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You're listening to Rancho Mesa Studio One Podcast, where each week we break down complex insurance and safety topics to help your business thrive. I'm your host, Alyssa Burley, and I'm joined by Greg Garcia, a partner with Rancho Mesa. He specializes in providing insurance and risk management solutions to landscape companies. Today, we're going to discuss the recent Aspire Ignite Conference.
Greg, welcome to the show. Hey, Alyssa. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Well, we're happy to have you. Now, for those listeners who are not familiar, will you explain what Aspire is? Yeah, no. Aspire Software is a software company that is tailored to the landscape industry, and what it does is it really helps with business management for those landscape companies.
So that could be from billing to invoicing to scheduling. I know there's many other things that it can do, kind of like Safety One, but I can only know the top surface of that. I don't get into all the details as much as you guys know about Safety One. It's the same with Aspire.
It's kind of, its outreach is kind of however much you want it to be, and it's a great software. And as you know, we have a focus on the landscape, lawn care, and tree care industry. You know, over 90 clients, and I would say more than 70 to 80 of them use Aspire. So it's something that our clients are using as well, so we know it's a really good product.
All right. So it sounds like then this conference that you went to is something that they're hosting. Will you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, definitely.
So Aspire Ignite is an annual conference that they hold. It's basically like their biggest event where they invite all of their users in, and anybody that's looking to learn more about Aspire. Las Vegas, but it's a way for them to get out to all of their users, to bring them into one location, and really talk about any issues, any upcoming service changes to the product, and really get everybody in one setting at the same time. So what was the most memorable part of the conference?
Yeah, there's a couple things that stood out to me. One, you know, we've been sponsoring this event for the last three or four years now, and it's really been fun to see the amount of clients that we get to connect with at the conference. You know, normally we're meeting with clients at pre-renewal meetings or claim reviews or renewals. It's nice to be able to connect with them on a completely different level and really get to learn more about, you know, the stuff that they're interested with this software company.
So it was fun to do that. And the other thing that was super fun was every time at Ignite, they have a, like, it's called Ignite the Night, and this year what they did was actually in the parking lot of the hotel, which seems kind of, can seem kind of janky, but just stay with me. You go out into the parking lot, they obviously closed down the whole parking lot of the hotel, and then they surrounded the parking lot with probably 15 different food trucks. So you kind of enter in, and you get a, you know, pick and choose whatever you want, that stuff, you know, fried chicken, pizza, tacos, anything you can imagine, they had a food truck for it, and then they had tables and a live band, but it was a chance to go get great food and then to be able to network as well with, with, with clients and potential prospects and things like that, so it was great.
The hardest part for me there was, it took me about two laps to figure out what I was actually going to eat that night, but I ended up going with some tacos and a chicken sandwich, but it was a, it was a great night, and they always do a really good job with that, and I know it's an event that a lot of people really look forward to, is that Ignite the Night. So what brings you back to this event every year, and why do you think industry professionals should attend? Yeah, I think what keeps us coming back and wanting to sponsor this event is going back to what I said about how many of our clients use this product. You know, it's kind of vetted in that sense where we trust our clients that they're doing the right things and going after the right companies, and I feel like because they all use Aspire, the majority of them use Aspire, it only makes sense for us to kind of partner with Aspire, and also for us, when we're looking out for potential prospects, it's a good betting tool for us, because what these business owners are doing is that they're reinvesting time and money, you know, back into this event to hopefully better their company, so for us, that shows us they're going to be a best-in-class landscape company, that's what we're looking to kind of partner with on our end, and then in terms of who should attend, I mean, what's nice about this event is you have companies that are doing a million dollars in revenue, and companies are doing a hundred million dollars in revenue, so it doesn't matter the size or how long the company's been in business, I would say if you're looking to, you know, looking for a software company that can organize your day-to-day business management from a landscaping perspective, it'd be great to learn about Aspire and go to this event to learn more about it, but more so than that, it's a great opportunity to go and network with your industry peers throughout the entire country, and again, you could be, you know, sitting right next to the landscape owner of a hundred million dollar company, and you're a million dollar landscape company just looking to get started, but to be able to pick that person's brain of, you know, what worked, what didn't work, I just think the networking opportunities are endless there, and then I heard a couple of the landscape companies say, you know, it's important to kind of have a showroom with all of us that are kind of standing in there, to go around and talk to each individual person that's out there, those people that are sponsoring the event, because you really don't know until you kind of get to know them and talk to them if they can help you out, so overall, just a great event, something that we'll look forward to continue to sponsor here in the future, I think next year, I think it might be back in Orlando, but I'm not sure yet, but it's an event that definitely will be on our calendar for years to come.
Yeah, I like the fact that since you are focusing on landscape tree land care, that you're participating in the industry events that your clients are going to, and you're learning about the software that they're using, and not just focusing on the insurance, because I think that it's a holistic way to look at a client, looking at everything that their company does, and not just the risk management or insurance, so great if listeners have questions about their risk management, what's the best way to get in touch with you? Yeah, a couple ways, you can email me at ggarcia at ranchomesa.com, or give me a call at 619-438-6905. All right, well, great, thank you for joining in Studio One. Awesome, thanks for having me, Alyssa.
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