Robots are taking over the world and replacing the need for humans doing your job, right?
Okay, maybe they'll replace some jobs, but how could robots help you attract new snow and landscape employees and extend the career of some of your more seasoned staff? In today's podcast, I interview Ryan Hebel, a snow and landscape contractor who shares, who clears sidewalks better? Humans with small tractors or robots? And how do robots impact employee recruiting and retention?
Hey, everyone. Jack Jostes here, and welcome to The Landscaper's Guide. This podcast is all about helping the snow and landscape industry grow through sales, marketing, and leadership ideas. I'm excited to share today's interview because it inspired a new way of thinking about how robotics impact the human employees of my snow and landscape clients. And Ryan is a great speaker. In fact, he was on the autonomy panel at SIMA's Symposium in 2022. That was a great conference, by the way. I can't wait to go to the 2023 conference in Connecticut. Now, before we dive into today's interview, if you haven't already received a copy of my book, The Tree of Good Fortune, the Landscapers Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing, I'd love to send you a free copy so you can implement the proven strategies that are working for snow and landscape contractors all over North America. So go to treeofgoodfortune.com, and I'll ship you a book. And now let's hear the conversation with Ryan about robotics.
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Landscaper's Guide. Today I'm excited to have Ryan Hebel, the owner of Green Ventures LLC. On this show we're going to talk about robotics, electric. And before we get into that, wanted to share that I met Ryan in an elevator when we were both in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at the SIMA Symposium. So great to meet you then. And I think I texted you my podcast, and you checked it out. And now here we are having a conversation. So Ryan, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Ryan Hebel:
Thanks for having me, Jack. Really excited.
What Is Green Ventures LLC?
Jack Jostes:
Tell us a little bit, what is Green Ventures LLC? How many employees do you have, and what services do you do? Oh, and where are you?
Ryan Hebel:
Okay, so Green Ventures Landscape Care, we're a small family business out of Waterloo, Ontario. We have about 25 snow employees, and we ramp up to about 35 employees in the winter or in the summer. I'm a fourth generation landscaper. This is kind of my family's second company, and it's eight years old currently.
Jack Jostes:
Wow, that's really cool. So how old were you when you mowed your first lawn?
Ryan Hebel:
Oh, geez. There are pictures of me on a walker, on my grandpa's lap when I was just a baby.
Jack Jostes:
I believe it. That's so cool. And what percentage of your business is snow versus green?
Ryan Hebel:
So typically for snow we're about 25% of our total revenue.
Jack Jostes:
And how many of your clients are commercial versus residential?
Ryan Hebel:
So that depends if you count condos as commercial or if you count them as residential.
Jack Jostes:
I do. I think if they're in an HOA, I would consider that commercial.
Ryan Hebel:
Okay. So then we're probably looking at about 75% commercial snow and 25% residential. Condos make up quite a large portion of what we do and probably the main driver of our snow operations.
Robotics In A Landscape Business
Jack Jostes:
Well, cool. So talk to me about robotics and were you speaking at SIMA?
Ryan Hebel:
Yeah, so I was on the autonomy panel that was at SIMA with Michael Mayberry and Joe Langton. And yeah, our panel was kind of talking about all things automation, mostly focused on the snow removal side.
Jack Jostes:
And what aspects of your business are you using robotics for, and how long have you been doing this?
Ryan Hebel:
So we've been using robotics in our business for about two years now on the snow side. We typically use them for sidewalks and small driveways to clear. Sometimes we'll use them on a smaller parking lot, but that's not quite the best use of our robotics. So we've been doing it for two years. This is our third year, and we think we're really kind of getting into the groove of things now and how to mix both our human staff with our robotics and our other machinery on sites.
Robot Vs Human
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, that's interesting. Sidewalks are the bane of everyone's existence, and many contractors are hiring shovelers to do that. And shovelers are hard to come by right now. How does the quality compare using a robot versus a human?
Ryan Hebel:
So that was definitely a concern of ours when we first started. We typically had been using small tractors to do sidewalks. A small tractor still tends to do it a little quicker and a little cleaner, but the robots can do it more often and give you kind of a better result overall since you can run them. Instead of just once during a snow event, you might be able to send them out two or three times during the same event. And so on the quality side being it was such a concern to start, we've been quite impressed with what we've seen.
Robot Pricing Standpoint
Jack Jostes:
From a pricing standpoint, what do you charge? How is the pricing for the customer different when we're having a human running a tractor versus a robot?
Ryan Hebel:
So typically when we're billing it out, they're billed out at a cheaper rate than the human and a tractor, just because they cost less to run. Most of the contracts that we're using them on are all inclusive. So the client actually doesn't see a huge difference. They don't see a difference at all in their billing.
Jack Jostes:
For sure. Okay. So when you factor in the capital to buy the equipment, is it profitable? Or how long does it take for that to become more profitable than the human with the tractor?
Ryan Hebel:
So right away they're more profitable on a per-meter basis if you want or per yard basis for you guys. They tend to be more profitable. Where they kind of struggle is they're not as quick overall, but where they end up winning out over a human and a tractor is with how long you can run them for. A human and a tractor have limits, whereas a robot doesn't have those same limits. So you can run it for 18 hours straight, and you're not going to be worried about it running into a lamp post because it's too tired. And so that's where you start to edge out the human and the tractor.
How Do Robots Impact Employee Recruiting And Retention
Jack Jostes:
And so how has this impacted your staffing needs? Has this alleviated or reduced some of the pressure for hiring people or how does it impact your team?
Ryan Hebel:
So I would say the best thing about it is it helps attract staff members to come here. We have been very lucky that people don't see our robots as taking jobs, but they see it as a way to multiply what they can do and give them more time off during smaller snow events where before we may have needed eight guys to do, but now we can do it with four and four robots. So that's really helped on that end. Where it saved us is during COVID. In Ontario, we had some pretty strict restrictions. So if someone was to get COVID, it was like 10 days gone right off the bat. So during snow season that could devastate you, especially when we're running 20 to 25 staff.
If we had two people sick, that's 10% of our workforce right there. And so knowing that we had these robots that could run no matter what, it really helped kind of buffer a time where a lot of people were getting sick.
Jack Jostes:
The robots can't get COVID?
Ryan Hebel:
No, it's quite nice.
Electric Equipment
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, definitely. That's one of the selling points that I share about making video content in your marketing is that if you make a video one time, it works every single day without fail. So we use video in a similar or that's how I think of video is making a video in a key part of a sales process that every customer's going to watch, can help you get that leverage. Whereas salespeople get sick or you get sick. I get sick. I missed some work earlier this year, and the cool thing was my videos were still working for me. So that's cool that you're seeing that with robots. I know another aspect of your company is electric equipment. And I wanted to hear a little bit where are you using electric equipment? And what are some of the pros and cons there?
Ryan Hebel:
Yeah, so we started our switch to electric equipment about five years ago. We had a larger client ask that we start to switch. And at the time we were using Gen one style equipment that didn't even really hold up at all compared to our gas equipment. And now we run typically hybrid crews with the newer kind of generation three, generation four style electric equipment. That compares quite well to the gas equipment we were using before. Some of the pros are just how quiet they are, how low maintenance the equipment is, how easy it is to train people on. And that would be kind of the big pros that I see. Some of the cons that you deal with are still the higher end power isn't always quite there. Some people find the balance with the batteries a little much. I don't find that personally, but I know that is a complaint to some people.
And your upfront cost is more. When you're buying batteries versus kind of spreading out the cost of gas, you pay a lot more upfront. I mean this last year though, it was quite great having a nice set of batteries that had all been paid for, and while premium gas up here was $2.20 cents a liter. And so we were able to see the savings two, three years down the line from when we originally bought the equipment.
Jack Jostes:
Well, so that's one of the things I'm curious about with batteries is their overall shelf life because a lot of batteries don't last very long, and then they're not super disposable really. What do you think about that?
Ryan Hebel:
So currently what we've noticed, we're still using our batteries that we bought originally five years ago. And they've had a bit of a loss of capacity, but nothing quite noticeable where people are complaining, oh, I don't want these batteries because they're old. So currently in our operation, we haven't been old enough with our use of batteries to see a place where we need to get rid of them. So I can't fully answer that question. Just it hasn't been a problem we've had to deal with yet.
Jack Jostes:
Well, that's good. And that's a good thing to hear. I mean that you're still getting great use out of them five years later definitely can be enough time to pay for it, especially when fuel is as expensive as it is.
Ryan Hebel:
Yeah, we typically are seeing about a two-year payoff with the batteries, which is pretty good for any investment if you get your money back in two years. And then after that, the cost of charge is so low that it's negligible when it comes to overall cost. And so that's when a year like this year, you can really make some serious gains. Or even just the way I look at it with the maintenance side is the amount of money we save in maintenance, we can buy 10 new batteries a year. And so there's other offsetting cost savings that we're getting to run the batteries and afford them.
Jack Jostes:
And so what type of employees are you seeing? I would think that some people would be really interested in the fact that you have robotics and electric equipment. Are you seeing that when you're recruiting and hiring?
Ryan Hebel:
Yeah, I think it's definitely been a big driver, especially with younger staff, how excited they can be about electric robotics, stuff that we watched TV growing up thinking, oh, is this actually possible looking into the future? And so I think we've been able to track a lot of younger staff about that. But at the same time, I think it's been kind of a great selling point for some older staff who are end of career looking, being like, oh, this can extend out my longevity in an industry. And so that part is also really cool.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, tell me more about that. There's a lot of fear around, oh, everything's going to robotics, it's going to replace the need for human workers. And yeah, it might replace some repetitive tasks for sure, but it also creates some opportunities. So for the people who are in a later phase of their career, how are you seeing it benefit them and extend their career?
Ryan Hebel:
I see the biggest kind of benefit being if you're looking at a sidewalk and you're like, oh, I'm going to have to shovel that and then hand salt it. And a robot comes driving by, you can start to see how that's going to protect your body long term. Your job may shift from just being in the field doing all this extra work to, I'm going to drive around and be making sure things are getting done properly, kind of more quality control. If a robot is dealing with some issues, how am I going to fix them?
You're going to need people in the field to deal with that. So it's just shifting people's jobs. Our robots still need kind of remote guardians to kind of watch what's going on. So for someone later in their career that has all this experience of what a good job should look like, they can be monitoring multiple robots from their computers.
Pros And Cons From A Liability Standpoint
Jack Jostes:
I love it. How does this impact liability? So when you have these contracts with HOAs or retail or hospitals or really any snow contract, there's a high level of liability. How do you see robotics? What are the pros and cons from a liability standpoint?
Ryan Hebel:
So from a liability standpoint, our insurance companies, we haven't had any issues with them so far. The great thing is our robots take constant pictures. They're reading ground temperatures, they're reading air temperatures. So they're doing all these things that I had to pay my staff to do in the past, but it's getting done automatically. So insurance loves that it can, when it's plowing, it leaves a breadcrumb trail of pictures for us to look at and see, okay, this is done at this time, this is how much salt went down.
It's so much more data than we ever had before. Even the best intentions when you're like, hey guys, record all this stuff. Well, if you're in the middle of the night and you've already worked for six hours, it can be tough to remember to do all that. So what's been great is having all that data to back up what's going on. And then again, when we brought this up to insurance, they're like, as long as you're still monitoring the properties and taking care of them, because we still have humans seeing the sites. They haven't had any issues with us so far.
Jack Jostes:
Awesome, Ryan. Well we really appreciate having you on the show and for speaking at SIMA. I didn't get to see that, but I just think it's really cool what's happening in the industry at large with electric equipment and robotics and the way that you're thinking of it, expanding the career path for your people is really interesting. So thanks so much for coming on the show. For people listening, where can we connect with you?
Ryan Hebel:
So you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Ryan Hebel is the name, and under Green Ventures you'll see me. And if people want to reach out by email, my email is Ryan@Greenventureslc.com, and I'll try to get back to you as soon as possible.
Jack Jostes:
Cool. Well Ryan, I'll put all of that info in the show notes so people can find it there. And thanks again for coming on to The Landscaper's Guide.
Ryan Hebel:
Perfect. Thank you for having me.
Jack Jostes:
All right everyone, thanks so much for checking out today's show. See the show notes for Ryan's contact info. And after we stopped recording, Ryan and I had a good 10-minute conversation about video and how powerful it is from a retention standpoint. How could you use video to systematically sell to customers, teach them things about budget, timeline, how to buy from you, your process, how could that generate more qualified leads for you? And then for your employees, how can you use video to train them? Train them things like how to use your estimating software or whatever things that you're spending a lot of time teaching people that they might forget, especially in springtime when all of a sudden people quit, and you have new people. Video is really the ultimate leverage, in my opinion, for both selling and also employee training. And one of the tools that I told Ryan about was Loom.
Yep. L-O-O-M. Check out Loom. It's a really easy tool for making videos. And there's also a lot of opportunity for professional video. And if you're curious about how to make videos, what questions to ask people when you're doing testimonial videos, I have a whole chapter on video in The Tree of Good Fortune. And there are links, there are examples that you can go and check out. So anyways, check out this book, Treeofgoodfortune.com.
My name's Jack Jostes, and thanks so much for checking out the Landscapers Guide podcast. I hope to talk to you on this show next week.