Mark Tipton [00:00:00]:
Companies need to be profitable in order to have happy, healthy organizations. You got to have happy, healthy employees.
Whitney Griffin [00:00:07]:
What we really want to strive for is helping our customers learn how to be proactive and plan better so that they don't have to put fires out all day. When you're estimating whether it's specific cultivar level or just, you know, here's what a 4-inch BNB shade tree is going to cost you roundabouts. Passing that information so it doesn't matter how many humans in your workflow touch that job, all of the information is always at their fingertips.
Mark Tipton [00:00:32]:
The unknown thing for people not in the software industry is that every company really gets to a pricing model that ultimately delivers to them a percentage of their customers revenue. We wanted to create the most value opportunity we could for our clients.
00:50 - Meet Aspire: Mark Tipton & Whitney Griffin
Jack Jostes [00:00:50]:
Hey everyone, Jack Jostes here. Welcome to The Landscaper's Guide Podcast. Today I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina at NALP's Elevate show, talking with Mark Tipton, the CEO and Whitney Griffin, the senior product owner from Aspire. And we're going to talk about some ways that you can get more done with the same amount of people on your team, how you can improve efficiencies. And thanks for coming on The Landscaper's Guide.
Mark Tipton [00:01:17]:
Great to be here. Thanks for having us, Jack.
01:19 - Labor Challenges in Landscaping: How to Get More Done with the Same Team
Jack Jostes [00:01:19]:
So, Mark, tell us a little bit. What are some of the ways, you know, obviously, one of the biggest challenges in the landscape industry is labor. Finding people, retaining people. I've been doing a sales and marketing survey for years and finding and recruiting people continues to be either the number one or number two challenge in the industry. So what are some tips that you'd have for landscape companies? Just big ideas to think about to be more efficient with their team.
Mark Tipton [00:01:49]:
Well, labor is probably something that impacts 100% of our customers. It's a big deal. And it's a big part of what we do as Aspire is we help companies manage their labor more effectively. Aspire's actually been used as a great tool to recruit talent to the team. A lot of the talent looks at a system like Aspire and says, yeah, I want to be part of an organization that's using the technology, that's leveraging it, that creates better opportunities for myself. And then of course, the guts of the Aspire system is really all about managing the jobs, managing them effectively, and dealing with all the challenges of managing jobs. We're going to talk about construction today, which is an ever evolving, changing project. Right.
Mark Tipton [00:02:39]:
Very few construction projects are. Here's the plan. Go do it. It Changes along the way. And that creates a lot of challenges in labor management. And so that's a big, big piece of what we do in our software.
Jack Jostes [00:02:50]:
Yeah. You know, really, when companies don't have that structure in place, they don't have a system for managing things that creates more stress for the team. Right. And that leads to employee turnover or challenges like that, and then obviously decrease profitability.
Mark Tipton [00:03:06]:
Yeah, yeah. It's huge. Companies need to be profitable in order to have happy, healthy organizations. You got to have happy, healthy employees. Right. That are not overworked, that are given the appropriate amount of work for the time that they have. And having solid systems that allow you to estimate accurately number one and then manage to the numbers that you estimated, it's huge.
03:31 - What Does a Senior Product Owner Do? Whitney Griffin’s Role at Aspire
Jack Jostes [00:03:31]:
So, Whitney, tell us a little more. What is a senior product owner and what do you do at Aspire?
Whitney Griffin [00:03:36]:
So a senior product owner is someone who works as a liaison, really, between the software development teams and our customers and other stakeholders. And so our engineers are very valuable to us. We want them writing code. We want them thinking about problems in the code and how to create creative solutions to the problems that our customers have as much as possible. And so my role is really to ask the right questions of our customers if they come to us and say, hey, I have this problem and I really wish that you could fix this. It's my job to ask them the right questions and figure out what we can do to deliver this functionality and then break that down and convert it into a kind of software development system so that our software developers can actually build what our customers need.
Jack Jostes [00:04:20]:
And how did you arrive at this position? Were you hired to be the senior product owner? Did you get promoted into it? What were some of the things that led you to learn how to do this?
Whitney Griffin [00:04:29]:
Yeah, so I was actually hired as a product owner, which means that I worked with a specific development team. We were very much a family, and I was kind of the leader of the team to kind of keep us on track and make sure that we were delivering. I was promoted up into the senior product owner role, which means I'm not directly working with an asymmetric single team. I'm kind of managing multiple different teams to deliver construction functionality specifically right now. And I get a little bit more customer interaction and more direct involvement with customers to actually see what they need.
04:59 - Common Mistakes in Landscape Planning & How to Fix Them
Jack Jostes [00:04:59]:
Well, so what are some of the challenges that you, when you're talking with landscape company owners that they're facing on the construction side from a planning standpoint? What are some of them? Maybe the mistakes or challenges you see them making that you try and help them with.
Whitney Griffin [00:05:12]:
I think that the most common problem that really everyone faces, honestly, is that everyone does things differently with maintenance. It's really easy, kind of. Everyone knows the scopes of work are always going to be kind of the same. And different companies do have different SOPs, but generally you're going to be delivering the same amount of work. And so with construction, every job is different and everyone's sops are different. And it can be difficult to ask them, like, well, what are your procedures? Often they don't have any. It's very much a fly by the seat of your pants day to day, putting out fires and reactivity. And what we really want to strive for is helping our customers learn how to be proactive and plan better so that they don't have to put fires out all day.
Jack Jostes [00:05:54]:
What are the top one or two things that if you could wave the magic wand and your customers were more proactive in planning, what would it be?
Whitney Griffin [00:06:03]:
Getting their trucks ready and prepared at the end of the day for the next day's rollout. Don't do that in the dark at 6am. I came from the industry. That was something really hard. We would start the season with end of day truck prep. And by, you know, June, July, it's. That's out the window and we're just in panic mode. And I think getting everyone to commit to that would be huge. And we do have customers who operate that way and they are more efficient.
Jack Jostes [00:06:29]:
So end of day preparation for the next day.
Whitney Griffin [00:06:32]:
Yeah. Load your truck at the end of the day before you clock out and leave. So that when you show up at 6am you're tired, your coffee hasn't taken effect yet, you just get in the truck and you go. And then by the time you get to the job site, you're ready.
Jack Jostes [00:06:45]:
I like that. I personally try and plan my day that way, and when I don't, everything falls apart. It does. It does.
06:54 - What Are Gantt Charts & How They Help Landscaping Projects Stay on Track
Jack Jostes [00:06:52]:
So tell me about Gantt charts. We were talking when we met about Gantt charts. What is a Gantt chart, first of all? And how can it be used in a construction project?
Whitney Griffin [00:07:04]:
Yeah, so a Gantt chart is a visualization. It's a bar graph that basically breaks tasks down into horizontal bars. And the way you can break the tasks out, you can get as granular as you want. But it's essentially a way of saying, okay, I have this whole big job and I need to do site prep and irrigation and some hardscaping and planting, and it's a way to look at the breakdown of time. So the bar graph equals time. So you can visualize, okay, well, I can't really put my plants in the ground until all of my site prep is done, but maybe I can start my irrigation before it's completely done. And suddenly, instead of having a task after a task after a task, you can identify when you can have some overlap and increase that efficiency so that maybe you trim a day or two off of the job.
Jack Jostes [00:07:48]:
So let's pretend that I plan the most beautiful Gantt chart, right? I've got everything planned. And now my customer comes out and says, you know what, we want to add a patio over here, or how about this walkway that we want to add on? Or we do want the water feature you told us about, or whatever. Change order. How do you manage? I think really that's where construction gets especially challenging, is all the changes in it. So what are some ways that listeners can manage that?
Whitney Griffin [00:08:19]:
I think when you have a visual, and maybe I'm just a visual person, but for me, when you have a visualization and you can see, these are the tasks that I have, and you know which crews are going to be delivering which tasks. If someone does say, hey, that patio, I had you cut out, I want that. Now you can quickly see, okay, which crews are equipped to do this, which have the skill set to do that type of work. And can I move things around if this needs to be done in the backyard? Can I move my crews to the front yard? Can I move them somewhere else on site so that they're out of the way and not tripping all over each other? Or maybe you're so far done that you were almost finished with the job and you just pluck one crew from another job, put them there, finish the change order, deliver it, get your final payment, and go.
Mark Tipton [00:09:00]:
So it kind of helps you see the dependencies, too, right? This has to be finished before I could begin this work. And the Gantt chart, as she said, visually lays all that out.
Jack Jostes [00:09:10]:
And so is that part of dynamic forecasting at Aspire, or is that something different?
Whitney Griffin [00:09:15]:
Dynamic forecasting is a little bit different, but the Gantt chart and dynamic forecasting do inform each other. So dynamic forecasting within Aspire is a way to forecast out your sold backlog. You know, you can sell $10 million worth of work, right? But if, when you actually start planning it, if none of those general contractors are going to let you on site for two months, you still haven't sold enough work. You still have to have. You have to have Enough hours for your guys to put food on the table and you have to have revenue coming in to meet your budget for those months. So with dynamic forecasting, you can forecast out multiple years of a sold backlog so that you can identify very quickly. What months do I need to sell more? In what months do I have too many hours and I need to either move things around or maybe talk about getting a subcontractor on site so that I can do all of this work.
10:07 - Vendor Management Challenges in 2025: What Landscapers Need to Know
Jack Jostes [00:10:07]:
One of the challenges I'm hearing from people, and that you said you're hearing too, is with vendor management. What are some of the issues that you're hearing right now in 2024?
Whitney Griffin [00:10:16]:
One of the things I'm hearing, well, there's kind of multiple issues. One of the big ones is you don't really know if you're going to be able to find everything you need from your preferred vendors. Right. And so if you have a landscape architect that specified a really specific cultivar, and maybe the nurseries that you typically go to don't have that, you may end up needing to go to a small mom and pop grower to find that thing. There's a lot of time and overhead involved with sourcing those materials. There's also the issue of things not being available. The biggest problem is, or the biggest challenge rather, is that a lot of companies don't have their companies staffed similarly. So sometimes a company may have a purchaser and their role is purchasing and they don't have any context into the jobs.
Whitney Griffin [00:10:59]:
They see a list of what they need to order. They don't know the difference between an autumn blaze maple and a September autumn glory maple, but they're going to order that because that's what is on the list. Or you may have a project manager that's managing the whole job and they're responsible for purchasing for their own jobs and they know on the fly what they can and can't change things out for. You also could have an estimator that's estimating items that once the job is won, they don't care. They're going to hand it off to someone else to deliver. And so whatever details they put in the estimate is what you get. And so I think for, you know, streamlining so that whatever vendors you get quotes from, when you're estimating whether it's specific cultivar level or just, you know, here's what a 4 inch BNB shade tree is going to cost you roundabouts passing that information. So it doesn't matter how many humans in your workflow touch that job, all of the information is always at their fingertips.
Mark Tipton [00:11:56]:
So I, I think you got a sense for what Whitney does, right? The way she talks through the issues and really understanding the challenges our customers are dealing with. Whitney worked with 15, 20 customers on this construction project. That was a very collaborative process where they would sit down, walk through specific topics. Whitney would lay out, hey, here's how we can address this, get feedback, listen to their ideas. And so understanding the problems is so key to what we do, because we can't fix the problem if we don't understand it. And she does a phenomenal job working with our creative engineers who can build amazing things when they have good direction.
Jack Jostes [00:12:39]:
Well, it's great that you get to work with both the client and the internal team who does it.
12:45 - Why Aspire Uses a Percentage-Based Pricing Model & What It Means for You
Jack Jostes [00:12:45]:
Mark, I'd like to address the elephant in the room. Okay, what's the deal with Aspire charging a percentage of revenue now? I just want to. I want to qualify that. I run a mastermind. I have the podcast. I have over 100 clients. And we recommend Aspire as one of the softwares that people consider.
Jack Jostes [00:13:04]:
And one of the rumblings I hear from people as well, Aspire charges a percentage of revenue. So can you just clarify for us what, what is the pricing model and why do you do it that way?
Mark Tipton [00:13:14]:
Yeah, you're absolutely right. It is a percentage of revenue, which is a little different. Right. Than most people have experienced within software system. So we're what you call software as a service SaaS. And so it's subscription pricing. People pay a monthly fee. That's how we do our pricing.
Mark Tipton [00:13:32]:
A lot of companies will do it based on user count or number of crews you have, or we've got another software package that we also represent that prices it based on the number of customers you have. The kind of, the unknown thing for people not in the software industry is that every company really gets to a pricing model that ultimately delivers to them a percentage of their customers revenue. And so we just decided to go with it up front and just be just very forthcoming with it and say, this is it. And we really did it because we wanted to create the most value opportunity we could for our clients. And because a lot of companies that sell user licenses, a lot of their customers will buy less user licenses than are ideal for them to use the software effectively in their business. And so we wanted to take that off the table. Say it doesn't matter how many users you have, you've got this much revenue, you're going to pay this price. Whether you have one person using the software or every single person in the company using the software.
Mark Tipton [00:14:42]:
And that's what we want. We literally want every single person in the company in the software. That is where you're going to get the most value. With a system like ours, that's comprehensive, that covers everything from the early stages of the sales process all the way through invoicing and everything in between. The more people that are in the system touching the system, the more effective the communication is, the better the workflows are, the more trust you can have in your data. And so we really went with a percent of revenue to take the friction away. So people weren't deciding, oh, you're a user, you're not a user, and that's the bottom line. But again, the other bottom line is every software company looks at it as percent of their customer's revenue.
Jack Jostes [00:15:25]:
Well, yeah, so if you visualize your profit and loss statement and hopefully you have your various softwares by brand name in your P and L and you can look at it if you take the, the dollar amount and divide it by your top line revenue, it is a percentage of revenue. Whether you buy it that way from Aspire or you use a different software, it already is a percentage of revenue.
Mark Tipton [00:15:50]:
Yeah, yeah. So I'm part of Service Titan, right. Much bigger software company than us. They charge based on managed technicians. So they're in plumbing, H Vac, electrical. So if you want to use Service Titan Software, you're gonna pay a fee per managed technician on the back end. We analyze that as what percentage of revenue is it of our customer's revenue? So whether we charge for it to the customer, that way we're going to back into that number by user charge or technician charge or truck charge, whatever the case may be.
Jack Jostes [00:16:20]:
Yeah, and I think you brought up a good point of, you know, if you're thinking of it as a per user fee, then you may be less likely to add the users that you really need. And now you're getting partial value of the program.
Mark Tipton [00:16:34]:
Yeah, yeah, we wanted to just take that off the table and say we want you to use the software in the most effective way that you can use it. And so you, you really have, there's no friction there. You're incented to get everybody in it.
Jack Jostes [00:16:47]:
So talk to me about the payment terms. So let's pretend that I have a highly seasonal business. And is it based on the revenue of that month, Is it paid at the end of the year? Is it build quarterly? Like, you know, maybe May, June, July, August? I have 50% more revenue than the other months of the year. Do I pay 50% more during those months, or how does it work from, like, an actual cash flow standpoint?
Mark Tipton [00:17:12]:
Yeah, we experimented with that and found out customers didn't love that as much. They liked the consistency of. I know what my bill's gonna be.
Jack Jostes [00:17:21]:
So is it based on last year's revenue?
Mark Tipton [00:17:24]:
Yeah, we reset annually, but we start off with. And we look at your trailing 12 months. So if you start in June, we look at the previous 12 months to June, and that's your rate. And then next June, we'll do the same thing and reset it based on that.
17:39 - Who Is Mark Tipton? Meet the CEO of Aspire
Jack Jostes [00:17:39]:
So who is Mark Tipton? What should we know about you as the CEO?
Mark Tipton [00:17:44]:
I am a father of two, a proud father of two. So I've got two kids who are now in college, and my wife and I are enjoying a little flexibility and freedom, which is great. I love this industry. I've been in it for 20 years now. 2004 was my introduction into the green industry and just the opportunity to serve contractors in this space. It's been amazing for me. I've gotten to meet so many amazing people. I've been on an amazing journey with Aspire.
Mark Tipton [00:18:19]:
You know, Aspire started 11 years ago, you know, with me and my co founder, Kevin. You know Kevin. And, you know, we're over 600 people today. And so it's been an amazing journey, a fun journey, and we get to do things that are very impactful. One of our purpose statements as an organization is changing lives, and we get to see that in our customers all the time and how we improve their lives, not just make them a more profitable, better company, we obviously want to do that, but we have a much bigger, broader impact than that. And so when you have a customer come up to you and say, I'm spending more time at home, you know, I'm with my family more. I had a customer who I was talking with a couple months ago that was telling me his story, which is an amazing story. And he's like, I'm sending my kid to a private school, his little daughter.
Mark Tipton [00:19:20]:
It was just like, that was so meaningful to him. He grew up with nothing, and now he has the ability because he's built an amazing business. We're a piece of that. We're contributing to that. But for us to hear that, for Whitney to hear that, for the rest of our team to hear that, it's incredibly motivating for us. So that. That's what drives me. That's why I enjoy being a part of this industry so much and feeling the impact you make, right.
Mark Tipton [00:19:49]:
To know that your work is significant. Like when I get up and work today, it's making a difference not just for me, but for other people.
Jack Jostes [00:20:00]:
I love that. I love that about the work I do in this industry too. And I love hearing you say that because it really does change people's lives when those things happen and they get time, they get time with their family or all those different things.
20:12 - The Future of Aspire: AI, Automation & What’s Coming Next
Jack Jostes [00:20:12]:
Where are you taking the company? What's your vision for the next few years?
Mark Tipton [00:20:17]:
Well, about a year ago we said, or a year and a half ago we said, hey, our customers have a big need that we're not completely fulfilling in construction. And so we made the big investment there that Whitney's led. And you've, you've heard a bit about what we've done there. As we look to the future, we have some more work to do on the construction side, but we're going to invest in some other areas too. Site audit inspections, those are a big one for us. But we still have to round out the construction functionality. And as you look across the application, whether it's the customer portal, the subcontractor portal, there's lots of features that we're going to invest in over the next 12 months, 24 months, we're going to be introducing a lot of AI related functionality. Part of our partnership with Service Titan is our ability to include products that they've developed into our software.
Mark Tipton [00:21:15]:
We've done that with Marketing Pro. You're going to see us do that with something called Contact Center Pro. We're rolling out Sales Pro very soon. And these are all AI tools that really bring a lot of just tremendous value to the contractor because they automate a lot of tedious work and they consume a lot of data that a person couldn't consume because you've got a machine doing it, making some intelligent decisions with it. So those are some things we're working on as an organization. We're going to continue to grow, we're going to continue to add customers, we're going to continue to find ways to serve this industry better and continue to improve ourselves and the industry as a whole.
21:58 - Final Thoughts on Industry Challenges & Growing a Stronger Business
Jack Jostes [00:21:58]:
Sounds great. Well, Mark, Whitney, thanks for coming on The Landscaper's Guide. It was good to learn how you solve some of these challenges in the industry and hopefully people have a better understanding of how they're already going to be paying a percentage of revenue for whatever software they're using and why you have your pricing model the way you do.
Jack Jostes [00:22:15]:
Like today's video and subscribe to our YouTube Channel to get upcoming videos to help you grow your snow and landscape company. My name is Jack Jostes and check out my free resources in the show notes and click the next video to grow your business.
20:12 - Charlotteville
Jack Jostes [00:22:40]:
Today I'm at NALP's Elevate show in Charlotteville, North Carolina.
Mark Tipton [00:22:43]:
You like the Ville?
Jack Jostes [00:22:45]:
I like the Ville.
Show Notes:
Watch the full episode + see the transcript at: landscapersguide.com/podcast
Tell us where to send your beef jerky: landscapersguide.com/toolbox
????️ Learn more about Aspire Software: ramblinjackson.com/aspire
???? Connect with Mark Tipton on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/mark-t-tipton
???? Connect with Whitney Griffin on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/whitney-griffin-phd-01357040