The Edge July/August 2025

î COVER STORY

that are in our local area that have a pretty good, up-to-date inventory that I will tell it to pull from and ask it to give us some ideas for a certain area or color, that’s really helpful,” Hartshorn says. PLANNING AND TRAINING Watruba says the main function he and his team use AI for is planning. He says he spends 20% of his time on how to be more productive. He’ll often ask ChatGPT for ways to improve a process. “Normally, I’m using it throughout the week,”Watruba says. “A lot of times, I’ll brainstorm a lot and just store the chats.” Rankin also says he’ll explore different ideas with ChatGPT. “I’ll have a business idea, and I’ll use ChatGPT to ask me dumb questions, but then I have to answer about it,” Rankin says. “I use it to actually question my ideas as a sounding board.” Rankin says they’ve also tapped into AI as a whole management team when re visiting their mission statement and vision statement. He says it’s been beneficial for training purposes as well. “You can use it as a sales trainer so you can talk to it, and it will give you a rebuttal, and you’ve got to go back at it,” Rankin says. “It’ll give you another rebuttal, and then you got to solve that issue. I think you can use it way more than people think. It’s way more capable.” Rankin says their branch manager has used AI to create 40 weeks of training. “We created a big, huge training doc ument, and the framework for that came from ChatGPT,” Rankin says. FOLLOWING THE TRAIL If you want to delve deeper into the possibilities of AI, first try out some of the different platforms available to find the one you like. Watruba says he uses ChatGPT and Gemini since they’re on his phone and connected to his Google accounts. “ChatGPT is my backbone,” Hartshorn says. “You have to decide which ones you’re going to make your bed in because I utilize AI for so many things. It knows me well enough that it can pretty much do anything for me, as far as the first step.” Then, you can begin training the AI on the ins and outs of your company and preferences. Rankin says when he started out, he asked ChatGPT what it needed to know about his company to provide him with the best information. “It asked me a series of 20 questions, and I answered those, and it asked me 20

dramatically ever since COVID,” Northrup says. “I think COVID really accelerated what already was a fast change. I think it’s very important to get ahead of these new curves with consumer demand. I think utilizing AI to sell online is a no-brainer for residential service companies.” Hartshorn uses another one of her custom GPTs to assist in developing plant maintenance packets for clients. Not only does this eliminate a menial task for her team, but also sets the customer up for success. DESIGN SUPPORT Hartshorn says AI can be a useful tool for design visualizations as well. She says while Midjourney is the best at creative, accurate and specific images, it can’t be too ambitious. She acknowledges this particular aspect of AI is still on the weaker side. “It hasn’t gotten to a point where I’m like, ‘Wow, this is so accurate, and it saves me so much time,’ because I still have to do the front-end work to make sure that it’s accurate to actually create it right,” Hartshorn says. Many other AI image generators are better suited for more conceptual purposes, such as Leonardo.Ai. Hartshorn cautions against sharing AI-generated images with clients, as some may take them too literally. Rankin adds that AI image creation is more helpful for idea generation for a design. “I think it’s great for getting started, but I think it’s really poor at the finishing touches,” Rankin says. Hartshorn does have ChatGPT help create plant palettes based on their database. “If you can hook it up to an online database, we have a couple of nurseries

Photos: (Top left) Deep Lawn (Top right) ETCH Outdoor Living

Joel Northrup, founder and CEO of Deep Lawn, based in Austin, Texas, says their sales tool uses computer vision to generate instant quotes. “We take in aerial and satellite imagery, and our proprietary AI models will auto matically measure and detect all of say the turf on a property for lawn care and lawn maintenance companies, the drive way and sidewalk data for snow removal companies,” Northrup says. “We also pull in house perimeter data, particularly for pest control companies.” Northrup says instead of lawn care companies having to visit a property with a measuring wheel or manually draw on a Google map, AI can provide instanta neous results for homeowners. He says what previously could take 15 minutes to 2 hours can now be provided in seconds. “It really brings a ton of value to lawn care companies, particularly in the spring when they’re inundated with hundreds of calls,” Northrup says. “It helps the buying experience be a lot more seamless for the homeowner, and also eliminates a lot of wasted time on their end for giving pricing and onboarding new clients.” With their newfound time savings, Northrup says their end users can focus more on setting expectations with clients. Northrup says they also have a geop ricing feature, so only individuals in your service area can request a quote. “Consumer habits have changed

24 The Edge // July/August 2025