I, until 2007. So I was running Lengthen and I was union electrician. Now, what made me more prepared for this automation revolution in our industry is that I was hooking up the robots for other industries. - Yeah, you saw it in other industries. - You know, so, is it really a surprise that I'm more successful in automation in our space when I've already been hooking up robots? Absolutely not. You know, somebody told me one day I was like Neo in the matrix, I'm like the anomaly that shouldn't exist. No, I'm not an anomaly. Literally, this came from a manufacturer. I'm not an anomaly. I was employed by companies that maintained automation. - So you understood it? - Yeah. - So I already understand it. I'm not some weird mad scientist genius. I've already lived it in a different industry. So why should people partner with me? Well, 'cause I've lived it. I'm giving you an unbiased, as a business owner. Well, at the time I wasn't a business owner, I was an employee of another business owner when I was an electrician. I never own my own electrician. Honestly, Angelique, it's one of the things that I think makes me the best business owner in this space. I mean, I'm okay with saying this. Some people are gonna say what an arrogant thing to say, but I know what it's like to be on both sides. I know what it's like to be told what to do. So when I ask someone to do something, I make sure I ask them. I don't tell people what to do. I ask them to do something. Because no one wants to do what they're told. People want to do what they're asked, right? So I took past feelings and found the managers that managed me the best when I was an employee, and I try to manage my team members the exact same way. Now, going back to the automation, it's the same thing for me. When I'm hiring automation technicians, I call my people solutions experts. If you look up some of the people that work with me and LinkedIn, they're called automation solutions experts. It's a neutral statement for sales or technical because my sales people are there to offer solutions operationally, and my technicians are there to offer technical solutions to keep the technology running. It's broad, generic, and that allows me to build a team of people with one mission, which is no matter if it's a landscape professional or a golf professional, our job is to keep automation that they pay us monthly for working. And that is what's allowed us, in my opinion, to kind of be the North Star to the automation industry is some people would say the Neo from the matrix in the space, it's simple. We provide service with automation. Now, I want to teach others to do that. I don't care if somebody says to me, "Joe, thanks for teaching me, but I want to own my own equipment." That's okay with me because as long as we can keep the industry professional and we don't race to the bottom, automation doesn't turn into our milk. - Yeah. - Yeah. - You're first like, "What, milk?" - Yeah. - Yeah. - Our worst leader. - Yes. See, now this test of the people we're actually listening, it's if we don't wise enough and really make a decision, we'll just race to the bottom, like we've already done with mowing. You know, we cannot allow that. I can't allow it. That's one of my whys to come to your show. I love it and I think that you have a lot of wisdom on this topic and I am, yeah, honored that you're gonna come and enlighten the business owners that come to your session. Again, like you said, we are not gonna allow any manufacturers in that talk. It's only gonna be for business owners because you are sharing business owner perspective. You just happen to be able to see things from both sides of the table or the viewpoint and that's what makes you able to enlighten everybody. So I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing you there. Anything else that you need to bring except for their fully burdened labor rate? - Well, yeah, I mean, that's a good start. I mean, the other thing that I see as a problem in the space is when people say get started with a robot at your house, you know, that's all fine and good. But we're so far past that now, you know, at the end of the day, - I agree. - Figure out how many acres you're mowing with a crew, okay? In order for you to see a change in your business and automation not turn into a cost for you, you need to actually figure out if you're gonna have it do a route or if you're gonna have it do a property and actually remove some operational expense away. So like what I've been finding lately is people are like, "Yeah, we'll try a couple." Well, listen, I can guarantee you if you just try a couple of robots, it is in the expense column because you're not changing any operational time, okay? So the other thing I want people to do is just think about your routes. Think about places you drive the farthest to get to. And then those places you drive the farthest to get to figure out how many operation hours you spend cutting those areas, okay? 'Cause if you can automate that entire property, only two people or one person drive so that farthest route, not three. This is where you start to provide traction and this is where we get a movement, okay? One or two here or there, change is nothing. It's just, it's like adding, it would be like me trying to tell you get one more string trimmer and throw it on your trailer 'cause it's gonna make you better. No, it's just gonna be one more string trimmer on the trailer. It's just all that it is, you know? You have to change the process, change the methodology. And, you know, is that something? Like if a business owner comes to you, Joe and says, "These are all my properties, these are where they are." Is that something that, you know, you guys at AOS can help them do? Yeah, so I mean, so, Angelique, you've said before this kind of fits right into what you do with synced, but, you know, we are, actually I shouldn't say we, Julia, is like my automation architect yet. That's my daughter, anybody doesn't know. She is our COO, but she's like our COO/ architect and because she takes properties and cuts 'em up and figures out the automation to go in, you know, we'll do that for people. But, you know, I've gotten the point and I'm very proud to say this. I need to be selective, right? If someone doesn't know their numbers and asks me to map a property for them, they don't even know what they're saving. I can give 'em a map, but they need to know those fully burdened labor rates. They need to know some of those operational expenses. Otherwise, all I'm gonna do is waste my team's time doing a map for someone that doesn't know if it's gonna be worked for them or not. Now, this is the part of me that gets some people saying, "Oh, Joe's a little rough around the edges." I'm selective, you know, if people choose to work with AOS, we're working with the top 10% of the space, whether it's golf space or professional landscaping. If you wanna be a top-notch person, then we're aligned in our initiative. If you just want to see what it would look like to do a property, well, you know, Google Maps would pretty much do that for you once you know what you're doing. I try to expand on the business side of the numbers to go off your question. If I map a 100-acre property, and you know you're 50 bucks an acre, then you know that in that 50 bucks an acre, which actually, most landscape professionals are probably, I'm gonna say this right here, or once they do the map, they'll probably realize they're about 31-an-acre burdened. - Okay. - So you wanna be selling at 41-an-acre to make profit, right? So if you know what your cost per acre on a large site like that is, then when we do map out the property and say, hey, this is your subscription price to put a bunch of Husqvarna's out, or a bunch of Echo's out, or a bunch of Cress. This is the other thing about us, Angelique. We are brand agnostic. Every brand you see at the show we have. Like, so you don't have to worry about, "Oh, do I gotta talk to the manufacturer?" Husqvarna, Cress, Nexmo, Segway, Echo, we have them. If they're relevant, we have them. Sunseeker, we have them. Then we're gonna basically say, "Here's what goes in the property. "Here's what does your slopes. "Here's what does this. "Here's what does that boom." We put it together. And now, in that napping, we provide a cost per acre for the property. So if you know, I'm doing 100 acres for profit, 40 bucks an acre, and you know, okay, well, this is the amount of money I needed to get out of that property, it's real easy for you to make an automated decision. - Yeah, that's fantastic. Well, I'm so excited that you're gonna come and share this with our audience at Sync Live. I really appreciate it and... - Yeah, no problem. I'm excited to do it. And you know, like I said, I hope that people come to it. Like I said, my daughter always talks about a social battery, and what's funny about my social battery is the more people are in the room, I thrive, it energizes me. So you know, I hope we can fill a room, and I hope people will be willing and free to ask questions. In an industry that's just emerging and starting, there is no question that's too elementary for anyone, because this is a space that we're pioneering right now. I've been told by many great friends in the space that, you know, it's a constant evolution, 'cause we're making something that doesn't, that hasn't existed. And that's what makes me most excited, Angelique, is 10 years from now we're gonna look back on this podcast and be like, oh my gosh, how much change 10 years, you know? - Well, we'll keep recording them so we can measure. - Well, and you know what, I wanna add one more thing. - Sure. - So, you know, I did the podcast with this in my background, because this didn't exist for me until I came into another market and automated it. When I'm speaking, I want people to realize I have no investors. I've done this with my own money from the first day I started my business, I started with a pickup truck, grew it. So when people, and if you're local to Illinois and you see all those Langton Group pieces of machinery, all those assets, bought and paid for by Langton Group team members that followed my plan for profit and we continue to grow. I took that same model that I will help people learn at your event and started it down in Florida. And for the people that listened to this that are sales-oriented, I came here, I rented a hotel about five miles west of me, Off Island, I'm on Singer Island right now as we speak. And I went to the first golf club that had some interest with Echo. I went, sold them my subscription model. And I went to other clubs, stopped in, didn't pay attention and they're no solicit 'cause I don't care, you know? I look at it like this. Like, if they tell me get off our property, we're non-solicit, they would have never been my customer anyway, so where do I have to lose? So I did, I just went, went to these properties and got into a lot of them. My first apartment I had was in Fort Lauderdale, little hole in the wall, place, you know? $1,600 a month place and I got a place and I came down here and I put my flag in the Florida sand. And now I have a full-time sales person and two technicians in Florida, okay? I gave my apartment to my Stepson Ray. He's the technician that runs this market. I have a sales person now that was a director at one of the golf courses we service because he saw the value that we provided that golf course and wanted to get involved. And here's the best part of the end of the story, Angelique. The first time I touched Atlantic Ocean sand, which that's the Atlantic behind me, was on this island and I said, okay, I'm gonna get myself a condo on that island because it's the first place I touched the Atlantic Ocean and I made it happen. Nobody gave me the money to do it. I sold enough accounts to afford this place and that's the type of business leader that I am. I am not smoking mirrors. I'm not recycling money. I'm not using other people's money and it's making it sound like I know what I'm talking about. If you listen to my method and you put it into place, I can allow you to have a view like this also. I think that every person that's an entrepreneur in the space should be able to reward themselves with things like this and that's where my passion comes from. And I want people to see that so they don't post later. Yeah, Joe's flexing or this and that. No, I'm trying to inspire. I wanna inspire business owners to dream big because it's not a dream if you make it reality. And when I came and saw that beach, I said, I will live here one and I did it. - You are an inspiration and yeah, I think that, yeah, I can't wait for you to share this with other businesses, lift all the businesses up. It's what it's about and appreciate you being so open and honest with our audience. - No problem. I enjoy it and I love this industry. I just want it to grow and I want it to just continue to grow with the great professionals that we have in the space. - Awesome. Well, we will see you at Sync Live if not before. - I will see you. - Thanks, Joe. Thank you so much. Great to see you again. - Exactly. - Okay. - Thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)