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TBC Podcast Episode 5 - The Landscape of Digital Marketing: Strategies for Growth in the Landscaping Industry
120 Plays2 years ago
In this enlightening episode of The Better Contractor Podcast, host Brent Oberlink is joined by Travis May, Jon Keck, and Tucker Willms, CEO of Arrow Valley Landscaping, to unravel the intricacies of marketing in the digital age. With a focus on the lawn care, landscaping, and tree care industries, they delve into effective techniques and strategies that can elevate a company’s online presence and client engagement. Discover how Tucker transformed his approach to marketing, embracing digital tools and social platforms to cultivate a premium brand identity and drive substantial business growth. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for industry leaders seeking to navigate the digital terrain and reap the rewards of a well-tended online strategy. Join us as we learn how to plant the seeds of digital marketing success and watch your business flourish.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guests and Backgrounds
00:00:11
Speaker
All right, guys, welcome back to The Better Contractor. Today, I'm joined by Travis, as normal, with The Better Contractor, John, with Landrecorp, and Tucker Wilms with Arrow Valley. So he's technically our first guest podcast, and we're glad to have him on.
Tucker's Journey into Landscaping
00:00:27
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, Tucker is a good personal friend, mentee, mentor at times, both. Good dude, started his landscape company really young, but he's still young, and you've been in business how long?
00:00:40
Speaker
Seven years so you're held 26 so 19 years old began And kind of did a little bit of this work much younger than that. Yeah, I mean not officially Yeah, but technically you've been in the business probably half your life right in some way shape or form so And then Travis What's that you man? Do strategy and operations for the better contractor? Yeah, John
00:01:07
Speaker
I'm a project manager for Land Record based out of our Illinois office. Awesome guys.
Choosing Landscaping Over College
00:01:14
Speaker
Well, Tucker, tell us a little bit about your beginning, kind of what got you into this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up here in Fayette County. My family, all around my family has been entrepreneurs. And so I started cutting grass when I was seven years old and kept that going through high school and into college. And then through college, I started doing a little bit of landscaping.
00:01:36
Speaker
And that picked up so much. I decided I'm going to drop out of college and go full bore into the landscaping. So I've been doing that for seven, eight years now. What was the balance or how did you work it out with class schedules and how much were you doing on the side with landscaping business? Right. I was doing a pre-dental track. I wanted to be a dentist. So I thought, so it was eight to five, five days a week in college. And so on the weekends, I'd worked 20, 30 hours. And if it rained, well, that was, that was an issue.
00:02:05
Speaker
So that, that, that was, that was kind of my hang ups. Like if it rains, I can't get this done. I really need to make a decision
Transition from Lawn Mowing to Hardscaping
00:02:10
Speaker
here. And so when all in. And abandoned the hopes and dreams of the dental practice. Right. I, I couldn't be stuck in an office all day. I know that now. Did you finish the degree? No, I have 70, 80 credit hours and dropped out. Yeah. Quite a life change to say the least.
00:02:33
Speaker
So then you started out doing a little bit more lawn mowing, but then you've transitioned recently to more hardscapes, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. You tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. Basically we just cut grass, ton of grass to start for the first couple of years. That's all we did. Then I really wanted to get into the landscape side of things as far as plants and lights and all of that. Cause I liked, I liked to create things and train the property, but the more I thought about it,
00:02:57
Speaker
hardscaping really changes the property, at least has the potential to change the property. Like we do a lot of work on a lake near us and building retaining walls and things could add a lot of usable space to a property. So I went to some classes in Kansas City for that and up in Chicago for classes and broke into that. And then since then, so probably five years ago when we started that, that's probably our main focus now is retaining walls, patios, that sort of thing. So seven years and that's not that.
00:03:26
Speaker
and it seems like a lifetime. I guess the vantage point to which you look at it seemed like yesterday or forever ago.
Starting a Business with Family Support
00:03:34
Speaker
Where did you get your initial equipment? Was it used, borrowed, to take a loan, buy new stuff, using mom and dad's? When you got started, what was the equipment or how did you get started?
00:03:48
Speaker
Yeah. In the very beginning was cutting grass. Uh, like I said, my family's an entrepreneur. So I got to use one of their company trucks as well. First of all, they drove me around to the lawns and I unloaded and mowed and they came back and picked me up. But then after, when I got my license, they let me take their truck and they said, we'll support you by buying the fuel for your truck or the truck. And you just got to cut the grass and buy your own equipment. So I went out and bought a brand new zero turn and.
00:04:12
Speaker
use their company truck and then came to an appointment and said, all right, you've got to go buy your own truck and pay for your own fuel and do all that. So quickly after I started, I transitioned and bought a used truck. And I kept, as far as the equipment on the like one Boeing side and landscape inside, we've always brought new and just recently we started buying new trucks and trailers and things.
Importance of Branding and Image
00:04:33
Speaker
Why, why the folks are buying new? Yeah, the more the, the appearance when you grow up to a job site,
00:04:40
Speaker
We don't want to position ourselves as a smaller company, although we still are a smaller company. We want to position ourselves. We're here to provide a premium product, and we want that premium to look throughout the entire company, not just the end result. We want, when we roll up, we want our trucks to look nice and clean, all uniform. I want the guys to look uniform. From day one, we want it to look good. And I've noticed that too, you know, just, so Trevor has done some work for us in the past and
00:05:05
Speaker
I remember when you first started, it was, you know, almost like a rainbow of trucks, you know, you might get a blue one today and a white one next week. And yeah, now you've, it's very much, there's a, there's a pattern, there's a marketing, you can tell there's marketing behind it. Right. Right. Yeah. We switched all Navy blue trucks, mostly all Ram, and then we get them wrapped in our company logo. And so it, it all looks uniform now. And have you seen like tangible, right?
00:05:30
Speaker
ROI or like tangible feedback increase in sales. I mean, there's probably a ton of things that go into it. So it's hard to point to one specific thing, but when you became more uniform and more professional looking, did you see increase in positive feedback from the customers are being received, like something to indicate that that really did work?
00:05:50
Speaker
Sure, yeah. In fact, this year we did a job that, well, 2023, we did a job that was equal to the amount of revenue we did our second year in business. And when we rolled up to that job site, the client came out and said, this is exactly what I want to see when I rolled up my truck with a wrap. She said, this is exactly the type of company I want to have working here. And so she said, that helped land a job.
00:06:11
Speaker
So do you guys in the field also have like the uniforms now and everything as well? Right, we have a contract through a company that we have uniforms from and then we also have t-shirts. Okay, I think that's a huge thing too in this industry and I know at our house having hired several different contractors over the years, you can almost tell who's going to do a better job the moment they roll up. So I think a lot of companies that may be listening to this don't underestimate or undervalue spending that little bit of extra money.
00:06:38
Speaker
to actually look professional. Now with that said, once you arrive on site, you got to deliver it though too. So I've seen some companies do that as well. And I think you guys do a good job. I know some of the guys you had out with us, like they're awesome. So they fit that image. But the one thing you don't want to do as a company is market yourself one way, look one way.
00:06:57
Speaker
and the product or service is a completely different way. So I think you guys have done a good job on that. And that's a good story. Do you have any idea, like percent of growth? So once you pulled that Band-Aid off and you said, okay, we're wrapping trucks, we're doing all this. Did you see like a 20% growth, 30% growth? I don't have those stats. They would just be a guess if I had that. The company is in the past two years, we've more than doubled and we started wrapping a year and a half ago.
00:07:26
Speaker
So I mean, there's some stats to that. Yeah. I mean, obviously there's more, more than just that to it. Right. You know, that clip, there's a wrapping company out there somewhere. Who's just going to grab that clip and double your business. Tucker said, yeah. Yeah. Thanks a little more than that. But hey, that's a good start. Yeah. Yeah. But it goes past just the wrap in the trucks. I think how you market yourself online on, on who you're marketing to and how you're marketing.
00:07:54
Speaker
For example, we have, after every one of our jobs now, we have a professional photographer come in behind us and take pictures of it. So I take pictures of our iPhone before we start, and then afterwards you have a professional photographer, and then you can see the before and afters, and they're often
00:08:07
Speaker
much, much better, higher quality. So I think that sets it apart, too. Yeah. And that's one thing we've done at Lantern Corps is, you know, having someone actually take professional photos instead of just using photos off of a crew's iPhone or whatever, which we did do some in the beginning. And it definitely shows in your social media. So, but I think having that full service marketing, which I think is a good point that you're getting at.
00:08:29
Speaker
A lot of people want to go on, especially some of you younger guys, and just have a social media following. That isn't enough. There's got to be the uniformity of uniforms, trucks, some print. I know you've got some billboards. I've seen those around. I've got a photo of himself on it. It's almost like an attorney ad. Yeah, he used to. I took that down. I realized that was enough of that.
00:08:52
Speaker
This is what he looks like if you see him around town. But it's a uniformity of marketing where at all those different touch points, all go back to the same message. So you're not just out there saying, here's a job I did. Because from a marketing perspective, you've got to highlight what you're different, what's different about you. And so I see a lot of companies like, oh, I mowed this lawn. Well, guess what? There's thousands of people that no lawns for a living.
00:09:15
Speaker
Um, so I think that's cool that you're, you're doing more of a full service approach on marketing. Right. And just yesterday I was in a meeting and the client asked me, he said, I've been looking at your pictures or all your pictures online, actually your work. I said, absolutely. I said, I said, yeah, we don't post any stock photos or from anybody else. I think that's a big thing too. I know when you first started out, it's hard to accumulate all the photos because you haven't done all the jobs, but we're going to let you have, I wouldn't want to put out a message that we can do this. And it wasn't ours. Yeah.
00:09:43
Speaker
almost guerrilla market it, do your own yard, do your family's yard, get the stock photos built up as opposed to, so Brent and I were just talking about some marketing agencies and then businesses, how they will go out to like these Getty images or whatever, these companies that sell professional type photos and oftentimes,
00:10:11
Speaker
you think, well, I'll go buy a couple of professional photos. So it gives me that image of I'm bigger than I am or I'm more professional. I've got, I got the app, but it actually has a reverse effect in that when, when clients see like, I've seen that image before, like, ah, I mean, I've seen that in like three other ads for other companies. And they, and then they know that it's just a purchase photo and it gives the air of,
00:10:39
Speaker
fake or inauthentic and has the reverse effect by going out and just buy in just random stuff offline.
Mentorship and Building a Strong Foundation
00:10:47
Speaker
Yeah, and I think you do a good job. I know, because you do hardscapes. So the before and afters I think are always cool, which I've seen several of those. And I know Travis going back to your point with like the bought in photos, you know, in house we try to do a little bit more of an artistic take to the photo. And we try to make sure that there's a little bit of branding, whether that's the logo on the side of the truck door.
00:11:07
Speaker
something that lets people know this is actually our job site. Yeah. Buying this from somewhere. Right. So that's a good idea. And you know, when I first started, I mentioned not having those photos to market.
00:11:17
Speaker
One of the things I did was I found a contractor, met a contractor at a water feature event. Um, and he's from South Carolina and he, he, all he does is water features and we were wanting to get into that. So I was chatting with him about his business and how he got into it. I said, Hey, during our slow season, can I come down to your place and work for you for a week or two on, on my dime? Don't pay me anything. I just want to learn from you and run some of these jobs with you to help maybe get some pictures for us and also learn how the process works and how you sell them.
00:11:44
Speaker
And so for two years in a row, I brought one of our right hand guys down with me and we worked for two weeks down there for this company and got a lot of awesome photos, but a lot of cool waterfalls and fountains. And, and so that was when I can exponentially increase what we can offer and how, I mean, quickly, I didn't have to go sell these jobs myself to get the photos and work on them and actually learn it. So I would recommend that if you can. Creative problem solving, right? That's not something that you'd necessarily think. Right.
00:12:11
Speaker
But yeah, it's a win-win essentially. Like he got some photos and built up his skills and you got some by doing partnerships. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. Well, it's the partnership and then, you know, kind of like he basically, he was a mentor. Yeah. Um, you know, he wasn't worried about it because you're not in his district. Right. So he can pour into someone. So don't, don't undervalue that either. There's so much power, especially your age learning from someone. How old was he?
00:12:35
Speaker
40s. Yeah, so he's got probably 20 years of experience that you don't have. So yeah, you know, that's powerful. I think people don't don't realize how powerful it is. So one thing good. I would one of the reasons that I did that is I was trying to take time out of the equation. I know I could have gotten to a point where I could have sold those jobs my myself and built them and done them like for family. But I wanted I wanted to acknowledge now and I wanted the pictures now because I wanted to start building it quicker. So I looked for other people who already done it and then partnered with them. So that's smart. That's real smart.
00:13:05
Speaker
So for you guys that are wanting to kind of exponentially grow your business, what he just elaborated on there is it will be super helpful. You know, so if you can learn from someone like that and what may have taken you three or four years to have learned and implemented, if you can shorten that down to a year and your goal is to tell your company, well, look what he just did by doing that. So he actually made it possible and he made it possible to do it without.
00:13:28
Speaker
scaling chaos which we've talked about in some of the previous podcasts and it's kind of a term I like to use a lot but I see that mistake made a lot though where people will go through and scale chaos and then all of a sudden five years in there they look at their company and thinking man this is
00:13:42
Speaker
This is really chaotic and I don't like it at all. Then you got to take two years and fix it. And in those two years, you've lost customers. Your revenues are down. Your growth pattern is down. So you go through and like, oh man. So, but if you do it the right way, you should see that nice increase. Right. One of my mentors, he says it like,
00:14:00
Speaker
If you're going to build a house, you don't build a two-story house on a one-story house plan. He's like, so if you're going to build it, you don't build a foundation for a one-story house and then decide, hey, I want to make a two-story and just slap another story on top. He's like, you've got to build that into the foundation to be able to support that second story. He said, that's how you should run your business to start with the end in mind so you know where you're going and can prepare for it. Yeah. No, I like that. I like that a lot.
00:14:22
Speaker
So one thing I had written down and I like asking entrepreneurs this, so entrepreneurship obviously is not easy. It's not for the faint of heart. On social media, everybody likes to post their wins a lot or people like to complain and get pity and, you know, empathy for the hard days. So.
00:14:41
Speaker
But one thing I like to do is take those hard moments. We all have them and share with other people like, hey, you know, this happened, but this is what I learned from it. This is how I strategically changed my business. So I like to look at it that way more of a learning moment than a necessarily a negative. Is there anything you can think of like, is there a day that comes to mind or a period that comes to mind in your course of business that like that day was rough?
00:15:07
Speaker
But looking back now, you're like, man, that was actually an amazing learning moment.
Learning from Legal Challenges
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. This was shortly after we were in business when we were just cutting grass. We were actually sued by a guy who wrecked his motorcycle and on the straight road, he wrecks it. And he sued us because he said there was grass in the street. And this was an event that happened a year. He sued us like 360 days after the event.
00:15:30
Speaker
And so when it, whenever we got the papers for it, we had to go back and look at our records and we had just started and I was still in college at the time. So my record keeping was non-existent. Like I couldn't even told you what day we were there. I knew we were there that week because we never missed a week, but I couldn't even told you the day. And so when the attorneys were wanting all the information, when you're there, what are the pictures from the job sites, all of that, I had nothing to go off of other than I said, we don't blow grass in the street.
00:15:56
Speaker
And so I'm like, this has got to change now. And luckily, to conclude the story, luckily, we got body cam footage from the police officer that showed no grass in the street. So that saved us. But you can't count on that. Had we had documentation of when we were there, what times we were there, and then the end of the job pictures, we could approve that. And so now we do that. Now we have a software that keeps track of when we're on the job, how long it took to travel there. We have company photos from the job.
00:16:23
Speaker
So now we're backed up in case, anything like that. So that kind of resonates with Travis and John here, because John does a lot of that for Atlanta Corp, you know, the recording and all the software. And Travis, obviously everything has to do with tech you like. Data is very important in what we do.
00:16:43
Speaker
being able to not only have the data, but access it easily and quickly. Yeah. Um, goes back to the body cam photos. Um, there probably wasn't easy to obtain. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And we had to get off the creative to find that we were, we were searching for anything to find some way to prove that we didn't, but had we just done what we do now, it wouldn't have been an issue. It would have been a 10 minute ordeal and not a two week headache trying to figure out what was going on.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah. And probably a lot of hours on your end. A lot of hours on our end. Yeah, for sure. I love worrying, especially. That was the first year that you were in business that you had that incident? That may have been second, but right in the beginning. So you learned that lesson quickly. Well, technically back in high school, I had buddies help me. But as far as, as soon as the business opened, I had two or three employees. So you had these processes in place? Well, when the business opened,
00:17:38
Speaker
I had the employees, but no processes. I was just trying to land jobs to keep these guys busy and myself busy at the time. So yeah, so I had nothing. It was exactly what you're saying, the tactical, like how exactly do we do this and how do we do it efficiently and not how do we record it and how do we keep the back end things in order? And then the more I look about like, what do I want the company to go? Well, we're trying to make the company something that is almost like a luxury brand in the service industry. And we want it to be, one of my goals is to have the highest paid teammates.
00:18:07
Speaker
in for the industry standard anyway. And in order to do that, we've got to really track our numbers and we're building up bonus structures and everything. And that takes a lot of time as far as software recording how long each things took based on what we bid it and that sort of thing. So as I started going down where I wanted to go, I backtrack and said, I've got to have some software in place in order to actually track this. So this is this is something I can proceed. So the fact that you learned that early helped you because you could you could do all this later.
00:18:37
Speaker
but the more legacy processes that build up and things, you're doing things on paper and spreadsheets and whatever, that legacy, it's harder to them, especially if you have employees or staff that are used to this and have been with you for a few years. And this is the routine for you to come back in like, all right, we got the software. Like, are you kidding me? And to try, it's easier to do it and then grow the business. So take the 19 year old Tucker,
00:19:07
Speaker
What could have, I mean, and there's a, there's a balance. There's a dichotomy to both too. You can get buried in the details of, and never get your business launched. Like I've got, I've got all these little widgets that I need to add and the software and, and you don't focus on, on gaining the client base, uh, or, and you. You over index on things that aren't producing revenues actually taking money out. How do you balance that? What, what could the.
00:19:34
Speaker
26 year old Tucker have told the 19 year old Tucker early on without the lawsuit to register for it to resonate when you didn't have that experience.
Business Efficiency and Technology
00:19:43
Speaker
Like, Hey, you need to, you need to put the software in, you need to do these other things when you're balancing it appropriately so that you're not actually losing momentum of gaining business. So it's more like whoever's listening to this, what, what could they learn from that? Yeah, I would say what I would have told myself now,
00:20:02
Speaker
is list out all the things that I do in the day, find out what takes the most time, and then how can I simplify it? Like for example, I used to spend an entire day sending out bills just for our mowing. And most of the time they were fairly accurate. I may have lost money because I didn't record something correctly. And so we've got this new software and now it takes me five minutes. So I got a whole day back so that
00:20:26
Speaker
a few hundred dollars a month, the software cost is paid for itself over and over and over just because of that. So just look for ways to leverage your time, I would say. Yeah. And also with that, you know, if you had customers before there were, there was mistakes, maybe in your favor, not in theirs, that's going to aggravate customers. Oh yeah. That, that would put a terrible name for sure. If you, if you charge more than what you actually did. Yeah. Thank the reputation quickly. Yeah. So it sounded like you did a good job of.
00:20:55
Speaker
embracing all that early on because I see a lot of companies and not necessarily just this space, but where your work is outdoors and people you have crews.
00:21:05
Speaker
for whatever reason, a lot of times, and maybe it's the people that start those companies as a whole, I don't know, but a lot of people fail to do this stuff early. And I'm telling you, it costs that company and growth and sales, profitability. If you're wanting to double your company, you're not going to do so. Sorry. If you're wanting to double your company, you're not going to do so.
00:21:27
Speaker
by not having these processes and software and all that stuff in place because it's going to piss the customer off, number one, and it's going to cost you money. It takes money to grow your company. Right. Exactly. And like with the billing, one of my thoughts where I could hire somebody to do this for me, then I thought, why would I pay somebody else to do this for me if there was a software solution that I could adopt and make it a lot easier on myself? And so I went with that route.
00:21:51
Speaker
Definitely saved quite a bit of money. And it's a lot more professional now too. Things come via email, they can pay directly with a link, it's smooth. Versus paying the bill. My truck just went into the shop, fuel pump found, and the place that we take it to, I get an email and a text message. And the text message has the entire work order and allows me to just sign off on it right there. So I literally was doing that this morning and got the text message
00:22:20
Speaker
had everything listed out, here's the price, do I approve everything, sign off, as opposed to the legacy where they call you, they have to explain, so it's taking somebody out of their operation, they're explaining, and then even legacy before that, you need me to come down and sign something so that they have proof that I approved, and just looking at the evolution of that and how easy that was, and how much time is probably saving them as a customer. Yeah, it was amazing, it was an awesome experience,
00:22:48
Speaker
Now I know that they're getting started on it quicker. I'm going to get my truck back faster, but just the amazing thing that just a small little piece of software for the improving both sides of the entire business. Oh yeah. Um, one thing I had Tucker, I was curious. So when you made the transition from lawn care to more of the hardscapes, what influenced that decision and how has that I can solve your goals with doing so, how has that panned out for you so far?
Innovations in Hardscaping Equipment
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, I, I wanted to make, like everybody cuts grass, as you mentioned, I wanted to make a bigger impact on the family that we were working for on the property. And I knew cutting the grass, the grass grows right back a week later. So that's, that's not much of an impact. I wanted to do something where families could come out and enjoy it, where they can have parties and not necessarily to be thinking about us every time, but that we would have made an impact on them. So hard skipping was first of mine, like patios and outdoor kitchens and retaining walls.
00:23:42
Speaker
And so we really focused on that. And so our marketing has changed. We don't push the mowing. We send the mowing accounts that come to us to another company. We really just hone in on the landscaping side, the hardscaping side, more of the luxury outdoor living side. And so it's been an adjustment trying to change from, especially with the guys that all they used to do for us was mow. They had to learn how to do the hardscaping, but send them to classes and things are going good. Nice, nice. So I noticed this year, Eddie Clipp Expo,
00:24:12
Speaker
You know, I had been years ago when I went and I noticed this year, the hardscapes area is enormous compared to what it used to be. So you must not be the only one doing this. Right, right. I honestly think during the COVID time, a lot of people poured into their houses because they were stuck at home. I mean, they started building up like, we can't go out. Let's at least make our place nice. And I think that really exploded that industry. Yeah, yeah. I'm a tech geek. I like all things like that. So it's two parts. One, is there any new
00:24:41
Speaker
cool innovative technology coming out in the hardscaping space or equipment that's really enhancing how you do your job improving it that's worth other people in the hardscaping space or looking to get in that that that's really helped you or that you see it's on the horizon that's going to change things.
00:25:00
Speaker
One thing that comes to mind, it's not totally new tech, but it's getting a lot better, is the vacuum, the suction power for lifting pavers and steps and wall block. We're looking at getting it for some of our machines where it attaches to a mini excavator and it will suction cup to a 800-pound step and you can move it and set it wherever you want so the crew just kind of guides the step down while the machine sets it so there's no more
00:25:22
Speaker
using straps and yanking the straps out whenever you're done and the step shifts and you have to put it back and that kind of stuff and then there's a little one man suction grip so you can like just pick up one paver with a handle make a lot easier and grabbing two sides of a brick and setting it. That's been a big thing that's coming up and we're getting ready to invest in that.
00:25:41
Speaker
That's awesome. I've seen a lot of videos of that and that is fascinating to me. This has to be a huge game changer. Yeah. Cause of what you just said, there's so much less labor involved and it makes it so much easier. Yeah. Safety thing. It makes it so much easier to pick up something, uh, a hundred pound papers, those, those, those large ones. It, there's a two man suction cup where there's, each guy has two handles on each side and there's one big suction cup in the middle of that paper so they can pick it up and set it down.
00:26:05
Speaker
against two other pavers and not get their fingers pinched. They can set it down without putting a corner down first and messing up the base. Just makes sense. So at the Equip Expo, we talked to a couple guys that went to one of those training sessions. I mean, they had a massive outdoor space and had tons. It looked really cool. I wanted to go over and play. But it looks like they were hosting a lot of classes. And one of the guys came back and said, yeah, I had
00:26:33
Speaker
me, and I think it was one of the owners of the company. And he's like, I had me and like three of my guys, we went through, um, I forget which one it is, pavers or something. It was so much information. It was really good, but I don't even know if I remember everything because it happened. It was like cram it all in. Um, what's the, the learning curve and the training for you migrating into that and getting your crew and, uh,
00:26:59
Speaker
Because it's design, aesthetics, materials, how to properly install things. Grady, what's the learning curve for getting somebody with zero or little knowledge to be really proficient in?
00:27:13
Speaker
So the way we've done it, we just paired the new guys with someone who's already been there a while, like our foreman or myself or somebody. And we walked them through the thought process when you start a job. Where's the water going to go? How's the pitch the pavers need to be? Where's the frost line? How deep do we need to go? Will there be vehicles on it? That sort of thing. So we just like go through a checklist of what is this going to...
00:27:35
Speaker
What are we doing here? And then what needs to be accounted for before we start. So, and then we just walk through the process now. So it is, it is a very time consuming process and it takes quite a long time to learn because every job is different, but the principles are the same. So, so when you say what, quite a long time. Yeah. Well, I mean, it depends on the person, but I mean, I would say it takes multiple jobs to start to feel comfortable with not having to follow the foreman's lead for every, every detail.
00:28:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's good. And I think that's a good way to teach, you know, where you're putting someone hands on. Obviously, you got to have some safety and stuff prior, you know, just the basic guidelines. Yeah. When Travis brought up a quick equip expo, I was wondering, was there any big takeaways for you this year there? Yeah, I mean, the John Deere booth, I went through a VIP experience with the John Deere guys. And the amount of tech they're putting in their equipment now is insane. I didn't even realize that. So we have one of the John Deere skids.
00:28:33
Speaker
and they installed JD link on it. And that'll tell us, I didn't realize what all of it tells us. It tells us like the fuel usage, where it's at, how long it's idle. It tells you the GPS of it. And then operators have codes. And so you can see how efficient each operator is. Now we haven't totally utilized all that yet, but there's so much information we learned. And we don't use their zero terms yet, but there's zero terms you can track.
00:28:58
Speaker
You can even watch it live feed, striping back and forth, whoever's mowing with it, how long the blades are on, how long they're off. That's worth quite a bit. Yeah. I feel. Yeah. Yeah. If we were doing mowing a lot, we would definitely pour into that because if they are, it should take 20 minutes, but the mower sat idling for 10, you know, something's going on. So earlier you brought up equipment being newer. Did you do some math and some statistics and stuff to kind of make that transition from those slightly used, more used stuff to going new?
00:29:28
Speaker
Yeah, nothing too specific, but I did look at the lightly used market because like I said, I wanted it to look professional and look high end. And the lightly used market is dengue near the new market when it comes to the price and the new market has all the new warranty. And so I thought, let's roll with that. Also, the dealer support, if you buy it from them, will be a lot better because they just sold it to the machine and our dealer support have already come in handy big time, multiple times.
00:29:52
Speaker
So I wanted a good deal of support. I wanted to build relationships with them because I knew we'd be buying a lot of equipment. So I wanted to start that as soon as possible. And then also didn't want the breakdowns. I mean, obviously machines will break, but a new equipment is more than likely, less likely to break than a thousand hour piece of equipment. Yeah. I like that. I was going to say, we have the new equipment philosophy, Atlanta Corp team. That's something that
00:30:17
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I was going to talk about a little bit as we've, in recent years, we switched a lot of our stuff to Caterpillar. And we've running, you know, we still have some used stuff, but usually that is stuff that is maybe not on the road as often. But I think it goes back to just running the math. You know, a lot of companies don't want the debt, so they'll go in, they'll run old equipment. However, this is all more complicated than just a balance sheet is also an income statement. So you may have low debt, but you got to run your numbers to see, hey, this old piece of equipment though,
00:30:46
Speaker
Actually is costing me more per month than a brand new item and then also you got a factory and like you mentioned breakdowns You know a lot of you guys aren't out there actually factoring that even in I know Atlanta Corp when we switched from slightly used equipment to the more of a lease program of Caterpillar That was the driving factor is actually our breakdown time
00:31:04
Speaker
was insane. It was thousands and thousands of dollars per month. That alone, just the breakdown time was enough for us to do brand new equipment. So again, your finances is a balance sheet and is also an income statement. So don't just be scared of debt, you know, just because of that. You got to actually look at the income, but if you're not making money, it doesn't really matter at all. Right. Our software, whatever we buy a piece of equipment, we put it in what we bought it for, what the terms are on the loan, what the interest rate is, how long we expect to use it.
00:31:34
Speaker
And then what it'll be worth whenever we're done using it for trade in or selling. And then also what the insurance is on it. So our software will spit out an hourly price for that machine and also how much fuel it uses and what the price of the fuel is on average. So we have it spit out an hourly price. And so we can just book that hourly price into every job. So we know we're recovering our overhead, plus making a little bit of profit on that. And then it pays for the machine. It won't have to worry about making whatever the payment is each month because we're building that and we know that.
00:32:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's good. I think bringing that up, you know, of tracking all your costs. Right. So I think a lot of people are guilty of, Oh, well that lease payment or that loan payment is $700 a month. So if I'm billing a thousand, I'm good. Well, you've got breakdowns, you got to average those and factor those in. You've got insurance, you've got overhead, if you have any staff in the office at all.
00:32:22
Speaker
You got to pay or bill for them somewhere, you know, whether that's in your equipment or on the labor side for your field workers. Just make sure you guys are covering all costs, actual costs. Right. Especially in the landscaping industry, a lot of it can be seasonal depending on where you're at in the country. So you've got to factor in how much it costs you an overhead per year, what are your payments and the insurance and all that per year for 12 months. But then you also have to factor in how many days a year are you going to use that machine?
00:32:48
Speaker
You might not use it every day because you're, it might be off a couple of weeks. So you've got to recoup all of your overhead and the amount of days that you work. So it's not just divided by 12 months. You've got to actually factor that in. No, that's good. That's good. Um, we're nearing the 30 minute mark here a little bit past, but one thing I wanted to make sure we got to, do you have any advice for someone just getting started?
Marketing Strategies and Client Communication
00:33:11
Speaker
Yeah, I would say you cannot spend enough on marketing. I was told that when I first started and I swore you could. I was hesitant to put into marketing. That's one of the things I changed dramatically recently and it has helped. It used to go from being booked out just a couple of weeks to now being booked out months in advance and all because of the marketing and how we're targeting. So I would say get known. A lot of people don't even know you exist.
00:33:39
Speaker
Yeah, and around here in Tucker's Market, you've got competition, obviously. But if some of you guys are in like a city, you have thousands of people that are competing against you. So your marketing efforts, your SEO, all of that stuff, social media, you've got to be paying Google, you've got to be paying social media to get your stuff out there, but you've also got to be producing quality content.
00:34:00
Speaker
because your C of competition is enormous. And if you're just doing what everyone else is doing, you're going to have the same result everybody else is having. Right. I guess I would, I just learned this probably three days ago. I believe it was Charlie Munger who used this way of thought. He said, think about everything with inverted thinking.
00:34:19
Speaker
He's like, when you go into a job or your business, he said, think about, write a list of things. If I wanted to take my business, what are the first 10 steps I would need to do? Like, what would I need to do to ruin the business? And it could be easy to come up with our mind thinks negatively quickly. And then he said, in order for it to be a successful business, do the exact opposite of those 10 things you just wrote down.
00:34:40
Speaker
So that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, it's been, it's been a pretty fun experiment for me to sit down and think about that. So simple was, was, was two of them. Yeah. I would, I would say the customer communication, if you want to tank it, just don't reply and don't get back to them. So the opposite would be get back to them immediately.
00:34:56
Speaker
I don't remember the stats on this, but like if someone hits your website or sends you an email and you reply within the first 90 seconds, the closure rate on that job goes up like a few hundred percent. And so that's one thing as soon as I get an email come through from one of our forums, I'm calling immediately and they always say, wow, I just submitted. That's it. That's we're on the ball. Here we are. What can we do? So I love that. I love that because that's one of the things that's passionate. I'm passionate about.
00:35:21
Speaker
you're aware of this as well. That's a big, big deal to me is how many people reply days later or they may reply four days later, you send them a response right back with a question and then they forget to reply. So for me, if someone's trying to sell me something and that is their structure, I am not buying from that person because if that's as good as it gets in the selling process right there, I've got to beg for a response. I'm not using you for anything we do here. So that response time,
00:35:50
Speaker
Obviously, you've got to move that into the field. Obviously, maybe she'd sell the job and start it. But during that sales process, that response time is everything, especially in this market, this world where everyone is just inundated all the time with texts and phone calls and emails. It is extremely difficult to keep up and to respond. I know at Langer Court, we try to do everything same day.
00:36:14
Speaker
or very next business day, depending on the priority. And that's been one of our biggest praises from our customers is our management staff's ability to respond quickly. Now we have a big management staff compared to some other companies of our size, but that's how much that matters to us. And I think that's the way you guys are too. And I know when we've used you,
00:36:33
Speaker
If I need something, it's usually within an hour. So that's super valuable. Yeah, I would say one more thing that we're doing, especially with the clients that we're working on their second house, whether or not they're at the end of every day, send them a project update.
00:36:49
Speaker
an email or, or group text with a husband and wife or whatever the case is, but just send them a project update with a picture. And I guess what we got done today, this is what we're doing tomorrow. And then it feels like they feel like they're there. And I thought of that based off that inverted thinking, I'm like, I would hate to be the client that never knows what's going on, especially if I'm not even there.
00:37:06
Speaker
hired these contractors or they're working for two weeks, but I'm not there. I'm at a job at the other, at the other house. And so that's one thing we do now is at the end of every day, I send them an update, whether it's text or email and they seem to really like it. No, that's perfect. Well guys, we're trying to keep these under 45 minutes. Travis or John, do you have a question for Tucker? We have not asked. Yeah. I want to ask about the marketing thing. So I think most people understand in the business in today's day and age,
00:37:34
Speaker
They have to do marketing to some degree, and most that's going to be digital. But that can be extremely overwhelming, especially if they've never done anything. If they're a younger generation, they might be more plugged into what's resonating and what works and how it works. If it's more of a legacy company that hasn't really engaged in some of that, it can be very daunting and overwhelming. What's kind of the strategy? How did you navigate?
00:38:03
Speaker
What type of marketing endeavors obviously is working for you? Where are you going to target? What are you going to do? How are you going to do it? How did you approach that? And is there any, I guess, successful things that you've done specifically that other people could replicate, but not your, not your, not your competition. Yeah. Yeah. So I started with the rule of three, like you make three columns on a page on the right side, you write down everything that you love to do, but that doesn't produce income. In the middle, you write down things that
00:38:33
Speaker
you don't really like to do. And on the left side, you put on what makes the most income. So you only focus on the left and you delegate the other two. And so I like, I don't know, I like to market, but I don't know what I'm doing. So it would take a lot of my time. And so I decided I will hire a firm that only does marketing for service based companies.
00:38:52
Speaker
And so we hired that firm and then they've taken off and ran with it because the owners of that company ran a multimillion dollar landscape business and decided they liked the marketing the best. So they started their own marketing side. So we've been using them. Just use experts in that. You don't have to be an expert at everything, just find them. And so that's what we did. That's good. John, you got any questions for Tucker as we wrap up? How do you determine how much money you spend on marketing?
00:39:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. So right now we're about 4% of the yearly revenue on marketing.
00:39:28
Speaker
I've always been, I just look at our monthly budget and then if I can squeeze out more, then I'll push a little more. Or like, for example, we dumped a lot into Facebook on Facebook forms, paid a lot for Facebook forms. And that was a flop. We were doing great with messages, like driving messages to the business. So we were paying a decent amount to have that. That was working great. And I thought, hey, let's switch to forums to see what that does. And then the leads went dry. And so we're like, well, that didn't work.
00:39:54
Speaker
So then we went back to forms and put more money in and immediately they all started coming back. So really, I decide on how much we're going to push out by how far we need to book out. If I'm wanting to book out a few months, I put some more money in it. And so that's not a real technical answer, but that's how we roll. And I think to kind of help answer that, Travis and I actually had a conversation this morning a little bit about this and how much money to spend on different social media aspects, but make sure you guys are running all your reports too. So if you send out something
00:40:22
Speaker
Check your website traffic after you sent that out and actually see if you've had a boost. Because if you've not had a boost at all, then clearly your messaging might just be a little bit off. You need to tweak that, try it again, see if you get a boost. So you guys got to make sure you're out there, you know, doing that and seeing, hey, I've done this marketing effort now for a quarter, a month or two months and I've seen a result or I've literally spent $4,000 in ads.
00:40:47
Speaker
And I have not actually made anything out of it. So that's a good question. Yeah. The whole marketing company sends us reports on the ROI based on how much we spent with their company and on the advertising and how many, how much we've got back. No, it's our job to send them what jobs we got from the leads that they provided. So we have to get them that, but then they're able to tell us what kind of ROI we got. But I would also say like in the landscape industry, I know guys out in California, all they use is Yelp.
00:41:15
Speaker
here in the Midwest, nobody uses Yelp for landscaping. And so like we use all Facebook and out East sometimes they'll use Facebook forms and here in the Midwest, at least in our area, that didn't work. So you really just kind of find the coast, the coast seemed to have like Instagram. So the East and West coast like Instagram advertising here, not so much. So find what part of the country you're in and find what works for that part of the country rather. Yeah. Tailoring the market. There's not a blanket answer for it. So there's an old adage that you can't manage what you don't measure.
00:41:45
Speaker
And so it's important. And in this day and age, we have so many avenues to collect data. And it's a balance between tried and true practices and data. You can't get your head buried in the data and devolve into analysis paralysis and not move or dissecting. But we definitely have that as a tool where
00:42:09
Speaker
in generations past, maybe they didn't. So it's definitely something that we should all be taking advantage of, of capturing that data, looking at how is it moving things or not and making adjustments and at least leveraging that where we have it. It is a new tool that can be extremely impactful if we integrate it in and keep it balanced.
00:42:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's good. For some of you guys listening too, don't be afraid to pay Google, pay Facebook. They're actually not free. Of course, you can just post all you want, but that doesn't mean you're going to get promoted and pushed out there to your target market.
00:42:49
Speaker
Make sure you guys are doing that. I know a lot of people that do not like spending that money, but honestly for bang for the buck, gosh, some of those ads, especially like Facebook, especially for your line of work, it is cheap. If you look at like the percent or cents per click or per view, gosh, it's super cheap. And it's your target market. Right. And with Facebook, I mean, social media in general, people are always on there. So if you're paying it, it's always putting them in front of them.
00:43:14
Speaker
And your ads in front of them. So, I mean, we get to all the time. We see you all the time on Facebook. I'm like, well, that's good. Thanks for that. So that's a good thing. Yeah. So. Awesome. Well, Tucker, um, pleasure having you on. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. That was fun. Um, make sure you guys give him a follow. He's a good dude. He's up and coming. Like I said, he's young. He's done a lot. He's going to do a lot more. So definitely give him a follow. As far as the podcast, obviously we did not run ads today.
00:43:43
Speaker
Tucker's not selling anything and neither am I. So it's a free podcast. So the only way we ask, like us, follow us, share it with your friends. Thanks for tuning in guys. Bye.