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Recruit Like a Pro

In this episode of the Green Industry Perspectives Podcast, Ty Deemer welcomes Kelly Dowell, owner of Keldo Digital

Kelly shares her journey from working at her parent’s landscaping company, to taking a leap of faith and creating her own agency to help green industry businesses grow. Kelly has learned a lot from her time in the industry, specifically when it comes to recruiting. Talent acquisition is a long time issue for the industry, and while there is no silver bullet, Kelly has tips and tricks to help you overcome your labor challenges.  

You can tune in above on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or anywhere you get your podcasts.

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IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL LEARN:

  • Why having a recruiting process is important
  • Tips on how to retain talent
  • Why your website is your greatest marketing and recruiting tool
  • Being selective about the jobs you take can help you grow faster

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Ty Deemer:

You are listening to the Green Industry Perspectives Podcast, presented by SingleOps, a podcast created for green industry professionals looking for best practices, tactics and tips in running their tree care or landscape business.

All right everyone, welcome back to Green Industry Perspectives. I’m your host, Ty Deemer, and today, we’ve got a great episode for you. We’re welcoming Kelly Dowell to the show. Kelly has an awesome background in the green industry, grew up in her family’s business and then ultimately decided that she was passionate about teaching green industry professionals how to market their business, how to get great employees and how to increase their business through sales. Kelly, welcome to the show.

Kelly Dowell:

Thank you, Ty. 

Ty Deemer:

Absolutely. So Kelly, we like to start off Green Industry Perspectives, the exact same way in every episode to provide immediate value for our audience and our questions pretty simple, in your experience in the green industry, what are the top two to three common threads that you see in successful landscape businesses? 

Kelly Dowell:

All right. So you prepped me for this. So I will say the first thing that I’ve noticed is a struggle to recruit qualified and experienced candidates. Number two is a lot of them have a desire for perhaps less but better clients. And then the third is that all of them want to be seen and recognized publicly as a professional company.

Ty Deemer:

Thanks for sharing those three points Kelly, I loved those and we’re definitely going to dive into those a little bit more as we go into the episode, but we always like to have our guests share their background and you have a really unique background. You’ve pretty much served every role in the green industry at possible through your family’s business growing up. So I’d love for you to touch on where you’ve come from. And then obviously we’re going to highlight how you’ve shifted working at your family’s company and now working with multiple green industry companies each day.

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah, absolutely. Like you said, I’ve grown up in the green industry. My parents own a landscaping company out of St. Louis, Missouri. And I worked there, I started stuffing envelopes when I was probably seven, just working for a dollar or something or whatever I wanted a candy bar and things like that. I would go out in the snow truck with my dad plowing snow with him and I always thought that was a really good time. In high school I started working more to answer the phones and in an administrative position and learned a lot about the business and that way, gradually advanced into more of like scheduling and things like that, but always still in the office. In college, I went to Lindenwood University for business and an emphasis in marketing, but I would schedule my classes either Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesday, Thursday, and then I would work the opposite days at my family’s business.

And it was during then that I started getting more out in the field and that taught me what I needed to know as far as horticulture and plants and the actual work of the green industry. So I enjoyed that doing the account management role. And I would say that the company was really, really good at getting work done. Our productivity was fantastic and since we had a great reputation leads were coming in, but we never had a strong proactive sales cycle or plan ever. So that was something that I learned in school and slowly started implementing at our company. And I grew into a sales manager position where I was able to hire and oversee the account managers who were doing the selling. So I loved that role. Absolutely. One of my favorite things to do is just coaching and working with the sales team to help them reach their goals both professionally and personally.

That all changed in 2015, when the company did not get their H-2B employees about a week before the mowing season began. So that was very interesting because we went from sell, sell, sell to all hands on deck. I mean, my dad was out there with his boots on cutting grass, everybody had to do work and there was nothing, we weren’t selling, we had to get the work done that we had then. So I put on my recruiting hat and figured out a way. So that was, I would say early March that we found out we weren’t going to be getting the H-2B employees. And by the end of May, we had a waiting list of employees who wanted to join the team, which I think was just a huge feat something that I am, it’s probably one of the biggest failures, but also one of the biggest learning experiences.

It’s something that I’m pretty proud of because when you don’t have anything to sell, you have so much other job to do your work to do as a recruiter, and you can put a lot of effort and emphasis into that. So that’s what I did that year. And then going forward from then we just made a decision. We can not be so reliant on this government work visa program, and we have to continually recruit and continually hire and keep filling seats on the bus and keep people on board as well, retention. So that became a huge part of increasing employee morale and developing our company culture the years after that and less into the sales side of things. So that was my background with Keldo my family’s business. 

In October of 2017, they took my call it a leap of faith, but I quit that job and decided I was going to work for myself and I had no clients, but I went to Mexico for about a week and just sat down and started writing out a business plan and thinking about what it was that I wanted to do. And what I wanted to do was I just wanted to help other green industry businesses in the way that I had helped my family business. So, I mean, as simple as that sounds, it’s like, I know what I can do. I can do marketing, I can flow with social media. I can learn whatever I don’t know, I just need to find some clients. And fortunately that happened and here we are, what, four or five years later, and I’m rocking and rolling. It’s great. I mean, I love what I did to do now. Coming up with sales, marketing, recruiting solutions for great industry owners and landscape leaders.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. I love your background, Kelly. I think it’s so cool. Just how many parts of a green industry business you’ve been exposed to over your career. And I think it’s such a testament to what you’re able to do today. We’re going to dive into a ton of topics that pull from your experience. So I’m glad you were able to share that. I want to start off that episode by asking you about the busy season. We’re rolling into the busy season, if not already there, things are blooming jobs are being booked. Schedules are being fulled, and it is a busy time for the people listening to this podcast. In your opinion, what is one of the main challenges or the biggest challenge that green industry businesses face during the busy season?

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah, I mean, they share our busy time because I tell you what I have with my clients. We talk at least once a month some clients every week or two weeks. And I get on these calls and they’re like, “All right, Kelly, make it quick. I got to go do this. I got to run this truck here. I got to do that.” He’s like, “Is there anything, what are you really need me for?” So I get it. I mean, this is the spring of the year. This is when everybody’s busy. And the ebb and flow is happening. So one of the things that I think is challenging, the clients that I have is just making sure that we’re on top of the recruiting issue, ensuring that, I mean, depending on where you’re at, a few clients in Michigan, they had snow last week. 

So they’re not really too deep into the season yet, but then again, the clients that I have that are in Georgia for example, are ready for spring. So just staying on top of recruiting, I think is a huge challenge, making sure that we’re going to be fully staffed, if not, we’re already fully staffed for the rush, because there’s nothing worse than having people want you to do work. And you just can’t fulfill it because of lack of labor. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. And recruiting and having a talent pool and labor shortages is something that has to come on this podcast all the time. And it’s something that faces everyone in the industry. It’s a known issue. And it seems like you have a really unique perspective on it because your family’s companies situation with the visas, I would love for you to dive into what took place with that issue and how you and your family’s business was able to pivot and create a recruiting system that you were able to scale and really ensure that your business was fully staffed throughout the entire year.

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. I actually developed an online course to help people specifically with this, where I just go through all the things that I learned so that you don’t have to do it the hard way. Essentially though, we put a lot of effort into online recruiting. That was the number one thing we used. We did advertising on Facebook. We did a lot of indeed advertising and job postings, making sure that we looked and had the processes of a professional landscaping company that somebody wants to work for. We had that appearance online and everything that we did. So our website got revamped and we put an emphasis on careers like before, I don’t even know if we had a careers page, to be honest, I can’t remember, but we definitely made a careers page. We put job descriptions in there. We took some fun videos of us working, having fun, doing training.

And then we set up a process for when we did post those ads that I think this tie is one thing that people miss the ball on, and I’m sorry to derail here, but when you set up all these systems and processes to get people in the door, what happens next? Who runs that process? You have to have somebody in your business who is that recruiting person. Maybe they wear other hats, but they have to be that main person. That’s like, “Okay, I checked the career’s email inbox or wherever these applications come in. I’m responsible for replying to them in a timely manner, which is probably that day. I’m responsible for, if I can’t get ahold of them through email I’m going to text them, I’m going to call them.”

Because if you’re in need of labor, you have to do everything possible to get these people in the door. And so I think a lot of people and I’ve talked to in the past, they just lack that process. And so that’s something that I just love helping people with is like, let’s have some accountability in the game, I can only do so much. And the way of writing you a bad-ass job description, that’s going to get people to apply. But then if you don’t follow up with them or you don’t you don’t have a process for hiring, then balls get dropped.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. And I’m just curious with the companies you work with, what percentage of companies have a dedicated HR/hiring manager type position where they’re able to dedicate a pretty good amount of their time to recruiting new employees? Or is it a situation where it’s someone’s side hustle at work to be in charge of recruiting?

Kelly Dowell:

For the most part in my work, I work with companies who are probably about a million to 7 million in revenue yearly, and that’s a huge difference. And as far as jobs structure and who can answer the phones and who’s doing what so having a dedicated person at a million dollars is extremely tough. I would say with Keldo, didn’t get their H-2B guys. We were probably around three million. So at that point it was a no brainer. We had to put the emphasis there, but a more direct answer to your question on the percentage of how many people have a person that’s accountable for it. I would say less than 10%, not many and I think like people like to pass it around like, “Well, if they’re a horticulturist, they report to Johnny. If it’s an admin person, they report to the office lady, Cindy,” things like that. But I’m a big proponent of having one person who’s accountable, recruiting is my thing and I own it.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. So here’s my followup question. If our landscape or tree care owner listening this and recognizing that I’m not at the point where I am big enough to have a fully dedicated recruiter on staff, but I do want someone on my team to begin to owning this. Who would you suggest that be? Or what role do you think that falls under within a company? Is it the owner himself? Is it an office/admin person who on your smaller companies typically owns recruiting?

Kelly Dowell:

For the most part? I would say it’s probably going to be somebody within the office and admin or office manager. I have seen the owner themselves actually take upon this role and delegate something else that they’re doing. Maybe they delegate scheduling or routing or something and then they have more of a say because as you’re growing, there is something to be said about the owner picking and building their team. And I don’t care if they are the lowest paid person on the totem pole but you’ve picked that person, they’ve met you, enjoy when the owner takes a little bit more of a responsibility in that until a process is established and it’s able to be handed off. But yes, as an admin person is good. I’ve seen the administrative assistant where both the marketing and recruiting hat, but it can be a lot.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. So we’ve talked a lot about what it looks like to attract a potential employee, right? What gets their attention, whether it’s through your website or ads on, on Indeed, but a huge element of making sure your team is staffed for the busy season, is retaining employees over a long time keeping the good people that you have working for you happy and interested in staying at your company. What have been some of the strategies you’ve seen companies use to keep employees happy and working at their business for a long period of time. 

Kelly Dowell:

Sure. One of the cool things that we did that I learned from a company that was outside of the industry, which by the way, if anyone’s listening to this, I highly recommend learning from outside the industry. But they put together a video that was a welcome video. So before you come, let’s say Thai, you just applied. Do you want to come work for my company, I’d tell you, hey, come in tomorrow at 2:00 PM. Okay. And then I send you an email and it’s a video and it’s a walkthrough that says, “Hey, welcome to X, Y, Z landscaping company.” And you’re showing a drive up to the building because they’ve never been there before. And here’s where you park. Here’s where you’re walking into the form door. You’ll be greeted by our office dog, as well as Becky who works at the front desk, we’ll ask you to sign some paperwork and then just sit here and then we’ll do the interview over here.

Just like a really nice welcoming video. So that they’re like, oh, it alleviates the stress of going to an interview because a lot of times, if you’re a business owner, you probably don’t remember the last time you walked into an interview, unless it was one that you were conducting yourself, but it’s nerve wracking. It’s something that you’re like, “What do I wear? I hope I get there on time.” It’s a lot of butterflies. You don’t know these people and it’s like an awkward first date almost. 

So those type of things went a really long way for us. And the video took me what five minutes to make. And then I automated the process of when it went out through HubSpot, I would set the alert and it would send them a reminder and it would send them the video and people were like, “Oh my gosh, thank you so much.” So I love tools like that to make people more comfortable at the interview. Same thing with the follow-up process. If you do any drug testing, having that, figure that out before these guys come in, every time we’re going to have them fill out this piece of paper and then give them the drug test form, whatever it is, but having those processes in place.

And then when they actually do get hired, I help companies develop a virtual onboarding program. So essentially they can do this at home before their first day of work. They can go through, they get their employee manual or handbook. They get all of their tax forms and legal paperwork that they need to fill out. So if they’re really ambitious, they can get that done before day one. It tells them how they can grow within the company, what the career structures look like.

It shows them a map of the shop and the yard and the building and where the bathroom is and what they need to bring on their first day and those types of things. So I love those virtual onboarding programs. Those help really a lot because one, you don’t have to have them sit down for a half day training one-on-one with your office manager, whose time is valuable, just sitting there watching them fill out tax forms and showing them what work boots to wear, where to get uniforms and things like that. They can just learn it through video and online. And if they don’t do it before they come, then you can just sit them down in front of a TV and they can learn that way. 

I mean, I worked at so many places as in high school growing up like Bath & Body Works or Best Buy. And I remember that onboarding was very virtual. They didn’t have somebody talking to me. It was like movies and it felt like I was watching a movie for half a day. So I went off of that model and try to develop something like that for leaders in the landscape industry. And that helps with retention. 

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. I have a few thoughts on what you just shared. First of all, I love the idea of that video. After someone schedules an interview with your business, I’m just thinking of how great of an experience that could be with a perspective employee of having a nervous, probably nature towards the interview. And then they get this email in their inbox that has a video attached to it that clearly lays out what they could expect when they show up for their interview the next day and how much excitement that would probably bring me as a potential employee being like, wow, these people are really care about my experience that has to make an impact. Right?

Kelly Dowell:

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean our results, it was funny because one of the issues we had was we could get people to reply and say they were going to come in and then they wouldn’t. And so I made a joke about it where every time I would schedule an interview, I got out of a post-it note and I had tons of colors because I’m a freak like that. But I would just write their name and the date they were supposed to come. And I would put the post-it note on the wall, in the interview room and on one side and then I would put it if they didn’t show up, I would put it on the other side. So then we could see really easily and clear picture all the time like the wall with the people who didn’t show up was getting bigger.

I’m like, “Why are people showing up? I don’t get it,” so that’s why I created the video. I’m like, we got to get them excited to come. What’s their problem? Why are they not coming in? And then we even told them in the movie, or in the video, like be on time, one of our huge things is we have to be timely. Our clients expect that. And we expect that out of you. So are the people who showed up as well as people who showed up on time, just skyrocketed with just a simple video.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. It really strikes me as an experience that’s mutually beneficial for everyone, right? It’s a great experience for the prospect. They get the chance to come in, see the company in a way and get prepared for the company in a way that gets them excited to work there. And then you, as the business owner are able to hire more people effectively. But then from a training perspective as well, this has got to be a strategy that a lot of smaller companies or even larger companies, can begin implementing to have number one, a uniform training process, but one that’s really scalable and that doesn’t take up the entire bandwidth of a member of your team every single time you bring on someone new.

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. And it’s a great winter project. I understand just like we started off talking spring is busy, people listening to this. If you’re listening to it anytime around when we’re recording, you’re probably like, “Yeah, it sounds great. Never going to do it right now,” but put it on the docket for this winter it doesn’t like it have to be fancy. Like you said, tie an iPhone is great, it’s pretty simple to do as well as while you’re out there this spring, get some videos and get some footage of guys throwing mulch and shovel edging and landing annuals and the spacing that goes into it and talk through it as you were training somebody else and just keep those on hand for winters so that you can build out plethora of training videos that people can watch, or you can send out via email to them at a later time, because I think honestly, everybody wants to do well at their job.

Everybody wants to thrive. And sometimes it’s just a matter of lack of education, lack of knowing. And if we can help that in any way, I definitely recommend it. I also want to throw out a quick shout out to Arden our Urbano. She owns Greenies and they have a complete deck already made for you of training videos. So that is if you’re looking for you and more money than time, that’s the way of doing instead of making your own videos.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. That sounds like an incredible resource. And we’ll be sure to link to those in the show notes of this episode. I want to transition some of our conversation more towards the marketing and sales side of things, because that is a lot of what your background is in and how you help businesses today. Specifically, when we talk about marketing, I feel marketing in the green industry is an odd term. Some businesses leverage marketing, well, some don’t at all. You have the wide range of companies that have nice built out website that leverages video and image like clean images of their crews. And then you have other companies that might only have a Facebook page, or maybe they don’t have anything at all. And your experience with the businesses you work for, what is the most important marketing asset that a industry business can have?

Kelly Dowell:

Your own website. That’s what they call and marketing your owned media. So at any point you want people to go to your own website, whether that’s your blog or your homepage or your contact page or whatever. I would think that in so many ways describes who you are. I think I opened this up with saying all the clients that I talk to, they all want to be seen as professional. They want to be recognized as a professional in the industry, as well as in what they do in their territory. So your website really shows that often. If your trucks are driving by, they see xyzlandscaping.com and they go there and it looks like garbage. And it was made by Ask Jeeves back in 1997, that’s the first impression you give them. So I think your website is huge. It has to be something that is well designed, it has professional and branded imagery and video. And not only that, but it answers their questions and provides a great user experience where it’s easy to get more information or easy to request a quote and learn more.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. For someone who’s listening to this episode and listening to us talk about websites, and maybe they have one, maybe they don’t. And they’re wondering where to get started. What would you say are some of the non-negotiables of an effective website for our green industry business?

Kelly Dowell:

That’s an interesting question. I guess the non-negotiable, it’s got to say your name, what you do and have a form they can fill out to get in touch at the bare minimum, right? That’s what you got to have. They got to know what you do and what services you offer and how you can help them and then be able to contact you. A form that works might I add, you’ll be surprised people will call me and be like, “Hey, I need help with blah, blah, blah.” And literally one of the first things I do is I go to their site as a client and I fill out the form and I’m like, “What happens? Do I get a automated email response? Does somebody call me to someone text me? Does the page go to a landing page or does it just have a thing that says, thanks, we received your request. What happens next?” So that’s something, I guess, that’s bonus points if you consider that from the basic website.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. And I think that’s why I asked the question. Kelly is because for someone like me and you, that works with websites regularly, it does seem like a silly question, but to a lot of people who websites in general, whether it’s web development or we’re word smithing, or copy, it’s difficult. And it’s intimidating. You don’t really know what’s best practice or what to do, but at the same, I would encourage you. There are a lot of really great tools out there that not only make having a clean website, relatively cost-effective, but easy to pull off as well.

Kelly Dowell:

Absolutely. Yeah. If you don’t have a website right now, I would highly recommend Wix, W-I-X or Squarespace. And those two are very easy to use. I know I’ve talked to a lot of people who are like, “Oh, we have a WordPress site. I can’t figure it out. It’s too many plugins and this, that, and the other one,” WordPress is difficult to use if you don’t know what you’re doing, a Squarespace and Wix on the other hand are drag and drop builders. They’re really inexpensive. They have good templates straight out of the box and you can be up and running in the next three hours.

Ty Deemer:

Absolutely. So many affordable tools out there for companies to leverage. So a question in a different direction from talking about bare minimums, and non-negotiables, let’s talk about what’s on the cutting edge with the companies you work for. Give us some examples of maybe things that people have on their website that are really next level or helping them achieve success at a really high rate. Some cool, really innovative things. 

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. I think copy is a lot. And when I say copy like the words, so that is describing things in a way that people want to read them, telling a story, making it so that they’re engaged right off the bat. I’m a big stickler for copy. I think that it’s really important. Pretty pictures are great, but telling the story and the why and how we help you and what you’re going to get is super important. Other things like I said, photos and videos, they paint a picture, they tell a story of their own. You will pull up a website of a successful landscaping company. And I guarantee they’ve got some really bomb projects on there and their work looks great. And you’re like, “Damn, I wished my backyard looked like that I’m going to call them.”

So I think that is too. I think on the other hand too there, right now, we’re getting into a lot of people want to accept payment and schedule appointments via their website. So being able to sell molds by the yard or whatever it is, or being able to sell a cleanup and or being able to schedule a site visit with a property manager, like those are things that we can set up and we can automate, and they can go in there and do it themselves without calling their account manager or calling office. One thing I think people are missing and I hate to go back to recruiting, but is having that careers page. I talk about this all the time. It should not be hidden. It should be as one of the main menu headers on there that says careers or jobs or something for people when they find you, because you’re a huge thing is recruiting right now. And so if you have that hidden somewhere in the about page, or you don’t have one at all, that’s can be a big difference maker of getting an employee in the door or not.

Ty Deemer:

I really appreciate what you’ve highlighted and talking about how a website can really serve the customer well because it really brings a lot of our conversation full circle. Consumerism today has changed and we can’t really be naive enough to act like that hasn’t affected the green industry. People everywhere expect an Amazon prime like experience, no matter what they’re consuming. And in the green industry, the best companies are the ones that are stepping up to that call that make it extremely easy for the customer to not only understand and to have a clear expectation of what the service will look like, but then following up on it in a really cool way. So I really do think what you were touching on there is part of what a website can do.

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. People do not want to call an office people don’t, especially the larger you get you have some automated thing or press one for scheduling or press two for billing, people don’t really want to do that. They want to pay their bill online. They want be able to get on the schedule online. They want to chat with someone. The chat feature is great, where they can just pop on the website, figure out the answer to their question. “Are you guys mowing today? I see that it’s raining.” “Nope. We’re not mowing today.” “Great.” Done. How much time was wasted there? Better yet send out a proactive email, but hey, so I don’t know. I think those are some big things. I don’t know if you want to talk about Facebook at all either, but getting messages through your Facebook page is another great way to reduce calls to the office, but also better that user experience.

Ty Deemer:

For sure I’d love to dive into that. So you’ve produced some really interesting content around Facebook conversations and how to really service the customer well on that. And it sounds like you help a lot of your clients with doing so. Why don’t you dive in to how you have your clients currently leveraging Facebook and the conversation tool in that platform?

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. I think the posts you’re referring to, I was talking about automated responses. So you can customize when somebody comes to your Facebook page, there’s a little chat box that pops up and it has a series of four or five questions. And out of the box, they are something like, “How much does your service costs? Where are you located?” And something like whatever, they’re not applicable to green industry companies because unless you have a nursery, you really don’t want them coming to business. So figuring out your customization for your brand and the questions that you want to pose so that they can ask, and then you have an automated response, come back is something that I set up for all of my clients, because how much does landscaping cost? And we can direct them to a page on your site that says, “Well, a small pergola that’s this size is this mount, a bubbling boulder, that’s this size is this amount or whatever you have. And how fast can I get on the schedule? Why should I choose your company?”

Those are all things that people are thinking. And then they can just quickly and easily click the button. It asks the question to you, your auto response comes back, they get their answer, and then you can personally follow up and say, “Hey, Sally, did you get everything that you needed? Is there anything else that I can help with?” So setting up those welcome sequences is huge and getting engagement because every time, the first time that somebody comes to your page, that will automatically pop up and they can interact with it. And we’ve seen a lot of people use that, but are those features.

Ty Deemer:

That’s so great too, considering what the experience is like for the person coming to your Facebook page. Typically they’re going to be googling landscape company near me or something like that. And one of the first two things that pops up is either going to be a company’s Facebook page or their website. And if it’s your Facebook page, they’re going to go to your page and easily be able to have any question they have answered for them through the chat experience. So I think that’s really cool stuff.

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. And I think there’s a lot of ways you can actually get people to engage with your messenger bot or your messenger in general on Facebook. When you make a post, there is a button that says get messages, I think is what it says. I’m not looking at it, but if you click that, then when you post your posts, then it will say it will have a little call to action at the bottom that says, “Send a message to XYZ landscaping company,” and they can quickly respond and say, “You just posted about doing spring or summer annuals. I’m interested. Can I get a quote?” And then they’re interacting with your chat, which means they’re talking to you and not calling the office. So any admins listening to this are probably cheering because I know when I was doing that, I was like, ah, phone calls are just distracting. It’s so much easier to just chat back with them.

So you can also run ads that way too, where you send them too messenger. And essentially you’re bypassing the whole, go visit our website and fill out the form. But at the end of the day, you’re getting their information, right? And that’s what we want. We want them to talk to us. We want them to connect with us and send us a message, give us a call, write us a letter, whatever, but we want them to talk to us.

Ty Deemer:

So Kelly, at the beginning of the show, you referenced that one of the top three common threads that you have seen in successful businesses, a desire for maybe less but better customers. And I really want you to be able to on that a little bit, because I think I see where you’re going with it really in terms of maybe some of the mistakes that landscape and tree care businesses make in terms of selecting customers. But let’s talk about what that looks like for someone to maybe take less customers, but better customers.

Kelly Dowell:

Well, this somewhat goes back to recruiting. It’s very, very hard to find somebody who wants to cut grass five or six days a week. That’s why we see a trend going into automated robot bowers and things like that. And it’s extremely non-profitable, I mean, it’s profitable. It’s probably one of the lowest things. So lawn care, irrigation, tree work, those all create more money for the company. And at the end of the day, it’s easier to service Mrs. Smith’s house. And she is a full service client who takes lawn care, tree care. We do our trimming, we do our pruning, we do her snow in the winter, like everything. That’s just one account versus having 16 mowing accounts that might add up to her account for the year. So I see that a lot of people are looking for, we want full service maintenance clients. 

We want them to take everything that we offer and do it all with us, but all their eggs in our basket. And that’s the trend that I’m seeing. It’s more profitable to do it that way. It just flat out sucks having a million accounts to manage when you could have half of that and still do the same revenue.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. So what does it look like for companies that are maybe further along in their journey to say, or to begin saying no to certain clients that historically they’ve always signed up for?

Kelly Dowell:

I like to start with the take two or take three approach. So letting them know and coming up with some verbiage and doing some role play within the office for people to learn how to say this politely, but essentially letting them know that we thrive on being a full-service company. Your yard will look better if you take at least these three programs, mowing, fertilization and irrigation, and I’m just throwing three out there.

It could be whatever you pick, but those are the maintenance programs that I think are most common. So we’ve learned that your yard is going to look the best. You’re going to love the work that we do as long as we’re providing these three services. And if they’re like, “Well, I just need someone to cut the grass.” Well, here’s a referral for you. So that would be the first  stepping point that I would take is maybe go to the pick two, if they call for mowing and be like, “Yeah, but you have to take the firsts, or whatever it might be that you want to bundle it or package together.”

Yeah. That’s where I would start is just a slow step into all right, we’re no longer taking. I know when I worked at my family’s business, it just became unprofitable to just do mulching. You can’t just mulch. You have to do the bed clean up and you have to do the shovel edge. And some people are probably like, “Well, duh,” but other people might not know, it’s like then do you sell mulch as a package? The mulch program where we come out and we edge and do the cleanup and everything together, and we just call it mulch or do we split them out separately and say, “All right, your cleanup is this your edge is this, your mulch is that. Combining those things really makes a difference. You’re going to get a higher revenue and then it all comes down to how you sell it. 

It comes down to the sales person. They have to be able to give that client or prospect an understanding of the value that they’re going to get. We’re not just going to come and throw mulch on top of existing weeds and leaves. We’re going to clean up the beds. It’s going to look awesome. You’re going to love it. It’s going to look better than your neighbors kind of thing.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. I loved the way you explained that, because it really just goes back to being an advocate for your client. You’re sitting there explaining to them why you do the things the way you do. And at the end of the day, it’s because you want their yard to look the best way possible. So again, people buy from people they like, know and trust, and if you do it in a certain way, it doesn’t feel like upselling. It doesn’t feel like it’s all about the numbers. It actually does begin to feel like, “Oh, this company just cares about my property” and that’s what any customer truly wants. Right?

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. And we’d say stuff like that too. “How did you hear about us? Well, you do my neighbor’s yard.” Well, your neighbor’s yard looks great because they do X, Y, Z. And so that we want to get you on the same program as your neighbors. Your yard can look good too.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So a few more questions before we go to Kelly, you have a really cool story. You’ve had quite the journey. You’ve been in different roles in a company, you’ve transitioned to where you’re helping different companies across the country. If you could go back in time and tell yourself your younger self, one solid piece of advice after doing this for the last 20 or so years, what would you tell yourself?

Kelly Dowell:

I’d probably tell myself to relax a little bit, work is a means to an end, you can’t take it too seriously. And like the seasons come and go, the work comes and go, sometimes we have too many employees. Sometimes we have not enough, sometimes there’s too much work in the spring, but then in the winter, there’s not enough. Or maybe in the heat of the summer, we’re like, ah, we need hardscape work. We needed to do this. We need that, everything is going to be fine. I would just tell myself just to relax. I think I would take it a little less seriously. And I don’t know, maybe that comes with just getting older and I take things seriously now, I meet deadlines and things like that, but at the same time, life is important, your family is important. And I just trust that things are going to work out and they pretty much do.

Ty Deemer:

Wow. I love what you just said about the seasons of life, because I think that’s one thing that the green industry knows about in a really unique way. Everyone deals with seasons. But a lot of them have to do with personal seasons or seasons of a business. But man, this is a green industry actually deal with seasons. There’s a structured and an ebb and flow to the work that every one of us does that is controlled strictly by the weather each year. And I think it’s cool to recognize that we can accept all the good and the craziness that comes with each of those seasons.

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah. Automations and things like that. And just learning from your mistakes since that’s what you got to do.

Ty Deemer:

So I always like to wrap up each episode with a question that’s a little bit more forward thinking, we spend a lot of time reflecting on this podcast naturally because you’re pulling from past experience, but like to finish it off thinking ahead and it’s pretty straight for question Kelly, what comes next for you? What are you most excited about right now? Whether it’s personally or professionally?

Kelly Dowell:

Well, six weeks ago, I moved from St. Louis where I’ve lived all 32 years of my life. And I moved to St. Petersburg, Florida all by myself. I don’t know anybody here and I’m just exploring a new part of the United States and just really enjoying it. So that’s what I’m up to now. As far as professionally, I have reached a point where I’m pretty full on retainer clients and I’m figuring out a way on how I can continue growing and keep accepting new clients. So just like everybody else, it’s a learning experience and I’m learning from other people who do what it is that I do and how do I get the help that I need so that I can help more people? And be able to keep my level of service at the place where I need it to be. So that’s what I’m working on professionally.

Ty Deemer:

Yeah. I love that. That’s so cool. So, Kelly, if someone has been listening to this podcast and has really enjoyed hearing you, hearing your expertise on the different topics we’ve covered, how could they come into contact with you or engage with the content you’re producing? 

Kelly Dowell:

Yeah, you can go to my website. It’s keldodigital, K-E-L-D as in dog O, digital.com. Take a look around, read some blogs, send me a message there. You can email me at kelly@keldodigital.com. Call me (636) 448-3000 or text me, anyway works. I’ll get your message and we’ll be in touch.

Ty Deemer:

Great Kelly. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We covered a wide variety of topics, and I really enjoyed getting to hear your experience and I’m sure our audience did as well. And look forward to hearing from you again soon.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Green Industry Perspectives, presented by SingleOps. If you got some value out of this episode, drop us a five star review on your favorite streaming platform. And don’t forget to become a pro member of the podcast at singleops.com/podcast. As a pro member, you’ll get notified of each new episode. Access to exclusive bonus content and be entered in to win some great prizes. Thanks. And don’t forget to tune in next week.

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