The race is on to set the mood for today's episode, which is about competition. I'm going to talk about competition because I've had a few suggestions that maybe I should talk a little bit about some business strategies. Maybe at some point, we'll talk about finances, P& L, balance sheet, estimating. But in this episode, I want to talk a little bit about sales and we will talk more about sales in future episodes. But I think today what I want to do is talk about. competition, and how, how you speak about your competition. Do you speak about your competitors? When do you speak about your competitors? Should you speak about your competitors? Because, uh, you know, in the landscape industry, there's oftentimes not a lot of sales training and the way that a lot of us handle. Our competition isn't always very strategic. It's oftentimes unprofessional. Yet, Um, we tend to, when I say we, my observation is that a lot of you get tied up thinking too much about your competitors, which also affects the way you price and market your company, your products, your services, et cetera. So today I'm going to dig into how to speak about your competition, how to frame your competition, and how to position yourself and your competitors in this episode. If you are an irrigation professional, old or new, who designs, installs, or maintains high-end residential, commercial, or municipal properties, and you want to use technology to improve your business, to get a leg up on your competition, even if you're an old school irrigator from the days of hydraulic systems, this show is for you. Okay, here we go. So I think I'm going to use just my own personal experience, um, helping to build the baseline company, uh, specifically because, you know, way back in the day when, when I was first introduced to baseline, which was. 2004 or 2005, they, they didn't, they didn't have any salespeople. It was just the founders, a couple of engineering, manufacturing people, and a, you know, sort of receptionist, uh, accountant, a bookkeeper, if you will. That was it. There were like five people, you know, and then, and then we, we grew the company. But, uh, at one point there, nobody knew who Baseline was. Nobody knew really amazing emerging technology. Nobody knew who the company was. So the various sales situations, that I was a part of, there was only competition because nobody knew, who I was. And I'm going to try to make a couple of analogies as we go through this, but I want to start by saying there's a difference between being the existing leader in the space, the biggest. competitors versus being the incumbent small, let's call it startup company, whether that's a manufacturing, a distributor or retailer, a contractor, whenever you're starting out, you're kind of that smaller emerging player. So depending on who you are, when you're listening to this, you know, keep this in mind because there might be some strategies that you want to deploy. If you are the small and emerging, and there might be some cautionary words if you are the biggest players. So when I say the biggest players, let's just say Rain Bird, Toro Hunter. Transcribed Uh, for instance, in, in our industry, or if it, as it relates to contractors, you know, maintenance contractors, perhaps Brightview is a big player. And then, you know, Joe's, uh, Joe's landscape maintenance that's starting up is the, is the incumbent. So just keep that in mind as we go through this. But I want to start by saying that in the most general sense, I tend to, and I guess me, my, my thought is to, when you talk about your competition, try to talk about them without naming them or naming their particular product or their particular company. If you have to talk about your competitors, you don't have to talk about them by name. And there are a couple of reasons why this is beneficial. And instead of talking about them by name, I think it's better to look at kind of the entire landscape. Uh, and if you are a s