Connect With Today’s Guest:
???? Egan Landscape Group: https://eganlandscapegroup.com
???? Connect with George Egan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgeegan
???? @meetgeorgeegan
???? @eganlandscapegroup
Get Started With The Landscaper’s Guide:
???? Watch the full episode + read the transcript: https://landscapersguide.com/podcast/
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Why Marketing Is About How People Feel
00:00
George Egan
Just like you said, people do look at you personally. Like, a client might see my truck drive by. Or it's not really about the product that you're selling, it's about how they feel. If we have too many clients, we need to market to employees. We don't have enough employees. Or if we have too many employees, well, we need more work. We're going to market to clients.
George’s Journey From Garden Center To $10M Company
00:16
Jack Jostes
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Landscaper's Guide podcast. Right now I'm at Landscape Cod in Hyannis, Massachusetts, put on by the Cape Cod Landscape Association. I'm speaking here at this conference. It's a really good show and I'm excited to have George Egan, the president of Egan Landscape Group. George, thanks so much for coming on the Landscapers Guide podcast.
00:41
George Egan
Thanks for having me.
00:43
Jack Jostes
So tell us a little bit about your background. You have a landscape company. You have a wholesale nursery. You're also the vice president of the association here, correct?
00:55
George Egan
Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I've been in the business, the green industry, I'd say, since. Since I was a kid. I was a teenager. I worked at a garden center when I was young, and that's really what got me involved. I've had a number of different occupations since then. After high school, I worked for a flooring company. I worked in the carpenters union. But ultimately I came back into this. I opened my own garden center in 2003 and started a landscape company back then. And it's been great ever since. I mean, we've just been rocking and rolling, and now we're 10 million in revenue a year, and we employ about 100 employees, including subcontractors that work for us full time.
01:38
Jack Jostes
So, yeah, that's amazing. And is that 100 between both the nurse or the garden center?
01:44
George Egan
And.
01:45
Jack Jostes
And the landscape company?
01:46
George Egan
Yeah. So our nursery. Yeah, I didn't speak about the nursery. So our nursery and landscape company. Plus we also have employees, subcontract employees that work for us full time within the landscaping company doing hardscape masonry. And they have crews work for us all the time.
02:03
Jack Jostes
That's cool. And of the. Of the 10 million, roughly ballpark, what percentage is nursery versus garden center versus landscape?
02:12
George Egan
Yeah, so the nursery is just. We just started. Well, I opened a garden center like I said, in 2003 that was more of a retail garden center. And we ran that for 10 years, and I closed it. I wanted to get out of the retail space. I wanted to focus more on the landscaping. And then just two years ago, we got back into the nursery business. We figured that were having a hard time sourcing materials for our own landscaping jobs. And we still had all of our accounts with the growers that were buying from past when we had a garden center. So I had a plan to open a wholesale nursery just selling to contractors so we could help the contractors in our area source materials.
02:52
George Egan
And what happened with that is it evolved into, you know, there were homeowners coming in because we have a great facility, and they'd come in and ask if were selling retail. So first the initial response was no, and then we hated to deny them, so we created a retail price list for them as well.
02:10
Jack Jostes
And so does it. Do you just sell plants and like, material to homeowners or is there like, do you have pots? Do you have gifts? What's the extent of the retail component?
02:21
George Egan
So currently it's perennials, trees and shrubs, annuals at this point. We do have some. We have some pottery, plastic pottery, some bagged soil. But the intent is to grow this much bigger and bring in other lines and brands and tools and anything else that we can bring in to help contractors, that they can come and pick up a shovel if they need to or some quick irrigation parts is something that we can keep.
02:48
Jack Jostes
And so where are you based in Plymouth, correct?
02:53
George Egan
Yes.
02:53
Jack Jostes
Okay, cool. I stopped by the tavern there last night. I can't remember what it was, but I basically just drove into Plymouth until the road ended and I was right in the harbor.
03:05
George Egan
Oh, Tavern on the Wharf.
03:06
Jack Jostes
Yeah, Tavern on the Wharf. It was great. I had some incredible chowder, so I had to do that. So did you grow up in Plymouth or where did you grow up?
03:15
George Egan
I didn't. I actually grew up in a town just south of Boston, Weymouth, and that's where I grew up. And I lived in Weymouth until I was in my early 20s. And then I met my wife and we started a family and we bought our first house in Plymouth.
03:32
Jack Jostes
Oh, that's fantastic.
03:33
George Egan
Yeah.
03:33
Jack Jostes
So did you grow up in the green industry outside of working at a garden center, like in high school age?
03:40
George Egan
No, I didn't really. But what's interesting is a lot of the stuff that I did in high school, so I took drafting and architecture classes in high school. I went to college. I went to Wentworth in Boston for architecture and engineering CAD programs. All of that stuff that I did, while it had nothing to do with landscaping, we utilize that now. So we're using CAD based programs for design. You know, I was in the carpenters union and I did concrete form work. We do we can pour concrete walls now and veneer them. Everything that I've done through my life has all. It's funny. Has all come to morph into what we're doing now. I mentioned I worked for a commercial flooring company. I was a salesperson. I took Dale Carnegie classes and Ziglar classes and everything. All of that stuff stuck with me.
05:27
George Egan
And this is again, something that we use now.
05:29
Jack Jostes
So what are some of the Dale Carnegie things that stuck with you?
05:31
George Egan
I can't. Well, there's not particular concepts that I actually remember from one or the other, if I can think of, like Ziglar1. One thing that was interesting was that I always talk about is in one of his tapes. So these were cassette tapes that we used to listen to. There was no CDs or anything. Right. One of his tapes he talks about, and he always called the person that you were selling to. He labeled him a prospect because he had that Southern drawl. And he said, you know, when you're with your prospect and you want to make a sale, a little trick. And he talked about.
06:05
George Egan
I'm not quoting him word for word because I can't remember, but he said, if you knock something off the desk or you do something that makes them feel slightly uncomfortable and they feel empathy, they feel bad for you. They're almost likely to buy from you just because of that. And I remember hearing that tape, and it happened to be the next day I was walking into. When I worked for the flooring company, into a manager of Boston University's office to sell them carpet samples. I had carpet samples to sell them with carpet. And I dropped them all over the floor, and it was embarrassing. And I picked him up and it worked. The guy, he felt so bad, he said, I'm sorry, let me help you with that. I'll help you with that. Oh, which one do you recommend? I said, this one.
06:42
George Egan
He said, yeah, that's what we're gonna go with, no problem. I said, oh, that's interesting. So it got me thinking. Now, not that I want to deceive anybody, but how seals is actually a kind of a. Not a mind game, but it's, you know, it's just making the prospect or the person that you're selling to, you know, feel a certain way is going to cause them to buy from you. Whether it's a. Feel empathy for you or they feel. Or they feel like they're having a great experience the same way. Right. Like you could go in and have this real conversation with somebody and it's not really about the product that you're selling. It's about how they feel when you're selling it. And that was something that I got a lot out of that, those tapes.
Building A Classroom For Daily Team Meetings
07:24
Jack Jostes
So tell me a little bit about the training component of your company. Before the interview, you told me that you recently built like an education room or. Tell us a little bit about that.
07:35
George Egan
Yeah, so in my facility. So we built a new building in 2021. It's a 11,000 square foot facility, state of the art solar roof, all our electrics covered. And we also built a classroom. And the intent of the classroom was just to have safety meetings for our guys. I didn't think when I built it that it would have morphed into such an important part of the building. It's the most important part of the building. So what we now do is we have every morning we have an all team daily meeting with all of our employees where we go over particular company metrics every morning that we share with the employees. It's like a team huddle.
08:13
George Egan
And it's important, the most important part of the day because you get to see, you know, you get to see their faces and see maybe, you know, maybe John is having a bad morning, something's happening at home. And we don't know that if he just comes to work and gets in the truck. And now one of our managers can go up and say, hey, is everything going okay? Or what's going on? So we do every morning, we have that and then every day, every day. And it's. And you know, it was recommended that I did this by a business consultant that we work with company Cardone Ventures. And I thought it was crazy.
08:42
George Egan
And I said, I'm adding the time in my head saying, how many minutes every day, by how many employees, by five days a week, what is this going to cost me? But the value is so much more than I ever thought. You know, they walk out, they're fist bumping each other, we talk about particular metrics of the company, we talk about wins for the day and they're out the door. And then every Tuesday we do a bigger meeting where we talk about personal growth, development.
How The 10 Minute All Team Meeting Works
09:07
Jack Jostes
And so who presents at this?
09:10
George Egan
Mostly I do. As the head of the company, I feel it's important to try to do that as much as I can. Now I know as a company grows, I won't be able to do that every day. But in my absence, my director of operations does the morning meeting. And that morning meeting is not just me presenting but we take stakeholders from each department. So the first stakeholder may be Abby, who's our marketing, and she'll talk about marketing wins from the day prior to. We had so many website clicks. We had this many calls come in, whatever. And then we move on to sales and director of business development. We'll say we had this many proposals go out yesterday for value of this much money. We closed this many jobs for this much money, goes right through to operations, finance, and ultimately the nursery.
09:54
George Egan
And each one of those stakeholders talk about a win that they have for the day, too.
09:58
Jack Jostes
So this is all done within 10 minutes?
09:59
George Egan
It's all done within 10 minutes.
10:00
Jack Jostes
And then is there a safety component? On Tuesdays?
10:04
George Egan
Yeah, Tuesdays we have a. So that's done in 10 minutes. On Tuesdays, our meeting runs for about a half an hour.
10:09
Jack Jostes
What time is this meeting? 7:00am 7:00am and are people on time?
10:13
George Egan
Yeah, every. They have to be. So that's another thing. Now you can see when somebody's a few minutes late because they have to walk in the room in front of everybody.
10:19
Jack Jostes
The walk of shame.
10:20
George Egan
The walk of shame. And I make sure to stop and pause when they walk in. So we call them out.
10:26
Jack Jostes
Yeah. I had a client who had a meeting like this, and if people came in late, he had this clock necklace. It was enormous and it was pink. And if you were late, you had to wear this enormous pink clock around your neck for the rest of the meeting.
10:43
George Egan
That's so fun.
10:43
Jack Jostes
And people would take pictures of you. And it was fun, but he was serious. Right. And we have a beef jerky club at Ramblin Jackson where we promise to be on time and prepared to add value. And if we're late, we have to send our client beef jerky, but we keep track of it, and it's like, kind of fun. Occasionally people are late for something, but it's not the norm. Like, our clients know that we're gonna be on time. I always start my meetings on time. I think it's really important.
10:11
10:11
George Egan
I agree. We did something funny a few years ago was somebody had given me. I don't know if you've seen these jelly beans. They're called bean boozled. So you can take. You take these jelly beans and the yellow ones, one can taste like banana, or the other one can taste like something really gross, and you don't know which one it's going to be. So I bought these jelly beans and I said, every time somebody's late, they have to take one of the jelly beans. You might get Lucky and get the good one. But you might get the rotten one too. Yeah, that solved a lot of the late guys pretty quick.
10:41
Jack Jostes
And you have to eat it in front of everybody.
10:42
George Egan
You have to eat it in front of everybody.
10:44
Jack Jostes
Yeah, my kids got some of those for Christmas and they were like barf flavored. There were some rotten eggs. Rotten eggs? Yeah, like they were really. And they were disgusting. Like you would not want to eat that in front of people. So tell me, so does this learning room, does this classroom, can it hold all 80 to 100 people?
12:06
George Egan
It'll hold 80 people right now. Which is the subcontractors don't come in the morning for our morning meetings.
12:12
Jack Jostes
And what do you call this meeting?
12:14
George Egan
We call it the all team daily meeting.
12:16
Jack Jostes
The all team daily meeting. It's at 7am, it's 10 minutes long.
12:19
George Egan
Correct.
12:20
Jack Jostes
And then everyone's off on their way,
12:21
George Egan
Everybody's out the door. And you know, one thing that we do is we've built over the years all these efficiencies. Like all of our trucks are set up with enclosed trailers. Every crew has their own specific set of tools in the trailers. We use the invisi tag system, which is really good. So all of our tools are tagged and we can scan the trailer and see what is in and what isn't in the trailer. So ideally every morning after the meeting they get their clipboards, they get their trucks and trailers which are already set up and they're out the door and they're on the road by 7:15, 7:20 every morning.
Building Operational Efficiency With Tools And Tech
12:54
Jack Jostes
What kind of software are you guys using to run the business?
12:56
George Egan
So we've kind of customized our tech stack. So currently we're using Jobber, which is changing because we're now we're integrating Aspire. So we're going to move to Aspire. But we found Jobber had some limits to what we needed for reporting. And I'm super detailed. And we've built these spreadsheets, these estimate job cost spreadsheets that are proprietary to us, that aren't part of Jobber that after a job is job costed. The details from every detail of that job cost to our revenue per man hour on that job to margins go to a master sheet by salesperson. So we can always track every salesperson's production.
13:36
Jack Jostes
And then where are you doing time tracking?
13:38
George Egan
So time tracking we're doing with currently doing with Clockshark. So what we've done is we've used a program called Zapier.
13:44
Jack Jostes
Yeah, love Zapier. I was just going to Ask, does that integrate with the job costing spreadsheet?
13:49
George Egan
It does.
13:49
Jack Jostes
So you're able to run real time job costing along the way?
13:53
George Egan
All the way. We basically built our own program. So we have Clockshock Zaps. Well, we create. We also use HubSpot as well.
14:02
Jack Jostes
So for folks listening who haven't heard of Zapier, it may have just gone over their head. What is Zapier?
14:09
George Egan
Zapier is a program. It's like a third party program that will connect to say we had two different programs, Jobber and Clockshock. I can take a field. As soon as we enter a field in Jobber and we enter it in for maybe a client name, it will create a client name in Clockshark, a totally separate program by putting this third party program in between them. Yeah, I love it. It's really awesome.
14:33
Jack Jostes
I describe it as a software that makes software talk to other software.
14:37
George Egan
That's exactly what it is.
14:38
Jack Jostes
And a lot of people are like, oh, okay. So I love the way you're using that because it automates so much of the data entry. And this real time job costing is key to profitability.
14:48
George Egan
Oh, for sure.
14:49
Jack Jostes
How long have you been doing this?
14:51
George Egan
I've been job costing for actually kind of since the beginning. It was always something that I thought, I don't want to talk specifically about another software program. But I did do a training for one that I wasn't happy with. It was a. It's a, it's a well known program. It did a great job of estimating, figuring out your budget for your company, building the estimate, but it never completed the loop. It never did. And that bothered me. And that was like 15, 20 years ago. I'm like, it doesn't tell me if I made money. So the estimating in the budget doesn't really matter. So then we wanted to create our own.
15:26
Jack Jostes
I find that many companies are still experiencing that problem where they're doing a really thorough estimate, but they're finding out at the end of the year if the company was profitable. But they're not going back and actually analyzing the job.
15:41
George Egan
Right. Seeing where your deficiencies are. You could have a maintenance contract and not know that you're not making money on that contract and sign for another three years. And it's taken the profit from your other jobs to know which job specifically. And making money, I feel is so important.
Building A Personal Brand In Landscaping
15:56
Jack Jostes
Well, George, you're pretty active on social media, which is cool and it's kind of unusual. I wish more of my clients and people listening would be active on Social media, How did you get started? And tell us a little bit about what do you do personally and also what does your company do? Because there's like George Egan and then there's your Egan Landscape group, then there's Egan Landscape Group. And each has a presence on social media.
16:22
George Egan
Yeah, they do.
16:23
Jack Jostes
Tell us about it and why do you do it?
16:26
George Egan
You know, I think there's a lot to be gotten from social media now, where back, you know, when we first started and were using MySpace or Facebook first came out, it was literally just what that it said, social media. You were socially talking to friends of yours, not specifically clients or customers. And it's evolved where people now businesses are going on and building business pages and sponsored ads and you can target demographics. And I think it's super important to utilize that. And we get so much out of it. So we do. I have my own personal brand, which, you know, that's how it started. My first page was George Egan Facebook page to my mother, my cousins, and all that. And I still have that page.
17:08
Jack Jostes
And is that just a personal profile?
17:10
George Egan
It is.
17:10
Jack Jostes
Or is it like a business page?
17:12
George Egan
That's a personal profile and I have it certified now because it's. It's kind of turned into a brand.
17:17
Jack Jostes
Yeah. And that's something that's new that you can do that with a personal profile. Because I have a separate brand page for myself as a speaker, because when I started it, I didn't want my personal profile. I don't know. And you couldn't certify it.
17:33
George Egan
Right.
17:34
Jack Jostes
So it is changing. And I think that can work. And I joke with people to clean up whatever stuff you wouldn't want a customer see from your personal Facebook.
17:44
George Egan
That's right.
17:44
Jack Jostes
Because you're personally getting referred. I think this is something many landscape companies don't realize is that the owner of the company is a keyword, is a brand. Meaning people Google George Egan Landscaping or. Oh, you got to call George Egan.
17:59
George Egan
Right.
18:00
Jack Jostes
Oh, okay. And people are going to Google you. They're going to look you up on social media. And so this personal brand, how does that help grow the landscape and nursery business?
18:11
George Egan
So I think, just like you said, people do look at you personally. Like a client might see my truck drive by or might see or hear my name around town. And sometimes they don't think to look up Egan Landscape Group. They'll look up George Egan. So it's important to make that a clean, you know, a clean profile, a clean page. Now I'm using it more because I'm Going to get into consulting and training. So the personal brand piece of that's going to be even more important. Yeah, it's going to separate that.
18:42
Jack Jostes
I like that you say that because many people dream of doing some kind of consulting. They've run their landscape company for 30 years. They know a lot. They're like, oh, I should do consulting. But what you're doing is you're building that personal brand, that social media presence now, and you're also starting that consulting component to your brand instead of waiting. You know, I think a lot of people wait and they put off building a personal brand because they don't think it's important. Oh, I have my landscape company. So I like what you're doing. And I actually before were introduced through the Cape Cod Landscape association to do this podcast, I saw you, because I follow Brad Lee and tell me you were on his podcast.
19:28
George Egan
I was on Bradley's podcast, yeah.
19:31
Jack Jostes
That's pretty cool. So how was that experience?
19:32
George Egan
It was pretty awesome. You know, his facility is in Las Vegas and I met him through a mutual person that was also one of his podcasts that I'm friends with. And yeah, it was interesting. You know, we sat down for about an hour before the actual podcast to get to know each other. He had some cards that he had scripted to ask me questions that his assistant had put together, and we quickly realized that those were useless. He got some bad old information, old website information from me. We threw them to the side. We just had a conversation and it was really, it was pretty fun, you know.
20:07
Jack Jostes
That's cool. Yeah, that's awesome. I saw that and I was like, oh, I hadn't seen a landscaper on this show. And then when were preparing, I was like, oh, yeah, I think I saw you on there. So you've got your personal brand, you've got your personal Instagram, personal Facebook, you're on LinkedIn, you're on YouTube. I saw you subscribe to my channel.
20:28
George Egan
Yes.
20:28
Jack Jostes
Cause I take a look and I'm like, oh, George subscribed. That's pretty cool. So thanks for doing that.
20:33
George Egan
Yeah, of course.
20:35
Jack Jostes
Because that's how I like looking at it kind of on a one one relationship. Like, although I have a following, somebody recognized me from Instagram today. And I remember who they are. His name's Brian. And now I know Brian. Right, so how does that translate to real relationships for you?
20:53
George Egan
It does. So just what you just said is interesting. Cause I'll have the same thing happen on LinkedIn. I'll have. I'll have a Ryan because I'm using this name because this actually happened. Ryan had followed me on Instagram and he worked for one of my competitor companies in my area. And you know, and so I followed him back and he started liking some of my comments and commenting back or great, you guys are doing a great job over there. Now I've never met this guy and this was 20 years ago. I would have had to meet him to know him. I would have had to meet him on the street.
21:24
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
21:25
George Egan
So now we're making introductions through a platform that we've never been able to do before. So now what happened is he just pops into my office a couple weeks ago, pulls in his company truck and came in and said, hey, just want to introduce myself and say, or you know, and see the facility. And it turned into a great conversation and we had this, you know, great relationship. We shared some tips and that's a power of. One of the powers of social media, for sure.
21:50
Jack Jostes
Yeah, I agree and I like that it's. It complemented what became an in person relationship because I think a lot of people resist doing social media. Cause they say, oh, I don't need social media because landscaping is a relationship business. And I see social media as part of establishing those relationships. You meet people on social media or the people that I meet in person, I connect with them, I see their posts and it contributes to the. It's not a replacement. Right. We're not just gonna, we're not sitting here like Instagramming each other.
22:26
George Egan
No.
22:26
Jack Jostes
Right.
22:26
George Egan
I'm putting a message at 8 o' clock at night that I might have never otherwise been able to do before.
22:31
Jack Jostes
Right.
22:32
George Egan
Like something that you post.
22:33
Jack Jostes
Yeah, for sure.
22:34
George Egan
Right.
22:36
Jack Jostes
So. So did Ryan end up coming and working for you?
22:39
George Egan
Oh, no, no. He just came in as. Just to come in and say hi and you know, and have a great conversation and talk shop and trade stories of customers that we shared between our two companies.
22:52
Jack Jostes
Sure.
22:52
George Egan
But it's just, you know, it's just a great thing to have to make those relationships.
22:57
Jack Jostes
Absolutely.
22:57
George Egan
And I think a big thing with social media too now is like were talking about, because it's blown up. Is being able to reach those Personas of those clients that you couldn't otherwise reached with targeted marketing by sending out a postcard. Now I can target a sponsored ad to a woman between the ages of 40 and 50 who might be my target Persona for a product that I'm selling and sponsor a specific ad just to that person that is actually our target client for Hardscape Patios. It's a woman between the age of 40 and 50 who lives in a house between 750,000 and a million dollars and lives in these specific zip codes. I can reach that person just from that one ad and target it to her.
Targeting Your Hell Yes Customer With Social Media Ads
23:40
Jack Jostes
Now, are you getting results from social? Paid social? Yes. Is that working well for you?
23:44
George Egan
Great results. And because we fine tuned it now, I've done it before where I've just boosted posts and got nothing out of it. But it's a matter of making sure you're making the right choices. We have a company that we're working with that's helping us with that.
23:57
Jack Jostes
Good.
23:58
George Egan
Yeah, it works out really well.
24:00
Jack Jostes
Yeah, I like hearing that and I like that. So that's a part of my presentation that I'm giving. Here is what I call hell yes customer. And you knew it's a woman between 40 and 50 with a home value of 750 to a million in these zip codes. And that's. And you mentioned outdoor living. Was it outdoor living or patios? Yeah. So that's a hel. Yes customer for that product.
24:25
George Egan
That's right.
24:25
Jack Jostes
Now the hell yes customer for the wholesale nursery is very different.
24:29
George Egan
Totally different.
24:30
Jack Jostes
It's very different. That's a contractor. And. And I think each service that you have likely has a hell yes customer. And what I see many landscape companies do is generally they say we're full service, and they kind of do full service advertising and marketing. And it's kind of boring. It's not specific. They're not thinking about an actual person like you are. So I think that's something that is working and that's why you're getting results. And so do social ads work? Yeah, if you have a specific offer for a specific person, sure. But if you put out a general ad, if you boost your post, that's not really. It's not really social advertising.
25:15
George Egan
Yeah, you want to reach that. Another Persona is Debbie, who is between 65 and 75 years old, and she's afraid of what her neighbors think of her house and her yachts, or she just wants it to look good so she wants her lawn mowed and maintained every week. Okay, so that's another Persona. Right. So she's a hell yes customer also. But that's for a yard post about yard maintenance or making sure.
25:41
Jack Jostes
And is Debbie in the 65 to 70 region? Are you reaching her with social ads?
25:46
George Egan
We are reaching her through Facebook.
25:48
Jack Jostes
I believe it.
25:49
George Egan
Yeah.
25:49
Jack Jostes
Yeah.
25:49
George Egan
But not so much with Instagram.
25:51
Jack Jostes
Absolutely. So I think the different platforms and I think you need to do multiple platforms.
25:56
George Egan
Yep. We do TikTok too, but we do TikTok because our clients might not be necessarily on TikTok, but their kids may be. And the kids will say, and if we do a funny video or something and they say, hey, or they share the video, they take the TikTok video and they share it and send it in a group text message to their family because we did that gets us, you know, organic reach on that. We're not paying on TikTok.
Recruiting Smarter With BambooHR And Indeed
26:20
Jack Jostes
So. So over the holidays, something happened. People applied. How many people applied?
26:24
George Egan
Over 60 people applied over the holidays.
26:27
Jack Jostes
Wow. Is that unseasonal or does that happen every holiday season?
26:33
George Egan
No, it's a record for us. But I think we've changed our tactic for hiring. So just like where we need to reach our target Personas for clients, we also need to reach our target Personas for employees, prospective employees, because we're always marketing to those two things. If we have too many clients, we need to market to employees because we don't have enough employees. Or if we have too many employees, well, we need more work, we get to market to clients. So we're using an HR program called Bamboo HR where we post job postings on Bamboo, push them out to Indeed and ZipRecruiter.
27:07
George Egan
And one of the tactics strategies we've used is instead of advertising for the job in the town that we're in just for Plymouth, we also advertise for the two towns in Massachusetts close to us where the most employees looking for those jobs are. And you can get that from analytics on Indeed. So people are looking for landscape foreman positions in Weymouth and Taunton. So we post three job postings, one for Plymouth, one for Weymouth and one for Taunton. And then in the body of the posting, we say it's for a Plymouth based location. So now they can make the decision whether they want to come to Plymouth or not. And that's been huge. That's really.
27:39
Jack Jostes
How far is Plymouth?
27:41
George Egan
Plymouth from both of those locations is about 15 to 20 miles. But employees will travel. We have employees that travel around.
27:50
Jack Jostes
So how long of a drive is that?
27:53
George Egan
Maybe 25 minutes.
27:56
Jack Jostes
That seems reasonable.
27:57
George Egan
It is reasonable. But the person who lived in Taunton may never put indeed. When he was looking for a job, he was looking for a landscape foreman job in place Plymouth. He would have put Taunton because he doesn't even think to put Plymouth. And then it comes up and now he can make his own decision. If he wants to travel to us. So the majority of our job applicants are from those two towns and not even from Plymouth, so it works out good. I'm curious to how the podcast itself. Now, originally, I'm assuming you started in the landscape industry, being a landscaper.
Documenting Systems With Trainual And Video Training
28:29
Jack Jostes
So I actually, my start in the green industry was working at a garden center, and I grew up gardening with my mom and my grandmother. And I remember getting this print calendar mailed to my house from the garden center, and that was where my soccer schedule, everything was just on this print paper calendar. And my first job was at Panera Bread Company and then I was 15. And then when I got a driver's license, I asked. I was like, mom and dad, I want to work at the garden center. So. So that was my first job, and that was more of a spring and summer job, and I did that five seasons. Fast forward. I became a public speaker for Constant Contact, the email marketing company, and they hired me to speak at the Pro Green Expo, which is a landscape show in Colorado.
29:16
Jack Jostes
And I just told the story. I used to work at a garden center, and they're like, oh, you know what we do? And I'm like, yeah, I know the difference between a nursery and a garden center, and irrigation and lawn care and all these things that I just kind of took for granted. And I got marketing clients. I had started a marketing company at that time, and it grew from that one talk. I got a garden center, arborist, and landscape company, and they got results. They referred me. I got invited to speak the next year, and then I just kind of started speaking at state shows and national shows like this. And after a few years, it was about half of my business, and that was nine years ago that I went all in and rebranded the whole focus of my company to landscaping.
30:00
Jack Jostes
So up until that point, we did landscaping and home service and lawyers and doctors and chiropractors and restaurants, and it was kind of chaotic. And during that time, though, I started a silly show called Friday's Informal Facebook Films. And literally one Friday, my business partner and I made a video and posted it on Facebook. And it was about something quirky with technology and a marketing tip. And I emailed it out to my database, and then I got a good response, and I did it the next Friday. And then it became like a Friday video that I did for about 10 years, and it had various evolutions. And then in 2020, so six years ago, I rebranded it as the Landscaper's Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing and introduced it also as an audio podcast. So it's a video and audio podcast.
30:59
George Egan
Wow, that's interesting. Do you find. Well, I'm sure I know the answer to this because this is something that I've, as of the last few years, really kind of come to realize that the concepts in business that you talk about, they fit really any business. The main concepts, talking about, you know, people, sales and marketing, operations, finance. And you could speak publicly, speak on, probably, I'm guessing on stage. To reach any target by narrowing that in. That's been a big interesting thing for me to kind of come to realize. I knew that anyways. But I feel more comfortable. Like if somebody had asked me five years ago, hey, could you run a restaurant? I'd say, absolutely not. Why would I run a restaurant? I don't know anything about a restaurant.
31:44
George Egan
But now, knowing what I know now and what I've learned, I feel like I could say, bring it on.
31:49
Jack Jostes
Yeah. I mean, a lot of business is pretty simple. You need customers who are willing to pay you money for something they don't want to do themselves, whether it's making a meal or installing a landscape or building a website for their landscape company. So there is a lot. And then you need great people, you need great employees and team members to take care of your clients. And you need bookkeeping and all the things. And you're going to pay taxes.
32:16
George Egan
Right?
32:17
Jack Jostes
Right. Yeah. So there is a lot. And the key to growth is having great people and great systems and great customers. So that's a key part of what I learned was, and why I decided to focus on the landscape industry was I was like, I literally, I did a sales by Customer report in QuickBooks in descending order. So I had my highest paying clients and I just started listing, I added a column and I was like, remodeling, landscaping. And then I just kind of had an other group and I found that. And then I added, how much do I enjoy working with these clients? And I found that my highest paying clients that I enjoyed working with were landscapers.
33:01
George Egan
Oh, that's good.
33:02
Jack Jostes
Yeah. So I think it's because you guys get to spend so much time outside. Landscapers are generally really easy to work with.
33:11
George Egan
We're down to earth.
33:13
Jack Jostes
No, really, they are down to earth. And I think landscapers are resources, resourceful and resilient and also generous. I'd say that the industry is really generous. You know, like that story of you and Ryan getting together and sharing, just having a conversation is kind of the spirit of the industry. And so I didn't know that's What I wanted until, you know, eight years into running my business, it was kind of chaotic. I had, I think, five or six employees, and I was in debt, and I really wasn't making any money. And I had a coach who's like, hey, you could make it, but you need to. You need to niche down into something.
33:51
George Egan
Right.
33:52
Jack Jostes
And so I never would have thought 17 years ago that I'd be running a marketing company for landscapers and a podcast for it. But I love doing it.
33:59
George Egan
Yeah, it's great. I learn something new every day. Now we're starting to implement Trainual. I don't know if you've heard of Truly.
34:05
Jack Jostes
Yeah, I know Trainual.
34:06
George Egan
Yeah. So, like, that's something that we're building every process out for our company and documenting it. And had you. Somebody said to me 10 years ago that you have to make a list of everything you do and put it down. I would have said, you're crazy. I'm too busy. I don't have time to do that. But now it's so important to do that.
34:22
Jack Jostes
One habit that I took on that I want to share with you and with the audience was to make one training video a week. And I actually make way more than that now or some weeks, I make more. I have thousands of training videos. So things that I used to do, like how to request an invoice or how to get the client's credit card information or how to. All these little administrative things I was doing just became video. I use Loom. That's the tool that we use. And Loom is amazing because you can record a screencast. They actually have an iPhone app.
34:56
George Egan
Oh, wow.
34:57
Jack Jostes
So I don't know if Trainual has an app.
35:01
George Egan
Yeah, they do.
35:01
Jack Jostes
But I don't know whether it's. I'm not working with Loom or Trainual. I think they're both great. But the point is, make video content. Video content is one of the best ways that you can train people. And when people quit or leave or you fire them or whatever, the video is ready. The video is ready to be watched. And to me, that's the ultimate leverage in systems like Loom or we use Learndash. Learndash is simply a WordPress plugin that allows you to basically build your WordPress website into an online training system. Trainual is really good. Yeah, I know a lot of people are using leanscaper. It's growing. There's a lot of Amazing Bradley's company.
35:56
George Egan
Right.
35:56
Jack Jostes
For sure.
35:57
George Egan
I take. So I look at. I have a sign in and username. For leanscaper. And I take little nuggets from everything that I can and try to utilize them the best we can. What I liked about Trainual was, you know, you document your process. We make sure that we have a specific format for every single process because we want them all to look identical. We have a vision statement, a commitment statement, and execution steps for every process. And then we build that process out, and we make this execution steps specifically in groups of three to four at a time. So as the employee goes on Trainual, whether it's on their phone or on the screen, they see the steps pop on, like, slides.
36:33
George Egan
Trainual has an AI integration where it will ask, create a quiz at the end of that process and quiz that employee on that process.
36:41
Jack Jostes
I like that. The quiz component.
36:42
George Egan
Yeah.
36:44
Jack Jostes
I recently created Green Industry 101. Okay. And so when I actually have a new employee who started yesterday, and I called him and I was like, hey. And it's funny. I run a remote company, and I even said this on the phone. I'm like, hey, I'm out of town. But I'm like, we work remotely anyways. But I'll be meeting with you on Zoom next week when I'm back. And one of the things that we'll personally do is Green Industry 101. So I have an online course, because not everyone worked at a garden center.
37:13
George Egan
Right.
37:13
Jack Jostes
And knows the difference between all these things. But I've created a course with quizzes, and then we do, like, a verbal interview where it's like, hey, tell me about the irrigation industry. Or, what is commercial bid build? What does bid build mean? So some of this industry lingo, they're like, oh, yeah, I watched a video, I did the quiz, I talked to somebody. And then the podcast, you were asking about how I started, it partly becomes ongoing education for my team, because each week they're gonna hear this conversation with you. They didn't get to meet you in person, but again, that, to me, is the power of video.
37:51
George Egan
Yeah, Yeah, I agree.
How To Connect With George Egan
37:53
Jack Jostes
Well, George, it's been really fun talking with you. For folks listening, how can we network with you? How can we connect?
38:01
George Egan
Well, you can find me on. You can find me on social media. My Instagram is meetgeorgeegan. My company is Egan Landscape Group on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. And if anybody wants to reach out and email me, it's Georgeegan@landscapegroup.com.
38:20
Jack Jostes
Cool. Well, thanks for sharing that. And, George, you're also. We didn't spend much time on this. You're the VP of the Cape Cod Landscape Association Board of Directors. So I just wanted to personally thank you and the board for having me speak at this show. It's been a great time.
38:35
George Egan
Oh, we're happy to have you. We're really excited to have you on board as a keynote speaker. So thanks for coming.
38:41
Jack Jostes
My pleasure. Thanks so much for watching today’s video, if you enjoyed this conversation with George Egan, make sure you like this video and subscribe to our YouTube Chanel, so you don’t miss our weekly podcast featuring conversations with inspired leaders from the landscape industry. I’m Jack Jostes and I’ll se you in the next video.