Is your office and sales staff overwhelmed with unqualified leads? Well, what if you had a video that you sent to each customer that not only pre-qualified them, but helped you get the budget faster and close more sales? Today, I interview a very successful landscape company owner who's using video throughout his website. He has over 100 videos. Why? Well, let's ask him and see, how is he doing it? How did he get started, and how much does he spend on it now? Plus, he runs the company with not only his brother and his wife, but other family members, and he shares some tips for balancing the family dynamic of his company. Let's get into today's episode.
Hey, everyone. Jack Jostes here, and welcome to The Landscaper's Guide. This show is all about helping landscapers run a more enjoyable company through sales, marketing, and leadership ideas. One of the things that I love helping people with is shortening their sales time, shortening the amount of time that they're spending so they can enjoy more family time and things like that, and today's guest shares his story of how he went from having to do sales on every Saturday and Sunday and working 100 hours a week to replacing what he says is actually the time and cost of two full-time people by using video. And he shares how he does it, how much he spends on it, and some of his process. Plus, he gets into the family dynamic and what's working for him. I hope you enjoy today's show. And if you're new here, make sure you subscribe at landscapersguide.com/podcast, and I'll send you our top three podcasts right away.
Now let's get into the conversation with Jason Turpin. All right, everyone. Welcome to The Landscaper's Guide. Today, I'm excited to have Jason Turpin, who's one of the owners at Turpin Landscape Design Build in Chester County, Pennsylvania. They do incredible work. They use a ton of video. In fact, I think you have the most video on your website of any of my clients. So today, I wanted to talk to you about why do you do that? How is it working? What are some of the benefits? How are you doing it? What are some lessons you've learned along the way? Because a lot of people want to get started with video, but they're intimidated. They're not sure how to do it. But before we do that, Jason, tell us a little bit about Turpin Landscape Design Build.
Jason Turpin:
Yeah. So I'm Jason Turpin. We are in Chester County, Pennsylvania, about 30 miles outside Philadelphia. We started in 2001. My brother and I started, like many landscapers out there, mowing grass. And then from there, we just really enjoyed the design build, heavy on the water feature side, now heavy on the pool side as well. We are about a five million a year company and have a little over 30 employees. Seasonal changes that a little bit at certain times of the year.
Jack Jostes:
Awesome. And for people listening, so you guys primarily do design build projects, typically, always with a pond or a pool. Is that accurate?
Jason Turpin:
To be very straightforward, that is definitely our marketing strategy. We definitely advertise the water side, whether that's water feature, and once you get your foot in the door for one of those, everything else tends to come with it. So we really are a one-stop shop. That's another one of our strategies. We will take care of pretty much the entire project.
Just quickly about us, I found a passion in the water feature side early on, actually in high school when a contractor came in and did ponds for kids, and that's how I started building bonds. My brother was starting to do the hardscape side, and then my mom works with us as well, and she started doing the landscape side. And from there, it just grew. But we are, yes, to answer your question, water first and then everything else with it.
Jack Jostes:
And that's interesting because what I love about working with landscapers is I don't have any two landscapers who necessarily love doing the same thing, but I can say that many of my clients do not like doing the water side. They don't like doing water features. They don't like doing pools. They're the bane of their existence. And this is your strategy, is to get in and do that first. And you guys do it really well. The photos, the drone videos, all those different things are just exceptional. How have you figured out how to enjoy doing it and make a profit at it?
Jason Turpin:
You've just got to overcome it. We don't fail well. We fail often, but we don't fail well. So when we fail, we just keep going until we get it figured out. We don't quit. And on the water feature side, luckily I had some really good features early on, and the pool side is newer. It's been within about the last four or five years. And to be honest, we're still figuring that part out. It definitely has its own set of hurdles. The water feature side, and even some of the masonry side, my brother and I just didn't quit. There was times where it got tough, and we just kept moving forward with it. But we're both pretty good about finding somebody that is better at it than we are and go try and do what they're doing and just never stop that attitude.
A Family Business
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, you can't. I think getting started is so important in business for anything. The services you provide your clients, and then also with video. Getting started, you just have to go do it and keep doing it if you want it, and learn from other people. I'm curious. You run a five million dollar company with your brother and your mom. Do you have other family businesses in your family? Are there other people who are running a family business?
Jason Turpin:
Yeah, we have a lot of family involved. My wife works with us. John, one of my top guys, his wife is my office manager, and John actually has a lot to do with starting the entire pool side, or everything to do is starting the entire pool side. So we embraced the family. Real quick story, I remember one time I hired a business coach. You mentioned struggles before, and gone through some things. Everybody goes through them, every company goes through them, and I remember one time we were sitting in there and we had a lot of family involved, and it's always a little bit of a different subject there. We're sitting there, we're going through it, and one of the business coaches looks up at me and goes, "You do know you caused this, right?" And what he meant by that was just how much family was truly involved. At that moment, we embraced it, and we really like working with family. I feel that we're good at it.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting. So your wife is there, your brother, your mom ...
Jason Turpin:
My brother's wife.
Jack Jostes:
Your brother's wife. So what's good about that, and then what are also maybe some of the challenges? You're not alone. A lot of our audience, a lot of my clients work with their family, and I know that it's hard. At periods, my wife has had a more active role in the company, and that was really fun. And then it also was stressful. Should we talk about work at 10 o'clock at night or not? All the lines get blurred, and it can get messy, but it can also be great, and there's a level of trust that's there. What's that like for you all and how have you figured it out?
Jason Turpin:
You've really pinpointed just a lot of topics right there. I mean, the trust one would be one way that you figure it out. There's nobody that you trust more, or nobody that I trust more anyway, than knowing that my brother is out there doing what he's doing, and my wife's doing her portion. That trust is there, and it's huge. And that is some of the hardest part about building a team, is that trust part. So when you have a team already that you trust, it allows you to grow and do different things.
The hard part is also what you just said. When should you talk about things, and when shouldn't you? And for us, my brother and I have always been good at arguing, and this was years ago, arguing and then going to dinner that night and not bringing it up. Somehow we have always just been able to do that. To be honest, with your wife, that always gets a little bit more tricky because it's a 10 o'clock at night conversation. So we have some clear roles. We use a really technical word called "timeout." And if we call time out, it's over, it's done. There's no more talking about work, and everybody's got the right to say that, and it really seems to work for us.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. I think that's really important. One of the things that really helped me and my wife was actually writing job descriptions and having like, "No, this is my job. This is your job," kind of thing. That gave us some clarity because there was a lack of clarity about what we were doing. And then also I learned a good question I would ask is like, "Hey, I have this idea for Ramblin Jackson. Can I talk to you about it right now?" And she's like, "You know what? Not right now. I'm watching a show, or I'm tired," or whatever. And then a lot of times it was a yes, and then we might have a really great conversation. And sometimes it was 10 o'clock at night, I think, yeah, getting those boundaries and getting the timeout or the, "I don't want to talk about this right now," I think is really key.
Jason Turpin:
It is. Absolutely. So it's awesome. We love it. We've embraced it since that little story that I told you, and now it's like, "We can do this," and it's pretty cool. And then we've got other people that really good friends with and their family members working there. So it's wild. It's wild. It's cool, though.
Jack Jostes:
Hey, it's the end of summer and we're heading into fall, which means it's time for conferences and cool things in the green industry. I'm going to be doing a lot of exciting virtual and live events that I'd love to see you at. So be sure to check out landscapersguide.com/events and join us at one of our upcoming events, including our booth at NALP's Elevate Conference in Orlando. If you're going, I want to see you there. So check it out in the show notes, landscapersguide.com/events, and let's get back into the conversation with Jason.
Is Video Worth It In The Landscape Industry?
When we work with our clients, we always do an audit where we thoroughly assess, "What do you have? What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What's your local market like? What are your competitors doing?" And one of the things that we score, which is part of my book with The Foundation of Digital Marketing, is video. On your YouTube channel, I've noticed, I think you have over 100 videos. So do you know-
Jason Turpin:
Yes. Yes, we do.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. So, I mean, that's-
Jason Turpin:
I don't know exactly how many. But we're over 100. Well over 100.
Jack Jostes:
I mean, that's a lot of videos for ... I mean, it's above average for YouTube channels, and it's probably top one percent for landscape companies. And YouTube does share your stats. You've had over 311,000 views since you started your channel just four years ago. It was actually four years ago, August. We're recording this in August. So that's pretty amazing. So why do you do that? I mean, videos take time, they take energy, they require shooting and editing and then putting on the website. There's a lot of work that goes into it. I'm a big advocate of it. Obviously, I have video all over my website. I recommend it to my clients. There's always a lot of resistance of, "Is it worth it?" So Jason, why do you have so many videos on your website and on YouTube?
Jason Turpin:
So everything starts a little bit with a challenge, right? Whether it's, how do you show your work or how do you be a little bit different? But to me, I feel that video is just what's coming. I want to almost say it's easier now to show what's possible and what you can do. For us, it was design build, which makes it even easier than some other lawn services and things. But I do feel that video would work for every single company.
So the way that it started out, basically, was on the maintenance side of things for us. And it was regarding water feature maintenance, pond maintenance, and it was, "How can we be, yes, a little bit different?" But when I tell somebody, "Hey, we're going to do a pond clean-out for you," a lot of people are, "What the heck is a pond clean-out?" And there was so many questions that my office was getting bombarded with, "Do you drain the water all the way? What do I need to do? And how much does it cost?" And a whole bunch of different things that we thought the best way to do that, and we've had some other vendors and some other influencers that were doing video, and I just said, "Hey, I think we can do this. I think we can answer some frequently asked questions through video."
Jack Jostes:
That's one of the reasons I love video is you make it one time, and you can send it to dozens or hundreds or eventually thousands of clients. I mean, technology will change, and you'll use different equipment, but the pond clean-out is going to stay the same over time, right? So you could probably get over five years from that one video and that can alleviate your office staff. A lot of people come to me and they say, "Jack, I'm understaffed. I can't hire one." And yeah, you have to hire people. You need people.
I see marketing and video as a solution to operational challenges. Okay, my office staff is answering the phone, spending sometimes hours every day answering the same questions. What if I just made a video that answered that? So I love that that's how that got you started, and then it grew from there. So you made more than just the pond maintenance, pond clean-out video. What were some of the results of that, that led you to keep going?
Jason Turpin:
Well, you already mentioned it in the beginning. It started working immediately. Not because it was like a bunch of people started ... We still don't have enough followers on YouTube channel, as far as I'm concerned. We want more, of course. But it wasn't like we released these videos on YouTube and people started watching. That wasn't how it worked and it wasn't how it was used. Like you said, it was used to give information or show our work that we would use YouTube just to host it and then push out to people.
Well, what's starting to happen now, and we're feeling really good about that, is now, all of a sudden, we're starting to get some leads off of YouTube. There's three reasons I love video. After we were trying to get the information out, the next one, it became part of our sales process. And by us using it in our sales process, by the time we get out to somebody's yard, we thought that it would make us the professional in the area and it would show people what we could do.
Yes, it did that. But the one thing that did that I didn't realize is it's amazing the difference of walking up to somebody's house, and this is just a cool feeling, but walking up to somebody's house to say hi to them, and before it was always you would introduce yourself. Now they walk up and they're like, "Hey, Jason. How are you?" And it's almost like they know you. That rapport is already there because they just watched you on video for a minute or two or five, or sometimes it's a lot more than that. And it's amazing the rapport that was built from them having a little bit of video. They're more comfortable with you by the time you show up at their house. So that would be one of my favorites.
How He Went From Having To Do Sales On Every Saturday And Sunday To Replacing What He Says By Using Video
The next one was the sales process part, the pond maintenance portion, where we were answering the same questions over and over and over again. We were able to use our video. We were able to use our video to answer a lot of those questions again. Here's an example. We're not the cheapest in the area. We don't want to be the cheapest in the area. Many people, we bid a pool, people come back to us and say, "Hey, you're a little bit higher. We just want to make sure we're comparing apples to apples." We have the Eight Hidden Cost video of putting in a pool that we shoot out the clients.
Now we shoot it out before. We used to shoot it out just afterwards, when we got that answer. But now we shoot it out many times throughout the process, knowing that a lot of other pool companies in this area don't include yard cleanup, don't include electrical cost, don't include landscaping, don't include some fencing. So we do a lot of things where we want to be that one-stop shop. But how do you tell people that? We use that video for that. So we are able to use video to be the professional, to help get people to know us. And the biggest one, is it really helping our sales process?
Jack Jostes:
What would be the result, maybe ballpark, or maybe you know in the time that you've saved and/or maybe the close rate, the number of people who say yes now, after you started using this?
Jason Turpin:
So that's a little bit hard for me to answer because we changed our entire process at that time, right?
Jack Jostes:
Okay.
Jason Turpin:
My process used to be, "Just get me at their yard. Get me at their house, and I'll close 20, 30%." And I spent all day Saturday, all day Sunday. That's all I did was consultations. As video was coming about, we had a much better process that we learned where we ask people to send pictures in. We have a full conversation on the phone. We discuss a lot of different topics, including budget, and we make sure that we're on the same page. We then charge a consultation fee to go out, a design fee from there. And those fees are not because we want to collect a bunch of money. Those fees are just qualifiers. But sometimes that takes a little bit of time to get through that process. So we use video in the middle of that to, "Hey, let me show you what that size pool will look that or that size water feature will look like." So we use that along the way.
Jack Jostes:
I love it. Yeah. So you're doing a lot of things really well that I just want to acknowledge. One is you're not going out and meeting with everyone anymore. That's one of the things that if I could get all my clients ... I get so many people who come in. They're like, "Jack, I'm working 100 hours a week and we're in debt," and all these problems. And I think you have to go and do this for a while. You have to go and try and sell to everyone to realize that it's not a very good idea, because it's almost counterintuitive like, "I'm not going to go try and sell to everyone," but you're qualifying, and then you're charging a little bit along the way, and you're giving them videos along the way. This is such a great process. It's disqualifying people and it's positioning you as the expert, and it's helping you justify charging more. You're educating them, and you don't need to do it more than once. You already made the video. So it just works for you.
Jason Turpin:
And one thing, if I could add based on what you said, in the beginning, my office staff especially was like, "Oh my gosh, this isn't working," as we changed their sales process, as we were bringing video into that. But what we realized was it was working. And the reason why we felt like it wasn't working is we were getting nervous by those seven that were saying no. And the three that were going to say yes, once we got out to their yard, still said yes. So it was actually a good sales process and a good video system and all of that stuff that starts working is when it's actually ... It was a different mindset for me than what I thought it was going to be. And it's actually because just eliminating those ones that weren't going to go through anyway.
Jack Jostes:
Well, that's a challenge that I experience in the work that I do, is people will come to me and they'll say, "Jack, I don't want more leads. I want more qualified leads." So we ramp up the qualification on the website, pricing pages, videos, and sometimes your total lead count goes down. But you have to measure the quality cause if the quality goes up and you're still closing the same three, like you said, but you don't need to meet with the six who aren't going to buy, that's a good result.
Partly, I think a lot of people don't think about the cost of sales, the actual financial cost of going out and driving somewhere, meeting with someone, preparing a proposal. And then the lifestyle cost. If you're spending every Saturday and Sunday forever meeting with ... And partly, it's just depressing when you're meeting with a ton of people who don't end up buying. What are maybe some things that you've learned in the last four years of doing this that maybe didn't work and then what's working now?
Jason Turpin:
What's working now is knowing what you're good at, knowing what you're not good at. I do outsource editing, and sometimes I even outsource shooting. We're using some different things, programs along the way, to take some pictures and get what they need, but then we have a guy come out and do the final shoot for us and the final edit for us. So we do put some money into it. About 40,000 bucks a year is about what I'm spending on video. You don't have to go that high, but that's truly what I'm spending. That's not necessarily including 100% percent of my time, but my time is pretty short now. I don't put a whole lot. I probably only put about 12 to 15 hours a year now because we're going pretty fast. So I have a guy that does it. He does some green screen work as well as he goes out and gets all the B roll for me and things like that.
How Much He Spends On It, And Some Of His Process
Jack Jostes:
So right now there are people listening who are a five million company who are spending less than 40,000 dollars total on marketing, and here you are spending 40 on video. And they must be thinking, "This guy is nuts." Is it worth it? It must be, if you're continuing to do it.
Jason Turpin:
It's absolutely worth it. I would need another person in the office and another person selling if we weren't able to shoot them a video and say, "Hey, just so you know, this project was roughly 150,000 or 30,000 bucks. And the project size doesn't matter. We do all different size projects, but if I were to shoot them out a video and say, "Hey, just so you know, based on looking at your yard, pictures that we have, I can visualize something like this. Every project is different, but here's an example, and you're probably in about the 30,000 range with this." And my office staff is able to do that quickly without going through a whole lot, and if we didn't have that, I would end up with more staff because of it where video replaces a lot of that.
Jack Jostes:
I agree. Not that we want to replace people, but we want to run an efficient business, and if you can use technology or video to do something, you absolutely should. And here's the great thing about the video. You don't need to train the video. You don't need to onboard the video. You don't need to give the video a performance improvement plan and fire the video and then start hiring, training, recruiting another video, right? You make the video one time, and it just works. It doesn't get sick. It's out there, and then you can train your staff to send the video to people. So Jason, you had some questions for me about video before we started that I thought might be helpful to other people listening.
How To Be More Efficient Producing Videos
Jason Turpin:
Yeah. So I'll tell you, I mentioned that I do spend quite a bit on editing and things. We're always trying to improve. One of the things for me is we do a lot on site. Yes, we do some green screen work, but we do a lot on site as well. So I'm just looking for some more efficient ways that we can have some things set up so that it's not ... We're good at it, but it still takes a lot of time. You know what I mean? So how can we get this shortened up a little bit?
Jack Jostes:
Last year I bought a second home, and I renovated ... There's a 500 square foot garage with an apartment above it, and I renovated the garage into a video studio. One of the ways that I've become really efficient is I have about 10 by 10 foot area. I have my wood wall here. I have a 60 inch light dome here. I'm surrounded by sound panel blankets. And I created, basically, a little setup here. And this is where I work, and on my desk, I have a camera, I have my mic mounted. I have my light. So I was just sharing with you before this, I can be set up and recording video in less than 10 seconds.
I guess, to answer your question, if you're going to be producing a high volume of videos, I like having a studio set up like this. I actually have green paper. It's photography paper, so I could do green screen. Getting started is where the most important thing. I have a client down in Texas, Shades of Green Nursery, they started just using their iPhone and an audio recorder. This is the audio recorder I like. It's the Zoom H1n, and they made amazing video. And then, two years later, they got a better camera and so on. So you've just got to get started with it.
Jason Turpin:
Two things I'd like to add, Jack. One is I appreciate you letting me know what you're doing. I want to get more efficient with it so that we can actually do more of it. So here you are saying that we have a bunch of video out there, but I think we can do better, and we can do more of it. And here's what I'm talking about.
There's some things that you don't ever see on YouTube, and you don't need a studio for this, but now we're starting to get to the point where if we had that, it would be great. But sometimes we will just take our phone and shoot them a video of their materials going into the back of the truck. Let's say we're going to have to do a small little waterfall and landscape around it, we'll shoot them just a quick video with our iPhone, just, "Hey, hey, here's your material going in the back," just a picture of the truck, guys jumping in the back, moving some things around. Turn the phone around, hold it on yourself and say, "Hey, it's Jason. I'm just letting know I'm very excited to get out of your project tomorrow morning. We're loaded up. We'll see you ta 7:00 AM."
I'd like to add just one thing, if you don't mind, and that is ... You already started on it, is just getting started. Just get started. It's all you've got to do. I was asking Jack a little bit about his equipment, because we're trying to become more efficient, but as far as my recommendation would be get started. Don't go spend a whole bunch of money on equipment. Don't go crazy. Use your phone. Use a GoPro. It's amazing what those these can do. I heard what you were talking about with sunlight. For me, our videos aren't perfect. I make a whole bunch of mistakes. Our sunlight is not right, we shoot at the wrong time of the day, but that's better than nothing. So we don't always focus on perfect video. We just focus on getting the content out and the people that are seeing it, I don't think are expecting perfect video. It's YouTube. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Jack Jostes:
Awesome. Well, we could just keep hanging out and talking about video, but we've got to wrap up. If people do want to connect with you, check out your videos, or maybe ask you a question, how can we reach you?
Jason Turpin:
Yeah. So give us a call. I mean, give us a call if you'd like. I'm happy to talk to anybody about anything. You can absolutely jump on our website, Turpinlandscapedesign.com, which has all of our contact information and our YouTube channel, of course.
Jack Jostes:
Awesome. Well, again, I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And Jason, you've been a wealth of information. Keep up the amazing work, not only the landscape and construction work, but the video content. And thanks for sharing this on the show.
Jason Turpin:
Thank you very much.
Jack Jostes:
Well, that was awesome. Jason is just killing it. Make sure you check out his YouTube channel. And I'm curious, are you using video? If not, why not? It's so powerful. Now I've literally made thousands of videos in my career, and the ones that I'm doing now are way better than the ones that I did 12 or 14 years ago. But the key is you've got to get started. And I know it's hard, so I may be able to help you save a ton of time. If you're curious about video, using it for your business, we offer video as a service at Ramblin Jackson.
So check out Ramblinjackson.com/video to learn more about the way that we can help you with it. In addition to collaborating with local people in your market, whatever you do, get started, create content that answers questions that your customers have, and you will help them. And by helping them, they will trust you, and you will close more sales. My name's Jack Jostes, and I look forward to talking with you next week on The Landscaper's Guide.