What does it take to double your landscape company in under five years? Today I'm going to interview one of my clients, Scott Callenius, about exactly that. Plus, how long does digital marketing take to actually get results? And should you invest in branding and photography, and what happens when you do? And Scott also shares what happened when he did the 75 HARD Challenge, plus why the customer is not always right.
Jack Jostes:
Hey everyone, Jack Jostes here, and I'm at The Landscape Show in Orlando, Florida where I'm presenting The Landscaper's Guide To Sales and Marketing. And I'm about to interview one of my clients who has implemented nearly everything from my book, and he's getting amazing results. He's hired me for some of it, but he's done a lot of it himself. So if you want to learn more about that, the actual foundation of digital marketing, the whole landscaper's guide to digital marketing, I'd love to send you a free copy of the book. You can order one at treeofgoodfortune.com and see our show notes for a link.
01:10: Introducing Scott Callenius from Forever Green Landscape Services
All right everyone, welcome back to The Landscaper's Guide. Right now I'm at The Landscape Show in Florida, I'm in Orlando, Florida, and I'm here with one of my clients, Scott Callenius from Forever Green Landscape Services. We met over five years ago.
Scott Callenius:
That's amazing.
Jack Jostes:
Right? So it was 2018. When we met, you were just under a million dollars in revenue, and I just wanted to hear where are you at now in your business, and how is what you're doing different from that time?
Scott Callenius:
Okay. So yeah, when we met, I was sub 1 million and now we are plus 3 million. We had probably a couple trucks and a couple trailers, and now we have 11 trucks and almost 60 people, teammates in this amazing journey, and we really focused in on our main clientele. I think you helped me personally a lot with identifying who that customer was, as you call it, the Hell Yes Customer or Hell Yes Client. For us, we realized, "Hey, we just need to focus in on HOA work, and homeowner's associations, and we've been very successful to stay in that lane.
Jack Jostes:
Right. Yeah, so that is your Hell Yes Customer, these HOA communities, and you stopped doing residential work outside of the HOAs, right?
02:24: Why Scott Pivoted From Serving Residential to HOA Clients
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, which was a big thing, right? So I remember texting you and saying, "Hey, I've decided to totally get rid of all of our residential work that I had done for a long time." And it was a hard decision, but it was really the best decision, and it was a way to focus the team on their energy, and build the right team and assets and systems to perform at a high level.
Jack Jostes:
And then that became one of your three reasons to buy, which is that we only do HOA communities, right?
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, and then I could focus in on HOA management. So I've changed from just taking care of one community, now we manage the whole thing. We can manage their irrigation, and their tree care, and their landscape enhancements, and their general maintenance. So it makes a big difference for a client because then I can say to them, "Hey look, we only do your type of work. My guys are built and they're trained to only do this type of work. They're not going to do a garden one day and then go mow 300 houses the next day."
Jack Jostes:
Right, yeah. And one of the problems that HOA communities have is that they hire these full service companies that also do design-build, they do residential, they do tree. Like, "Hey, we do everything for everyone," and they're not available to come do your weekly mowing, your weekly landscape maintenance, and then your community gets overgrown and people get angry.
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, I would also say you maybe look at it the other way, look at your team. So if you train your team to be fast and efficient, and then you take them to a really nice landscaped yard and they're going to be fast and efficient, you're not going to make that customer happy or that client happy because your team is trained to be fast and efficient, not detail oriented, meaning every little weed is pulled, and so on and so forth. Where we're built for speed and efficiency, and our communities like that, because they want us to come in, do our task, load up the trucks, and leave the property. They don't want us there for three or four days doing one task.
04:10: Scott Shares His Growth Plan to Go From $1 Million to $3 Million in Revenue
Jack Jostes):
Yeah. So a Hell Yes Customer impacted your operations and your retention with employees. And where are you at in your growth journey? So you were under a million, where are you at now, and where are you heading and...?
Scott Callenius:
All right, so this year we'll be north of 3 million, don't know exactly where that'll be. We've totally changed our verticals, we just really work in a couple areas. Tree care, we're growing that division, we're growing the landscape maintenance, and we're growing the enhancement business, but we're also looking at larger communities. So a perfect customer for us now is a project that probably has three, $400,000 a year budget. And that allows my team to get in there, work with the property managers, work with the boards, and make improvements. And it also is a better way for us to vet clients when they call or they reach us out on the website, which is great. We can have an open conversation, "Hey, what's your budget? What are you really looking for? Are you just looking for someone to come in, mow, blow, go, get superfast and efficient, but you want a less price? Maybe we're not the fit for you." Now maybe you want that on a larger scale, we might be the fit for you. We have some really large properties that my team gets in and out really quick.
Jack Jostes:
Okay, so you can be the mow, blow, and go team for a larger community?
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, absolutely. And we do that.
Jack Jostes (05:33):
But why is it harder for the smaller?
Scott Callenius (05:37):
Because you're really bebopping around. You're going from one community, to the next community, to the next community. We like to get in and do 300- 400 houses by lunch, and then move on to the next. We do large HOAs, large common areas. And one thing that's been really helpful with not only having our presence online but having branded trucks, having branded teammates, being active on social media, posting where you're working, and stories, and stuff like that, right Jack? So it gets you out and about is that now we've been able to take one property, and then link another one to it, and then link another one, and we don't really even leave an area. So now what I'm noticing is we'll have a whole corner, and we'll do maybe three communities in the same spot, and it looks awesome. It's a great sales point because the communities are like, "Hey, you do that one, and then you do ours, and you do the common ground." So instead of them having three contractors, they have one contractor, and everything's mowed in the same timeframe. And they love that.
06:36: Why Picking a Hell Yes Customer is Essential for Growth
Jack Jostes:
Well, so the key thing here though is picking a Hell Yes Customer, right? Because do you think you would be here if you were still out doing residential stuff and-
Scott Callenius:
No, I think I'd be wandering, I would think I would be figuring out what to do. I mean, do we all have problems and issues, and things in our companies that we need to work on? Of course, we're always growing, but I feel like as we've figured out who we are, where we're going, and then we could figure out the employees or the avatar that fits that. Not everyone's built for speed and efficiency. Sometimes our teammates come in and they don't last because they can't operate at this speed we're at, but then there's other people that are on it that love that. I have many guys that they just want to mow all day every day. And it's great because they're fast, they're efficient, and they love to do that, and they get in and they get out. And I think that for my team, they enjoy that. They also enjoy the investment in the equipment, the new stuff they see what's going, they want bigger, faster, better. And when you're doing private work, which I did for many years, it's a little different. You're dealing with homeowners, you're dealing with more personalities.
In our case we're dealing with a manager, and then we're just dealing with maybe some client work order issues, but we're not necessarily dealing with Jack and his wife's problems.
07:48: Scott Explains How Working with Ramblin Jackson to Create a Work Order Process Improved His Sales Process
Jack Jostes:
Right, yeah. So speaking of work orders, so that's one of the things that we built into your website at the top, is a work order. So tell us what is that and how does that...
Scott Callenius:
So that's been great. You guys built a landing page. So you can click on the top of our site, you can enter a work order, you can go in there, you put your name, your address, your information, you can upload a photo, you can make some comments. And then that instantly comes to me, and comes to my team. Now we've even taken it one step further, with your help and the help of my team, where it's integrated right into our actual operational software, which is wonderful. So now in the morning when you open it up, there it is, here it is, here it is. Where before it was to the email and then transfer it to the other thing. But now we don't do that, you built that.
Jack Jostes:
Well, yeah. This is a result of ongoing work together. And so you've done all of it, there are a lot of stuff that I recommend people do that I don't even offer as a service. Like getting branded shirts, getting branded vehicles, taking quality photos. So you've really done... Picking a Hell Yes Customer and going for it. And then we've worked together over the years, and just through account management learned, "Oh, I'm having this issue of I'm getting texts from homeowners, I'm getting emails from homeowners," and I think that idea came out... I had the same problem, so we created a page on our own website where when we get a request for a website edit or for whatever change, we fill out this form on our website, and it creates a support ticket essentially that can be routed to the right person. And now we're not lost in email.
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, and for that, Jack, that's been wonderful for us because also, we should back up for a minute with that, is that by us working together and creating these landing pages, we've also been able to streamline and get to a no, which is important. Because we know you can also go on our site, fill out a contact form and we can contact you, but we have a list of questions and things, and if you don't fit the certain parameters, you're just going to get a nice email that says, "Hey, thanks for coming on our site. Unfortunately, we don't serve your client," or whatever. I don't know how you guys have it written. It's way more elegant.
09:55: How Learning to Say No Helps Scott Stay on Track for His Revenue Goals
Jack Jostes:
It's nice. So you're from Minnesota originally, I'm Illinois. We're nice Midwest guys, and I know that you struggled with getting to that point of telling people no, because at a time, you were talking to all these people and like, "Dude, you can't spend that much time getting to a no." So the website does filter it. You said that you can say yes to get to a million, but to get to 5 million, you need to learn to say no. So tell me about that.
Scott Callenius:
Well, I feel like when you're sub a million dollars, you have to say yes, you have to build up revenue, you have to get in front of people, you have to pay the bills, you have to build the brand, and it takes money to do that. And you have to train your team, and I don't really think you know what your Hell Yes Customer is. The truth is I don't think you know who you want to work for.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, that's what I was saying last night. I think some people can figure it out and jump to the top, but I think you have to get through that grit of just doing work for people for years, or at least that's how I figured out who my Hell Yes Customer is.
Scott Callenius:
Well, wouldn't you say this though, Jack? I would say, okay, so if you worked in the landscape industry as a young man or a young woman, and you work there for a company, maybe you would know what your passion would be because you work someplace. But if you're just a young guy starting a business, you don't really know what you're doing, and you're going to have all the trials and tribulations. So of course you're going to figure out, "Do I like doing design-build work? Do I like doing construction work? Who do I like to work with?" I think for me, that's a big thing. I learned who I communicate well with, who I like to work with, and who works well with us. And I realized in our industry, and in my profession, and with our company, we work better with professionals. We work better with property managers and really good boards who are making decisions that are impersonal, because when you're making a decision that's personal, your emotions get involved. Instead, we can make business decisions about where should we go, how should we budget, what should we do?
And we can work through the issues. And there's a challenge, of course, we all have challenges and so does every community we work with, but they also have the ability to reach out. We can sit down, we can walk a property, we can drive a property, we can just have coffee and just talk about, "Hey, what are we going to do for 24? What should we do for 25? How should we budget?" We have these issues, we want to keep our housing in our neighborhood strong, we want to make the values stay here. And those are all conversations you need to have with your landscape company and your vendors.
Jack Jostes:
So yeah, working with that Hell Yes Customer of HOAs is also unusual in the sense that... So I have clients all over the country. I talk with landscape company owners all over the place, believe it or not, I don't have many clients who have the exact same line of services or the exact same Hell Yes Customer. I have a lot of people who don't like HOAs, or they don't like municipalities, or they don't like hospitals, or whatever. So it was interesting for you to describe why you like them and that you do see them as more of a professional client. That makes sense to me, but I think a lot of them don't see it that way or they're not staffed to do it. And I think Hell Yes Customer is partly an extension of the owner, and who do you like working with? Because you're the one that's probably going to make the decision of, "Hey, we're going to focus on marketing and operations here."
13:10: Scott’s Advice: Build to Scale, Scale to Sell
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, I would agree with that. I also think that you need to build a scalable business, you need to build a sellable business. And if you stay too long in residential and small stuff, you're not really working with contracts, you're working with handshakes and that's great, but houses change, people change, opinions change. And it's hard to work in that environment and build a steady recurring revenue model, in my opinion, that if you get your marketing right, build your website, make your investments. I think another point, Jack, that you're not really coming up with is that a lot of people don't realize it's a heavy investment. It's an investment to get into these types of jobs, where they look at it like, "Well, I'll just pick up this small condo or this small community, but then I'll continue doing my a hundred houses," or whatever it is. And then they're growing in two areas and then their resources are pulled, because they don't really have the money or the backing to do all of those things.
And if you focus in on who your customer is, and who your client is, and who you want to work for, it's important. I did residential, unbelievable landscaping, for decades and I loved it, but eventually it started to wear thin. You're on call 24-hours a day, there's always things going on, and you can't get away. When you move to a commercial, you can send out an email, you can send out email blast. You have team that can handle some of this. Account managers, leaders, foreman, they can handle a lot of the day-to-day stuff. You don't need to be there moving a plant three inches.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Well, so one thing people always ask me is, "Jack, how long do I need to do the wild frontier plan? Or how long does this take?" And the answer I tell people is, it really depends on what you have, what's in your market, what kind of competition. Are you in a growth phase in sales and marketing? And so the answer is always different for people. But for us, we've been working together for four years. You have this robust Tree of Good Fortune, you've got all these different things. So now we're actually entering more of a support mode for you, and that's cool, I feel good about it. So I just wanted to hear from you what that's like. And also, there was a period though where it wasn't working and I had to come to you and be like, "Hey look, this takes time. We need more time," and that's not something people want to hear. But now you're here, and you're close to over 3 million this year, and you've done all of the right things. So I just wanted to share that story with people because it comes up.
16:06: Why Domain Authority on Google is so Important for Landscape Companies
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, for sure. I would say that when you build a new site... In our case, I think of it this way. So we had a bad site, we didn't have a good domain, we went through all that. So we started at the bottom and you said, "All right Scott, look, everything you have is garbage." And it was great, it was perfect, because that's what I needed to hear. You told me that. And then from there... It's the truth, and then what you said is, "I don't like your domain, so we need to get rid of that." But then you and your team was upfront and said, Hey, if you do this, you're going to have this low..." What is it called?
Jack Jostes:
Domain authority.
Scott Callenius:
Domain authority. So for me, I watch that every month. When your report comes, I look at that, and I see that thing going up. And it took a year where I was down low, and we were getting some traction, and you were building our SEO, and we were moving up the pages, but that domain authority just took time. It took back links, it took communication, it took your guys working in the back. I'm not an SEO expert, but it was a lot of that. And I think anybody out there that wants to invest in a website, they have to treat it as an investment. You have to stay the course. You have to say, "All right, I'm going to put X into it this year, and I'm going to put X into it next year, and I'm going to put X into it..." Until it gets me to a place where I'm getting the type of leads I want, and it's built out the way I want, but it's not going to happen day one, hour one. I think a lot of people get emails. I mean, my email inbox is full with-
Jack Jostes:
I already know what email you're talking about and I get it too. And they're like, "Hey, we guarantee page one rankings tomorrow. Your website is awful." I'm like, "Did you even look at what we do?" And they didn't.
Scott Callenius:
They didn't. And here's the thing, I said this to your team the other day. I said, "I feel like it's an MMA fight." Because in my market, which is heavily competitive, I have a lot of competitors. There's a lot of really good people that are doing what you're doing in the background. So I feel like there's times where we leapfrog over them, and then they leapfrog over us, and then we have to get on the phone, and we got to figure out what do we have to do to leapfrog back over? And it's not easy, it's a battle. I think people have to realize that that's what life is about. Life knocks you down sometimes, you got to pick yourself up and you got to move forward, and the same thing's going to happen online. Don't look at it like, "Hey, they're not doing their job."
Jack Jostes:
And you didn't know this stuff really before…
Scott Callenius:
I knew none of this.
17:49: Why Working with a Marketing Agency is a Long Game to See Results
Jack Jostes:
So I'm just highlighting that. Thank you for reading the audit, and reading The Tree of Good Fortune, and participating as a client. Because it is like an MMA fight against these other landscape companies, and they've hired another agency, and it does take time. So there's a lot of different moving parts that we have to just be honest with people about. And yeah, it can take several years, but people are probably listening to like, "Wow, why does it take so long? Could it be done any faster?" What do you think?
Scott Callenius:
I don't think so.
Jack Jostes:
I don't either. I think to me it's like a landscape. There are certain trees and that's why I created The Tree of Good Fortune.
Scott Callenius:
Great book.
Jack Jostes:
Right? Well, thank you. But you're planting it and nurturing it, and over time it continues, it gets stronger. The roots. I talk about the links and the soil. So like a landscape, there's many different things that over time take work to get that result.
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, and I would also say too, that you change as a company and as a person. How many photos have we uploaded and changed, right? Because I've hired a professional photographer to come out and take team photos. All at your advisement.
Jack Jostes:
And that is a key thing. Because sometimes people work with me and they're like, "It's not working." I'm like, "Well, you have a three star Google review and your photos are 10 years old."
Scott Callenius:
Oh, we talk about that. We should talk about that.
Jack Jostes:
About reviews?
19:06: How Scott Handles Positive & Negative Google Reviews & Why He Responds to All of Them
Scott Callenius:
About reviews, I think it's important. We have a five star review. We have five stars on Google, but it's also because we reply to our Google reviews, "Thank you for the kind words." I mean, I've got bad reviews, they're not all perfect, but I reply to them and I don't accuse them. I don't say anything mean towards them, I actually just say thank you for the information, we're working on that, appreciate you reaching out. Because it actually means more that if I reach out to the ones that have issues with the bad reviews, which is not very many, than it is that I say, "Thanks for the kind words for your great glowing review." Because I think people look through them.
Jack Jostes:
I agree. They immediately sort by lowest reviews, and if you respond with grace and professionalism, people are like, "Okay, when there are problems, this person is responsive, they take care of it." But when you get defensive, and nasty, and, "Blah, blah, blah," they don't like that.
20:01: Why Investing Outside of Your Website Improves Your Company Brand Image
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, they don't like it. Yeah, and I think that that's a big thing. I would also say too, Jack, that you have to invest outside of your website in how your company looks. Like branded shirts, branded trucks, wrap trucks, new trucks, new equipment. You have to then hire a photographer to come out and document some of this stuff. We do it two, three times a year. You have to come out, and get the drone up, do this, do that, and then put them in a Google Drive, and ship them over. And you guys can parse through them and see what's good, what's not good. Because it's important.
Jack Jostes:
It's so important because you ultimately sell an aesthetic, you sell a visual product. I'm looking at-
Scott Callenius (20:36):
The landscape.
Jack Jostes:
Could you imagine being at The Landscape Show without all these plants? This is the deal. It's designed, there's a place to walk through, that's what people... So they need to see that, is my point. And if you're not showing them those great photos or an HOA community, if you're showing them only residential or other commercial parks that are not an HOA, they're like, "That's nice, but what I really need is an HOA."
Scott Callenius:
Yeah. You brought up a good point and I don't even think you'd realize it, but another point is, is that you need to have the same... How you look in real life is how you need to look online, and I think that's a big thing too. Because I go on a lot of sites, and even my competitor sites, and I'll get on there and I'll be like, "That's not how they look. That's not how they act." But somebody-
Jack Jostes:
Because that creates an even worse buyer's remorse, when you're like, "I thought I was buying this and I got..."
Scott Callenius:
Right, I got this.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah.
Scott Callenius:
What is that?
Jack Jostes:
For sure.
Scott Callenius:
Yeah.
21:28: How the 75 Hard Program Keeps Scott on his A-Game
Jack Jostes:
So I've known you for a while and I know that you did 75 Hard.
Scott Callenius:
Yeah, Andy Frisella's program.
Jack Jostes:
Andy Frisella's program, and you don't do it anymore. And I think on podcasts, I think 75 Hard is awesome. And I also wanted to hear... Over dinner, you told me that you're not doing it anymore, but I wanted to hear why and what you took away from it. And for people who don't know, what is 75 Hard, and-
Scott Callenius:
All right, so 75 Hard is Andy Frisella's program. He owns 1st Phorm, and I've done it twice, and it's a 75-day basically mindset reset, is how I look at it. And it consists of two 45-minute workouts, one indoor, one outdoor. You drink a gallon of water every day, you have to stick to a diet of some sort. Could be intermittent fasting, could be counting macros, whatever you choose. And then you need to take a photo of yourself every day, and you need to read 10 pages of a book, which comes in great for one of your books. And so I've done it twice, once by myself, once with my wife, wonderful experience. I think for most people to do a program like that, it's really about a mindset reset. You need to start pouring good stuff into your body. So if you drink a gallon of water every day, you need to be hydrated. You take a picture of yourself every day because when you look at those pictures, you're going to see a transformation.
Most people look at this program and think, "Okay, I'm going to see a transformation in my figure, in my body, and some of that," the truth is what you see is your face changes. You become more powerful, become more uplifting. You become more confident, because that's really what it is. And you're committing to doing something every day for 75 days in good weather, in bad weather. You live in Colorado, it's not always convenient to go march outside and do 45-minute workout, whether it's a walk, whatever it is. It could be cold, it could be slippery, it could be snowing, whatever you might be dealing with. Florida, we deal with storms, hurricanes. You also got to look at it, if you do it during holiday time. I've done it through Thanksgiving, I've done it through Christmas, I've done it through other things, and it's not easy. One other thing that goes with that facet is no alcohol for 75 days. I think that's good for a lot of people to detox, just to pull themselves away, regardless if you're an avid drinker or a light drinker or a social drinker.
I think when you cut something out of your life for a little while, it teaches you a lesson about what you can give up. My next role in Forever Green is to be the CEO of the company. To be the leader, to be able to pour into my team, and pick them up and grow them. And it's like there's nothing more fulfilling than to see what I've accomplished and then see my team do it. I start on these programs and now I have teammates who go to the gym every day. I have teammates who read every day, I have teammates who drink water every day, I have teammates who used to drink all the time and don't drink at all anymore. And it's because they've made life choices, and they've seen the leader make these choices, so I'm doing it with them. I'm not afraid. If one of my team came to me and said, "Scott, I'm struggling, and would you do a program like 75 Hard with me?" I would totally do it.
I would jump right on there and be like, "Yeah, I'll do it with you. As long as you commit, I'll do it with you."
24:34: How Scott Positively Impacts & Leads His Team
Jack Jostes:
You've read all these books, you've been going to coaching programs, you've really invested in yourself, you've done marketing. What's different now about you as a leader of the company now versus when we met? And what are some of the results?
Scott Callenius:
Oh man. I think the biggest one is I do not micromanage. I let my team make mistakes. I let them make mistakes and then we repair the mistakes. I do a lot with marketing and sales, I tell my prospective clients that we are flawed and we will make mistakes, and it's really how we handle them. And we're, well, more open. We look at large communities, they want you to be perfect, and there's no such thing as perfect. We have to work through the problems. And I think by me going through these programs and helping with my team, I've become a better leader. I understand what they're going through. I can sit down with them, and there's been many conversations in my office that people have been brought to tears because I'm more willing to say, "Hey, this is what you're dealing with. This is the problems you have. Let's work through them together. I'm not going to leave you and I'm there with you, I'll hold you hand in hand and we're got to go," but you have to make these choices too, Jack, it's not just Scott.
And I think it's important that if I walk in the morning, instead of being buttoned up like this, but I'm in workout outfit and I'm soaked head to toe, and the team looks at me like, "Oh, he was just on the treadmill, or he was working out, or he was doing whatever," it inspires them to realize that if the owner's going to do it, then I can do it. If the owner's not drinking, then I don't need to drink. If the owner cares about the trucks, and the trailers, and the accounts, and so on and so forth, then it's important. I also think another thing that's really changed for me is that before I used to think the client was always right and it was always about the client, now I realize that my talks are more about my frontline. And that's something that's important, is the frontline is the lifeblood of my company. And if we don't have good people, not just skilled people, but good people. Just good people in general, how are you going to operate? I need good trustworthy people.
26:39: Scott Shares His Strategies for Retaining Hell Yes Customers
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, you've got to have great people. So tell me more about that, so the customer is not always right, what does that mean? So how do you retain clients and also tell them, "No, this has come up a lot," right?
Scott Callenius:
I think that's a science, Jack, and an art form to that. I think you got to figure out, "Okay, what do I give on and what do I not give on?" For us... We'll use an example of let's say we spray some weed control and we kill some sod, some turf. I could fight with them and sometimes we don't even do it. There's many times that it's not our company or even our staff that caused that little patch of grass to die, but is it really worth dying on the hill for the $10 of sod? It's better just to send the enhancement crew by, throw in a couple pieces of sod, and let the homeowner be happy. Because what you're doing is you're helping the property manager. So I think we got to stop realizing, putting up these fights because Mrs. Homeowner's upset because we're going to die on the hill over it.
As opposed to just saying, "Hey, our client..." I might do 300 houses in one neighborhood that has a name, but the real client is that property manager who has a stressful job already, and just wants these pain points to go away. And that was something we talked about even in our website and our videos. How do you handle that stuff? So for us, I pick and choose the battles. I'm much more willing just to just say, "Hey, you know what? Go put in a couple shrubs for that homeowner or put in a couple plants," because in the grand scheme of things, we don't want to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for a 10 or $15.
Jack Jostes:
Well, so that makes sense. But what's the line, or when do you know that it is time to say…
Scott Callenius:
Oh, I got a great story. You want one on?
Jack Jostes:
Yes.
Scott Callenius:
Okay. So we had a really large HOA, and we still do it, and what we had was somebody smashed into a wall in front of their house. And it was a retaining wall, not a landscape garden, an actual wall with cinder block attached to the house. So I put my foot down and I said, "There's no way." I have a board of, at the time, seven people. It's a really large HOA, four are on my side, three are on the homeowner's side, and I put my foot down. "I'm not giving you my insurance, I'm not taking responsibility. We didn't do it." Finally, I sent them many emails, many text messages, many phone calls, many, many, many everything explaining that it's impossible for a Wright Stander lawn mower to run over literally a concrete retaining wall and not have severe damage to the lawnmower, and probably an injured employee. It's impossible. So a couple board members agreed. Finally, property manager, she decides, "I'm going to dig in on this, because I don't think you did it, and we need to figure out."
So she was a new manager on this property, the old manager didn't do anything. She starts going out, and she starts knocking on doors. She knocks on the neighbor's door and says, "Hey, we have this problem next door. Do you know what happened?"
"Oh yeah, I know what happened."
"Oh really? Thank you."
"Yeah. The neighbor next door was having a party, invited people from Canada, the guy from Canada drove his car down here, they had way too many drinks. He went and got in his car, he pushed the gas, he smashed into her wall of the house. Backed up the car, drove, took the car to another parking lot, and left the next day for Canada."
Jack Jostes:
Wow.
Scott Callenius:
So she went over and said, "Hold on. Now you saw all this, you knew all this was going on. You didn't go and speak to the board, to us, tell us what happened." And the neighbor... They're all together, there's three houses. The neighbor where it happened, he didn't go and say, "Well, my friend smashed into your wall," which would've been neighborly, "And we'll just take care of it." The person in the middle that had nothing to do, saw the whole thing, it was in the middle of the day, didn't say anything. So the property manager, she ended up resolving it all. She demanded that we get an apology, she demanded that they come to a board meeting and apologize to the entire community, she demanded that they call me personally and apologize to me. And of all that stuff, none of that happened. She didn't apologize, but we did not get blamed for it, and then his insurance ended up paying for it. I wasn't going to pay for it anyways, but this is an example of you gotta put your foot down.
Jack Jostes:
It's been a pleasure having you on the show again, hope to do it again sometime. We've got to go present The Landscaper's Guide To Sales and Marketing.
Scott Callenius:
I'm excited.
Jack Jostes:
So for people listening who want to connect with you, where can we send them?
31:13: How to Connect with Scott Callenius Online
Scott Callenius:
Best place is Scott Callenius on LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Or check us out online at forevergreenlandscaper.com.
Jack Jostes:
So another thing that you do well that I want to acknowledge that I wish other people listening, or my clients would do, is you post interesting content on social media. So not all of it can be outsourced to someone. Some of it's like you're just driving through a community, doing stuff like you're going and looking around, and acknowledging good work. And it's simple photos and video clips from your communities about what you're doing, or you're taking a photo of your team having lunch, smiling. So I noticed that stuff. So definitely connect with Scott on LinkedIn, and see what he's doing there.
Scott Callenius:
Exactly.
Jack Jostes:
What I loved about Scott's story is he talked about how he was afraid to pick a Hell Yes Customer. It is scary when you're going along and you realize you need to make a big decision like picking a Hell Yes Customer, and eventually graduating or stop selling to some of the other clients that maybe had helped you get to where you're at. That's exactly what I did though with my own business. For the first six years, I was working with a variety of trades, a variety of industries, and it worked well, and we did a good job. But once I decided to fully go into the snow and landscape industry, almost eight years ago, it streamlined my business. We're now the highest rated company in our industry, I get to speak at cool shows, I get to have great clients like Scott, and it's because I made the decision to have a Hell Yes Customer. So it's a key thing.
I'd love to send you The Tree of Good Fortune book because it'll teach you how to pick your Hell Yes Customer. What do you need to do with your marketing to finally get those leads? So check out treeofgoodfortune.com. I'll ship you a free book, and see our show notes for a link to that. My name's Jack Jostes and I look forward to talking with you next week on The Landscaper's Guide.
SHOW NOTES:
Order Your Copy of the Tree of Good Fortune: https://treeofgoodfortune.com
Tell us where to send your beef jerky: https://landscapersguide.com/toolbox
Check out Scott’s website: https://forevergreenlandscaper.com/
Connect with Scott on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-callenius-29b6261a/