Greener Lawns, Stronger Businesses with Kelly Giard

**SPEAKER_1** (0:05)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:18)
Well, come back to the show, everyone. I'm Stephen Sakach here with my cohost, Tullio Siragusa, and we've got a special guest today who we'll introduce in a moment.
Sustainability is often discussed as an environmental commitment, but it's also a business design challenge these days. For companies to create lasting change, responsible practices must work operationally, economically, and then at scale. They can't remain side initiatives or promises that disappear when growth becomes difficult. We're going to look at this challenge through the lens of lawn care industry today which has historically been associated with the gas-powered equipment, the emissions, the noise, chemical treatments, and changing that model requires more than just replacing a mower. It requires rethinking all the equipment, the products, the training, customer expectations, and the economics of all that too. Today, we're exploring scaling sustainability through franchising, and Tullio, introduce our special guest today.

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:27)
Looking forward to it. I guess today is Kelly Giard. He's the founder and CEO of Clean Air Lawn Care.
Kelly began developing the company from his garage in Fort Collins, Colorado, before leaving his career as a stockbroker and financial services franchise owner to focus on Clean Air Lawn Care full-time. His goal was to offer an alternative to conventional lawn services through electric mowing equipment, solar power charging, organic fertilization and natural weed control solutions. What began as a bold local concept grew into a national franchise network centered on environmental responsibility, local entrepreneurship and services designed to be safer for children, pets, families and of course the planet. The company supports franchise ownership through training, marketing, operational coaching, technology and an engaged owner community. Welcome to The Bliss Business Podcast, Kelly. I think all podcasts of the world over will be great for electrical lawnmower because when they go around, they just take over your life for a moment.

**Kelly Giard** (2:39)
Yeah, there's a big difference between that gas blower outside your window or an electric one, that's for sure.

**Stephen Sakach** (2:45)
Yes, indeed.
So, Kelly, when you first began exploring Clean Air Lawn Care, sustainable lawn care was far from the industry standard. What convinced you that environmental responsibility could become the foundation of a viable and scalable business in this area?

**Kelly Giard** (3:04)
Yeah, I have a degree in environmental analysis and policy, and so it's been a passion of mine.
I was reading one day that the EPA estimated 10 to 12 percent of the nation's air pollution was coming from small engines, and that was staggering to me. Then I researched it a little further, and it was largely tied to lawn care. So it was the smaller mowers, the trimmers, and the blowers, the ones that don't have catalytic converters, they're very polluting, they kind of spew out. And so, that was a, the lights came on for me because I was a kid, I had high school and college, I had a lawn care business, and I was like, well, that sounds like a solvable problem, that there's electric equipment out there. I knew it was largely being done that way in Europe already. And so, kind of started to dive into the research and operational end of it from there.

**Stephen Sakach** (4:03)
Can you describe a little bit like what that looks like if I'm used to the traditional sort of lawn care scenario?

**Kelly Giard** (4:11)
Yeah, I describe it, what we do is more like an experience than just a commodity type service.
The smell is different, obviously. There isn't a smell of gas or chemicals. Our smell is clean. It smells like fresh grass. It smells like the fertilizer products we use are kind of earthy. The mosquito control stuff we use is citronella, garlicky. So I think that that's a big piece.
The sound is a big piece, obviously, too. Our customers could be in the backyard having coffee, and we'd be in the front yard working, and they wouldn't even know that we were there yet. And so it's not push the kids into the basement and run and hide for 15 minutes while people come out of the trailer with their machine guns. It's more the personal gardener sort of field and the experience. And I think that they have confidence that everything is healthy for their dog pets and all that. And also for the people working, I think that a lot of our customers really have empathy for the techs that are out there and the ones that are getting to do it our way versus having to do it, you know, with gas chemicals being exposed to that all the time.