00:00 Introduction
Jack Jostes:
If you're the leader of a snow and landscape company, or any small business for that matter, it's your job to set the vision of the company and share it in a way that attracts your ideal employees, that your family understands. It ultimately helps other people working with you achieve the vision. I just read a really great book that I'm gonna share with you in today's podcast, plus some of the results that happened when I implemented what I learned from this book.
00:34 Vivid Vision
Jack Jostes:
Hey, everyone, Jack Jostes here. Welcome to The Landscaper's Guide. This podcast shares sales, marketing, and leadership ideas to help you grow your snow and landscape company. In addition to running this podcast, I'm the CEO at Ramblin Jackson. We're a multimillion dollar snow and landscape marketing agency. We've been in business for about 14 years, and I've read a lot of business books. Some of them are great and some of them are really great and make their way into the podcast. And one of them is this book Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold. And I read it with my business coach, Wayne Herring, and we did a workshop. And this book takes what I was doing with the book Traction. We run EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. And if you look in our show notes, I'll link to other videos that I've done about that book, cuz that's been a great framework for leading our company.
Jack Jostes:
There's like a little box in the Vision Traction Organizer about vision and expands it into a much bigger format that shows in the future where is the company heading. And it gets into more the emotion and the experience of the company and the experience of your company is everything. The experience that your employees have is gonna keep them there or repel them away. The experience your customers have is either gonna keep them and they're gonna tell people about their great experience or they're gonna stop working with you and say bad things, right? So this book was really great. I actually listened to it first and then read it. And one of the things that I liked about it was it had examples of vivid visions, from different types of businesses, and it gave you prompts for how to create your own vision, including an exercise for creating your personal vision.
Jack Jostes:
And I filled out this document and I shared it in the form of a video with my team. And I had them reflect on their personal vision and great areas of their life, like, you know, faith, family, fun, finance, fitness, right? And, and that's prompted some really great insight into what are my employees' lives really like, what do they really care about? Where is the company heading? How do they see themselves here? And it was an overall really great experience that helped me get clear on where we're heading. Part of where I see Ramblin Jackson heading is right now we're around two and a half or 3 million. We'll see how the third and fourth quarter shake out. But anyways, we're on track. And, and we're growing. We're hiring and, and we're planning to, by the end of 2026, become a 5 million company.
3:17 An Inch Wide and a Mile Deep Into The Snow and Landscape Industry
Jack Jostes:
I see us going an inch wide and a mile deep into the snow and landscape company. What that means to me is we're gonna expand the services we offer. We're currently offering branding and sales process, video, websites, and SEO. We're doing a lot with process development with our clients and really learning about their operations and how does sales feed into that and how do we funnel the right leads to the right department of our increasingly larger clients. And what I'm seeing as our clients need more from us, they need some of the things that I'm doing and that I've been doing for 15 years, like email marketing and social media and more video. We're rolling out Google ads and developing that. We're gonna increase the sales training and coaching resources that we offer. That's what I mean by going a mile deep.
Jack Jostes:
It means that we're gonna continue to develop the marketing and sales for our clients in the snow and landscape industry instead of saying, oh, well, can we do what we're currently doing for some other industry? And part of it is, I love the snow and landscape industry. I love our clients. I love going to trade shows and interviewing people. I'm continually learning, I love reading the trade show, the various publications from the associations Lawn and Landscape Magazine. And I feel like we're helping people. Feeling like we're helping people is a key thing that unites the people at Ramblin Jackson. And one of the ways that I shared how we're helping people in our video was sharing some clips from the recruiting videos that I got to film for our clients last year. So last year I did several in-person video shoots, and then we also did some remote ones where we took footage that some of our clients shot locally. And that was really rewarding for me. So I wanna share some of those stories with you here partly as an example of how can you use video in communicating the vision to your employees, and how often are you sharing the testimonials and stories of the people that you're helping with your back office staff, with your frontline workers, with the various people that might not be client facing?
5:33 Inspiring Through Visuals: Utilizing Video to Communicate Your Vision to Employees
Abigail Woodard:
When I first got interested in horticulture, I was in the FFA program at my high school, and one day I just joined the horticulture program and found out that I actually really loved it. What I loved most about plants is that there's always something new to learn. And it's so awesome to see all your hard work put into something and you can actually see it grow and you can see your work. The reason I'm choosing to pursue a career in horticulture, because ever since I was a little kid, I've known that I wanted to work outside. I wanted to get dirty. I never wanted an office job. That never sounded fun to me. And when I found horticulture in plant nurseries, I was like, this was it.
Carlos Contreras:
Been working for landscaping for 12 years. CPHort does a lot of things different. They value time with family and the hard work that you do, some other companies don't value what you do. CPHort does. Now that I've been working at CPHort for six years, I became PHC Manager, Maintenance Manager, and now I'm Snow Manager. We see what other companies don't see. We give you the chance to show us what you got.
Jon Stanton:
So far you know, working with you and your team has been so beneficial to us. It's allowed me to remove myself from some of the sales processes. So instead of going out and chasing eight leads a day, what I'm doing is I'm the first line of qualifying those leads on the phone. So when Brian goes out or our designer Sean goes out, it's a much better experience with the clients we're meeting with. We've implemented a $79 consultation fee.
Brian Baur:
It has been a refresh, you know, seeing your methodology and the science behind it, it has really just taken this business to the next level. The previous people that we had worked with just didn't really understand what we were trying to explain. And as soon as our first meeting with Robert came on and the things that he started to talk about, we knew it was gonna be a great fit. And you've actually exceeded expectations from that level.
7:46 The Ramblin Jackson Experience
Jack Jostes:
Part of my vivid vision for Ramblin Jackson is delivering a great client experience. And one of the ways that we do that is through marketing. If you've worked with us, you'll know that we send gifts, we send a marketing toolbox. You can get one at landscapersguide.com/toolbox, see our show notes and we'll send you one. It includes a really helpful Marketing Field Guide that'll help you figure out which marketing you should get started with first. It includes beef jerky from a small business that makes excellent jerky. It's branded in an awesome package, and we then follow up and have a conversation with people. And when they're a client, we send gifts at the right time throughout the experience. And that's important to me that we're working with the right people and we know who they are, and we're keeping track. We're keeping notes from our sales and strategy team through projects, through accounts.
Jack Jostes:
And when you read our Google reviews, we're already doing it. People are enjoying that experience and that excites me. And the idea of doing this for more people is very rewarding, because I know that we're gonna help more people. And hey, our snow and landscape clients are amazing and they employ great people. And I know this because I've gotten to work not only with our clients, but their people. So what is the vision of your snow and landscape company? Where are you heading and why? Who cares about 5 million dollars, right? I do, but only because it's a means of achieving the vision and helping us achieve our mission of helping small businesses ring the bell. And by telling those stories, I can tell you from reading the feedback, the people who work here are energized by that. They see that I see department heads in our sales and marketing department, in our project department, in our accounts department, and several of them have said, hey, I like that.
Jack Jostes:
I'm interested in that. I see myself there. And I've also communicated that not everyone will be a department director. And that hell yes, there's a seat on the bus for highly skilled specialists who are excellent at their skill and they continue to grow in that. And that lets people know that, oh, just because we're growing to 5 million and there's department directors, there's also other spots on the bus for me. So it's been very productive. I'd love to know your vision. If you're working with us, share it with me. Reach out to me, check out this book Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold. It's an excellent audiobook. It's a quick summertime read or listen. And it's very important to solving big problems like client retention, employee retention, and recruiting. You've gotta share with people these big important things that you may have been putting off for years like I had. And then I can tell you that once I started following these things like vision, mission, core values, that's really when the company started to grow. My name's Jack Jostes. I hope you enjoyed today's video. If you did, be sure to subscribe landscapersguide.com/podast so you get an email with our top episodes, invitations to our webinars and events and more. I look forward to talking with you next week on The Landscaper's Guide.
Jack Jostes:
So, thank you for helping small businesses Ring the Bell. Woo.
Check out the Vivid Vision book + resources:
https://www.amazon.com/Vivid-Vision-Remarkable-Aligning-Business/dp/161961877X
Entrepreneurial Operating System Resources:
https://landscapersguide.com/2021-annual-ramblin-retreat-takeaways/
https://www.amazon.com/Traction-Get-Grip-Your-Business/dp/1936661837
Grab your Snow and Landscaper’s Marketing Toolbox: https://landscapersguide.com/toolbox/
Subscribe for top episodes and invitations to our events: https://landscapersguide.com/podcast/
