We were lucky to catch up with Weston Zimmerman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Weston, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

I started as a laborer on the crew for a landscaping company when I was 16. (I worked there for a total of 15 years)
As the years went by, I worked my way up in the roles and responsibilities I managed. I was the techiest guy on the team, and took on the task of getting the company off of paper, and into software to manage our customers and projects.
After some research, I selected a product, and the team in the field loved it. It made accessing customer and job info from the field so much easier. As well as allowed us to track our time on projects.
But that product didn’t have any ability or features to manage the backend of our estimating. So the sales team did not love it.
A few years later, we found another product that actually did a fantastic job in the backend of estimating. It allowed us to build estimates for projects. Just by entering all the labor and materials we needed to do the job, it would automatically tell us exactly what we needed to charge for the job. Direct costs, overhead expenses, and profit were all accounted for in that magic math.
It was awesome!
Except… it wasn’t.
The team out in the field was not a fan.
The mobile interface was difficult, and all the things we had come to love in the “field-friendly” app we had used were missing.
So we used both.
Talk about a recipe for disaster. Double data entry, missing info, on and on.
So… that was frame I was in when I came home from work one day, and found my dad working on our back patio. He was on his laptop, clicking around on some graphs.
I was intrigued, and asked what he was doing.
He showed me how he was testing a new software they were building.
That’s where the lightbulb flicked on.
The next day I was talking to the two owners of the landscaping company I worked for, babbling excitedly how we should just build what didn’t exist on the market.
An app that served both the backend of the business, and the team out in the field. The whole team, synced up.
I must have had a sparkle in my eye or something, because the owners actually took me seriously.
In the months that followed we started having meetings with software developers, and eventually got a quote.
$67k to build our hopes and dreams.
(If I had only known…. ha ha $67k is nothing in the world of software development)
But in blind faith, excitement, and a little (or a lot) of naivety, we signed the contract and kicked off the project.
Over the next year, we actually built a usable skeleton of software, that allowed us to do the estimating that we wanted, and… a totally underwhelming version of the mobile version for the team out in the field.
This is where reality started kicking in.
It takes incredible amounts of energy, thought, design, time, and…. money, to build good software.
More than our $2-$3m landscaping company could ever justify.
Here’s where a shift happened.
The project became more than “let’s build an app for ourselves.”
As I looked out around us in the landscaping industry, I realized that the problems we faced as a landscaping company were not unique to us. It was an industry problem and need. And no good solution existed in the marketplace.
I, as an employee in this landscaping company, was bit by the entrepreneurial bug.
I had a vision of not solving this need just for our own landscaping company, but for the entire industry.
I wanted to do this right.
Solve it for real.
With world-class software.
So, I struck a deal with the two owners of the landscaping company, and we started pouring money, time, and energy into this software project.
For the next f o u r years…. we worked.
I built an overseas dev team.
We tested, tested, and tested internally in our own landscaping company. Working out the design and kinks.
We spent far more money than was “prudent”.
I spent many, many nights and weekends tied to my work on this project.
And finally, in January 2020, we timidly reached out to others in our network and put our beta version out there for others to use and give us feedback on.
The beta phase went quite well actually.
And in October of 2020, I was invited to speak at a conference in our industry.
At that event, we finally launched SynkedUP, our new software and app, for real.
It’s been a crazy ride ever since.

Weston, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I grew up as a horse and buggy Mennonite, in the beautiful Appalachian mountains of rural Pennsylvania. We lived on a 15-acre property, with tons of landscaping, a huge yard to mow, and gardens to maintain. I loved working outside.
When I was 16, I called a local landscaping company and asked them if they were hiring.
And thus, my career in the green industry kicked off.
I was always drawn to identifying problems and finding a better way to do things.
I can’t stand wasting time and energy doing things that don’t make sense.
This tendency is what drew me to solving problems and finding a better way to do things at the landscaping company I worked for. And in turn, was the catalyst that triggered building a software company. 😁

We built SynkedUP, an app, to help contractors in the trades know their numbers, earn a profit, and work more efficiently.
The average net profit of a contractor in the landscaping industry is 2%-5%.
That’s not enough to justify the risk and stress of owning a business.
A lot of owner-operator business owners could actually make more money by getting a good job.
A lot of owners got into the business because they love their craft. They are a landscaper or contractor, or a craftsman rather, who just so happens to own a business.
They are not a business owner who happens to do landscaping (or whatever trade they work in)

The result is there are a ton of extremely skilled and talented craftsmen in business, who struggle in the finance, pricing, and “knowing their numbers” side of owning a business.
They wait for their CPA to tell them if they made any money or not. Whether they can go buy that new truck or not.

What sets SynkedUP apart is our approach to solving the “entrepreneurial poverty” problem as we call it. Our vision is to eradicate entrepreneurial poverty from the contractor in the trades world.
SynkedUP builds a bridge between the accounting world and the contractor world.
It turns accounting “greek” to “contractor English”.
The result is the contractor ends up knowing their numbers and production capacity better than even their CPA does.
Which, ultimately allows the contractor to actually own the business, and not the business own them.
To actually thrive, and not just survive.
When this happens, kids get to see more of their parents. Dinners don’t get missed. Clients get a better and more professional experience working with the contractor. More good jobs are created, and employees can actually grow and thrive in the company they work for. They aren’t limited by the owner “bottle-necking” the company.

The thing I’m most proud of?
Our team.
I am so proud of them and incredibly grateful for them. They pour their hearts and souls into our mission of making contractors profitable.
They bring their skills and do things better than I could ever do it.
They unlock their discretionary effort in a bid to make our “thrive not survive” mantra come alive for our customers.

The thing that gives me meaning and purpose today?
When I am at a show or an event, and one of our customers walks up to me, and tells me “You saved our business.” Many times they are emotional about it.
Their biggest fear is letting their family or team down. Failing at the game of business.
And SynkedUP gave them the 180 they so desperately needed. It changed their world.

Seeing more contractors actually earn the money they deserve, not miss dinner, see more of their kids, and grow a business that their employees are proud to work at, is why I do this.

We are not just another software company. We’re on a mission to end entrepreneurial poverty forever. We’re not just building apps and buttons. We’re changing lives.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

One of the biggest shifts I’ve had to make in my own entrepreneurial journey is the concept I learned from Dan Martell’s book called Buy Back Your Time.

“you don’t hire people to add capacity, you hire people to buy back your own time.”

Subtle shift. Huge outcome difference.

In the early days of starting a business, having a lot of skills and abilities is extremely helpful to get the business off the ground. You just do what needs done yourself.

There comes a point when the scale tips though. And your own abilities and skills become an Achilles heel.

Why?

Because by your tendency to “do things yourself”, you become the bottleneck in your company.

When you try to hand things off, it’s easy to be critical of your team’s work. Often times we get sucked into doing $10 tasks, robbing time from the $1,000 tasks we should be focusing on as the owner.

If we allow that to become a chronic problem, we become the bottleneck in our company. No one else can do it as well as we can, so we do it ourselves. We’re the smartest person in the room.

Bad strategy.

Because by ourselves, we are going to crash headlong into the brick wall of our own capacity.

You can’t do everything on your own.

So… hire to buy back your time. Not to add capacity.

Hiring to add capacity just adds more to your own plate, because now you have to keep them gainfully occupied, plus do your own tasks.

Hiring to buy back your time, truly frees you up to focus on what you need to set your eyes on.

All that to say, reading Buy Back Your Time was probably the book that actually made me change the most about how I work. It was a beautiful blend of theory and actual “how” to do it.

It’s completely changed how I think about my team, our processes, and in turn, what my calendar looks like. To this day, I’d say it is the book that has changed the most about how I live my work life on a daily basis.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

When I started this journey of building an app to help contractors know their numbers, …I wasn’t a software/tech person.

I was a contractor.

I was more comfortable holding a shovel than working a spreadsheet.

But I had a vision. There was a thing in my mind’s eye that I was determined to build. To make it happen. To make it a reality.

Through sheer blunt force and determination, I’d beat problems to death until I figured it out.

When I started this journey, I had no idea how to work a spreadsheet.
I had no idea how to create a mockup.
I didn’t know what the terms Information Architecture, Product Manager, Business Analyst, and others meant.
I didn’t know how to build a team.

But today I do.

Not through any formal education.

But through sheer necessity, I self-taught myself these skills, and built the team to serve the bigger vision in my mind’s eye.

This is why I think it’s so important that you have this deep burning fire in your belly when you embark on the entrepreneurial journey. You need to KNOW what it is that you’re working for. You need to know the WHY.

Without that, you won’t have the tenacity and energy to push through the endless brick walls you will run into.

One example from my story:

As I mentioned, I was a contractor, trying to hire developers to build what I envisioned.
I had no idea whether the code they wrote was high or low quality.
All I could see was the buttons and numbers on the screen in the interface.

Pair that with the hustle to produce the outcome on a shoestring budget, I was constantly pushing the engineers to produce the outcome as quickly and cheaply as possible.
This led to a lot of scrappy “spaghetti code” in the back end. But I had no idea.

Until…

It got to the point that trying to add a feature, took 10 times as long as it should have, and broke half a dozen other things when added.
Developers started leaving. It wasn’t worth it to them.

There was a real moment, where I was questioning my sanity in continuing this pursuit.
I had sacrificed (and in turn forced my family to sacrifice) countless nights and weekends. I had strained relationships with my dad and colleagues. I was working insane hours for zero promise of reward up to this point.

I saw an ad pop up one day for a coaching/mentorship program for SaaS (Software as a Service) founders.
On a hunch, I booked a call.
I spent money I didn’t have, and signed up.
I posted my quandary in their private Facebook group, asking for advice.

From that post, I got connected to a person who has been a Chief Technology Officer for multiple companies. To this day I still marvel as to why, but he agreed to meet with me.

That meeting was a pivotal moment in SynkedUP history.
He helped me rebuild the dev team from the ground up.
I don’t know if we’d even be in business had this event not happened. (I believe God orchestrates these kinds of events)

Today, we have our “forever” team. Incredible talent building world-class software that is producing the outcomes that I envisioned.

And… we’re just getting started.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://synkedup.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/synkedup/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/synkedup/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/synkedup/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@synkedup
• Other: https://synkedup.com/podcast/