Podcast Transcript
Erick (00:02):
Hello, Dan.
Dan (00:05):
Hello, Eric.
Erick (00:07):
So we are starting a little later than usual today. Yeah, we're a little
Dan (00:17):
Later,
Erick (00:18):
Huh?
Dan (00:19):
We're a little later than usual.
Erick (00:21):
Yeah.
Dan (00:22):
Yeah, I got caught up. Yeah.
Erick (00:29):
Yeah, I know.
Dan (00:31):
Yeah.
Erick (00:33):
So what are we talking about today? Did you feel like telling your story?
Dan (00:41):
I don't know if people would be curious. Basically, I live very close to the water, the ocean here in Clearwater. So usually when I get a phone call, I just walk out of the house and then I go, I head over to the beach, which is a very, very short walk, and I've been reading about grounding, which is having, being connected to the earth and being barefoot basically. And it's very good for you because your body has an electrical tar charge, and we all wear rubber shoes all the time. And so if you can discharge into the earth, it's good. It's a positive thing for health. And there's a lot of research on this. And so I've been trying to work on wearing shoes a little bit less. And anyway, I was on this phone call and I was on the sand, and I like to just walk and keep moving.
(01:48):
And I decided to walk, and I was barefoot, and I walked up north on this. Clearwater is an island. Clearwater Beach is actually a separate bland mass from the mainland of Florida. And anyway, I went north and I just kept walking and I was on the phone, and then I went all the way to the end where there's not really a sidewalk. And I ended up walking on kind of the road a little bit, and my feet started to hurt because I was wearing no shoes. And the sidewalk is very smooth, but the street that I ended up walking on and cutting across was very, very rough pavement and kind of almost unpaved. So there was a lot of rockiness. And then my feet started to really hurt, and then I thought that it would loop back around and then it didn't. And I ended up getting lost
(02:43):
With no shoes on. And then my phone was getting extremely low on battery, 2%, and I was on the phone. And then I had to, I realized I didn't know where I was, and I was frick, and I was going down one end, and then I was going down and I had a G p s myself back in the direction of the house to know that I was going the right direction. So now, anyway, long story short, I think I have maybe four or five blisters on the bottom of my feet from walking probably several miles in bare feet on sidewalk and pavement. And it gets hot out here, and the ground is hot, and it is what it is. So I'm kind of like, limping is the wrong word, but trying to shuffle across the house without walking on the bottoms of my feet, which obviously is impossible. Anyway, so
Erick (03:49):
That's a good story. It's a good story.
Dan (03:52):
It's sort of a danm. People who worked with me and who know me for years would be like, yep, that's something that Dan would do for
Erick (04:00):
Sure. It's kind of a Well, that's cool. Yeah.
Dan (04:05):
Kind of a dorky little moment there. Anyway.
Erick (04:11):
Oh man. Well, that sucks about the blisters, but
Dan (04:16):
Yeah, it's fine. It's my punishment for whatever
Erick (04:23):
Whatcha
Dan (04:24):
Going to talk about today. We going to, let's deliver some value to these people.
Erick (04:28):
Yes. However, I do want to say I hope that this is the episode that goes viral.
Dan (04:36):
That would be great. Then everyone can know, can know that
Erick (04:41):
I'm just messing around. We can talk
Dan (04:43):
About all sorts of funny stuff. I like to make fun of myself, maybe a little too much.
Erick (04:48):
Sure.
Dan (04:49):
But I don't take myself very seriously these days, so that's fun. I did wear a nice dress dressy shirt.
Erick (04:57):
I noticed. I noticed. And
Dan (04:59):
I'm sitting down for the first time in any of the podcasts, I'm actually sitting in a chair, mainly because I can't stand on my feet. So it'll be also be an adventure to see what my background changes into over basically sitting in a room that is just full of all my things in this house that we moved into. And there's no organization, because I have no filing cabinets or furniture in here really aside from this desk and chair. And so I'm going to try and make the background as bougie as possible as we go, as I have to keep up with Eric and his olive skin and
Erick (05:42):
Beautiful
Dan (05:43):
Lighting and you know, look. So just good.
Erick (05:52):
Yeah. I think my setup could use a lot of improvement, but I'm on it. I have some lights coming in the mail today, I think for the light up.
Dan (06:03):
I don't think you should change the light. I think you have really, really nice mood lighting going on.
Erick (06:10):
Just wait, just you wait. Okay. It's going to be good. It's going to be good.
Dan (06:16):
Yeah.
Erick (06:17):
Well, okay. Let's give these people something of value.
Dan (06:22):
Cool. So yeah,
Erick (06:24):
We were going to talk about diversifying your marketing so that you're never caught with your pants down, so to speak.
Dan (06:34):
Exactly. Unless you have your pants down.
Erick (06:37):
Yes. The reason this came up, actually, just so people know, I've actually had on more than one occasion, people, clients of ours who have invested a lot of time and money into one avenue of marketing, for example, like s e O or Lead generation. And then suddenly, and that's been their thing to get clients, and then their business becomes completely reliant on that one thing. And as soon as it goes away, I've seen this with people who do ads, who get their ads account suspended, or with Google and doing SEO or their Google listing gets shut down. And even with lead generation where they relied on one vendor for leads, who they go out of business, you get your business to a point where you're completely reliant on this one aspect of marketing. And once it goes away, that cuts off all the income. And what are you going to do?
(07:57):
It's like a nightmare situation. You know, still have people to pay who rely on you. It's, it sucks to be when the people I've worked with who experienced it mostly, they had a previous marketing company who set up their Google listing improperly, and then it gets shut down because it wasn't set up properly. And then they're calling me freaking out. And of course, we always get the listing back up and resolve the issue. But it's a shame that not everybody realizes. They don't always know what their marketing companies are doing and whether or not they're doing things legitimately come to think of it, it's probably a grounds to be able to sue, I would imagine, if you lose that kind of income due to misrepresenting the company online. But anyway,
Dan (09:06):
Yeah. Yes, I'm a huge proponent for doing things that are successful in continuing to do those things. So don't misunderstand this as do something and then bounce to another thing and then bounce to another thing. If you do something that's really successful, then you got to keep doing it. It's almost your duty as a business owner to do that. And to be able to identify that also, to understand your business enough to, if you have a major influx of business, to be able to identify, well, what was the action that actually caused this? What did I do? Was there an amazing job that I get, a great review was I get a bunch of referrals. Well, okay, great. Did I do something to cause the referrals?
(10:01):
And then write this down. I used to, as I was coaching people specifically in sales, I made it a point to tell these guys, someone come in, they're a salesperson, they have a record week, maybe first week that they hit or have a really, really great sales number. I would always advise with a lot of intention, go into a private area, sit with yourself and write down and catalog all of the things that you did that contributed to the week that you just produced and you produced it. It wasn't an accident. The things that you did or did not do caused the week that you just had.
(10:54):
And this could be mindset things. It could be your routine could be when the guy, maybe he was super energized because he was hitting the gym and he was eating a great diet, and he wasn't staying up late. And so he was in a really clear mindset every day when he showed up and he felt really good. And there's lots of things that can go into producing a great result in any field and some of the things people don't think of. And the reason I would coach on that is because this is something that I would do. I would have a great week in several careers. I would be tracking my things closely. I would have a great week, and I would go and sit down and go, okay, what were the specific things I did that caused this week? And eventually, if you catalog these things, you'll get to a point where you have almost a recipe for a good week.
(12:01):
And over time, what I would then do in order to have consistent production is I would look back at that and go during a poor performance week, and maybe I would have 12 points or eight points. And it was always narrowed down to, if I'm having a great week, it's one of these eight things that caused it, or a multitude of these eight things. And inevitably on a bad week, I would refer to my recipe, that's what I would call it, and recipe for your week. And I would go, which one of these points is out? And then I would figure it out which one of these points is out. Most of the time it's not just one thing. And that to loop this back around, you want to repeat the things that one,
(12:51):
But also you want to have multiple things that win. So if you just are relying on anyone source, even if it's referrals, you could, referrals could dry up, you could have a problem with mailers, you know, could be doing email marketing and your email accounts could get spammed. There could be a problem with any avenue. And you just never want to be in a position where you have one lifeline or feeder line of business, and then it stops abruptly. And there was a client that happened to, that you were telling me about, this was a little while ago, but who had grown the business and hired a bunch of employees, and when was he started working with you? It was just him and he didn't have a bunch of overhead and all this stuff, and something happened with a listing that was providing most of the leads, and he's calling you freaking out. And obviously, just like you said, we can get on it immediately, but some of it just takes time to turn around. It just takes time. And the guys, obviously the income went up, but then his overhead went up to meet the income, and he had this massive overhead and was going like, I'm not going to be able to make it.
Erick (14:25):
Right.
Dan (14:26):
But that's also something to be aware of.
Erick (14:29):
He recovered, by the way, it did take a couple of days, but he was freaking out because he thought, this is the end of my business. Fortunately, the fix was not very difficult and the listing went back up, and within a couple days
Dan (14:54):
It can be difficult.
Erick (14:55):
Oh, sure. Absolutely. Especially
Dan (14:59):
Sometimes. Well, I want to hear what you were going to say, but it may have be where I'm going with it is, especially in local search, you know, could have a location that's not a brick and mortar location that Google decides isn't valid for some reason,
Erick (15:21):
Like a post office PO box or something like that. If you use that, that's one of the main ones. Yeah.
Dan (15:29):
And then what happens?
Erick (15:32):
Shut down. Yeah, Google gotten, I, Google has always been really smart, but it's literally a computer that is constantly going over the internet and looking for things that aren't legit. So when they see, they're actually, I was talking to someone recently who is telling me about how there's actually a strong connection with Google and the US Post Office and which is how they identify PO boxes and things like that. So when they see you're using a PO box for your Google listing, it might stay up for a little bit, but chances are it's not going to stay up for long.
Dan (16:29):
Well, and then that's not something that you can just recover.
Erick (16:33):
Then
Dan (16:34):
If you put a bunch of work into that, the marketing companies put a bunch of work into that, and then Google goes, oh, that's PO box. And then they, you off can't just go and fix it. You actually have to get a location, wait for a postcard verification, go through this process with Google, which has recently become a little bit more involved if I'm
Erick (16:58):
Yeah, you're right. Yeah.
Dan (17:00):
And so then, I mean, that could be weeks or a month. And again, if you got subs to pay, you got payroll to make for admin staff, whatever it is, equipment to pay for, and you're expecting the next jobs to come in, and it's the only way that you get jobs. It's a pretty nightmare scenario.
Erick (17:28):
So that leads us to the solution, right? Yes. So there are some tips that we wanted to share on different ways you can diversify your marketing so that even if one source starts failing or declining for you, you've got other sources as well that you can use as a backup that that'll work for you. So of course, with whatever marketing a person's doing today, SEO does offer some of the highest return on investment of any kind of marketing. So definitely have s e O in there. But Dan, I think you also had some ideas that you wanted to share too. I thought we'd just go back and forth.
Dan (18:23):
Yeah, I mean, another one that you may have mentioned is email marketing. That can be great.
Erick (18:30):
I didn't mention that, but yeah, you're right. I didn't mention that. So that's a good one.
Dan (18:36):
It is a good one if you can figure out how to do it. And there's definitely a lot of, anyways, there's a high degree of return on the investment in that typically. Yeah.
Erick (18:51):
And that can also, getting into email marketing, one way that email marketing could work really a lot better for you is if you add on to the services that you're offering. So if all you've ever done is lawn care and maintenance, if you can add something like landscape lighting or irrigation, then you have something to email your existing customers about and literally make a ton of money doing that. Or if you study up on successful email scripts and successful email campaigns, then of course you can use that and just keep the existing services that you have. But yeah.
Dan (19:41):
Yep, yep. And so we talked about ads.
Erick (19:45):
No, we didn't. I mean, ads are given, you have Google Ads,
Dan (19:50):
That's what I mean,
Erick (19:51):
Yeah. Oh yeah. There's also just hard copy mailers as well. And in our seven top ways to get top seven ways to get high paying clients, P D F, that actually talks about certain types of mailers you can do to attract really high paying clients, not just postcards. Postcards is one way you could potentially get clients. And if any landscapers listened to this, some of you may have tried it and not have had it work. That just has to do with a lot with ad copy and the offer that you're presenting. But there are other ways to do mailings that can be far more successful.
Dan (20:48):
It definitely works. It definitely works. So if it didn't work for you, there's a way to get it to work there. Zero question, it will work. It's just the degree, how well it works, essentially,
Erick (21:05):
Right? Yeah, absolutely. So you and I were talking about a really interesting one earlier. Did you want to share it?
Dan (21:18):
Which one was it?
Erick (21:19):
It was the one about golfing.
Dan (21:24):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's one that would obviously be down the list. But there are certain, obviously environments and activities that just are conducive to business. They're just conducive to business. And one of them is golf. I mean, probably an immeasurable amount of business is conducted on golf courses. And I think the main reason for that is for a person who's representing their business or who has a product or service, you basically have a captive audience for a multitude of hours, and you have a lot of exposure to that person. You're doing an activity, it's easily approachable. You don't have to schedule an appointment, get your gatekeepers, whatever it is. And I'm being very general here, but most of the time when you end up on the golf course with someone, if it's someone that you don't know very well, you're going to get to know that person. And I've done a tremendous amount of networking and through my career and so much of just being in the environment with someone and them getting to know you and getting, having an experience with what type of personality you have, there's not a lot that's more effective than that. And if someone likes you and if they have that experience with you and they know that you do landscaping, landscape design, hardscapes, whatever, they're going to go, oh, that's my golf buddy.
(23:13):
I'm going to use him. People that I've used first services, I don't know how many times, just because I knew them, not necessarily because I thought that they were going to be the best person to do the work. Right. Yeah. Anyway.
Erick (23:33):
No, you're totally right. I of course mean we've always understood that networking on a golf course could result in getting more business, but in the landscape industry specifically, we have a client who has closed several, many, many six figure jobs on the golf course, and nobody else thought to do it in the area that he services. And so he gets all the high paying clients.
Dan (24:12):
Well, yeah, because think about it, golfing is a little bit more of an affluent sport than activity. People who have time to go golfing in the middle of the day are in situations where they're typically business owners, people capable of controlling their own schedules, et cetera. Yeah.
Erick (24:39):
They can
Dan (24:40):
Afford to pay 500 bucks in an afternoon for a round of golf once or twice a week.
Erick (24:47):
Right. And in this client of ours, in his particular case, I happen to know, he spends about $20,000 a year for his membership at the golf course,
Dan (25:03):
And he's close about half a million dollars worth of business.
Erick (25:06):
Oh yeah. Easily. Yeah.
Dan (25:10):
But also he's probably writing that off.
Erick (25:16):
Oh, yeah, he's probably, I assume so. I mean, I don't know, maybe probably. But get
Dan (25:25):
An accountant that lets you do it, how to do it.
Erick (25:29):
So we've covered a bit of networking mailers, Google Ads and seo. There is some other copy.
Dan (25:43):
Yeah, you said mailers, didn't you?
Erick (25:45):
Yeah. Yeah.
Dan (25:46):
Okay.
Erick (25:48):
There are other forms of advertising that a person can do. If you happen to know, know that the area you'd like to service happens to be full of elderly people, but it's a neighborhood that you'd put an ad in the Yellow Pages that, believe it or not, people are still using them. So
Dan (26:16):
There's no doubt about that. There's also, oh my gosh, the name is escaping me, but those value books. Yeah, PAC value Pack,
Erick (26:30):
Val. Yeah.
Dan (26:32):
Okay. Yeah. I mean, they have an audience still.
Erick (26:40):
Yeah.
(26:44):
And then of course, you know, can also advertise in certain magazines that you happen to know that the people you'd like to work with are reading, and I'm not talking about national magazines, but maybe there's a magazine for a specific neighborhood or city or a magazine that gets mailed out to specific neighborhoods. If you can get an ad in there, that could be useful, but you're probably going to find, I think a higher rate of people calling you from other methods. I could be wrong on that. I'm just speaking from what I've heard from a couple of our clients who have tried those types of magazines. Then again, it might just be that the messaging that they're putting in the ads that just didn't work out that great. It worked out just not that great.
Dan (27:50):
Yeah, I mean, I think it could be said, it's just really important to try stuff. You have to market your business.
Erick (28:00):
I think that's the moral of the story.
Dan (28:02):
Yeah.
Erick (28:03):
You have to try stuff.
Dan (28:05):
Yeah.
(28:07):
Well, you do. I, if you care about all your, I mean, there are still things that people are doing where, and we know, we've talked to a lot of business owners, I've met, I don't know how many entrepreneurs, very, very successful business owners, and it's like, well, what do you do? Okay, great. How did you go about that? And some of 'em are like, yeah, we tried this and it worked really well, and we leaned into it. And it's like, man, I don't think a lot of people are doing that. There's also, I think we referenced in one of the previous podcasts, just because something seems old or it used to be a way of doing something, doesn't mean it doesn't work anymore. And so we've covered some of those things today, but being an entrepreneur, kudos to all of you for having your own business that do have your own business. It takes a lot of courage and to go out there and do that and try things and be intimately and vitally connected to the entity that you're making,
Erick (29:20):
Right?
Dan (29:21):
But you got to feed it. It's like a living and breathing. It's like a child. You got to feed it and take care of it, and in order for it to be healthy, and if you expect that it's just going to happen by itself, you'll have a rude awakening experience. Yeah.
Erick (29:43):
Well, that said, we created this P D F that I mentioned, top seven ways to get High Paying Landscaping clients. And we did that actually, because we have a mission that Dan and I were actually just talking about over the last few days. Dan, you should share that message because I think you put a lot of thought into exactly what it is we want to do. And I mean, I did too, but I really feel like you are more of the brain child for this mission,
Dan (30:29):
Bo, and both parts of it, or just the 600, 600,
Erick (30:34):
The 600, 600 is what I was talking about.
Dan (30:38):
So I, we generally, not generally genuinely want to help the industry. And if I haven't said this before, we really love the industry. All the clients, people that we've interacted with specifically in landscaping have been just wonderfully kind, hardworking people. And we are honored and privileged to be part of the community and hope that we can continue to be embraced and grow as a force more and more. In order to do that, we believe that we want to and can provide 600% growth for 600 landscape contractors. And we have done this before, we've, we've actually accomplished much more than that, but the percentage of the market that is and what that would accomplish for the industry, we would be so proud and just glad and happy to be able to produce and give to the industry. And so we would love for you guys to know that the rock bottom result would be six times of growth in your revenue if you work with us. And that doesn't necessarily have to mean that you're a paying customer. If we can help you by giving you advice, and like Eric said, this publication, I mean, we're making these things available because we just really, we know what it takes to grow a business. We know these basic fundamentals and we know marketing and we want people to understand that they can do a lot of these things themselves. And if they really understand and can educate themselves, the business is going to grow and prosper. So
Erick (32:50):
Whatever
Dan (32:51):
We'll do, but we will get 600 companies to six times growth at a base level. We have clients that we've, we've gotten close to 3000% revenue growth with, so it's a lot of growth. That's complete business transformation. And those people are still with us and we're really proud to be with them and stuff like that. That being said, if you are looking at doing any marketing and you want to see case studies and you want to even talk to some of our clients, we can make those things available because we don't want there to be any, what's the word? Any
Erick (33:43):
Back off, I don't know.
Dan (33:45):
Yeah. As
Erick (33:47):
Far as skepticism.
Dan (33:49):
Yeah, skepticism, false ideas, whatever, anything like that. I'm a word that is escaping me, but PE, pessimism, we want to be really clear about what type of products we can get for you.
Erick (34:04):
Cool. I dig it, man. All right, cool. I think we're pretty good on time. Shall we cue? You? Want to cue it?
Dan (34:14):
Cue the outro music. This is all sponsored by Landscape Marketing and seo. We really appreciate you watching. If you got any value from this, please like and subscribe. And we're trying to bring, bring the heat, bring the value, and we appreciate all your time. Cue outro, music. Outro.
