Growing up, I often mowed my parents', friends', and neighbors' lawns for some extra jingle in my pocket so I knew how to do the work. The summer after my senior year of high school, I worked for the city at a water reclamation plant with 45 acres of grass. I spent the whole summer learning how to work irrigation, cut grass, put down gravel, lay sod, and more.

After college, I worked in tech sales and hated it. I had bosses who would check if I was active on Slack in the middle of the day and text me if I was offline; I hated things like that. I grew up on a farm with many animals and wanted to be outside more, so I picked up a couple of cutting clients. I did that for a while; then, I landed a big commercial client that essentially paid for my tech sales salary. I decided to run with it, and I’ve been doing it full-time for a couple of years.

After getting a few clients while working my day job, I wanted to get more serious about the business. I went to Facebook Marketplace to look for landscaping trailers for sale. I needed a riding mower and a truck to pull the trailer. I found one listed for $8,000 and got the seller down to $4,000 since we had some mutual friends. It was a trailer, a couple of trimmers, blowers, a stand-behind riding lawnmower, and a couple of push lawnmowers. It was perfect for getting started with a small crew.

My equipment was old, and I would need new stuff the following season, but it worked well enough to get started. I started by walking into gas stations, buying water, and asking the guy at the desk who mows their lawns or trims their trees. By doing this, I ended up signing a handful of gas stations. From there, I gained the confidence to pursue bigger businesses.

My brother-in-law worked at a water park here in Utah County. I called him and asked if he knew who decides on the landscaping provider, and then he put me in touch with them. I went to the water park to meet him, and it came down to me and another guy. I offered the best price at $3,500 per month. The water park and all my other clients pushed me over my tech salary of about $60,000 per year. After talking with my wife about it and, this is a plug for having a great spouse, she encouraged me to go for it. I lept and haven’t looked back.

I have a local church leader here in Utah who is a decent-sized landscaper but is primarily interested in doing snow removal. When he picks up big contracts, he wants to focus on snow removal and subcontract my lawn care. Last month, he notified me that many of his big contracts did not re-sign. Losing these clients was a big hit as these contracts were about 60% of our expected revenue this summer. $10,000 in revenue disappeared overnight. That was tough, and I wish it hadn’t happened, but that’s part of the game.

The winter is the off-season for landscaping here in Utah. I’ve tried many different businesses during this time to supplement my income from the landscaping business. I poured concrete one winter, but it got so cold that it wouldn’t set properly. I also tried doing gravel and xeriscaping, but it’s slim pickings. This past winter, I decided to try an ad agency since I did Facebook and Google ads for my business. Initially, I helped a few friends with their companies, and now we have a dozen clients

We run Facebook and Google Ads for most of our clients. We also do some basic landing page and website design. We mainly work with new businesses offering a new service this season or recently starting their business. Our main differentiator is that we qualify all the leads we generate before bringing them to the business owner. I’ve worked with agencies that give you a list of emails, and it’s frustrating. Half of them already picked a provider; half are not real people.

We collect all the information and have mastered our 'speed-to-lead' service. We call the lead as soon as they come in, ensuring no opportunity is missed. If they’re qualified, we’ll book the appointment on our client's schedules, streamlining the process for you. We don’t work with two businesses in the same city as we don’t want to buy ads against ourselves. Our clients include roofers, garage floors, epoxy coating, and landscapers.

Facebook and Google are totally different beasts. You attack clients at different points in the funnel. With a Facebook ad, you have to generate interest, whereas with a Google ad, you capture interest. In order to have a good Facebook ad, you have to have great creative. What works best is the client's footage for before-and-after pictures.

The other thing that makes Facebook ads successful is the offer. Some businesses offer an offer based on a percentage, like 10% off, but that won’t move the needle for most customers. We recommend using a specific dollar amount. One of our roofing clients offers $1,000 off any estimate generated from our Facebook ads. We generate 4-5 weekly leads for him, which are valuable since roofing is a high-ticket industry. If the best you can do is 10% off, figure out what the average customer spends with you, and then offer a dollar discount equal to 10% of that.

The call-to-actions are industry-dependent. If a customer has a popped tire, they want action now. An In-Person Estimate or Call Now, which drives immediate action, works best.

For example, let’s use my roofing client with the $1,000 discount offer. Their call to action on their Facebook ads is “Get A Free Estimate Today.” When a lead responds to that ad, they fill out a Google Form pushed into Go High Level, and my team calls that lead immediately. Yesterday, I was calling leads and called one less than a minute after they submitted. The lead answered, pleasantly surprised at how fast I was, and we booked the job. Calling people immediately is crucial.

Table stakes for Facebook ads is $20 per day. $20 per day is the bare minimum. If you can’t spend $20 per day, you’re better off doing something that requires less capital, like knocking on doors. The critical metric for Facebook ads is the return on ad spend, a.k.a ROAS. If you’re spending $20 per day, hopefully, you can return $100 on that, which is 5x ROAS. If you’re only getting 1x ROAS, you don’t have good enough ads or enough appetite for your service.

We use Slack for all internal communication and communication with our customers, Go High Level for all lead capture, and Monday.com as our CRM.

We use Go High Level like Feedbacker does. We use it for lead capture and getting reviews and other things. We use Jobber as our CRM, Quickbooks to track time, and Google Suite for a few things. We keep it simple.

Feedbacker has shown me a lot of promise so far. I’ll keep growing the agency for the foreseeable future. Landscaping is tricky, especially the type I do, just cutting grass. Each employee depends on a specific machine; if they don’t have one, they’re not helpful. Growing a landscaping business requires a lot of CapEx and human capital. My personal goals align more with the company's digital side, so I plan to focus more effort there. If the landscaping business grows initially, I’ll keep building it. But, most of my attention is on advertising for the next few years as that’s what I’m most passionate about.