A landscape operator, on your side of the table
More than 15 years in the landscape industry, from the field crew to sales leadership. Now SecondOrder helps owners figure out where AI and automation actually pay in their company, and builds what is missing.
Founder
Derrick Stack
A B.S. in Landscape Contracting (Design/Build) from Penn State, then more than 15 years in the landscape industry, from the field crew to sales leadership. He knows these problems from the inside, and he takes no referral fees from software vendors. Everything SecondOrder builds is built new, on each client's own data.
Derrick on LinkedInDerrick started on a landscape crew and worked his way up to leading sales. Along the way he ran sales teams and operations, and hired, onboarded, trained and managed field teams.
That is where he learned what actually moves a landscape company: renewals priced on real numbers, crew leaders who know what earns the next step, customers who pay on time, and follow-up that does not depend on one person's memory. It is also where the gaps showed. The numbers were all in the system, but every week someone still rebuilt the same answers by hand, and the answers arrived too late to change the week.
Just as much of the work was connecting systems that were never built to talk to each other: field software, accounting, spreadsheets and shared drives. Internal workflows that run on email, paper and memory can become automated ones: purchase approvals, payment requests, vendor invoices read by AI and entered for a person to check.
Then AI arrived in every pitch. Every software company in the industry is selling it now, and owners are left to sort out what is real, with no time to do it. Most of them say the same thing: they know they should be doing something, and they do not know where to start.
SecondOrder Systems exists for that. Derrick starts with the problem that costs an owner the most, whether that is margin, people, cash or sales. He says what to turn on in the software they already pay for and what to skip, and when the right tool does not exist yet, SecondOrder builds it on the client's own data, in their own accounts, and keeps it running.
Working with the person who built it
The first call is with Derrick
Not a salesperson. Thirty minutes on the problem that costs you the most, and within two business days a one-page list: turn this on, skip that, build this.
Straight answers on tools
No referral fees from software vendors, so "skip it" is a real answer. Most first lists start with something you already pay for and have not turned on.
The person who plans it builds it
When something needs building, the person who scoped it builds it and keeps it running. Nothing is handed to an implementation team. It starts with the Game Plan, the first month of Advisory: $1,250 for the month, paid once, then month to month only if you continue, with or without a build.
See how we startA note from Derrick
I spent years in the landscape industry watching good people lose valuable time to spreadsheets. The information was always there. Nobody had the time to turn it into a decision before the week got away.
Now the same owners are being sold AI from every direction. Some of it will change how a landscape company runs. A lot of it is noise. My job is to tell you which is which for your company, start with the one thing that pays, and build what is missing.
If you know AI and automation should be helping and you do not know where to start, write to me or book a call. I read every inquiry myself.
Derrick
Values
Systems over heroics
If a result only happens because one person remembered to do it, it isn't a system yet. We build for the Monday the owner isn't in the truck.
Show the mechanism, not the magic
We'd rather show you the weekly scorecard from your own timesheets than promise something that sounds impressive and can't be explained.
Honest about what works
We say "skip it" when that is the answer and "not yet" when a tool is still in beta, and we never call a rule or a spreadsheet AI. What we build, we build new for each client.
When we build something
We start from the data already in your system, read with view-only access you grant and can revoke, and build from there. Every build gets checked against your own numbers before you rely on it. Nothing we build replaces the platform you run; it works alongside it.
The server lives in a cloud account in your company’s name, opened on your setup call. We are added as the administrator to set it up, run it and keep it current, and nothing of yours sits on our systems. Cancel with 30 days’ notice and no fee; if you would rather run it yourselves, you can buy a permanent license to the code and its documentation.
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