00:00 Introduction
Jack Jostes:
Have you ever thought about giving back to your local community by volunteering time with some of your landscape employees? Today I just volunteered at a local nonprofit in the Denver area with two of the Ramblin Jackson staff who live near me in Colorado. And we interview one of the employees from this nonprofit, plus share a bunch of ideas about how you could get involved with your landscape company by either donating or volunteering, maybe it's not to this particular nonprofit, but there's probably one in your local community. Check out today's interview to get some ideas on how you can do that, plus the team building and marketing benefit that you can get from it.
Hey, it's Jack Jostes. Welcome to The Landscaper's Guide. Right now I'm at the Ronald McDonald House in Aurora, Colorado, and this morning I volunteered to make breakfast for about 35 people with Aaron and Robert. They are two of the Ramblers from the Ramblin Jackson team. And it was a really great experience. We made bacon and eggs, we brought orange juice and apple juice and bagels and bars and stuff. And it was overall a really good team building experience. And for the last few years, we've been a fully remote company and we did a volunteering event for the green industry with the Industry Collective.
They help you coordinate a volunteering event, they specialize in doing this in the green industry. We worked with them and we made over 75 meal kits and donated them to a church in Lyons where I live, and I have several clients who have participated. It's an amazing way to get your people together, build relationships amongst your team members, and ultimately give back. You can make a really big impact. And on this show, on The Landscaper's Guide, I interviewed the founder of the Industry Collective, Jamie Waldron, who shared with me that you should talk about it in your marketing. Honestly, I used to feel uncomfortable sharing that I was donating or volunteering. But what I learned from Jamie is that it helps the nonprofit that you're mentioning and it helps inspire other people to do so.
2:18 Inspiring Generosity
Jamie Waldron:
The goal is not to brag like, "Look at what I've done, we're so awesome." But it does inspire generosity. It inspires other people to participate, and it gives opportunity for more people to be impacted. And I had to wrestle with that in my head because I could do all of this quietly. We could go behind the scenes, just fill all of these things, but you would never have known had they never talked about it. And all of the people that will choose to participate if they don't share it, there are kids down the street that could have really benefited from that opportunity. And I think it inspires people.
Jack Jostes:
It's May 2023, and I stayed at the Ronald McDonald House. I honestly can't remember how many nights, but my son was born eight years ago and had to stay at the NICU across the street for 11 days. It was a really hard time on my family, and we live about an hour and a half drive from here. But because of the Ronald McDonald House, I was able to stay here for free and be with my son and be with my wife and pray with them and be with them. And I brought my mandolin and I played music for my son. And thinking back on that, it was a really hard time. It was like boom, all of a sudden I'm at the hospital and needing to just trust doctors and trust these nurses and let them do their thing and do what I could do.
And it would've been really hard to have either scrounged up the money to stay in a hotel or an Airbnb or to pay for all the meals and things, and being able to stay here was a significant relief. I'm a big fan of the Ronald McDonald House. I hadn't heard of it before having to stay here, but I'm really grateful that I was able to. Next, I want to interview somebody who works here so you can learn a little bit about it. They're all over the country and world, and here's what David has to say.
Right now I'm in the cafeteria at the Ronald McDonald House in Aurora, Colorado, and I'm talking with David Wexler, who's the guest services associate. David, thanks for coming on the show.
David Wexler:
I'm glad to be here.
Jack Jostes:
Tell us, what is the Ronald McDonald House and how many of them are there in the world?
4:35 What Is The Ronald McDonald House?
David Wexler:
The Ronald McDonald House is a place for families to stay while their children are receiving medical care. The child has to be 21 or younger, and the family has to live at least 60 miles from the hospital. There are 300 Ronald McDonald Houses, thereabouts, in the United States.
Jack Jostes:
And how many are in the world total?
David Wexler:
I think 350.
Jack Jostes:
Wow.
David Wexler:
It's an international organization.
Jack Jostes:
I stayed here eight years ago when my son was born, and he was in the NICU for 11 days. And it was so great to be able to stay here. And it's basically a free, it's not a hotel, I think it's more like a dormitory almost, where there's private rooms with private bathrooms, and then there are these cafeterias where they provide breakfast and things. And it just had such a huge impact for my family to have that resource. I know you weren't here at that time, but thank you for having this and for working here.
David Wexler:
To me, it's unbelievable that we're able to provide this for families because here's one thing you don't have to worry about. You have a place to stay and you don't have to worry about paying for it, and now you can focus on all the other things that are going on in your life.
Jack Jostes:
It was incredibly helpful to have that. I wanted to talk to you about it to see how can the audience of this show is primarily lawn and landscape companies throughout the United States. Some of them have five people, some of them have 150 people. And I found a lot of value in bringing my team here today. I brought two of my employees, we're a mostly remote company, but I had two people from the Denver area, Aaron and Robert who came and we helped make breakfast today, and it was a great event. How can businesses listening throughout the country get involved?
6:28 How To Get Involved
David Wexler:
There's a lot of different ways to get involved. You could go to our website, rmhc-denver.org, and there's a big red button that says, "Donate now." That's a very simple way to make a cash donation. The other things that we offer to volunteers is we have people who sign up for three hour shifts throughout the day and evening who just come and work at the front desk and help us manage the house. We have meal groups three or four days a week that come cook breakfast, come cook dinner, sometimes brunch on the weekends, things like that. Sometimes we have volunteer groups who really want to get down and dirty and will come in deep clean our kitchen and pantry areas, which is always helpful. Those are the main ways I would say that you can volunteer and give to the house. There's a lot of other ways, I'm sure on our website it talks about those as well.
Jack Jostes:
And with 300 locations around the country, I think there are three in Denver and then the rest throughout the country. People watching, what was the website again to check out?
David Wexler:
Jack Jostes:
Okay, cool. I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And what else should businesses know who are listening, what are some of the things that they've told you after they've done volunteering?
David Wexler:
I think for the people who volunteer and I myself have volunteered with my family and friends, I think what they really enjoy is interacting with the families and our families are going through a lot. And to just sit down and relax and have breakfast provided for you, again, one more thing you don't have to worry about for that day. I think mainly for our volunteer groups, it's just interacting with our families who are wonderful.
Jack Jostes:
And tell me a little bit, I was curious to know, Ronald McDonald House, what does it have to do with McDonald's and then how much of it is not McDonald's, I was curious about the funding of this.
8:30 Does McDonald’s Fund The Houses?
David Wexler:
Again, there's probably a lot of people who are better historians than I am, but my understanding is it was originally started in Philadelphia and wholly funded by the McDonald's corporation. Over time, they've transitioned. We still get support from the McDonald's, but 25% or thereabouts of our budget come from local franchises that contribute pennies on meals and things like that. We're lucky enough to have some big corporate donors, and then it's also people just clicking that, "Donate now," button and making a donation or making a $10 a month donation. It basically takes everyone in the community to support the house and provide a place for families to stay.
Jack Jostes:
That's awesome. There's a lot of different ways people can get involved. And David, thanks so much for coming on The Landscaper's Guide.
David Wexler:
And thank you so much for cooking this morning. And you guys had a lean team, three people, and you cranked it out. It was awesome.
Jack Jostes:
We did. I was on bacon duty and bacon was a hit today. Bacon and eggs were a hit, and I cooked about 10 pounds and I'd say nine and a half of them went really well. I forgot one tray of bacon in that lower oven and it got a little burned, but otherwise maybe 95% of the bacon was pretty good.
David Wexler:
And I'm sure the families were very appreciative despite that one.
Jack Jostes:
They didn't know. It was a little smokey, but we recovered from it. Thank you. You guys made it really easy. You've got the kitchen. We basically went to Costco, went to the grocery store, got some food, brought it, cooked it, cleaned up, and we were out of here by 10:30.
David Wexler:
I think the way they run our meals are pretty efficient. Everything's pretty well set up for people to just come in, do what they do.
10:25 Making Time For Volunteering
Jack Jostes:
For people listening, if you have a small team or you could bring your whole team, or if you have a big team, you could send a few people. It doesn't have to be a huge strain on your business. A lot of people are listening and thinking, "Oh, I don't have time to do that," but maybe a few of your people could go for a few hours once a quarter, that sort of thing would help.
David Wexler:
And what's interesting too is that we have groups from the Ronald McDonald House, and we do service projects at other places in Denver where we go for two or three hours in the morning like food pantries and things like that, then back to work in the afternoon.
Jack Jostes:
That's awesome. Cool, David. Thank you.
David Wexler:
Thank you so much for coming. We really appreciate it.
11:08 Making Significance The Final Stage Of Building Your Business
Jack Jostes:
Whether you decide to donate to the Ronald McDonald House or volunteer here or find another nonprofit, I think part of growing a business and creating wealth is being generous and sharing, and that could be in time, it could be in money. I interviewed James Martin on the podcast and he was talking about how significance is the final of four stages of building your business. That was an awesome interview. I'm going to put that in the show notes too. But he created a scholarship for the kids of his employees to go to school. That was just a really interesting way of giving back to his people. Volunteering with your business and also donating can be an opportunity for link building. A lot of clients talk to me about SEO, "How do I rank highly on Google?" There's a lot of things we can control, the words we use on our website. On-page SEO, building out a limb for each city and a branch for each service with The Tree of Good Fortune.
That's something that we do. And then we're able to build some links for clients. But one of the things that's really powerful is having other people's websites link back to yours. And right now I'm making a video podcast, I'm creating social media content. I can distribute this on my social media. I'm going to link to the Ronald McDonald House because I want to support them. And I got in touch with their marketing person, and I'm going to see if they will share the story on their social media. And maybe there's an opportunity for me to get a link to ramblinjackson.com. You see how that works? When you're donating, when you're volunteering, think about it as a PR opportunity. This is a social media opportunity and it can be a link building opportunity. Link building, it's about the links, but it's really about relationships.
And that's the reason why links are so hard to get, is you need to actually have real world relationships and go and build them in your community with people who have websites and they can link back to you. To recap on that idea, when you're volunteering, bring a photographer, even if it's your team, ask them to take photos, have a social media person with you, create a blog post about it, share it on your email newsletter. And if you do blog about it, you could reach out to the marketing coordinator at the nonprofit and ask them if they would link to you, or maybe you donate and you're on this sponsors page and does that link back to your website? I have a ton of ideas about that in my book, The Tree of Good Fortune, which you can grab at treeofgoodfortune.com.
Hopefully you got some ideas today about how you could donate, how you could give back to your community. And there's an opportunity that it could have some benefit to you from a marketing standpoint, which, again, was uncomfortable for me to think about, but why not? It's ultimately going to help you continue to serve more people, hire more people, give back to your community in an even bigger way. All right, everyone, thanks so much for tuning into The Landscaper's Guide. Check out our show notes to see links to everything I mentioned and make sure you subscribe at landscapersguide.com/podcast. My name's Jack Jostes and I look forward to talking with you next week on The Landscaper's Guide.