Daniel Thomas’s Landscaping Journey: From $1 First Mows to Blue Ribbon Outdoor Acquisition

Anthony Codispoti (00:00)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspodi and today’s guest is Daniel Thomas. He’s always been an entrepreneur from mowing lawns as a teen to founding his company called Cutting Edge Outdoors, a boutique design build firm creating high-end outdoor living spaces.

patios, retaining walls, drainage systems, and custom details. He didn’t just run crews, he built systems. Adopting EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system, and core values like serve the customer, be on time, develop people, and work as under the Lord. That process-driven approach shaped both team culture and client experience. In 2025, Blue Ribbon Outdoor acquired Cutting Edge Outdoors.

recognizing a well-run business and a leader who could scale sales and systems. Daniel joined their leadership team to expand sales and elevate the brand experience. Today, he’s applying everything he learned as a Scrappy founder to help build a larger organization, continuing to innovate in landscaping with resilience, disciplined growth, and a readiness to seize bigger opportunities. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

Today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your landscaping employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription meds. And here’s the fun part. The program actually puts more money in your employees’ pockets and the companies too. One recent client was able to increase net profits by $900 per employee.

per year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, manager of new business development at Blue Ribbon Outdoor, Daniel Thomas. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Daniel Thomas (02:20)
Sure, thank you for having me on.

Anthony Codispoti (02:22)
So Daniel, what first drew you into the landscaping industry?

Daniel Thomas (02:26)
⁓ you know, truly it was, ⁓ it’s not a cool story at all, but I was 13 years old and my family had just moved to a new town, ⁓ because of my dad’s job. And I honestly think that I was spending too much time being a useless teenager for my dad’s taste. And so he, I just remember him kind of popping his head into the living room one day and I’m sure I was playing a video game or something. And, ⁓ he just sort of said, Hey, why don’t you go mow some lawns and make some money this summer?

And I said, okay. And so, uh, he made me some business cards and I just started going door to door and it was, it was kind of just a way to make some money. Um, and then did that for a few years, uh, until I turned 16 and I got a kind of an actual part-time job at a diner close to my house. And I worked there for six weeks before they closed. And, uh, I don’t even know why they hired me. You know, I never, never found out why they hired me when they were that close to shutting down. But when they, when I lost her, when they shut down my mom.

told me, she’s like, well, it’s okay, Daniel, you can go get another job. And I just remember thinking, no, I don’t think so. I thought, you know, I make one, I’m a one lawn and that money is more than my entire two week paycheck I got from that diner. You know, I mean, of course that was a minimum wage part-time employee, you know, but still I was like, that doesn’t make sense to me. And so that was kind of the day I decided like, I think I kind of want to make this my income stream, at least for now, you know, it just, it just seemed.

Anthony Codispoti (03:41)
wow.

Daniel Thomas (03:55)
You know, that was when the entrepreneur thing clicked in my head of like, seems like I can just make more money doing this. I can just make as much money as I want. I can just go mow more lawns. I don’t have to work a certain amount of hours to make a certain amount of money determined by somebody else. Like it’s up to me, you know, and that was just too appealing to give up.

Anthony Codispoti (04:13)
So when your dad poked his head in the door that day and he was like, hey son, why don’t you ⁓ go mow some lawns? As you’re telling the story, you’re like, okay, sure. But was it really that like agreeable in the moment or did it take a little more arm twisting?

Daniel Thomas (04:29)
No, I mean, I was a very, I was not a very rebellious teenager or anything. I, and I, me and my dad got along super well. And I just thought, okay. I mean, literally, I just, I just remember saying, think at first kind of thinking like, why is he telling me this? But then I just thought, sounds okay to me. Cause I, like to make money. you know, so, and I liked mowing lawns. even when I was a little kid, I’ve

begged him to let me mow the lawn because all my older brothers did and I was jealous and I was like, that looks fun. you know, I always kind of had this interest in mowing for some reason. So then when he said it, like, again, it was 15 years ago, but as far as I remember, I just said, okay. And it was like, what do I, what do I do? He said, well, I’ll make you some business cards. So that’s what he did. And then he said, and I’ll go knock on every neighbor’s door and tell them who you are and tell them you mow their lawn for $25. And I said, okay. So then I did that and I was

What’s funny is I was very shy at the time. mean, not like horribly shy, but I really didn’t like talking to people that I didn’t know. It was, yeah. So knocking on door, like I hated doing any kind of door to door. My dad was a pastor. And so whenever like Easter came around or Bible school came around, we had to go knock on doors and like pass out flyers, inviting kids to come to vacation Bible school. And I hated it. I hated it. I hated it with everything in me. So I was really not looking forward to that. But again, I liked mowing and you know.

Anthony Codispoti (05:29)
This was uncomfortable for you.

Daniel Thomas (05:54)
making money sounded cool. So that’s what I did. And yeah, I got two lawns on my street. And then since he was the pastor, he let me mow the church yard, which was like four acres for like $25, you know, literally. But I was like, yeah, sure. But yeah, that’s, I mean, that’s exactly. Yeah, exactly. Then I was like, do I still have to tie that the church pays me? You know, how does that work? But yeah, that’s truly how the initial

Anthony Codispoti (06:10)
Well, it was kind of like you’re tithing, right? You were, yeah.

Daniel Thomas (06:22)
entrance of me into the lawn care industry.

Anthony Codispoti (06:25)
So when did you formally create Cutting Edge as a business?

Daniel Thomas (06:29)
Sure. So, um, when I was 16, once I kind of decided like, okay, I’m not going to get in, not going to get a different job. I’m just going to try to see what I can do with this. That’s when I named it, you know, changed from Daniel Thomas lawn care or lawn mowing. And I thought, I need a name. So, you know, bounce around all kinds of names of my family and cutting edge was the one that I liked. And so my brother made me this really, he’s a great artist, graphic design guy. So he made me this great logo, which I kept for the entire time I ever did it.

and, that’s when I’ve got a couple of t-shirts made. Now I formally like, you know, like got an LLC. ⁓ I mean, I ran it as sole proprietorship for a long time until finally I got a good accountant that was like, you don’t need to be, you don’t need to be running this under assault, you know, under your own name. You should, you know, you need to get some liability protection and stuff. So, so I got my first LLC, I think in 2020 or 21, it went for a long time before I really started thinking outside of just the work.

Anthony Codispoti (07:26)
Okay.

Daniel Thomas (07:28)
you know, and like, how do I, which, you know, and it’s kind of a long story, but yeah, Cutting Edge, think as it was named, was in 20…

16, I believe.

Anthony Codispoti (07:42)
Okay, okay and so at what point did you hire your first employee?

Daniel Thomas (07:47)
Well, I mean, all throughout my teenage years, people would help me. know, if I got, if I got rained out, I’d grab a friend of mine and I would pay them, you know, pay them for the day or pay them hourly. I hired my first full-time employee in 2021, which, you know, and then this is the funny thing is like from about, you know, 2010, oh, I’m sorry, 2014 is when I named it. But from about 2010 to 2020, like it was literally

This is the interesting thing about the history of cutting edge is like, I was just a teenager mowing lawns. Even when I turned 20 and 21, I kind of still operated like a teenager mowing lawns. So I’ll kind of give you like the most interesting part of the story here is like, ⁓ I did good and I made good money for a teenager. And even when I turned 18, my mom was like really pushing me to go to college. And I just said, I don’t, I don’t understand why, why would I do that?

Like I like doing this and like my brother just graduated college and he got a job at UPS and I make more money than he does. So why would I do that? You know? and it was when I truly, when I got married, ⁓ in 21. No, I’m sorry. I got married in, ⁓ 2019. ⁓ it was when I got married that my wife really honestly pointed out to me as she was like, Hey, you don’t make enough money.

to build a family with as it is. And so this was kind of my light bulb moment of like, I made really good money for a teenager, but now I’m 21, 22. This isn’t build a family kind of money. And so my wife had a very, her heart, she had to have a really honest conversation with me where she said, you either need to do something else or you need to do this better. And which really hurt me in the moment, I’m not gonna lie to you. I was like, I was doing great.

Anthony Codispoti (09:37)
Yeah, you thought you were doing great.

Daniel Thomas (09:41)
And, and I remember I had this really big lawn close to my house that I was, took me hours to mow and I was out there mowing it, just really thinking and praying like, okay, like honestly, she’s right. Like, what do I need to do? And I thought like, I really like this and I don’t want to change what I do. This is what I know how to do. But I thought, how do I turn this into a real business? You know, like, how do I just think beyond the people that call me, that asked me to mow and I go mow it. And how do I make more money?

So I got turned on to a friend of mine had told me about just a business podcast that I was thought, you know, I’m just going to start listening to that. And it was just a super down to earth bare bones. This is the simple applicable steps. It’s not theory. It’s like, these are steps you take to make your business grow. And so I started, I started doing that. ⁓ and just by a podcast was called the Thrive Time Show, ⁓ which I’m not going to lie to you. It’s kind of a controversial show these days.

Anthony Codispoti (10:28)
What was the name of the podcast?

Okay.

Daniel Thomas (10:36)
Back in the day, it used to just be strict business. now ⁓ I don’t listen to it a whole lot. It’s not bad, it’s very, it’s almost more politics than it is anything now, which is not my thing. So if anyone’s looking for it, I don’t necessarily recommend that show for business. But, ⁓ but like then it was fantastic. ⁓ Like such good content. And so I just started applying these little things, simple things like wake up earlier and make it to do list for the day. Set a goal for how much money you want to make.

Anthony Codispoti (10:46)
⁓ Okay.

Daniel Thomas (11:05)
and then figure out how many lawns you need to mow to make that much money. know, like things that seem dumb and like, why didn’t I think of that? So one day I just woke up early and I made a list. These are the lawns I want to mow today. And I got up early and went out and did them. And I, you know, set a personal record of how many lawns I mowed in one day by myself. And I made like, it was like $500, which for me, I was like, I’ve never made $500 in one day before. Then I thought, can I do this every day?

So then I thought, maybe I should try setting a goal. So I set a goal for, okay, what would it take for me to make $500 every day? Like, well, that’s $2,500 in a week. So then I wrote down all the lawns I had to mow that week, and it was about $1,200 to $1,300. And then that sparked the next question, how do I make more than that? So then I started calling my customers, like, hey, your bushes look a little shaggy. You want me to trim them while I’m there this week? And then I called somebody else, hey, I think you mentioned you wanted to re-mulch sometime soon. And guess what? It wasn’t even hard.

to figure out how to make $2,500 in a week. You know, and I was like.

Anthony Codispoti (12:06)
You

were just calling the customers who you were already mowing their lawn and basically you were doing the McDonald’s. Hey, you want fries with that? What else? What else can I do for you?

Daniel Thomas (12:09)
Yeah.

Exactly. Right.

It became from a, changed from a just literally doing exactly what they asked me to do to looking for other things, other needs that they had that maybe I could help them out with. Right. So that’s when things started to grow. And so I, you know, increased my weekly, weekly revenue by like a thousand dollars just by doing that. And it was, I was blown away. And so then this podcast that I listened to, they taught you how to do search engine optimization. So that’s when I made a Google profile and I started

building my Google profile up so that I could rank it high in Google. And once I did that, and they ⁓ told you that you need to come up with a no-brainer, like an offer that’s just too good, how can anybody pass it up to get you in the door? So I came up with a no-brainer, which was I will mow your lawn for $1 for the first time. So, you know, when people are calling to get their lawn mowed, they Google it, they get three to five people, and they call all of them and say, how much does it cost to mow a lawn?

And what does everybody tell them? Well, I need to come look at it. So they’ll call and set up three to five people to come look at their lawn. But when I got cutting edge to rank number one, they would call me first. And when they say, how much does it cost? I say, I’ll come vote for $1. And they would go, what? And I’m like, it’s true. The first mo is $1. And after that, if you like it, I’ll tell you how much it costs to get them out. Well, at that point, they say, come on. And then they don’t call anybody else because they want the $1 cut.

Anthony Codispoti (13:42)
That’s genius.

I love that.

Daniel Thomas (13:43)
So then I went,

I mowed it, I did a great job. Then I knocked on the door, they came outside and I was like, here it is. They go, oh my God, I love it. And I say, if you like it, it’s $50 per cup. And then it also gave me a chance to mow it once and really see how long it took me, right? Because there’s so many times where you like go look at it and you think, oh, it looks like a $40 yard.

Anthony Codispoti (13:58)
Mmm.

So on paper this this idea sounds genius right. You’re to the top of the listings. They call you when you tell them a dollar for the first. They’re like this is a no brainer. Come on out. So you’re getting that opportunity to get in front of them. And I’m going to guess at least again on paper it sounds like you probably close a lot of these because you’re the first guy out there. But did it backfire at all. Was it like you get deluged with people who just want the one dollar cut and then they’re like.

Daniel Thomas (14:06)
Sure.

Anthony Codispoti (14:32)
See you later. Thanks for the good deal.

Daniel Thomas (14:34)
So you would think so. And that was my fear because I really hesitated on even doing that because that’s what I was afraid of. But the first season that I did that where it was just me, I had a 90 % conversion rate. I can only think of like one person ever that didn’t actually take me up on continual service, which was funny because it was actually a person that I knew. And I thought, man, of all the people who would actually just take me up on the one cut, like I didn’t think it would be the person that I knew. But yeah.

Everybody I can think of except for that one person signed up for continual service. Now the next year when I actually started hiring people and sending out crews to mo without me, that definitely, it definitely dropped off because nobody will sell it like I sell it, right? Like, you know, it’s just that they didn’t have, like, cause I’ve been doing it for, you know, 10 years at this point. I knew how to talk to the customer and it’s like, I

They, know, employees, just don’t have quite the same mentality of like, this needs to be perfect. If nothing else, this one time it’s gotta be like, we have to double check and make sure we didn’t miss a single blade of grass on the driveway that needs to be blown off, you know? Of course we should be striving for that every time. So anyway, I think the conversion rate, I would say probably drops to like 60 % ish. Once, it was still worth it for sure. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Anthony Codispoti (15:31)
Mm.

Okay, it’s a big drop, but it’s still a pretty good conversion rate Yeah,

and what geography are we talking about what area were you serving at this time?

Daniel Thomas (15:56)
This

was in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Anthony Codispoti (15:59)
Okay. Now I want to go back. Sorry, you had something you want to say there, Daniel.

Daniel Thomas (16:00)
And I, I said just

a little bit of surrounding towns, but definitely mostly Fort Smith.

Anthony Codispoti (16:06)
Okay, and I want to go back to that, you know, time where you’re a 13 year old and you hate knocking door to door, like just hate it, hate it, hate it. But you do it. And you take the business card with you and you got a couple of people lined up. Because I know that there’s a lot of people listening because this is really common. Very few people like to cold call or knock on a door or you know, whatever it is, like that’s really uncomfortable to do. How did you get past it? Because a lot of people are listening saying, I can’t do that. That’s never never not me.

Daniel Thomas (16:14)
Yes.

for sure.

sure.

Anthony Codispoti (16:36)
What’d do?

Daniel Thomas (16:39)
I mean, if you’re ready for a really underwhelming answer, just, I just did it. You know, it’s one of those things like I, there’s, can’t tell you probably how many times I would just stand outside the door, you know, and just kind of sit there going.

Anthony Codispoti (16:53)
Hahaha

Daniel Thomas (16:53)
you know, and then I would kind of

reach and be like, I’m not ready, you know, and eventually it’s like, you just kind of have to count down. Okay, three, two, one. Wow. You know, and then it’s like, you just throw your hand out and knock the door. So it’s too late. You can’t take it back, you know? So, but you know, eventually I just kind of got comfortable with it to where now I am. mean, again, I was, I would say a pretty like a shy person back then. And now like I am like kind of overwhelmingly extroverted. Like I

Anthony Codispoti (16:57)
Yeah.

Okay,

this brought you out of your shell. Yeah.

Daniel Thomas (17:25)
I, yes, yes, like I’m,

turned into this kind of weird social butterfly to where like, love, still, I to be honest, I still don’t like cold calling, knocking on doors. It’s still not something I like to do, but, um, but I’m really good at it. You know, I can talk to anybody and it’s, once I get it started, like I love it. And I love making a new connection and starting to build a relationship with somebody.

Anthony Codispoti (17:45)
And so here’s why I love the answer that you just gave because I think sometimes people are like, it takes some sort of special magic wand or like a high level training session or like there’s a secret to it. And, sometimes those things help. But to me, the biggest differentiator is the person who just does the thing. Right. It’s not always easy and things like this cold calling, knocking on doors is particularly hard for almost everybody. It’s not easy.

but you just have to do it. And the more reps that you get in, the more comfortable you become with it. And that’s what we hear from your story.

Daniel Thomas (18:21)
for sure. For sure. mean, every… Yes, and that’s… Because when you learn how to deal with that, you have to have that… You have to build that skill. ⁓ Because if you’re in customer service, because then that ability to just do that uncomfortable thing… Well, guess what? The first time you have a customer call and leave you a voicemail that they’re unhappy about something, it’s even harder. The harder thing to do is just call them back because you don’t want to get yelled at.

And so it’s like, what I have always found much harder is like, can knock on a door now a lot easier than I can sit there listening to a voicemail from somebody and hit the callback button. You know, that’s what now I’m like, man, but like you’ve got to do it. And like, it’s a skill that you have to build. And again, now I don’t enjoy it, but I’m good at it. Like, you know, I’ve, I’ve learned from a lot of people and have read some great books that help me with deescalation and taking care of those issues.

Anthony Codispoti (19:15)
Talk to us about what you learn. What are some tips that you can give our listeners about how to de-escalate in a situation like that?

Daniel Thomas (19:21)
sure. ⁓ So great book, fantastic book. I literally just finished reading it for probably the fourth time is Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, ⁓ a book about negotiations. And this man literally negotiated terrorists and hostage takers for a living. So he’s ⁓ very good at deescalating tense situations. And so I mean, the first thing you have to do to me is just call them and first of all, just not sound, not be defensive at all. Because what I’ve learned is

don’t know what that is, I’m sorry. ⁓ When you call them, until you call them back, they’ve been running through their head all the scenarios of how this conversation is gonna go. And I’ve had so many people where they answer the phone and they’re ticked. like, hello. And I say, hey, how are you? not good. And what they’re expecting is for you to be very hard to deal with. And they’re expecting you to be defensive and to try to stand up for yourself and tell them that they’re being unreasonable.

And they’ve been running through that in their head, ready to fire back all the things they’ve, all the responses they’ve thought of to that kind of answer. So really my thing is to just call them and just try to listen to them and say, Hey, what’s going on? What happened? And then they tell me all these things. And again, I think, don’t know what the exact people they’re expecting me to say, but I just go, my God, I’m so sorry. And the easiest thing to do is say, I’m on my way right now to fix that.

Or if I broke a window or something, say, or if somebody, I wasn’t there, I hear a window got broken, I just say, my God, I’m so sorry. Let me take care of it. Like, do you want to, do you want to fix it and invoice me or do you just want me to handle it? Like you don’t even have to call anybody if you don’t want to. So one, just being super willing to deal with that in general and to accommodate and make sure they’re taken care of that usually just, yes, I had one guy actually, here’s a good story. Did a huge drainage project for these folks and it rained.

And he calls me and he’s, ⁓ he’s really pissed. And he’s like, Daniel, we’ve got yards sitting water sitting in the yard. And I’m shocked because I put in a ton of drains and I called him back and he was ready to fight. And he goes, he’s just letting me know what’s going on. And I said, my gosh, Mr. ⁓ forget his name. ⁓ it’s like, but I’m so sorry. It was like, let me just drive out there right now and take a look at what’s going on while it’s raining. And he goes, ⁓ okay. Thanks, Daniel.

Anthony Codispoti (21:44)
you

Daniel Thomas (21:46)
And it was bam, like deescalated just like that. And then he was just happy that I was coming to take a look at it. what I’ve learned is that people really just get in their head about how you’re going to react. And you just have to be really nice and listen to what they have to say and just treat them like a customer because they spent money with you. They need to be happy about that money they spent.

Anthony Codispoti (22:04)
And what I found in my experience, I’d be curious to hear if this is true for you too, Daniel, is that when you do have an upset customer and you jump through hoops to make it right and you do it quickly, oftentimes you end up with an ally for life. They see how you handle the tough situ. It, you know, it’s good to, you know, when everything’s going well, people are friendly and you know, every everything’s rosy. When, when crap hits the fan.

Daniel Thomas (22:21)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (22:33)
That’s the true measure of a person and how you handle it. And when you can show them that, I really stand behind my work, they become a fan, they talk about you, they send you other business, they wanna give you more of their business. Do you find the same thing?

Daniel Thomas (22:42)
Yes.

Yes. Yes. 100%. Yes. There’s a great book called The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath. And they have a quote from a contractor who says that. He says, is some level of benefit to a mistake being made during the job. Because a perfect job is great and they’re happy with you. But when they see you bust your butt to make something right that in their view was wrong.

That just makes, they just love you even more. Matter of fact, that happened to me. I didn’t do it, but I got my truck wrapped at this place and they did it wrong. You know, they, they took a bad logo, which I had told them, I was like, Hey, when you blow this up, it’s not going to look good. Here’s a cleaner version. And for some reason they didn’t see that. And they blew up this logo that looked awful. And I pointed it out to them. And what did they do? They said, my gosh, you’re so right. Leave it here. We’ll have it ready for you in the morning. They didn’t charge me. Didn’t even try to blame me or charge me.

And I’ve sent so many people to that place because I’m just so impressed that they didn’t even try to not take the blame for it. They just immediately said, wow, you’re so right. Give us six hours and we will have it fixed. No problem. And that, means the world to me, you know, that that’s integrity.

Anthony Codispoti (23:54)
Let’s give those guys a shout out right now for doing the right thing. Who is it?

Daniel Thomas (23:56)
Yeah, that is that

is ABC printing and signs in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

Anthony Codispoti (24:00)
All right, I like it. Okay, so at what point did you come across EOS and why was this so helpful for you?

Daniel Thomas (24:10)
Oh, great question. So that podcast that I told you about before, Thrive Time, think the first, I know that they would quote that book and I know that they, I heard them mention it. I’d heard about the book Traction. And then it was sometime later that they actually interviewed Gina Wigman on the show, the author of the book. And that’s when I got very curious about it and thought, Oh, maybe I should read that book. And so there was a time probably around 21 or 22 where I actually bought the book and I bought it for

⁓ kind of all the guys I had on my crew and I kind of made the mistake of trying to make everybody read it and ⁓ It didn’t go that well. My business coach pointed out to me. He said man, they’re not gonna read that book They don’t want to read that book. You just need to read it with your leaders. Whoever your top guys are You know, you can tell anybody that hey, we’re gonna read it and I’m gonna be here every morning If you want to read along we come talk about it you can He’s like but don’t require that of everybody because they’re not they’re not into that like you’re into that Which is very true

And so honestly, I started reading it and we didn’t finish. We kind of fell off, but there were so many good things like the principles of hiring, right? The GWC, do they get it? Do they want it? Do they have the capacity to do it? The vision, the mission statement, the core values, the uniques, the tenure goal, you know, all that stuff that I didn’t go like hardcore, start running my business off EOS, but I just tried to apply these principles. That’s when I wrote down all of our core values and I had these signs printed out that I put up in our office.

⁓ and then actually it wasn’t till I met, there was a man who goes to my church who he owned a very large heating and air company. I think it was the largest one in Arkansas actually. And he had sold it and I asked him what he was doing now. And he said, I’m an EOS implementer, which I actually didn’t know was a thing, but yeah, he’s one of the people that companies hire to help them implement EOS. So that kind of re-sparks my interest. And, ⁓ that’s when I talked to him about it and I finished reading the book and then he just took me to lunch one day and just tried to help.

helped me work through how at my small stage, you cause I’m not a multi, multi-million dollar business where I wasn’t. He’s like, you you shouldn’t hire somebody like me. He’s like, you should try to self-implement now. But he took me to lunch and gave me lots of pointers on here’s the things that you should focus on. And now that I’m at Blue Ribbon, they are an EOS run company, which is one of the things that I was very excited about to be here is that they have an implementer that they work with. And we run all of our meetings through the L10.

Anthony Codispoti (26:20)
Wow. Nice.

Daniel Thomas (26:35)
Format that traction and the teaches we have our core values posted all over this building. We have our 10 year vision and our 3 year. Our 1 year, there’s like a few different things you call it. It’s like the 1 year goal, the 3 year.

Anthony Codispoti (26:51)
There’s like goals and there’s rocks and there’s yeah.

Daniel Thomas (26:53)
Yeah, we’ve got

our quarterly rocks. Yeah, it’s like the 10 year vision, the one year goal and the three year plan, something like that.

Anthony Codispoti (26:59)
What was the big

thing that you got out of your own implementation of it?

Daniel Thomas (27:08)
I would say the biggest thing first is core values, which core values I didn’t learn from traction. I had heard that many times, but traction reading through it was really made me go, okay, I’ve got to, I’ve got to make core values. I got to write these down and I have to put them up where everybody can see them. But I’d say also the biggest thing was as traction puts it, getting the right people in the right seats. ⁓ Cause it’s like, I knew that people were important, but I didn’t really, I didn’t really know what the method is to decide.

what person is right for which position aside from just thinking he seems good for that. So traction laying out the GWC as it calls it, know, does this person get it? Do they want it? And do they have the capacity to do it? ⁓ Though you having that framework really helped me a lot to look kind of look at my employees and go, okay, like, yep, he wants it. He like, he wants what he does, but like at this point in time, at least he doesn’t have the capacity to have to have that position, you know, which

allowed me to realize that, make changes and swap people into different places and try to just try to get the right people in the right seats, as the book says.

Anthony Codispoti (28:15)
At what point did you meet the folks from Blue Ribbon Outdoor?

Daniel Thomas (28:19)
So I met them, ⁓ I was aware of this company, they’re really big, so it’s hard not to know about them. And actually that same guy, the implementer, he put me in touch with them back in November. He gave me a call and he knew somebody here and he said, hey, I was having lunch with them and they said they were looking for a certain position for their sales ⁓ role and they asked if I knew somebody with experience in landscaping. Told them about you.

Told them that I thought you were impressive and that they would have to buy your business if they wanted you, which I was like, what did you just say? He said, but they want to talk to you. Do you want to talk to them? I was like, I mean, sure. I thought I didn’t have any much interest to be honest. Like I didn’t want to sell my business, but I what’s the harm in talking to somebody? So I think we had a first really contact on a phone call with them in December was when we actually got together for the first time. Correct. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (29:13)
So this is December of 24. And yeah,

we’re talking right now at the end of September of 25. Okay, so this is recent, okay.

Daniel Thomas (29:19)
Right.

Very recent. Yeah. So we had a brief phone call and which, you know, just kind of a, Hey, who are you? What’s your deal? And just getting to know each other. And that fellow asked me, he was like, are you looking to make a change? And I said, well, no, I, love what I do. I’m just curious to hear what you have to say. He said, okay, well, he goes, let’s get past the holidays. Let’s maybe, why don’t you come up we’ll take you to lunch in January. So fast forward into January, I came up.

him, that was Michael and Doug, who’s Doug is my boss now. They took me to lunch and Doug asked me kind of the same thing. He’s like, what are you looking for? And I said, ⁓ nothing. I’m not looking for anything. I’m, I’m just, again, I’m here to, to hear what y’all have to say, you know, cause it seems like you wanted to talk to me. So I was like, what are you looking for? And so they told me about the person they were looking to, you know, the position they were looking to fill. And they told me about their, you know,

their values, what they’re doing. And it’s interesting because at the beginning of all this, when I got that phone call, I told my wife about it and she said, oh, that’s exciting. I said, oh, it’s not exciting. She said, why not? I was like, well, because it’s not going to happen. I was like, there’s no way this goes anywhere. Like, because I’m not in their market. Like we’re in a different, I mean, they’re about an hour and 20 minutes north of me.

Anthony Codispoti (30:37)
I figured they were right here in the same geography, like almost like friendly competitors. Okay.

Daniel Thomas (30:40)
No, no, no,

we didn’t. mean, I did a little bit of work in their area because Northwest Arkansas, where Blue Ribbon is, is like the booming part of Arkansas. know, Fort Smith is like, it’s fine, but ⁓ Northwest Arkansas or Bentonville and Fayetteville and the university is it’s it’s gangbusters up here. Yeah, exactly. So so I did some work up here rarely, but but no, they didn’t really hardly ever do anything in Fort Smith unless it was some humongous project that nobody in Fort Smith was equipped to do.

Anthony Codispoti (30:56)
the university, Walmart, all that.

So why did this eventually

come together? What was the synergy here?

Daniel Thomas (31:11)
So, it’s a crazy story. And what happened was, as I told my wife, I was like, there’s no reason for them to buy a business that’s not in their market. There’s no reason for them to spend the amount of money they would have to get me to leave my business because I love it. There’s no reason for them to pay me as much as they would have to, you know, it’s like for me to work for somebody else. The commission, they would have to, they great commission plan. Our values would have to align because I’m

I don’t have a job. Like I’m on a mission with cutting edge and I believe in what I’m doing and I’m trying to make a difference for my employees, my customers, and I want to build something really cool. Like I don’t want to just go work for somebody. want to be a, this is a saying I didn’t point this, but I want to be a missionary, not a mercenary. You know what I mean? ⁓ I just want to do what I love and happen to get paid for it. I don’t want to just get paid to do something. And so just all these things like the flexibility, I don’t want to move to this area at the moment. ⁓

I would have to really like those people, you know, like, just feel like I had flexibility and freedom and just, was like, I don’t know. I can’t imagine all those things would line up. So after our first meeting, they told me about their values. thought, wow, those are my core values, you know? So the values, the values here. So at cutting edge, our values were, um, dang it, I’m not blanking on them all of a sudden, but, uh, let’s see. It was serve the customer, work harder than everyone else. Be on time.

Anthony Codispoti (32:20)
And what are the values? What are your shared values?

Daniel Thomas (32:37)
develop people and work is under the Lord. Develop people was really important to me because there’s a leadership podcast I love by Craig Rochelle where he says that people are not a means of getting things done, but getting things done as a means of developing people. And that was a thing I really, and I was not always good at it, but I really tried to always have that in mind. It’s like, I don’t want people to just feel like they’re just working to get paid, but I want them to feel like they’re learning and they’re getting.

better and like if it’s even possible, I want them to feel like working here makes them better men and makes them better husbands and fathers. I don’t even know how that works, but that’s how I want them to feel. You know, so that’s the kind of culture and work environment that I wanted to have. Here at Blue Ribbon, their values are chase better. It means like get better every day, gritty resolve, which is the same thing as just work harder, right? And then do the right thing and care for others.

And I was like, those are like, like, like worded differently, but I was like, those are my values. Like literally. Yeah. Yeah. And then they told me about their, their mission. Their, their vision statement is inspiring the enjoyment of life by creating beautiful outdoor spaces. And I was like, that’s literally mine is much longer than that. Cause I couldn’t figure out how to. Condense it. like, but literally I’m like, my philosophy was I want to make the world a better place. And I want to do that one backyard at a time, because if I can.

Anthony Codispoti (33:36)
These are my guys. This is my tribe.

Daniel Thomas (34:01)
So much a part of improving yourself is changing your environment. So I thought if we can help people change their environments and if that helps them become better people, like, you know, to me, and I wasn’t, I didn’t, I wasn’t good at condensing that into a statement like they did, but I was like, that’s literally perfect. And then I just found out that I really liked these people. So after like a couple more meetings, finally in April, I came and met with them again and I met with their CEO and that’s when he really sold me on the company. He told me they’re

their 10 year vision, they’re, you know, really honed in on the mission for me and the vision statement and their values. And he just said, like, this is the kind of person we want. We want an entrepreneur. I don’t want just somebody to come work a job, but I want somebody that we can just give this to and say, grow it, make it happen. And so after talking with, and I asked them, I was like, why are you talking to me? It’s like, I don’t get this. I was like, I’m not in your market. Why would you buy my business? Well, I like you’ve interviewed people. Why don’t you hire one of them?

You know, like don’t get this. And my boss Doug now he’s like, well, it’s like, I don’t want a salesman. I want a landscaper that knows how to sell. want an expert in this industry. And you’re the only one I can find that fits the bill of what I want. It’s like, that’s, was like, we just want you. And so after that meeting, there was a whole lot more to it, but I was kind of sold and my mentality had gone from, I mean, I guess if they paid me enough money, I could do this to honestly, I really kind of want to do this.

and I hope they make it worth my while. So we went back and forth for about another three or four weeks and everything that I had laid out to my wife five months previously of like, is everything that would have to happen. It all happened. And it was just like, tell people like, was like God put a neon sign in the sky saying, go here. And this is the most bizarre thing to say, but it felt like the entire 15 years I’d spent building my business, you know.

had led to this point, which I never thought it was not something I wanted, wasn’t something I was looking for, but it got here and I was like, wow, it feels like this is what I’ve been leading to this whole time, just because I loved what they were doing. And our CEO told me, he’s like, look, you’re a business owner. You have a dream and you’re on a mission. You don’t have to give it up. You can just bring it here and just jump 10 years ahead and we can do it together.

Anthony Codispoti (36:17)
Yeah.

You know what’s really cool

about this story is I think it’s a great example of always being open to possibilities, right? Because and I’ve been guilty of this so many times. I’ve got a vision in my head. This is where I’m going. This is what it’s going to look like when I get there. And I just put blinders on and you know, there’s some value to being able to say no to, you know, things that come up. But when you’re too rigid, you know, if you had been too rigid in that moment, you would have passed by this great opportunity to

be part of an organization that shares the same values as going up and to the right. And so I think being open to infinite possibilities, that’s the message to take away from this little bit of Daniel’s story here. So they acquired your business. Where are you now? Are you still in your hometown? Did you move to where they are? Are you going back and forth? How’s this working today?

Daniel Thomas (37:16)
Yeah,

so I commute. So every day I drive in the early in the morning, it’s about an hour up here and in the afternoon, it’s about an hour and 20 minutes back home. So, you know, we plan to move closer at some point, but that’s that’s down the road a little bit, you know. ⁓ But eventually, eventually we will. But, you know, they give me a direct drive and they pay for the all the fuel. And honestly, I with little kids at home, I don’t mind a little time, quiet time in the car. So, you know, it kind of works out right now. But I would love to be be able to get home sooner.

But yeah, so I work in Rogers, Arkansas every day and I live in Fort Smith.

Anthony Codispoti (37:49)
and still servicing the same accounts.

Daniel Thomas (37:51)
So here’s the crazy thing. They were not operating in Fort Smith anymore. Like effectively, Cutting Edge was shut down because in 22, Cutting Edge stopped maintenance. So even though I started mowing lawns in 2022, I decided I just, I didn’t want to do maintenance anymore. And I loved the install side of it. So we actually stopped maintenance completely and just became a design build company.

So Cutting Edge didn’t really have any recurring maintenance accounts. We had a lot of repeat customers. ⁓ So Blue Ribbon bought us. They finished out our backlog. And I mean, I still will talk to people down there. And if my old customers call me, I’ll certainly go meet with them, see what they need. And 90 % of the time, Blue Ribbon’s probably not going to do it. But I’ll hook them up with a friend of mine that works down there. So we still see all those people as potential customers. Because we might be in Forst Smith one day. But that was also kind of the crazy thing is like,

They bought Cutting Edge even though Cutting Edge really had no value to them at the time. They just did it. Well, apparently, yeah, once again, I don’t even like to say that, but I guess it’s true. It the only barrier that stopped me from coming here. So they were like, okay, well, we’ll buy that and get you up here.

Anthony Codispoti (38:53)
The value is you.

It’s like an aqua hire, right? Yeah. okay, so how have things gone so far? Anytime there’s that sort of a transition, an acquisition, an aqua hire, whatever you wanna call it, there’s wrinkles to iron out. How’s it been for you so far?

Daniel Thomas (39:08)
Literally, yeah, an aqua hire.

Yeah. Yeah.

For sure.

Well, I have loved it. mean, I have not regretted this for a single minute since I’ve done it. My boss Doug is fantastic. Like he’s been doing this for 30 years. We get along super well. I love working for him. There definitely were a few wrinkles as far as work was still going on in Fort Smith. And even though I’m completely on the sales side at Blue Ribbon, usually the production department handles getting the jobs done.

But because those were all jobs that I had designed and sold and I still live down there, I still kind of had to act like production manager to my old crew that they hired doing the work, but also trying to sell up here. So that was a lot. And then even now, some stuff still pops up from my old like, you know, a water feature last week, the auto fill line busted. So it’s like, well, I have to go deal with that because we’re just going to send a crew down to Fort Smith to fix a, do a 15 minute fix. So that’s kind of the wrinkles right now is sometimes that

takes me a little later getting home, because I have to sort that stuff out. But it’s not, I mean, it’s not a lot. It’s just a couple little things that we’re still, it’s gonna take a little time to get all those situated before I really don’t have to spend any time, know, extra time outside of the office here doing production things.

Anthony Codispoti (40:37)
So what have you introduced so far in terms of new sales and marketing techniques to help build the business there at Blue Road?

Daniel Thomas (40:45)
So yes, good question. So I run or I’m in the I’m one of the people that run the new business development department. So we have account managers here which take care of all of the existing maintenance customers at Blue Ribbon. ⁓ And so until until I got here, there’s nobody to do new business. So all the new calls that came in got split up between the account managers and kind of added to their plates. And so it was really hectic and because they just didn’t have time for that. Like there’s plates are so full we have.

hundreds and hundreds of customers here. And so they had very full plates. And so it was like, get a call, call them, go meet them. And so the first thing that I tried to introduce here, which we do, I do is the qualifying call. Cause one thing I learned at Cutting Edge is if I just go meet everybody that calls, like there’s a lot of tire kickers, there’s a lot of window shoppers. And really there’s a lot of people who have unrealistic ideas of how much things cost. So I would go, ⁓ one of the best stories is I met this guy.

Super nice guy, spent probably an hour and half at his house. He wanted landscaping, he wanted lighting, he wanted everything. And I spent hours designing this, pricing it, sent him the bid. And he emails me back and says, Daniel, thank you. This exceeds our $1,500 budget. You know, it’s like, So one thing I did, if only, yeah. So there’s a great sales course by The Contractor Fight, which is like a little contractor coaching program called Shinfu.

Anthony Codispoti (42:03)
if only I had known.

Daniel Thomas (42:14)
And this is a little system that just teaches you how to have a very effective qualifying call before you go meet somebody, which saved me so much time when I started using it. Exactly. So, so that was kind of the first thing when I got here and they were talking about how do we handle these calls as they come in? Do we just immediately schedule them on Daniel’s calendar? And I didn’t want that because I’m like, I don’t want to go run around all those people. So that’s when I was like, okay, well, why don’t you just send the info to me and I’ll email them, set up a, a phone call.

Anthony Codispoti (42:23)
Teach us.

Daniel Thomas (42:44)
And so that’s the first thing I did here is like, just call them. I talk with them. I try to build all the rapport that I can get to know like why they want what they want. What’s the reason behind this? How bad do they want it? Then I look at it on Google Earth and I just give them a bracket. This is what I learned at Xun Fu. It’s like, you don’t have to give them an exact price because you don’t know until you look at it. But I can tell them, you know, from previous jobs I’ve done like this, this could cost you somewhere between five to $10,000. And I just see what they say, you know, if they go, okay.

Or if they go, ⁓ my God, no. You know, and then if they freak out about that, say, well, there’s really probably not anything I can do for you then. You know, like this is kind of the budget you need to have. ⁓ or if they go, that’s not bad. Like, okay, great. So that just already saves me so much time. ⁓ and then it gives me a really kind of realistic idea of like, cause we’re, we’re kind of expensive, like we’re even very premium. And so that also opens them up to say, let yesterday this happens. Lady said, well, I got a quote for.

5,900 from somebody already. And I said, well, that’s great. That’s great. Like we can’t do that. So I mean, I can come look at it if you really want me to give you a prize, but it’s going to be $2,000 more than that for sure. Or you can just stick with those guys. And then they say, we’ll just go with this guy. So I just saved myself an hour and a half at least driving out there, spending 30 minutes on the site with them, driving back, putting this quote together.

Anthony Codispoti (44:10)
And you guys are in a position where you can do that. This isn’t like the early days when you were first starting up where you wanted every scrap of business that you could take. And it’s kind of understanding where you are in sort of the life cycle of your business to know that, hey, early days, I got to take everything I can get. And if I, you know, got to sharpen my pencil a little bit to get that job, I’m going to do it. Now where you guys are, you’re so busy. You’ve got such ⁓

Daniel Thomas (44:15)
For sure.

Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (44:37)
backlog of work, you’ve got so much credibility in the area, you actually need to sort of tighten the scope. You can’t go talk to everybody. You don’t want every job. You’re not a good fit for every job.

Daniel Thomas (44:44)
Yes.

Yes, yes. mean, it’s exactly it’s supply and demand. You know, if you don’t have a lot of demand, you just got to do what you can to get your product sold. When everybody wants your product, then you have to be frankly, you just have to raise your prices to to make it more worth. Am I trying to say, I mean, you know, you know, the principles of supply and demand, obviously. ⁓ But yeah, 100 percent. Excuse me. And, know, there’s a story which we talked a little bit about earlier, but I applied it to like

my children because it’s like when we had my wife and I had a newborn baby, whenever that baby cries, we just got to do whatever it takes to get it stop crying, feed it, change it, burp it, whatever, you know, and then that’s what you have to do. Even the contractor fight when they teach the Shinfu course, he says, well, guess what? If you’re a startup, forget it. You got to keep the baby alive. Like you have a baby on your hands and you got to take, go meet anybody that will call you and sell them a job because you have to keep revenue coming in. Otherwise your baby will die.

So in the beginning, you keep your baby alive. And then as you progress a little bit, you have a toddler on your hands. And sometimes you have to tell your toddler no. Because like, if I give you everything that you asked for, it’s actually not good for you. Because now you’ve got desires beyond just feed me, put me to bed, and change my diaper. So then you have to start parenting it. Then you get out of the toddler stage, and it’s like this thing starts to take on a life of its own.

All of sudden, sometimes you feel like it’s running your life all of a sudden out of nowhere. You know, like that’s kind of, there’s, found that these stages really mirror my parenting journey and my business journey at the same time.

Anthony Codispoti (46:25)
Where are you on the parenting journey? How old are your kids?

Daniel Thomas (46:27)
⁓ My oldest, I’m not very far, my oldest will be four ⁓ next week. And then I’ve got a two-year-old and I got one on the way in February.

Anthony Codispoti (46:37)
hot dog. Okay, you’re in it. ⁓ Yeah. And right away it feels like they’re running your life even before they get to the toddler age. But yeah, the parallels are helpful. And you think about business to child raising. So what’s the future of Blue Ribbon look like? Where are you guys going?

Daniel Thomas (46:38)
Yeah, I’m in it,

That’s true. It’s very true. Yes. 100%.

So right now ⁓ we have grand aspirations. Eventually we want to be in other states. ⁓ This is not a vision. This is not my vision. is the vision that I… One second.

Excuse me. You know, this was the vision that I bought into that they sold to me. But right now we’re in Northwest Arkansas, which North West Arkansas is an incredible market. I mean, there are, you know, the population here is super dense. The, know, here you have Walmart and Tyson and JB Hunt. there’s ⁓ the income classes are like perfect for our industry right here for the luxury landscape industry.

So right now we definitely, even our CEO, when we were talking about what to do with cutting edge, was, do you want to do work in Fort Smith? His answer to me was, well, maybe one day, but not right now. It was like, right now we need to nail it here. You know, there’s a good saying, it’s nail it, then scale it. So right now we’re still trying to just nail it and just figure out to get this smooth before we just overextend ourselves and go everywhere. But eventually, I mean, we want to be in Little Rock. We might want to be in Dallas or Tulsa. You know, we have.

We want to expand, but right now we’re just really trying to focus on how do we just make this run so smooth that those expansions will be so much easier and not cause a massive catastrophe because we’re still figuring out how to do it here at home, much less 100 miles away.

Anthony Codispoti (48:26)
And I wonder when you get to that point of being ready for that expansion, if that will be just sort of like starting from scratch in a new city or will that be another acquisition?

Daniel Thomas (48:36)
A bit of both, I believe. Depends on the situation, but I imagine that both scenarios will come into play when that happens.

Anthony Codispoti (48:45)
Let’s shift gears for a moment, Daniel, and I’d like to explore a serious challenge that you’ve overcome in your life. What was that? How’d you get through it? What did you learn?

Daniel Thomas (48:54)
A good question. ⁓ Let’s see. So I’ve had some big personal challenges or one really big personal challenge and I’ll tell you about a little business challenge, which one of them, was before, I was mowing, cutting edge wasn’t like I was still a teenager at this point. And this is probably going to sound not like a big deal, but I was 18 and my parents separated and it wasn’t just a simple.

hey, we decided to go our separate ways. It was a volatile, like ugly separation that really just kind of rocked my world and my siblings’ worlds. And it just kind of shifted my worldview in a way, you know, and it made me question a whole lot of things. Because, you know, it was, I had, remember having moments where it’s like, I want to, ⁓ I want to call my dad and ask him for advice. But at this moment, I don’t know.

which one of my parents I can trust because one of them is crazy. I was like, I don’t know which one it is yet, but one of them is kind of off the rocker. I’m so sorry, my throats.

try to clear that up. And so I just remember being so numb during that time. And you know, I was raised in a Christian home. My dad was a pastor and you know, I had been a Christian since I was nine years old. And I just remember like, feeling like I don’t know even what’s real, the people who taught me what I believe, I don’t even know if I can trust what they taught me anymore. And ⁓

And everything was just going wrong. on top of my mom having just kind of basically disappeared and she just like left one day. And then my siblings and I had to move out of the house because we were like, we don’t know what’s going on. We’re just going to get safe. And let me just say this right now that ⁓ things are much better now. And my dad and I have a wonderful relationship. Like he’s an amazing man. And I really I don’t talk to my mother much because of it all. But I don’t want you to think we were like abused or anything. It was like a

Anthony Codispoti (50:59)
There was a lot of turmoil going on.

Daniel Thomas (51:00)
a lot of

uncertainty and turmoil. And we were like, whatever’s going to happen, let’s just get out of it, basically. ⁓ And so, like, so on top of my mother having just basically just vanished, ⁓ I went to work one day and all my equipment had been stolen. So I pulled into my shop and my trailer and my lawnmowers are gone. And somebody had come in at two o’clock at night, cut the lock off the gate, just hooked up and drove off with it. And

that was kind of like, wow, okay, great, now this. And then after I was starting to kind of like somebody let me use a trailer and let me use a lawnmower to keep things going. And then my truck broke down and then my lawnmower broke. It’s just everything just kept, like every time I was just trying to have a good productive day, it just crashed and burned. And there was this time where every day would go home and me and my sisters had an apartment together. My older sister would ask me, hey, how was your day?

And I would just always say, ah, it was rough. It was a bad day. It was a bad day. And I remember one day, I don’t remember what happened, but it wasn’t good. And I was driving home and I thought, man, my sister’s going to ask me how was my day. And I’m tired of telling her I had a bad day. This sparked this thought in my mind of like, what does it take to not have a bad day? Is it up to me or is it up to what happens to me during the day? So I decided to try an experiment and this experiment like changed the course of my life, which is where in the morning I would wake up.

And I would just say, again, this is Christian talk for anybody who’s not going to be offended, but I would wake up and I would say, my sins are forgiven and I know where I’m going. It’s a good day. Nothing can take that away from me. If anything else good happens, it’s icing on the cake. know, nothing else good happens. I’ve still got cake. And so, you know, honestly, I didn’t internalize that. It took like weeks of doing that before it started to like actually get itself into my mindset.

But that’s what started to help me develop this mindset of nothing happens to me. It all happens for me. So even when the hardest thing happens to me, when my reaction would just be to be like frustrated and angry, not that I don’t get frustrated, but I just have to stop and say, okay, like what’s God trying to teach me right now? Like, am I some victim here or is this just an opportunity for me to become a stronger person capable of handling bigger challenges? ⁓ And so that application, like day after day, like,

totally reworked my mindset at just about everything in life. And I just started to view challenges not as things in my way, but things that are there to make me better and things that are there for me to grow from. So that was a big, big, challenge that I had to, and that was probably the biggest challenge. And through that time really had to decide for myself, what do I believe? Do I believe in God? Do I believe in the Bible? Do I believe, you know, and I spent about two years wrestling with just all of this.

But I look back on that time in my life and like that was the most formative time in my life. And those are the two years that made me who I am and turned me into this person that I wouldn’t have built that business if it wasn’t for those two years. You know, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have my wife. I wouldn’t have my children if I hadn’t gone through those two years of my life, which were the hardest. ⁓ In business, the hardest thing I’ve ever done is get sued. Probably that was a challenge is ⁓ had kind of a crazy customer that was not happy and.

leveled out. was small claims, but it was really annoying and stressful for me for about six months. And I mean, I won and ⁓ she did not go her way because I had all the things to prove that I didn’t do anything wrong. But that was extremely stressful for six months because I no idea what was going to happen with that. You know, it’s like, ⁓ this is crazy.

Anthony Codispoti (54:38)
Let’s go back to what happened when you were 18 years old. And it just seems like one thing after another. mean, parents splitting up in this volatile way, that would be enough to rock anybody’s world. And then your trailer and all your gear is stolen. And then your truck breaks down. And it just feels like you’re running into a wall every time you turn around. But somehow you find it within yourself. Was this, I don’t know, was.

Or was this a podcast you were listening to that sort of planted this in your head, where you sort of had this idea of, how can I stop having a bad day? And how did you put it? You know, is having a bad day, like, is that up to me? ⁓ Or is that, am I just sort of a victim of whatever happens during my day?

Daniel Thomas (55:25)
So like that particular day, I don’t remember a certain podcast that like I, as far as I remember, not that I don’t want to take credit for it if it wasn’t on me, but like I literally just remembering, think, remember thinking like, I can’t deal with this anymore. Like if this is how, like I’m like, I’m tired of just having zero control over how the day goes. Whether or not I can control the lawnmower, snapping a belt off, like I’m tired of just feeling completely at the mercy of whatever the heck happens to me.

And so that was strictly just a thought experiment. I just was tired of it. And I thought, is there any way for it not to be like this? ⁓ Now, during that time, and as I tried to kind of develop that mindset, there were podcasts, like there was a preacher named Timothy Keller that, again, at that time, I was really having to figure out if I still believed in the faith that I grew up with. And, ⁓ you know, I listened to music all the time when I was mowing lawns and…

One day I just thought, I’m so tired of this playlist, this stupid playlist I listen to every day. And I heard about podcasts and I thought, man, let me try this Timothy Keller guy that my brother told me about. And I don’t know if you’re a Christian or anything, but Timothy Keller was just a wonderful preacher that just helped me. It kind of brought it back into my heart, like the beauty of what Jesus did for us and the gospel and how that integrates into my entire life and every challenge I go through.

when I view through this lens, it shows you that these things, if you treat them the right way, are actually things that make you a better person, and they bring you closer to God, and they strengthen your relationship. But you have to view it that way, and you have to take the steps to view these things as the Bible says, count it all as joy, and not become bitter because of the circumstance.

Anthony Codispoti (57:10)
It’s not happening to you, it’s happening for you. It’s helping to shape you. Those challenges are where the growth comes from, right?

Daniel Thomas (57:17)
Yeah,

exactly. And that’s just it. Because you never get stronger if you don’t lift a weight. So lifting the weight is hard, but if you don’t do that hard thing, you’ll never get stronger. It’s a simple principle that it’s hard to see when you’re 18 years old and it feels like the world’s falling apart.

Anthony Codispoti (57:36)
Daniel I’ve just got one more question for you, but before I ask it I want to do a few things First of all folks if you want to get in touch with Daniel Thomas you can contact their business at blue ribbon outdoor comm that’s blue ribbon outdoor comm Or if you want to reach out directly to Daniel himself his email address is d thomas at blue ribbon outdoor comm

DTHOMAS at blueribbonoutendor.com, DTHOMAS at blueribbonoutendor.com, and we’ll have links to that in the show notes for everybody. And as a reminder, if you want to get more employees access to benefits that won’t hurt them financially and carries a financial upside for the company, reach out to us at atbackbenefits.com. Finally, if you take just a moment and leave us a comment or review on your favorite podcast app, we will be forever grateful.

All right, last question for you, Daniel. As you look to the future, what exciting changes do you see coming to the industry? And how are you guys gonna be prepped to take advantage of that?

Daniel Thomas (58:35)
So ⁓ that is one thing that our CEO here, Dan, ⁓ I think he’s a great leader and he’s one of the big reasons why I’m here. And he has three things that he says are very important to our future, is, again, every time I try to say these things, I blank on them all of sudden, but it’s ⁓ culture, brand, and technology. So one thing that’s really prevalent in our industry right now is the technology that’s starting to

really change things. So even up here in Northwest Arkansas, there are already, honestly, you know, people know that Walmart is, they know who the Waltons are, right? The Waltons live here and we have so many, there’s so many properties that the Waltons have. And there are some contracts, least one contract that we lost because this, I think it was a school, excuse me, I think it was a school that they decided we are, ⁓ if you want this contract, you have to be a fully electric crew.

So your truck has to be electric, the mower has to be electric, the trimmers and blowers all have to be electric. so, one sec. Thank you. Okay. Sorry.

⁓ and so we are not set up. are, ⁓ demoing and testing electric equipment, but we are not, we don’t have any fully electric crew just yet. So that’s a big thing that we’re working towards right now is in the next year or two to have at least one crew that is fully electric. Cause there are already people who are only hiring a service if you can offer that option. So that’s a really big deal going on. And then just the use of technology, you know, we really, we picked a totally different software to run this business. Well, before I got here, but.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:10)
Wow, interesting.

Daniel Thomas (1:00:19)
They started using a brand new software because the size of this business is, eventually I used to use jobber at cutting edge, which was a great software for the company that I was, but jobber is not robust enough for this business. So we had to find a different software that could handle all the data inputs there are for us to properly track our labor, our materials, you how efficient are we being, ⁓ you know, and so technology is a big, big deal right now. And previously technology was not a factor in the green.

mowing lawns industry. You just need a lawn mower and a blower and a weed eater. Well now, for you to be a company that handles very high-end, you know, luxury neighborhoods, luxury businesses, that’s what people are starting to require. So that’s big effort that we’re making right now.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:06)
That’ll be fun to follow. ⁓ Interesting to hear that there’s really such a push and obviously it requires a pretty big investment in you all kinds of new equipment, new truck, ⁓ lots of batteries, right? You’re not just going down to the gas station to refuel for the day.

Daniel Thomas (1:01:08)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

yeah, yeah, it changes a lot. So we’ve demoed a lot of electric equipment this year. I think, I’m not on the production side, but I believe we settled on a brand that we’re gonna start actually sending out with crews. I’m not sure what it is actually, to be honest with you. ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:37)
We can cover that in a follow up interview. How’s that? Daniel Thomas from Blue Ribbon Outdoor. I want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Daniel Thomas (1:01:39)
Okay, that sounds good. ⁓

Of course, thank you. Thanks again for having me.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:49)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.