300 Episodes Later: The Biggest Social Media & Marketing Lessons To Grow Your Landscape Company
00:00 — Celebrating 300 Episodes And Why Done Beats Perfect
Welcome to the 300th episode of the Landscaper's Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing podcast. Today I'm going to share with you my top takeaways from running the show for over five years that you can use to grow your snow and landscape company with social media. Plus, of all my video and podcast gear, my favorite one that you could use to massively improve the quality of your social media videos. Done beats perfect. A lot of people are afraid to get started with social media because they think, oh, I need this camera or I need this microphone. I get a ton of questions about social media, about video, about my podcast, or maybe it's email marketing or SEO or whatever it is that you're going to do. Get started now and improve over time. Hey everyone. Jack Jostes here and welcome to the Landscaper's Guide.
00:53 — The Real Reason You Need To Start Now
This show is all about bringing stories of sales, marketing and leadership inspiration to the green industry. And I feel blessed to have been able to run this show for five years and I'm excited to share some of the things that I've learned with you. My main message for you today is to get started and improve over time. Now, this could be relevant to a lot of different things in your business. Maybe you are thinking of starting your own business. Some of you are working for somebody else right now and you've always wanted to start your own company. Maybe it's time to start and then get better over time. Maybe you're thinking of opening a maintenance division at your design build firm, or maybe you're starting social media.
I get a ton of questions about social media, about video, about my podcast, or maybe it's email marketing or SEO or whatever it is that you're gonna do. Get started now and improve over time. That's my key message today because, you know, when I was starting out with my business 16 years ago, I was really struggling. Three years in, I had a ton of debt. I didn't feel like I was making any progress. And a very wise business coach who was in his late 60s told me, Jack, it takes 10 years to build a business. So I was in year three and hearing him tell me the truth, that I had another seven to go to make it was both comforting and terrifying at the same time because I knew I had a long road ahead of me.
01:38 — Social Media, SEO, And Starting Before You’re Ready
And I believe the same is true with, you know, digital marketing, with social media, with growing a tree of good fortune, especially if you are in a competitive market, it takes years. It takes years to build up a bunch of Google reviews. Maybe you're in A market where people have 400 reviews and you have four. Well, keep going. You're going to get better over time. You know, when I started this podcast. It was March of 2020 and Covid had just come out and I had spent months getting ready to launch the podcast, the Ramblers. My staff bought me this sweet shure microphone. I had all the gear. And then I was like, oh, maybe I shouldn't do it because it's Covid. And then I was like, no, I'm going to launch it. And I launched the show.
02:29 — Building Your Digital Marketing Foundation Over Time
And I'm glad that I did because that year podcast listenership overall skyrocketed. And I happened to be part of that trend and started building an audience. I started that at that time I was working out of a shed. I had closed my office in Boulder where I had an in person office. We went fully remote. I renovated a shed. It was tiny and when it was hot out, it was hot, and when it was cold. But I got started and I did my best with the lighting in there and I dressed professionally and you probably didn't know I was in a shed. And the show took off. And years later that helped me buy an investment property. Where I now have a video studio with lights and all this cool equipment. But I needed to get started. I needed to get started.
03:18 — Launching The Podcast During A Pandemic
And in the years prior to that, I did the show on my iPhone with a $20 mic from Amazon. I'm going to tell you about my favorite gear later. But it was nothing like what I have now to what I had then. And if I hadn't gotten started, if I had waited, I never would have gotten the results that I've gotten now. So right now it is November 2025, it is the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm blessed. I'm so blessed. You know, thank you for. If you're watching this or listening to this show, We've had over 75,000 audio downloads and over 110,000 YouTube views and then hundreds of thousands of short form. All the little clips that I make on Instagram, YouTube shorts, LinkedIn, Facebook, there's literally hundreds of thousands of people. And I'm grateful because, I mean, that's a lot for me.
05:04 — Comparing Yourself And What Really Matters
Right, but compared to what, is a question. You know, I think a lot of times when people get into business and social media, you want to compare yourself, you want to benchmark yourself. And you know, compared to the most popular podcast, Joe Rogan, I mean, he gets over a million views and downloads and all the clips and things like per episode, but who cares? I don't want that many people to know who I am. What really matters to me is helping landscape companies, helping people like you who are watching and listening learn ideas. Either you're hearing it from someone else who's invited onto my show to share what's working for them, or I'm sharing something with you. And some of the most rewarding experiences for me are really the one one experiences that I've had as a result of doing the show.
05:55 — The Rewarding Impact Of Sharing Ideas
And so just recently, I had dinner with Aaron and Janice from Wickenburg Landscape and they told me how the show inspired them and their work with Ramblin Jackson and my team inspired them to be more punctual. They're more punctual. They show up to their sales meetings on time and they end them on time. And they've like doubled their sales close rate. And he's saved hours a day. And his wife told me that I've helped their family. Right. So that's rewarding. That's why I do this. These ideas on this show, I believe can truly change your life. And then Aaron and Janice literally feed people, if you know them, they have these feasts, they're super generous in their church. And so for me, running the show helps me spread ideas that then help people like that impact their community. That's what this show is about.
06:47 — How The Show Created Surprising Opportunities
Or I got to have dinner with Dominick and Diana from Tri-Valley Landscaping, and Diana told me how she found the podcast. She moved into the position at the landscape company. She wanted to learn about business, and she found my podcast kind of organically, started listening to it, read several of the books that I recommended, some of which were literally on my bookcase when she came to the studio for when Dominick was one of the finalists for Landscape Leader of the Year. So that was a great conversation that we got to have. So. I can't even believe this result. I was recently invited to speak in Cancun, Mexico at a landscape event as a result of my podcast. It's surreal. I can't even believe it. But when I started, hardly anyone was listening.
07:45 — Influences, Coaches, And Lessons From Mentors
And it took five years of just doing it to have that kind of result of showing up organically in the podcast and the whole podcast system and all of those things. So I wanted to thank my wife for encouraging me and believing in me and helping me get new shirts when I was wearing the same shirt every week. Yeah, you know, people notice that when you're on social media, the Ramblers, our clients, all of you who are listening. Pat Flynn has one of the best. It's called Power Up Podcasting. So if you're thinking of starting a podcast, one of the things I took away from his course is a spreadsheet that I use multiple times a week for over the last five years.
08:33 — Systems, Spreadsheets, And Learning Production
So it's amazing how, you know, I invested in his course and I learned a system for doing the podcast, and I took away, you know, a checklist and spreadsheets that are a part of my life. Jason Swenk, my digital agency business coach, has been recommending, he recommended to me for years. He's like, dude, you should start a podcast. And you're right, Jason, I should have started a podcast, and I'm really glad that I did. And if you're a digital agency owner, you should start a podcast, listen to Jason Swank, and do it. And then Wayne Herring, my business coach, I'm wearing his Business builder cool shirt with the campfire. I'm drinking coffee out here. There are mountains. It's overcast. I mean, it's. It's really a beautiful day. So I, you know, I love the green industry.
09:24 — The Unexpected Path Into Marketing And Media
And growing up, I was good at talking to people. I was, I was the second. I was voted number two in my class of 500 people for everyone's best friend. I don't know that I was really best friends with everybody. I just, I love talking to people, and I never would have imagined that being good at talking, just really being curious about people, would be a career. And I took a lot of opportunities along the way back to my. My message of get started and get better later on. I'm grateful that I took opportunities as they came to me because.
You know, I wrote for a newspaper in high school. I wrote for an independent newspaper in college when I couldn't get onto the official university newspaper because I wasn't a journalism major. I was a minor. But that was incredible. And that was.
10:26 — Dan Kennedy’s Lesson: Done Beats Perfect
It wasn't what I thought I wanted to do, but it got me started and it got me going, and it led to, you know, what I'm doing now. One of the people who really influenced me, and this is key to you and your business. And my business is Dan Kennedy, who you're going to hear mention, like, all the time. He's my marketing mentor. He wrote the forward to my upcoming book. I've had the opportunity to work with him and learn from him. And one of the things that I learned on a project was that he said, millennials try to be perfect. I'm a millennial and he shared that the key to his success was getting things done and not making them perfect. And at first this really didn't settle with me.
I'm like, well, does that mean you don't try and do a good job? And I got to talk to him about it and if you read his books, they are excellent. If you read his newsletter, it's excellent. And it's excellent because he gets it done. And because he's gotten it done over time, the quality has gotten better over time. And that's a key motto that I instill in my own marketing is done beats perfect. This show has come out every Friday for the last five years and for eight years running up to that, I had a different weekly video podcast, but I didn't do the audio podcast. It was called Friday's Informal Facebook Films. It was really silly. And then it became Friday's Ramblin Roundup.
11:13 — Consistency, Commitment, And Twelve Years Of Weekly Shows
And then when we, when, you know, a few years after rebranding Ramblin Jackson to focus exclusively on the landscape industry, I launched this podcast. But here's the thing. No one cares about your social media. No one cares. No one cares. So do your best and get started. A lot of people are afraid to get started with social media because they think, oh, I need this camera or I need this microphone that Jack's gonna tell me about in a minute, or I, you know, I don't look good on camera or whatever. I think that there's a level of humility that comes with this in realizing that we. Wow. My podcast stats are amazing. I'm super grateful. And there are also, there's a million other things people could go and watch. And so if my thing isn't perfect today, like who really cares?
12:00 — Why No One Cares About Your Social Media (In A Good Way)
Who's really going to notice? So get started and get better over time. I, you know, when I started out, I was using an iPhone and I had like a $20. Microphone from Amazon and it was, it was fine and people watched it and listened to it and then I bought a big boy camera. I bought a Panasonic GH5. It was overwhelming. It was like a frickin rocket ship compared to an iPhone. But I learned how to use it. And the first video I shot was this enormously wide shot from like 30ft away. And I used autofocus, thinking that would focus it, but the footage was terrible.
12:45 — Early Gear, Improving Quality, And Learning By Doing
And then recently, you know, I did a shoot with a client where I brought in a light kit, I had two lights and I set up three cameras and I had, you know, individual Audio tracks for each of us and interesting camera angles. It was an interview with Jeff Riddle at Alterra Landscape in Dallas, Texas, on a really hot day. And I got that set up in about 15 minutes. Whereas five years ago, that shot, I don't even think I could have done that. So I wanted to tell you a quick story about my great grandma Hankoski Katherine Hankoski. She moved to the United States from Ukraine in 1905 when she was 14 years old, and she literally escaped an arranged marriage. She had this arranged marriage with this, like, significantly older Ukrainian dude, and she's like, I'm out of here.
13:38 — Story Of Jack’s Great Grandmother And Grit
I'm leaving the country on a boat to America. And she came here, and I heard a lot of stories about her from my dad growing up. And I just talked with him today, and one of the stories that stuck with me was that in Chicago at this time in 1905, people had, like, they. They literally dug the basement of their house with horses, and they had chickens in the yard. And when they made meals, they literally, like, killed the chicken, plucked all the feathers out, and made dinner with it. That was part of this lady's life. And she worked two different cleaning jobs. So she would get up, like, before 6am and go work this cleaning job, come home, make dinner, and then go back and do this night shift.
15:21 — Why Grit Matters In Business And Content Creation
And my dad told me, like, seeing her falling asleep in a rocking chair at night. And so I share that story to talk about grit. That's something I feel that the Ramblers have at Ramblin Jackson. These are the people who have been here for three, four, five, seven, eight years, some of them. And having grit. Because anytime, you know, I've had people quit working on my podcast, people who have worked in marketing positions because it's not creative enough, or my checklist for launching the show is too detailed. And I'm like, what? These details matter? This is just work. And I think about, like, could my great grandmother have ever imagined not going and cleaning because it didn't feel creative or whatever? Like, it's just unfathomable to me that some people would think that way. And I. I appreciate the Ramblers who.
16:22 — The Power Of Consistency And Checklists
Who helped me get the work done. And I'm grateful that I have a detailed checklist, because when people quit, or when it was Friday's Ramblin Roundup and I had somebody send out the show the following Monday, and I'm like, look, it's Friday's Monday Rambling. Your job is to get it done on Friday. Like, what? What happened? And they're like, oh, I thought it'd be okay. It's like, no, it gets done on Friday. So really, it's the consistency of doing the show every Friday for the last 12 years that has produced these cool results in my business. And I've gotten faster, I've gotten sharper, I've gotten clearer. I've learned a lot of social media, email, web development, video. Lighting, audio, all these different skills as a result of doing it.
17:15 — The One-Video-Per-Week Challenge
And I want to leave you with a challenge of what if you started making one video a week on your iPhone at your landscape company? You know what if you made one a week. For the next year, you would be 52 times better than the other guy, the other gal, the other landscaper, who's thinking, oh, I'm gonna wait and get started when the time is right? So just get started with it. And when I bring up this challenge with people about doing social media, I get a lot of objections. So I wanted to answer some of them. Some of the objections I've gotten from people about doing social media. One is, I have family. Because I have a family, I can't do social media. And I'm like, dude, you can do both.
18:08 — Common Objections To Making Social Media Content
You can be a great mom or dad or cousin or uncle or brother or whatever, and also have a social media platform. Also make content, go to bed an hour earlier or get up an hour earlier. Whatever you need to do, just do the work right. You can have both a great business and a great family. In fact. I believe that being great, you can be great at both, and they'll improve each other. The second one is, I'm not good on camera. You are better than the person, again, who is not doing anything. And so no one cares about how you look, how you sound. You are experts at landscaping. You know so much about horticulture and drainage and construction and plants and all these different things. So just get it done.
Another objection I hear from people in starting social media is that they don't have any gear, or I don't have a light or a camera or a mic or all these things. You can get those things later. Start with your smartphone, start with the phone you already have, and just start making content and get better over time. One thing, if you have the budget for it, I have a separate iPhone that is just a camera, meaning it doesn't have cellular data or anything. It's refurbished, so it was way less expensive. And that way, when I'm working with people on my team at events or even client work, they can use the phone without Logging into my texts and my bank and my email and all that stuff. So consider getting a separate phone if you have a team who's going to be assisting you.
19:01 — Starting With The Gear You Already Have
Now, I will share with you my favorite gear. Now, many of you, if you know me, I love gear. Dominick called me Inspector Gadget when he was at my studio because I had all these different microphones and stands and cameras and lenses and ND filters and all this stuff. It's become a passion of mine. Since went fully remote in 2019, I've had to learn how to self produce my show and that's turned into a real passion for gear. I'm also a musician. I've been recording music since I was six years old, so. So I will share with you that my favorite gear is this Rode Wireless GO ii. So it came, it's basically a microphone like this. You turn it on, you sync it with the receiver. So this is a transmitter.
19:48 — Jack’s Favorite Gear For Better Video
So it transmits the audio into the receiver which you plug into your camera or your phone. And this way your audio sounds really good. And so this is one thing that if you had this set up with a phone, it would take your video production to the next level because you could be walking through a garden, you could be doing all these different things and the audio will sound good because it's recorded like right here. Whereas right now I'm about six feet away from my camera. It would sound awful, it'd be windy and noisy. This particular. Brand Rode is very reliable. I like the Go II because it came with two mics. So if I want to record two people at once, like a podcast at my trade show booth, I can do that. There's a cool handheld mic attachment.
20:39 — Why Quality Audio Changes Everything
You can also plug a wired mic into it. It's very versatile and it has seven hours of battery life and seven hours of record time. You can record a backup to it in 32 bit float, which is a wav file that basically allows your video editor or audio editor to. Remove any peaking in the audio. It's, it's kind of advanced, but to keep it simple, you plug it in, you turn it on, it syncs and it just works. So that would be my favorite piece of gear. And I also got this cool case that's an additional battery. Look at that. So now when I'm showing up to a video shoot or something, not only do I have seven hours in the actual transmitter itself, but I've got like another 10 or something in this battery pack. So I'm ready to produce.
21:28 — Multi-Camera Setups, Trade Shows, And Efficient Production
Sometimes I go to these trade shows and I'll record for 10 hours, you know, and I'm just ready to go and back it up if you're still here. Thank you again for helping me reach this incredible milestone of 300. Podcast episodes. I appreciate you listening to this. If you enjoy the show, share it with somebody you know. Share a link to it, take a screenshot of it and text it to somebody who's a landscape company. Help spread the word. My name is Jack Jostes and I invite you to subscribe@landscapersguide.com podcast. That way you'll get an email each week with the new episodes, plus invitations to our live and virtual events where we share sales, marketing and leadership inspiration for the green industry. All right, thanks so much.
22:18 — Gratitude And The Impact Of 300 Episodes
I'll look forward to talking with you next week like today's video and subscribe to our YouTube channel to get upcoming videos to help you grow your snow and landscape company. My name is Jack Jostes and check out my free resources in the show notes and click the next video to grow your business.
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