Connect With Today’s Guest
???? PermaGreen: https://permagreen.com/
???? Connect with Brian Middleton: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-middleton-48862b344/
???? PermaGreen Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/permagreenspreadersprayers/
???? PermaGreen Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gopermagreen/
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00:00 – Why Equipment Downtime Hurts Crews And Profits
00:00
Brian Middleton
I'd always worked on engines. Machines always been very kind of, how does that work? Let's take it apart. The reason it's challenging for me is because I feel the pain of our customers when they're broken down on a property, that machine has to go. If that machine has to do 30 properties today and the machine's broken down, they're losing money. If I help them through a problem with an engine or it's not spraying properly or whatever, and we fix it, you know, they kind of feel like I got their back.
00:33 – Meeting A Childhood Radio DJ At NALP Elevate
00:33
Jack Jostes
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Landscaper's Guide podcast. Today I'm excited to interview Brian Middleton, who I just met at NALP's Elevate conference, who surprisingly was a DJ. You're a DJ that I grew up listening to on B96 radio in the Chicago area.
00:51
Brian Middleton
Unbelievable. When I found out you're from Arlington Heights.
00:53
Jack Jostes
I'm from Arlington Heights.
00:54
Brian Middleton
That's right. So he goes, I grew up listening to you on the radio.
00:57
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
00:58
Brian Middleton
So.
00:58
Jack Jostes
So how long Tell first before. I mean, we've got to talk about that. Okay, so like, how long were you there?
01:26 – Life On Chicago Radio And Early Career Lessons
01:03
Brian Middleton
What did you. So I was on B96 for 20 something years and so pretty big market, number three, radio market, and had a great time. You know, nobody would ever complain. You know, everyone would call and they wanted to, hey, listen to you guys all time. Love the station.
01:20
Jack Jostes
It was great. So who were. Who are some of the artists that you met that came by the radio? Anybody during that time period?
01:26
Brian Middleton
I think I met everybody from Britney Spears to 50 Cent to Outkast to, I don't know, Mariah Carey.
01:37
Jack Jostes
So, like, what time of the day did you work?
01:40
Brian Middleton
So I was on middays. I did 10 to 2 on B96. And then I also did the mixes on the weekends. So everybody would go out on the weekend. Friday and Saturday nights, they'd have their windows rolled down, you know, and they were listening to our mixes. So it was pretty hot station.
01:54
Jack Jostes
Do you remember a DJ, Bobby D?
01:57
Brian Middleton
Work with him closely? I just, I just did a mix event with him in Crown Point, Indiana, two weeks ago. Bobby and I did.
02:03
Jack Jostes
Seriously?
02:04
Brian Middleton
Yeah. There were five of us mixers on B96. Bobby was one and I was one.
02:08
Jack Jostes
Yeah, I remember listening to you guys as a kid and I actually recorded you on a cassette tape.
02:13
Brian Middleton
You had a cassette tape?
02:14
Jack Jostes
I had a boombox.
02:15
Brian Middleton
Did you?
02:15
Jack Jostes
Yeah. And that actually. So we're doing a podcast right now and I have all these, like wireless mics and cameras and stuff, but Listening to the radio and recording stuff on a cassette tape was what I did as a kid. That.
02:29
Brian Middleton
Yeah.
02:30
Jack Jostes
I don't know, it's how I learned to love recording stuff.
02:34
Brian Middleton
So it was a different time.
02:35
Jack Jostes
It was a different time. But it's also. I don't know, it's really relevant to what I'm doing now and what I did today.
02:41
Brian Middleton
Right.
02:42
Jack Jostes
So. So.
02:43
Brian Middleton
Well, you're on the leading edge of stuff today, though.
02:45
Jack Jostes
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying that.
02:47
Brian Middleton
No, you are after seeing this, for sure.
03:03 – What PermaGreen Does And Who They Serve
02:50
Jack Jostes
Yeah. So I. Right now, I just finished a talk on ChatGPT for sales professionals, and you stuck around to say hi, and here we are. I just thought it'd be cool to have you on the podcast to learn more about. What do you do now?
03:03
Brian Middleton
I'm glad to be here. Well, I'm the head of tech support for a company called Permagreen. We make the stand on spreader sprayer machines.
03:11
Jack Jostes
And.
03:12
Brian Middleton
And we've been around for a minute, and we've got a lot of new innovations now. We continue to innovate and evolve. And, you know, one of the big pain points that I've noticed over the last couple days here at Elevate is that one of the toughest things to deal with is employee turnover. You know, burnout employees, you know, after pulling a hose and pushing a spreader for 60 hours a week, they don't want to come back to work next week.
03:59 – Solving Burnout And Employee Turnover With Equipment
03:59
Brian Middleton
So that's where we come in, is that, you know, we've got a small machine that does all properties. So if a person can ride a machine all week, they're not burned out. They can go home and play with their kids and go out to dinner with their. With their wife and, you know, have a much better quality of life. We're finding out. So we've addressed those problems, and I think we contribute to the overall profitability of some of these companies, because if they have less employee turnover, those employees are pretty well educated. They can do a great job on the properties reducing callbacks. It's just. It's a win, win, win for the customers.
04:19
Jack Jostes
So how did you go from the radio business into the green industry? Tell me a little bit about that.
04:24 – Transitioning From Radio To The Green Industry
04:24
Brian Middleton
I was wondering if you're going to ask that. I am. I'd always worked on engines, machines, always been very kind of, how does that work? Let's take it apart. And so I went to Permagreen one day to get some parts for something, and I met the owner, and the owner said, hey, you have a unique skill set. So we sat down and talked about it. And so I took over tech support.
05:11
Brian Middleton
So the reason it's challenging for me is because I feel the pain of our customers when they're broken down on a property. You know, that machine has to go. If that machine has to do 30 properties today and the machine's broken down, they're losing money and customers are upset.
05:11 – Fast, Practical Tech Support That Saves Time
05:11
Brian Middleton
And you know, with social media today, customers, if they have a problem, they're telling their friends, they're, you know, they're texting, they're on groups. So, you know, we've taken a lot of steps to be unique in the sense that, like our YouTube channel is, you know, I've got a series of videos. If you have a problem with a machine, you're going to fix it in six minutes.
05:54
Brian Middleton
You're going to watch this two minute video and this two minute video. And if you don't fix that engine, you probably need a new engine. So it's not a 26 minute video where you get introduced to my cat. You know, you see a lot of YouTube videos where people just don't get to it. And well, you got to get to the point because time is money, as you know. So I have live video chat things that I do with customers, my customers, right on a property, maybe a machine is down, we fix it right on the property. So, you know, it's all about keeping these people going on these machines so they can go out.
06:14 – What It’s Like Handling Nationwide Support Calls
06:10
Jack Jostes
That's a really cool position. What, so what is your actual job title there?
06:14
Brian Middleton
I'm the head of technical support for Permanent Green. So I take all the live calls from across the country, people with issues, problems with their machines.
06:23
Jack Jostes
How many calls?
06:24
Brian Middleton
Thank goodness. Thank goodness there aren't that many.
06:26
Jack Jostes
Well, that's good. So during springtime, how many calls might you field in a day?
06:32
Brian Middleton
You know, when it's early in season, when maybe people are getting their machines ready to go for the season. I don't know the exact number of calls. There's one other person that'll take tech calls there too, but it can vary from season to season. But yeah, early in the season will get a lot of maintenance calls. How much oil goes in this thing, you know, what's the psi for the tires and things like that. So they're getting literally phone calls or.
07:08 – Where AI Helps And Where Humans Matter More
07:01
Jack Jostes
Are they texting you?
07:02
Brian Middleton
Oh, no, I take straight phone calls. I'll take live calls right now.
07:05
Jack Jostes
You know, so I'm thinking, you know, so were Just talking about AI.
07:08
Brian Middleton
Yeah.
07:08
Jack Jostes
A lot of those things could be answered by an AI.
07:10
Brian Middleton
Absolutely.
07:11
Jack Jostes
You could program with all of these things. And I think you love that you're there to. I think you said you even FaceTime or video call.
07:19
Brian Middleton
Oh yeah, we'll do video chats.
07:19
Jack Jostes
I'll do video chats and sometimes you do need to do that. But some of these things, like how much oil or what kind of oil, I would think you could prompt.
07:28
Brian Middleton
You're exactly right. And we have looked into that and we are going to implement something like that.
08:13 – Building Trust Through Real Human Support
07:54
Brian Middleton
But you know, we have kind of a unique machine in the sense that. And you know, when you're talking about an engine, it's not. If the engine won't start, it's not a matter of, well, it can only be two or three things. It could be 21 things. And what I like to do is get that person on the phone and knock those things out quick and get them going.
08:13
Jack Jostes
And you still need a human. I mean, I think that human component is really important. There are certain problems that you do need to pick up the damn phone is. One of my core values at my company is be human and pick up the damn phone. And there's a time and place for that.
08:13
Brian Middleton
I agree with you and I love AI. I think we all love AI. You've demonstrated here what AI can do as far as saving time for everybody. But I like that personal interaction and I feel like our customers appreciate that too.
08:36
Brian Middleton
If I help them through a problem with an engine or it's not spraying properly or whatever and we fix it, you know, they kind of feel like I got their back.
10:11 – Where To Learn More And Connect With PermaGreen
08:42
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
08:42
Brian Middleton
And that goes a long way to the connection. It really does.
08:42
Jack Jostes
Yeah. So I have people ever send them follow up recordings of you from B96 so they can like listen to some music.
08:49
Brian Middleton
No, these guys and you know, unfortunately when they're down, they don't care much about.
08:54
Jack Jostes
Yeah, I'm kidding. Well, hey there. The, the crew is here. We gotta, we gotta pack up. Yeah. It was a pleasure meeting you. I mean, I, I grew up listening to you as well on the radio.
09:04
Brian Middleton
I certainly appreciate that.
09:05
Jack Jostes
So it's just funny. Like I, I wouldn't have thought about meeting you.
09:09
Brian Middleton
Yeah.
09:09
Jack Jostes
And then I'm meeting you and it's like I grew up listening to you.
09:12
Brian Middleton
I kind of know this guy.
09:13
Jack Jostes
I know this guy well.
09:14
Brian Middleton
And hats off to you too because like I said when I came in here, what you were doing and what you were showing these people as far as how to integrate chat into their businesses. I mean, I was taking notes on it because I'm going, oh, wait, I can use the assistant mode in this way. You know, you said, when you get in the truck, when you get in the truck, sum up what you. Just the interaction you just had with that potential customer right now while it's fresh in your mind. And then have emails sent out, you're dripping on them, so you can keep them, you know, top of mind. And your sales are going to increase.
09:52
Jack Jostes
Absolutely.
09:53
Brian Middleton
You know, and people. People are out there going, oh, man, I'm downloading this thing right now.
09:56
Jack Jostes
Yeah, that was. My goal, is to get them to start.
09:58
Brian Middleton
And they did. I watched them, I looked around. Here you were up talking, and I'm looking around and all these guys are going, okay, going to the App Store.
10:05
Jack Jostes
Good.
10:05
Brian Middleton
You know, to get that. So phenomenal.
10:08
Jack Jostes
Well, Brian Middleton, where can we connect with you? Are you on LinkedIn or.
10:11
Brian Middleton
Absolutely, I'm on LinkedIn. Permagreen.com is a great source for our entire YouTube channel for links. And if you have a problem with a machine or want more information on a machine. And we've innovated in a number of different ways. We're constantly drilling down on this machine because to address the pain points for the customers. I mean, we truly are every day. And I think that's what motivates me every day is we gotta make this thing bulletproof.
10:41
Jack Jostes
Love it, you know. Well, keep doing great work, Brian.
10:43
Brian Middleton
Thanks, man.
10:44
Jack Jostes
Thank you.
10:45
Brian Middleton
Nice meeting you. You too.
10:46
Jack Jostes
Hey, it's Jack Jostes. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I enjoyed meeting one of my favorite radio DJs as a kid, and it's one of my favorite things about this podcast is just getting to talk to great people. So if you enjoyed this video, make sure you like it. And subscribe. And subscribe@landscapersguide.com podcast so you never miss an episode. And you'll also get invitations to my live and virtual events. I'm Jack justice, and I'll look forward to talking with you next week on the Landscaper's Guide.