Jack Jostes:
There are many design build landscape companies, but what is design-manage, and could this model work for you? In today's podcast, I interview Joshua Gillow, the host of the Outerspaces Podcast, who shares through his coaching programs with landscape professionals, his events and his podcast, what he's learned over the last 24 years in the outdoor living industry. For the first half of his career, Josh, ran a design-build model, but about 14 years ago, switched to design-manage. He's much happier now, travels more, works less, and makes a lot more money. Check out today's podcast to hear Josh's perspective on how to grow your business during a bear market. How to handle sales conversations now that interest rates have made money so expensive. And what does it mean to be a marketing company that also does landscape construction?
Hey everyone, Jack Jostes, here, and welcome to the Landscaper's Guide Podcast. This show is all about helping you grow your snow and landscape company through sales, marketing, and leadership ideas. And today we're going to talk about all three with my guest, Joshua Gillow. Now, if you're new to this show, I invite you to subscribe at landscapersguide.com/podcast, so you never miss an episode. And when you do, I'm going to automatically email you our top three podcast episodes. So check it out at landscapersguide.com/podcast and let's get into the conversation with Josh. All right everyone, welcome back to the Landscapers Guide. Today, I'm excited to have Joshua Gillow. He's the founder of YES Express, which is a company that teaches outdoor living contractors the systems to grant the ability to successfully sell on the worst day of your life.
He is a serial entrepreneur, he has a lot of different cool things going on. He's got a podcast that I was recently a guest on, that we'll share a link to in the show notes. And he's been a guest on the Landscaper's Guide. I was just realizing it was during COVID, it was actually April of 2021. So I'm glad to have you back now, Josh. And the first thing I wanted to hear from you is we were talking before we pressed record, how money is becoming more expensive, it's a little harder to get, and that's having some impact on outdoor living. And what are you seeing on your end?
What impact does outdoor living have talking about how difficult it is to get money?
Joshua Gillow:
Well, thank you, Jack, for having me back on. And it's interesting running outdoor living business, been in this industry 24, almost 25 years now. I've seen a lot of ups and downs. Been through 08, 09, been through all of those times. And the interesting part here is we're in a very unique environment where we just came out of many years of very cheap money. And what I mean by that is, you could go into the equity of your home. That's what our homeowners a lot of them are doing. They go into the equity of their home as it's appreciating and they're starting to pull that out as home equity loans or whatever to fund projects like this. And so, when they do that, when it's set 3%, 2, 3, 4%, most people don't even think about it. It's like free money at that point.
So they'd go in and take as much as they could and then they'd set up long terms and it'd be good to go. So getting that money was easy. Now, with interest rates not creeping up, slamming up quickly, people are starting to be a little bit more mindful of that because the interest payment alone on that money becomes pretty substantial. Not every market in the United States is in this. Some are just boom and still, a lot of the markets in the Texas market and Colorado, those areas, they're still booming like crazy. A lot of people are moving there with tons of money because they sold for, say California, they've sold their home, they take that to another state and that money buys them a palace versus what they were living in. So they have a lot of extra money to spend, which is helpful in those markets.
But in rural Pennsylvania where I'm at, it's not the case. We're an hour and a half outside of New York City and a half north of Philadelphia. And there's still plenty of work for us here, don't get me wrong, Jack, but it's different and it's not the COVID bump different. Those were just beautiful things that happened. And I mean that for business side, they were a beautiful thing that happened to help bump everybody's schedules because everybody was stuck in their house, at the same time across the United States and they all hated their backyards and we just exploded. Who would've ever expected that be the case?
Jack Jostes:
We talked about this when I was a guest on your show about those two years were crazy. They were special, they were hard, not to say COVID wasn't a challenge, but for business it was a good time and now we are back to normal and money's way more expensive. So, how are you handling this personally in your own sales and how are you coaching your clients? Because you work with people on sales, you have a course around sales. How are you handling this market now?
How are you handling this market now?
Joshua Gillow:
Yeah, so I have a philosophy when it comes to selling. For instance, I hate being called a salesperson, just like I hate being called a landscaper. The reason why is because I feel like it has a lot of negative connections and connotations to it. So you think salesperson, it's that person that's going to try to sell you or take advantage of you or manipulate you in some way. I like to be more considered the guide. I want to be guiding clients to the best solution. That's the ultimate goal. So we approach the sales conversation very differently and we want to make sure that our clients become the hero and that we become the guide in that story. And so, that's how you can differentiate yourself right away is by listening as the guide. You're not just going to hear your clients, you're actually going to listen to what they're telling you and take them on a journey and experience where they can actually get deeper into what they truly want.
Because maybe they come to you for that pool deck and patio and they don't really need all those pieces to have the experience they want in their backyard. But if they tell you they need those things, you can just say, "Okay Mrs. Jones, it sounds great. I'm going to design this and build this for you." And then, they get the thing that they worked so hard to save for and they don't find the joy in it because it wasn't planned well, based upon what they truly need, they need help. They need guidance through that. Maybe the deck isn't the best choice, maybe a whole patio space is, or vice versa or much smaller. Or maybe they sell that house and buy a beach house. I mean come on, we're guides in this conversation. With markets changing and with things happening, we have to learn how to differentiate ourselves. And the best way to do that is to care. That's the easiest thing we can do.
And that's the kind of message that we teach you to have and how to communicate with your clients, to make sure you're getting all of that before you go out. Because you never know, Mrs. Jones might come to you for just the deck and she might have a grander plan in the back of her mind for the patio and the pool and all these other features that would make a space. It would create a space that her family would come closer together and break bread on Sundays after church. And they would sit out there and watch their grandkids run around in the backyard and you start getting into the whys, the deeper emotional drivers to these things and the entire thing opens up pretty soon. That little deck that she was talking to you about, becomes an entire outdoor living space because she didn't know you could do that or help her unlock her true needs. That's the important part, it's how to communicate with people and not to get more from them, but so that everyone gets more from the conversation.
Jack Jostes:
I like what you're saying, it's really rooted in service of helping people get what they want and sometimes they don't even know what they want. A lot of times they're coming to you, they know that they want their backyard to be a place where they can enjoy their family time, but maybe they don't know everything they need. So I love that as a overall, I would think you would sell that way. Interest rates high or interest rates low, that's just how we're going to sell. How does that help you now though, when things are changing? Does it become more relevant now that maybe people are more spooked about money?
Differentiation And Effective Selling Skills And Empathy And Caring Is Absolutely Essential When Selling Becomes Harder
Joshua Gillow:
Yeah, so that's a great question, Jack. So I believe that during the COVID times, we had a tremendous increase in how many landscaping outdoor living hardscaping businesses that boomed, you saw it everywhere. Everyone went from working a nine to five is saying, "Look, there's this big demand for contracting and for building and all that kind of stuff. I'm going to quit my job when I'm going to start a company." I know a lot of my students have done that. I know a lot of people I talk to have done that. It's an amazing opportunity, huge opportunity for the people to do that. But when your demand goes up and your supply of contractors and designers and builders go up too, that's great. But when demand goes down, those contractors and everybody who took on all that overhead, they bought all that equipment, they invested in facilities, they did all of these things, it's the same amount of contractors going after less work.
One of two things is going to happen. One is people are going to start slashing your prices just to stay busy, which eventually means they're going to be out of business because they eventually can't pay bills with that. Or you're going to differentiate yourself. This is an opportunity of a lifetime right now. How are you differentiating yourself to your client base? Are you focused on falling in love with your service or your offer to your clients? Or are you falling in love with your clients? What do they need? What kind of support do they need? Do they want to phase projects because they like the big idea, but they can't afford to do it right now, the whole project? How are you becoming the guide to help them do that most efficiently? And if you can't unlock the true potential of what they want, necessarily what they say, but what they're truly trying to achieve, you're going to be last place. Someone else is going to do that for you and they're going to charge Mrs. Jones more and get the job because they'd listened.
Jack Jostes:
I love it. And I love the word differentiation that you're using. In my book, The Tree of Good Fortune, I have the foundation of digital marketing and the first thing is branding and differentiation. To me, they're together. To me, a lot of people think branding is your logo and is your shirt logo and your colors. And that's the visual part, but I like differentiation. Differentiation is why are you truly different? And you're hitting the key point here of in a way that your customer cares about. So many people talk about themselves and they're so proud of this and they're so proud of that and their customer doesn't get it, they don't care. So, differentiation and effective selling skills and empathy and caring is absolutely essential when selling becomes harder. So, I'm curious, how do you see marketing and branding as the economy gets tighter? Is it more important or less important or to get to that point where you can even be one of the people talking to Mrs, was it Jones?
How Do You See Marketing And Branding As The Economy Gets Tighter?
Joshua Gillow:
Mm-hmm. She's popular.
Jack Jostes:
She's very popular. Yes.
Joshua Gillow:
All right. So one of the first things that most business owners do is when things start getting tight, they start looking at their expenses. Things that cost money that you're bringing money in the front door and money's going out the back door. So what can I cut? And I know I was guilty of this in the beginning of my career. The first thing I did was I said, "Marketing, well, it's a lot of money I could just do without that. I can just cut that out, I'll be fine and then, I can pick it up later." But what I've learned here over the years is that marketing is something that has to be running constantly. Because I know in here, again, I'm guilty of this, where in the spring we had tons of work, no big deal. It's spring, it's just what it is.
And then all of a sudden mid-summer, late summer comes along and there's a lull and I'm like, "Man, people aren't calling. They're on vacation. They're not spending money right now. I need work. Crap." All right, ramp up the marketing machine. Fall comes right? Naturally we get more work anyway. Oh, we got lots of good stuff, marketing was great. Wintertime comes, "Oh, man, I can't afford that. We've got four months of snow, this isn't going to work. Let's cut that budget." And then you're scraping through and you're thinking April 15th is coming, I got taxes coming. Hope I can land a couple projects so I can pay Uncle Sam. And then you get up a couple projects and you're like, "I got to start ramping up the marketing machine." And it was just ups and downs and ups and downs.
And what I've learned is we have to focus as companies, especially in this sector, in this industry, because nobody's talking to us about this, they're not teaching us how to do this, is we've got to be focused on becoming not landscapers who market. We've got to become a marketing company that landscapes it's a gigantic difference. You guys out there listening, just put that through your head for a second. If you're a landscaping company that markets like I used to do, it's ups and downs whenever you got the money, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, versus focusing your business that you are a marketing machine and you happen to landscape.
Jack Jostes:
Josh, I love what you said there about being a marketing company that does landscaping. I'm curious, this is an idea I learned from Dan Kennedy. I think we've talked about Dan Kennedy. Have you read any Dan?
Joshua Gillow:
I'm sure I have. I read lots of books.
Jack Jostes:
I don't know. Anyway, so this was an idea that, and I can feel some people listening right now, their blood is boiling, they really dislike this idea. So I want to talk about it a bit more because in my own business when I was starting out, I believed that, I'm like, "Well, I'm a copywriter and I do these things and I don't need to do marketing because my quality will speak for itself and I'll get referrals." And I hear this from contractors in every trade. "Oh, well, marketing is for people who aren't very good at what they do." I think there's a lot of head trash around marketing being a dirty word and it's something that you shouldn't have to do. How did you learn that? Tell me more about, what does it mean to be a marketing company that does landscaping and how do you still do excellent work? How does that actually help you become the best employer, the best trades person in your market?
What Does It Mean To Be A Marketing Company That Does Landscaping And How Do You Still Do Excellent Work
Joshua Gillow:
Now, great question again, Jack. So, on my journey again, doing this for a long time, I now own multiple businesses and different sectors and all that. Because I figured out this thing called business. And what I learned from my mentors, people that are doing not hundreds of millions but billions in revenue, is that whole concept. I look up to them, how are they doing? How do they own a 100 companies? How do they do just hundreds of millions of dollars and run teams? You're one person, how do you have that capacity? And I started to listen to some of their nuances. Again, your proximity is power. So when you're around these people, you start listening. You know what, the number one thing is we're always marketing always, you can never stop it. And when you focus your company on being a marketing machine that does X, everything changes.
And I was like, you know what? If they're doing it, they're obviously successful in it. What happens when I do it? What happens when I do it in the landscaping world,? Jack, we're typically kind of thought of as the guys that mow the lawns and we're just run around and do odd jobs for a couple of bucks, clean my gutters. And that's not true anymore. With outdoor living and all that, there's been a huge shift, but there still has not been a professional upgrade to our services yet.
People still see us as those landscapers, hence the reason why in the beginning I said I don't like being called a landscaper, because I feel like I'm being lumped in with that. And there's nothing wrong with those things. But we do so much more, we're doing this whole outdoor living space that impacts people's lives.
It's not just mowing lawn and I'm not beating up lawnmowers. I think what you do is amazing but it's not the same thing. I think we can all agree with that, right? So...
Jack Jostes:
Sure.
Joshua Gillow:
That's the thing that I'm trying to get across and we will in my lifetime, my mission with YES Express is to professionalize our industry where we get the credibility that doctors get, we get the credibility that lawyers get because we are professionals. I don't care if you have letters after your name. We're offering a professional service that is changing people's lives and we deserve the respect, but we've got to earn it.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Professionalizing the green industry is something that I'm passionate about too, and that's why I love having conversations with people like you or clients are doing things. And I remember I had a conversation with a client who told me he couldn't do something, I can't remember what it was, but he told me he was just a landscaper. And I was like, "Oh, no, don't tell me that you're just..." This guy had 30 years of experience in business and so many different things and he has gone on this amazing personal development journey and is now the leader of his company. And the mindset around it is so important. And I think part of being a business leader is recognizing marketing is an essential piece of helping people. So I want to talk a little bit about design-manage. So we hear about design-build and you introduced a concept to me that I hadn't really heard anyone else talk about, which was design manage. What is design-build and then what is design-manage and how are they different?
What Is Design-build And What Is Design-manage And How Are They Different?
Joshua Gillow:
Yeah. So, I can just share my story because I've been through both. So in the beginning when I first started out over 20 years ago, we did design-build. So the easiest path into this industry at the time I thought at least was go buy some trucks, get some tools, learn how to build stuff, learn how to design, try to make some money at that. And go on a design-build model where you keep all the crews in house, you have control over all the pieces, you own all the equipment. You own all the overhead, you own all that stuff, everything you own so you can control it. And I did that for 15 years and I enjoyed that. During the time, I didn't know a whole lot different, I just thought that's how this business was. And I found that over time, I was like, "There's so many other things I want to do." I'm a creative by my soul, I just love creating things.
So, I realized at a certain point that there was so much more that was locked up that I wanted to do design-wise, that we didn't have crews for, Jack. I didn't want to hire a carpenter to build one deck a year and I didn't want to hire a mason to do three or four fireplaces, you know what I mean? Because those things weren't even that popular. Deck where a bit, but fireplaces and all the stuff that we have. So used to in outdoor living now, 20 years ago, it wasn't a thing outside. Like those things you just never thought about, like a fire pit was about as much fire as you got. And that's changed tremendously in the last 25 years. Right now, everybody wants this. Thank goodness for HGTV. As much as we hate them at certain times for what they say, they've built awareness.
Jack Jostes:
Yes.
Joshua Gillow:
They've built awareness to the outside space. They're like, "Oh, my God, look what we can do and what's possible." So people's gears started to run. Now, what I realized after 15 years in that style of business, design-build, is that I found that at the end of each month or each year when I thought we had lots of money, we made a good profit, next thing engine would blow out or I need a new set of tires on this or all right, the skid steers getting old, we got to re-up for a new one and next thing we've got new payments. And it seemed like at the end of each project or end of each year, something in the overhead structure would just start sucking money out of the business. So I went through that cycle for years and then, I started thinking about, wait, I'm looking around the pool builders, I look at how the home builders are building homes and I'm like, "These guys don't even have employees. They have a couple of managers."
And I'm thinking, wait a minute, how can we take that same concept of design-manage, have no overhead when it comes to equipment and all the tools and all that stuff and how do we take that into the landscaping world? How can we take it into the outdoor living space world? So 12 years ago, I embarked on that journey and I started Master Plan in my current design manage practice and we blew it up. It was like, Holy moly, nobody's touching this. No one's looking at it this way. But the first thing, Jack, I had to work on was my own trust. Because when you're doing design-build, you're in control. You can yell at your own employees, you can do all of those things. And if you don't trust yourself, which I didn't back then as much, I was comfortable there.
When you go design-manage, you then have to trust other people. Now, going with a design-manage model, I don't have the overhead burden of all the equipment and all the trucks and all the stuff that's needed, the big facilities to house all of those things. I don't have that stuff. To be fully honest with you dude, I work out of my basement. I have my two team members come in and we last year did over $4 million in sales and builds. And I have two team members, I'm in that business four hours a week and that's why I can go out and get into other businesses because now, someone else manages it, because it's manageable. I don't have crews coming in each and every day. We have teams that we assign projects to and they go out and they build. Now, it's not perfect. It's not like, "Oh, my god, get rid of one, you're going to have nothing but rainbows and unicorns on the other side."
You've got to learn different talents, you've got to develop skills for those things. And I can empower other teams to build really cool stuff. Because what happens is not everybody is a great, we don't like to use the word subcontractor, we don't like to use that word because it just, again, landscaper or it just has sometimes even salesperson, it has a sour taste to it. So we say our craftsmen, we say our specialist. Because you go to your doctor and someone says, "Oh, I'm going to refer you to a specialist." You don't say, "No." If they would've said, "I'm going to refer you to a subcontractor," you'd be like, "What? No way didn't I want you to do it?" So if you're going to a specialist, again, in communication.
Jack Jostes:
I'm curious about what's in it for the specialist. And what I found is, isn't then that company then in the business of hiring, recruiting, and finding people, and if they're a sub for other companies, are they able to offer benefits or is everybody a 1099? And is there just that much more pay? I'm just curious from the actual labor side of how do you get the boots on the ground, the people who are actually doing the work and why would they choose to work in this route versus going and working at the design-build firm that has employees and they have an HR manager and all these benefits and all this stuff. So, who are these people and why do they choose this route?
Joshua Gillow:
So the people that want to be part, we'll just say of our organization, that want to be part of our build crews, and I say crews meaning that they are craftsmen and trade partners for us. There are a couple different types of people that build really cool shit. There's the person who loves to control the idea, wants to bring that idea through sales. They want to take that idea through sales all the way to construction and stand at the end and say, "I did it all. I was from Mrs. Jones, from first day to the last day and stand there proud. That's fine." You also have other people out there who don't want to communicate with Mrs. Jones. All they want to do is build cool shit. She all they want is a simplified version of existence for lack of better terms. They want to be able to come out on a Tuesday and build for five days straight and go home and feel like they accomplish something without having to deal with all the "Red tape."
They don't want to deal with the monies, they don't want to deal with any of that stuff because they are craftsmen in their hearts and you got to love them for it. I love them for it. So we're giving them the opportunity to not have to do that because as design-manage, we do. We manage the idea, we then take it to the next level. We're actually managing the clients as well through our process, through our conversation. And then, from there, we're taking it to another level where we're taking all the permits, we're doing all revisions, we're managing all the monies. Like that's the management side of things. The bigger pieces that adds the owner of the company or as the team that's in that company running those craftsmen, managing schedules and monies and payments and those kinds of things.
There's so much more flexibility. I can travel whenever I want to. My team takes care of everything that needs to be done. There doesn't have to be a whole lot of boots on the ground, besides for project manager, who's out there once or twice a week max on site. As long as you have good conversation, good, again, communication between the inner office and the field people working, things go really smooth.
Jack Jostes:
Josh, we are out of time. I think we could hang out and talk about sales and business all day and we've got to wrap up. So I wanted to hear from you real quick. What is the cool event that you have coming up in February?
Joshua Gillow:
Oh, yes. I appreciate that. So what we started doing is last summer, we took 10 of us out to Colorado and we hiked a 14,000 foot mountain. We took a group out of what we call our Flatlanders, right? I'm at 800 feet here in Pennsylvania. And we went up and we worked one day on preparation for the mountain because the mountain is a hike, but it's also a metaphor for life and for business, it's one step at a time and how do we do that? And when your saboteurs, those negative thoughts and your head start keeping and creeping up and saying you can't do this. Who do you think you are? How do you think you're going to do this, dude? The air is really thin here. I can bet your legs are burning. Isn't that just like what it is in business?
So we have done that last year. We're actually here in February, since we're not going to take people up in the Rocky Mountains in February, we're actually going to the Grand Canyon and we're going to hike down the Grand Canyon on the south rim and then right back up and we're going to work on mindset and leadership. And that's what it's about. It's a three day event. It's February 9th through the 11th and we have a couple of spots left for that event. So if anybody's out there looking to take their business to the next level, they can come join a bunch of other business owners and see how that's done and learn some new introspection inside of themselves so they can take that big leap and push them forward. So that's, one piece. And if you like what I talked about before, about the going from design-build to design-manage, and you're curious about it, you can always reach out to me.
We actually have a group that we meet once a week and we talk about how to make that transition. Whether you decide you want to do 5% of your business in design-manage, and the rest stay design-build. Or you want to go a 100% to design-manage, it makes no difference. You don't have to do one and all. Maybe it's only fences that you want to sub out, right? We can teach you how to have that conversation and how to make money on the side doing that and get extra cash flow that way. We have a group, it's $99 a month, we meet four times a month. So if you want to start that conversation, come hop in with us and you can reach out to me at hello@yes.express for both of those events. Again, hello@yes.express and we can have a bigger conversation.
Jack Jostes:
Josh, thanks so much for coming on the show.
Joshua Gillow:
Thank you, Jack, for having me. And let's keep getting it.
Jack Jostes:
All right, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in today. I'm curious, what do you think about his ideas about being a marketing company that does landscaping, very interesting and controversial. I know a lot of people think marketing is a dirty word, but I really see it as a key to growing an enterprise, especially if you're trying to recruit employees, you need to create a place that they want to work at. And a lot of that ties into marketing and having enough of the right clients that you're able to then pay your people really well and create the benefits and things to be competitive or maybe pursue this design-manage model. I'm really curious.
Are any of you doing that or what do you think about it? Let me know, send me an email or hit me up on social media, jack@ramblinjackson.com is my email. And I hope to see you at one of our upcoming events. We've got cool, upcoming, virtual and in person events. Check those out at landscapersguide.com/events. My name's Jack Jostes, thanks for tuning in to the Landscaper's Guide. I look forward to talking to you, next week. Let's get some more energy in here. I'm going to drink some coffee.