Many landscaping companies kick off a new year with an onboarding event where they're going to share the employee handbook core values and the plan for the year, which is great. But what happens when the inevitable turnover happens in your onboarding, a new hire during spring and summer, and they just don't get that time with the owner or the managers that they would, if they came on during the beginning of the year, that's where the power of video can really help. And in today's episode, I interviewed one of my clients who is going to share how he made a home video studio for under a couple hundred bucks and made onboarding videos, including bilingual ones onboard his staff throughout the year with the great leverage of video. Plus in this episode, I'm going to share how I've literally made thousands of online training videos at Ramblin Jackson, where I host them online to keep them organized and a cool online software that we use for our Ramblin Jackson university. So let's dig into today's episode to see how you can get started using videos way faster and less expensively and way more easily than you ever imagined possible.
Jack Jostes:
Alright, folks, today, we're here with one of my clients, Tim Stevens from F&B Landscaping down in Colorado Springs. I've worked with Tim for a while. I really enjoy Tim. We read a lot of the same books and, uh, uh, we were just having a conversation following up. The last time I saw Tim, we, we saw each other in person at the program expo, really taking for granted the opportunity to hang out in person and eat food and whatever we did right before this whole pandemic hit. And, um, since then, um, uh, Tim has produced videos and we were talking about, you know, how you've made video training programs for your employees. And so today, uh, we wanted to chat with Tim and see, you know, share with us how you made those and how you're, how you also made a Bible lingual version of it, which is amazing. And before we get into that, Tim, what is F and B? What does the F and B stand for an F and B landscaping? You had to go there didn't you? I did. I did. So it stands for Franks and beans. So now, now it's out. Thanks and beans. And, uh, it's a long story how I got
Tim Stevens:
There, but it's, unfortunately it's from a movie and you all can go do your research and figure out what movie it's from.
Jack Jostes:
Right. Well, that's good. I like that though. And, uh, I just remember when we started working, I was like, Hey, what is the F and B for like, your name is Anne, you know, Frank, you know, or, or, or something. And, uh, and it was, I love that story and your, your clients enjoy it. And that you tell it's quick background. How long have you been in
Tim Stevens:
And what do you do? So I started my business in 2002, went through some transitions in the current business, and really re reformed in 2007. So we've been going since 2007 in our current state. Um, we're a full service landscaping company. So we do residential construction. We do, uh, commercial construction. We do commercial maintenance. Uh, we do irrigation. Um, we do basically everything. So we're design build firms as well on the residential side. So do it all.
Jack Jostes:
Great. Great. And, last time we talked, you had gotten some video equipment. And so just tell us kind of quickly, what, what did you do at your home office? So that way you could produce video?
Tim Stevens:
Yeah. So real simply, I just didn't really want what you see behind me there, because what, what I have back here changes all the time. I'm different books, my wife and I work out of this office together. So I wanted something that was uniformed, that if I need to go back in and edit or go back in and add to it, I can make it look the same. So I purposely wore what I'm wearing today. Um, and then I have a backdrop that I had my sign company make. It's just basically, it's an outdoor, uh, sign made out of tarp material that I attached to my bookshelf and it rolls down behind me, um, has our logo on it. You'll see it a little bit. And then, um, I got some extra lights to put up. They're not great. Uh, definitely could be improved. Um, and then I have a little microphone, um, that I use, and then primarily I use zoom to do it.
Tim Stevens:
And so the goal was to make it repeatable and that I can duplicate it with whatever topic we're talking about. And the look will be the same. So that next year, if I do it again, I can probably almost duplicate the look and not make it somewhat seamless. So I won't necessarily have to go back and redo all of these videos. I might just be able to do a new introduction or a new conclusion or something to that effect. So that was kind of it. I kept it very simple. Um, and I tried to do it in a way that when I redo it or set up again, I can have my camera on my computer in the exact same spot. I marked my desk. I mean, I have it all marked so that it's very easy to come up with the exact same situation. And I really didn't spend that much money. Uh, the tarp was about a hundred dollars. I've got about $150 in Amazon lights and my microphone was about $50. So I kept it pretty inexpensive. And then I just use an iMac, my, my existing iMac camera. Um, and I think it worked, it gets the job done.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, that that's great, Tim. Um, I'm a big fan of making video content for my employees, because the value of it for you, the business owner, is extreme leverage, right? It might take you some time to get this stuff set up, record it, trim it up, organize it. But, but let's, let's pretend that you spent 20 minutes making a five minute video. The beauty of that is you, you get years of leverage out of that five minute video. So when you get somebody new, you can send them those things. And that way it frees up more time for you to coach and mentor your employees and less time, not that you don't need to train them, but some of this basic stuff, a video is going to be a better use of both of your time. So, tell us a little bit, what are some of the videos that you decided to make to train your employees?
Tim Stevens:
The primary one that I did, this all started was our handbook. And our handbook is something that I feel very passionate about going through with every employee. I don't just hand it to them and tell them, go home and read it. Um, we, we sit down at the beginning of the year, we sit down with our entire company and we go, basically we go page by page through the handbook and we don't read the entire handbook, but we hit all the really important items. The things that I know year after year, come back to be issues with discipline or, you know, uniforms, or, um, you know, paid time off paid holidays. The things that I know they're going to have questions about, we go through and we hit very carefully. And when you're in a group setting, it's, it's great.
Tim Stevens:
Cause you're getting a lot of questions and you get feedback. However that drags it out and makes it really long with the video. I can just go through very quickly and re and I don't, um, improv, you know, I don't add any improv or, or add any, um, I don't elaborate on anything. I read exactly what's in the handbook and I go straight down the list. So it's very clear cut what they need to absorb. And then I hit the text of it. I hit three passwords that I just randomly say. And at the end of the time that they watch it, they don't get credit for it. They're not, they're not allowed to sign off on the handbook until they've given us those passwords. And so, um, as kind of hokey as that sounds, it's worked really well because I knew people would sit down and watch the video and just, you know, zip to the end and sign it and be done with it.
Tim Stevens:
Right. I can't do that without the passwords. So, um, so that's worked really well. Um, so that video was, um, done then again in Spanish with one of my managers who basically did the exact same thing I did, he just duplicated it. I hosted it. I narrated the intro and I wrapped it up at the end, but I actually had him on screen. And I had him reading through the Spanish version of our handbook. So there are basically two identical videos, one with me, one with him. Um, and then we also did our company culture, our background, you know, how we got started, all the history of the company, our core values, all the things that, again, I want every new employee to understand. We did a video for it. So that now, as you know, in landscaping, you get a ton of turnover. You have a lot of new hires.
Tim Stevens:
It's really hard to, schedule onboarding sessions with it on video. Now I don't have to schedule it. They can do it whenever they have time or they can come to the office, sit down and watch it on their phone. It gives us a lot of, um, uh, control over when we do that. And years past has been really hard to get four or five employees to all come sit down together for a new onboarding meeting, um, that has just killed us schedule wise. Now that's our thing in the past. We don't worry about that. They just watch it and they don't show up the first day without having all the stuff signed off on the video. So it's worked.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. It creates amazing leverage again for you too, to onboard people throughout the year when they come in, uh, without you having to also personally do all of those one on one meetings and you'll probably still do some level of those one-on-ones, but Hey, in spring and summertime, it's going to be hard for you to spend as much time as you'd like. Um, as in, you know, maybe at the beginning of the year where you guys have those, those kickoff meetings for the year, tell us what are some of the results of this? Are people actually watching them? Are they learning better? Are they like, what is, why, why do this?
Tim Stevens:
Yeah. So it's simple. Last year, I set up a video camera at our kickoff meeting and I actually recorded the handbook, uh, presentation. And, um, it was like almost two hours and I couldn't edit it down. I couldn't, it was just as big an animal that was, I couldn't manage it. So it didn't work this year with having COVID stuff going on, not being able to meet the zoom stuff, came to light and it's just been, it's a no brainer. It's so easy. It's basically free and makes it work really well. Um, YouTube is where I host them. I probably need to find a better hosting site for it. Um, sometimes it's been a little difficult for the employees to get to work on their phone or whatever, because of YouTube. So we'll be looking at doing something a little better with that, but the results have been great. You know, I took a lot of time off myself, my managers, my office manager, and it kind of put that time on the new employee. Um, so it's saved us a lot of time. I think we've probably had 25 or 30 employees watch this now. And, um, you know, that's 25 or 30, probably realistically that's 25 or 30 hours that now one of my staff is not having to do this with, so I think that's that's value right in and of itself.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. And, and, and as things change, you know, you can go back and edit these videos, like you said, and, and a lot of the stuff won't change and you'll probably get several years of use out of each of these videos. Um, I'm going to share, um, I'm going to share my screen and show you I've over the last 11 years, I've literally produced thousands of training videos at Ramblin Jackson for my internal team, in addition to all the marketing. And I'm going to share with you how you know, so we started using YouTube and, and for those of you listening or watching, I think YouTube is great. It's free. You can, you can make the videos private. So that way only people who have the link to them can see them that way. If your customers are Googling you or checking you out on YouTube, they're not going to see it.
Jack Jostes:
But one of the drawbacks is it's a little harder to organize all of them. Um, and, uh, the, the tool that I really like using is called Wistia. So I'm going to, I'm going to share my screen here. Um, and Wistia is the tool that we use. And I remember they found me through a Facebook advertisement and it was like, are you tired of using YouTube and having sloppy videos? I'm like, yeah, I kind of am. And so I've been a customer for maybe six or seven years. And so I have, um, you know, a sales training folder. We have a whole university that I'll show you next. Uh, but what I like about Wistia is you can add these little sections here. So you could, you could add a section called, um, employee handbook and you can kind of organize your videos together under there.
Jack Jostes:
I created a whole system on how to do sales and I've organized things in this way of including a challenge. I've taught my people how to produce videos. And I have some videos here. What we use is actually a tool called Lessonly and Lessonly allows us to, it actually creates an online course out of our art of our material. So I can do a, um, a, uh, I can assign things to people and I can quiz them and I can see if they actually completed them and I can get, um, you know, little feedback from them on what their responses were. And then when I meet with them, I'm really prepared to, uh, review their responses to materials. So I think, you know, phase one, you know, built, simply record some videos, put them on YouTube, keep it in a Google doc, even as a spreadsheet with links, simple enough. It could be an email, honestly, that you send to people like start out real simple here, um, and just get the videos done. So kudos to you for getting the videos done. Because the hardest thing I hear is, you know, and I remember my, my first videos were awful. Um, tell, tell us a little bit, how did you power through like making a video is weird and uncomfortable? How did you, how did you muster through getting the first one done?
Tim Stevens:
Yeah, that was a big one. I mean, I've been talking about this for years and every time I sit down to think about doing it, I think, man, I don't want to do it. I can't do it. It's beyond my skill. It's out of my pay grade, whatever I shouldn't be doing it. And, um, I'm always, you know, I get nervous talking in front of people other than my employees, so I just never got around to doing it. But when the COVID stuff kind of hit and we were really forced into working remotely and working on the video, um, it just kind of started to happen. I think the first 30 seconds, you're kind of aware of yourself, you're looking at the screen, you're kind of thinking, Oh gosh, you know, my hat's crooked or whatever. Um, and then once you get into the meat and potatoes of what you're talking about, that kind of just goes away.
Tim Stevens:
You can read through the handbook, um, in a way that takes some of the stress away. Cause what I did was I went through and you know, I highlighted what I was going to talk about. So I don't even have to think about what I'm going to talk about, what I'm not going to talk about. It's all highlighted for me. Anything that's not highlighted I can skip over. So that takes a lot of that stress that you're talking about away from you. I think part of what made it successful was being prepared. Um, and maybe not, but maybe not. Over-preparing um, I think if you over-prepared, it's like giving a speech, I think sometimes you can over-practice your speech and then it makes it harder for you. So just get it done. I think, especially with employees, you know, they really don't care. They love the fact that the owner of the company is standing in front of them on a video talking, um, and getting some feedback from the owner.
Tim Stevens:
I think that's really valuable, but it's just, it would be just as valuable if you had a manager doing it, but you just got to fight through that and get it done. And I think having material, the other thing too, is if you have material to go over on screen, you then become a smaller icon up in the corner and it really takes the focus off of you and puts the focus on the material that you're talking about. And I think that was really important. I did, um, another one with a PowerPoint slide presentation, and being able to just go through the slides on screen and you're not really on the screen, you're really just a voiceover. That makes it really easy. So maybe start with something like that where you're not the primary focus of the video and then maybe work yourself into doing more videos where you're more predominant and maybe more of the face of that video. Maybe that would be my advice. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
Tim Stevens:
I would absolutely recommend as simply as screencast video, like you're saying, like make a keynote or even a, um, uh, it could be you scrolling through your word doc or PDF or whatever makes it really easy.
Tim Stevens:
You mentioned you're using a Mac, the program that's built in
Jack Jostes:
And that I love for that is called quick time. And,
Tim Stevens:
Um, I'm going to share my screen and show you guys just how easy this is for those of you who use it Mac,
Jack Jostes:
Um, quick time is built in and you can click a screen recording. And then in the options section,
Tim Stevens:
You shouldn't make sure that you're, you're using the right microphone. I would either use the builtin or if you have an external,
Jack Jostes:
Like you'd select that and you can,
Tim Stevens:
You can kind of click and drag this around and I'll, I'll share one of the things that I do when I make, um, a screencast video is I, I can, uh, put the screen,
Jack Jostes:
You can put quick time and only highlight the section of the slides, right? See homes, zooming this down. And then, then we put record and now
Tim Stevens:
You can actually use the presenter notes underneath here and look at it
Jack Jostes:
And nobody else can see that they just see the main slide. So that's that, that would involve just a little bit of editing to use quick time. Um, but I, I like,
Tim Stevens:
I think what you were saying was you're using, you're just recording straight in zoom, like a solo meeting by yourself. Correct? Exactly. I do it in zoom. And um, I'll see if you can see kind of what it looks like. Um, you know, it's just me in the background and talking, and then as soon as I, um, get back into the video, it will jump forward and it'll bring the text onto the screen and you kind of disappear. And, um, it's just really simple and I'll be honest. I didn't even do any editing. I did it in one take, start to finish. I did very little, the only editing that I may have done, um, on a few of them was adding some text over the screen, just, you know, like an introduction type thing. So people know what they're watching and that's the other issue I have, I guess, with YouTube and you hit on that as the organization of it. So I tried to
Jack Jostes:
Make as many things on screen too, so they know what they're watching. So they're not wasting their time. Yeah, that's, that is one of the features of Wistia that I love is that you can customize that's called the thumbnail and you can either upload one or pick a still frame from the video. You can't customize that on YouTube until you reach a certain level of YouTube usership, which takes a long time. Um, we'll, we'll often tend to, this has been really helpful. I think the best word that you've used today in regards to video is done is just get it done. Okay. Because honestly, um, and I, I, I, you can see, I enjoy video gear and I've invested a lot in it and I, you know, but it can be a trap where I feel a lot of business owners who will say, Oh, I don't know if the right camera or I don't have the right this.
Jack Jostes:
And it's like, no, man, get, get a backdrop, a hundred bucks, 200 bucks or whatever your, your printer is going to cost. Hang it behind you and just use whatever you have. Your computer probably has a webcam. Um, you could use your smartphone. I do a lot of video on my iPhone. I have a simple tripod and I like that. You just did the one, take the one take wonder, right. And you probably sneeze and cough and say, um, but who cares? Right? Like you're making a training video, that's going to really help people. So, good job marketing.
Jack Jostes:
And even if it was, it doesn't have to be perfect. Um, I think it's really easy to get hung up on making video. Perfect. And then never doing any of it. I agree. I agree. And you know, just a simple blank wall in your house or your office works just great for a backdrop. You don't have to do. I just kind of went, I thought that would add a little piece of flair to it. But in reality, it doesn't add really anything to the video. It just, um, you know, added one more piece. But I also dragged my feet doing it cause I was waiting for that piece to get produced. And Tim, another thing that I really like about your setup is that you are pretty much, how long would it take you to get set up, to record your videos? Maybe eight minutes tops.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. So you drop it down behind your chair and you put up your lights and your, and you don't even, you just use your camera on your computer. So that's how I have my own home office configured as I have, I have this, I have this nice mic that I use for the podcast, but it's built into my desk. I don't need to go get the microphone, take it out, uh, set up my camera or anything. I just have it ready to go. I, you know, it's like, I just turn it on and start recording. So I think I'm making it easy for yourself. If you are going to, if you are going to produce video content, whether marketing work training, I would encourage you to try and configure your desk in a way that the whatever's behind you looks professional. You know, it could be for me, I have this wood wall, um, for you, it could be a branded little sign.
Jack Jostes:
And then decent lighting front lighting is really important. We never want to be backlit and video and yeah. Um, $25 lights on Amazon are totally fine. And you know, honestly the lights, um, they do kind of complicated a little bit. If you plan ahead and, and do it during the daytime, when you have good natural light, if you have an office with natural light, I think it works better and it's easier and it's less fidgeting. You can spend a lot of time wasted trying to adjust lights and get things, right. So again, if you can think ahead maybe, and try it, you know, during different times of the day, that might be your best that, um, but you know, I did mine in the evening, so I had to, um, you know, and it was dark so well, one challenge I will say with the light from the windows is if it's too right, it can overpower you in there.
Jack Jostes:
So I actually, the way I use my home office, I have blackout curtains. I block out the light and then I just, I just, uh, when I was building this office, I had led lights put into the ceiling. And those, those that's the only lets the only light I'm using right now. And uh, yeah, you're right, because using those ring lights or those other video lights that can complicate it. So again, keep it simple. Good enough is, is great. And a friend of mine is a video production person and he always tells me, Hey, keep it simple. And B don't worry about getting the next greatest thing. Just master what you currently have. So if you have an iMac or something with a camera, just master using that camera and you'll be way ahead. Yeah, because learning to use a DSLR or mirrorless camera is kind of like getting a rocket ship.
Jack Jostes:
When I got my camera, it was a huge learning curve, whereas yeah. And use your computer webcam or iPhone. So in essence, again, keep it simple. Just get it done. You can always redo it. You can always make a new one down the road, but get it done and get it out, using it, to get the feedback from your employees and you'll make them better and better as you go right on. Well, thanks Tim. And for uh, for everyone else listening, learn more. We've got more content at landscapersguide.com/podcast where you can learn more about cool ways to inspire your team and get new clients. So thanks Tim.