I started MulchMasters during my first year of college when we all got sent home due to COVID-19. My friends and I were sitting around bored and wanted to start a business. We had all done landscaping the prior year as summer jobs, so we knew how to do this work. We posted a few ads in our local Facebook Groups, asking if anyone needed landscaping services, and our business was created.

We worked on the business every summer break, and after graduation, I wanted to see how big I could grow it. At its peak, we had six full-time and four part-time employees, generating $200k in revenue and $80k in profit.

We would go to the client's house to conduct an assessment. We would walk the property to understand what the client wanted and how many beds needed to be edged, weeded, and mulched. We charge $60 / hour for the bed maintenance and $120 per yard for the mulch itself. Most houses needed four to ten yards of mulch, so we could create a rough estimate after the assessment was complete.

Before starting the job, we ordered the mulch to be delivered to the property and did bed prep, which involved weeding and edging the beds. Then, once that's all done, you start with the mulching. You use a pitchfork to grab the mulch from a wheelbarrow, place it in the bed, and spread it out. It’s a pretty simple service that is easy to learn, and most people could offer it.

The two biggest challenges when getting started were estimating the price of jobs and communicating effectively with clients. We consistently underpriced our jobs because we underestimated how long each job would take. Often, the jobs would take twice as long as we expected, so learning how to accurately predict the scope of each job was an important skill.

Another big skill I developed was the ability to communicate professionally with my customers. I updated them on my arrival times and ensured they were happy with the worker. If they were not satisfied with the work, how could we fix it? We learned a lot about customer service.

I got my first landscaping job for MulchMasters through Facebook Groups, which were our primary marketing channel for the business. We didn’t have a website or run ads on Facebook or Google; it all came through Facebook Groups.

After the summer ended, I wanted to keep working on a business, so helping other companies use Facebook Groups as I had was a good idea. My friend Chris owned a custom pergola company that was perfect for Facebook Groups. Chris agreed to test marketing in Facebook Groups with me.

Join local community Facebook Groups within a 20-mile radius of where you offer your services. These groups typically have names like “All About Franklin Mass.” Make sure to read the group rules - some groups allow explicit promotion, while others are very against it. To find the groups, click the “Groups” tab on Facebook and search for your town name. The most popular groups are usually the first results.

Finding the most active groups takes some trial and error, but by joining many groups, you can find the ones with high engagement. You can tell how engaged a group is by seeing how many posts there are per day. Private Groups are good, too, as they have less spam. For the marketing to be successful, you’ll typically want the group to have at least 2,500 people in it.

Write a thoughtful post that tells your story and isn’t just an advertisement. Share who you are when you join this community, how you engage with and support the community, your family, your pets — things like that. Include at least five images in the post, not just photos of your business. Share unedited pictures of you and your family and one or two of your business or service. Finally, use an online form like JotForm to create a simple information request form to capture people’s names, phone numbers, and email if interested in your services.

This is a post for my residential awning and siding business client in the “All Things Plymouth MA” group. We created an introductory message to introduce my client and his family. These personal details really help boost engagement because the readers feel like they’re engaging with a real person and want to support you. We discussed the business and linked it to a JotForm so people could request a quote. This post got 73 likes and nine comments and is shared in a group of 15k people for $0.

The images are probably the most essential part. Include high-quality photos, both personal ones with your family or doing something you enjoy and good photos of your services or the final results of a project. You can see we included high-quality pictures of his services and family.

With my clients' forms, we aim to keep it simple. Just a quick name, phone number, and email, and then submit. From there, I set up automations for my clients to send an automated text message after the form is complete to get in touch immediately. The automation is set up via Zapier and OpenPhone, saying, "Hey, this is Name of Business. Thank you for filling out our form. What service were you interested in?"

It’s so important to be super responsive to your leads. The goal is to respond to leads in 30 minutes or less. Our automation ensures we follow up immediately, which is the best way.

We track the data thoroughly for our clients. We average 5.7 leads per Facebook Group per week for our clients. Anywhere from 50 - 75% of leads respond to our initial text outreach and request a quote, then around 50% of those people become customers. About 15% of Facebook Group leads for my cleaning clients become customers. For my clients who do in-person estimates, that number is closer to 30%. Generally speaking, 10% up to 35% of Facebook Leads become customers for my clients.

I’ve suspended MulchMasters' operation to focus solely on Ride The Wave. I enjoy the business, and it’s going well. We aim to develop lifelong business relationships with our clients by creating unique growth solutions. That growth solution is Facebook Groups, but we’re trying to create new outside-of-the-box marketing methods. We’re making door hangers for one client right now, and we’re attaching hand-written sticky notes to them and things like that. I’m excited to keep working with clients and find creative ways to help them grow their businesses.