Why Guessing at Marketing Is Killing Small Businesses

In this episode Jeremiah Jennings walks through the real planning process behind Growing Green Landscapes heading into twenty twenty six and explains why growth without discipline nearly broke the business the year before. He shares how revenue growth exposed weak systems cash leaks and the absence of a predictable lead engine and why the next season must be built on data instead of emotion. Jeremiah breaks down his focus on building a legitimate marketing pipeline tracking close rates and average job size and using real numbers to evaluate return on investment. He explains how spending money on marketing without analytics is gambling and why knowing your numbers allows you to hold vendors accountable and make confident decisions. This episode is a practical look at how to move from guessing to leading and how disciplined planning can turn chaos into controlled growth.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Jeremiah, hello and welcome to the growing green podcast. Your host, Jeremiah Jennings is the owner of growing green landscapes in Birmingham, Alabama, and has a passion for growing the entrepreneurship community. For those who are young in business, being a business owner isn't easy, especially in the early years, and that's why, in this show, we dive into a wide range of topics, covering all the challenges small business owners deal with, even if your company is generating a million dollars or more, the stories from our great guest and Jeremiah's own firsthand experiences will propel your business forward. And now here's your host, Jeremiah Jennings. What's going everybody? Thank you, Sean, tuning in to come so today here on the growing green podcast, this is Jeremiah Jennings. I'm excited to come to you today. I host this thing that we call the growing green podcast, and I'm excited to talk to you a little bit about what we are going to be focusing on, what I'm going to be focusing on, some top things that I'm going to be working towards improving, fixing and implementing in 2026 this time of year. It's a lot of reflection on the previous year, the current year, as it is now, and then a lot of forecasting into the new year and what that looks like. You've heard me say a lot on the show we run a 12 month rolling calendar so everything, we don't just wait to the New Year start things, but it is a starting point for some things that is fiscally we will start tracking revenue from January 126, to December 3126 but we do always continue to keep data over a rolling 12 month period. And I want to just share a few things that I am focused on for the next year, personally, as a leader in our company, and some things that inside the company we are working to change, and some of the top things that are most important to us. So you've heard all our story from last year. You heard a lot of the UPS, a lot of the downs. We were up in revenue significantly this year. I say last year, but I mean this year, when 2025 we're up significantly in revenue. We grew a lot there. We did not hold on to that money, though. We lost that money in some leaks, in areas that we did not have really optimized. And so project 26 is keep money right, keep money in the bank account and grow the team. So we are really focusing on, I'd say, like the number one thing that we're focusing on here going into the new year is building a predictable, a truly predictable lead engine. And this is something that is going to be a work in progress. I think there's gonna be stages to it. So what we're doing now is we are hiring company to come in, and we're going to spend some spend some bread with them, and hopefully, optimistically, analytically, get the get the needle moving. And so we have built, we have a website that is doing good. It's not the best website in the world. I don't know that anybody's really is, but there's always room for improvement. But it is doing good, and we're going to pair that with good optimization. I think we are going to end up redoing some of the site, but we're going to have them come in and they're going to manage all of our, all of our outbound marketing as far as paid social ads go. The last three to four months, I have been exhausting very heavily our organic outbound, just like free outbound, cold calls, knocks, drop ins, some flyers and things, stuff like that. We've been exhausting that pretty heavily, and so that is, that is step one in the process, right? So before you go and just spend money on some marketing guru to tell you the next best thing, which you have to be very, very, very careful about in today's world, I've been burned by that. I've lots of friends have been burned by that, you need to be careful on that, and that's why we're going to talk to you about this, what this is, and kind of take you along with us again, do the journey to update you how it's going. But we have done all those things, so step one is, if you if you have anything going, you need to do those things first, right? You need to exhaust those efforts. You need to be cold calling. You to be like looking at signs. And I'll tell you you're trying to get commercial properties, literally. Just start calling signs with retail space. That's a great way to start. If you have never done that before, find this. Find a sign on the side of the road to some commercial Complex. A retail for rent, space for lease. You know, call the number on that because whoever that is is involved in managing that property. They may not manage the landscape portion, but they have, they're involved in that property. And so they can usually connect you, if you can kind of swoon them the right way and tell them, you know, just speak real nice to to them. Tell me you just, you're just you're just looking to help the facility get kept up and and, you know, sales is a weird thing. I'm kind of rabbit trailing here, but sales is a weird thing, and it's all so different. And, you know, maybe the biggest sales guru would tell me no, but I think it really, really heavily applies to what market you're in. If you bring some cold, hard sales tactics from New Jersey, the Northeast Michigan just up up, really, from like Kentucky, north, if you bring that stuff down to the south, you will get the door slammed in your face. You will not break like barriers go up so fast. You will not break through that here you may, maybe you'll find some people that have moved in here. Any locals to Alabama? Good luck like that is that is not landing. You are not being heard. You know, my sales approach is so different to that it is a like, kind greeting, like, how are you? You know, people always say, like, don't ask the don't phone and say, hey, it's Jeremiah Jennings, how are you today? Like that. That's when people get get mad, hang up, not down here. Like people hear you out when you say that, if I, if I pick up the phone and say, Hey, Jeremiah Jennings, going to your landscapes. We are in the neighborhood servicing properties. Today, I want to see if we can help you with the commercial landscape. How, how can we help you? Like, no, people throw up a wall real quick on that. And so that is just like, think about that too. When you start doing organic think about your market. Think about what are you like? How do you like to be sold? And you got to do it well, right? Like, I don't, I don't like so a lot of the sales, the telemarketers and things that call their script is, is this the owner of growing green landscapes? And or they'll ask my name, and they'll say, Are you the owner of growing green landscapes? And it's like, yes, but see it because I know what you're doing, right? So you got to have a script that is not so sales pitchy. It's like, let me help you. Let me invest in you. Let me show you that we can add value to you. So anyway, back to what we're doing, or exhaust that organically, we're paying to bring in an outside company to do some things for us, and I'm excited to see how it goes. We have, they have, they brought a lot of numbers to the table. It's all analytics, and that's something that I will I will preface this by saying we're spending, we're spending some cash. We're spending a couple grand, recurring couple grand, right? To do this plan and but it's, it's literally analytical, and I think that's where a lot of us small guys might, like myself included, right? Guys sub $1 million like every literally, every little penny counts and matters. And there's an there's a time where you get up to one and a half to two and a half three, where like 10 and 15 and like 10 and fifteens really don't bother me anymore. Hundreds to 200 don't really bother me anymore. In the business, three, three to fives, that real. That still hits me pretty good in the company. And you get to that three to five, two to 3 million, like, then you're into like, the 1000 to 2000 the 2000 to 3000 range of like, what really matters is anything sub 1000 is like, that's usually all right. Like, if we can, we can have a decent justification of it. Like, it's, it's okay, we're not moving the needle that much. So we're spending a couple grand right on a month. And it's like, this is going to add up. This makes a difference. This is this is cash coming out of my pocket. And so I went into it, I was like, Look, I need analytics. I need numbers. I need you to show me how this like, how you're going to make this happen, not just a hey, spend, give us some money, and we're going to get you some ads. We're going to get you some leads in the door, right? No, that's not how this works. And so very, very analytical, very good spreadsheet brought presented, thought out three different options here, close rate percentages, things like that. And so our close rate percentage is actually pretty good. It's just 35 to 40% usually, I think the average is 33 I think we do trend upwards of that, though. And so it's not bad. It's not the best in the world either, but it's not bad. And so we're able to put that in. I. Put data in and say, like, Look, if we spend this amount of money, we're gonna get this amount of leads, and we're gonna close this amount of work based on this average job because of our close percentage, right? But let me tell you one thing, those numbers don't happen if you don't track them and have the and have the ability to plug those into that spreadsheet. And so those are very simple numbers that you need to be tracking throughout your year. In 26 you can have the data for this in three months, six months max, in 26 by June of 2026 you could have every piece that you needed to fill that sheet out and fill it out pretty well. You just need to know your close percentage. So that's literally like, Hey, we're sending 10 estimates. We're landing six. We got a 60% close percentage, right? Figure that out over a course of 100 estimates. How many did I close? Right? When you get that figured out, there's your close percentage, you also need to figure, need to be figuring out your average job. So that is going to be, hey, we did 20 jobs, we did$200,000 in revenue. Average job cost, or average job price is what$20,000 so that's a 20 jobs. We did 10 jobs. We if we did 20 jobs, we did it, and we did 200,000 we did $10,000 average job, right? So you figure those things out, okay, those numbers you can take, and that's all trackable in element, by the way, like very, very easily. If you go to the analytics screen, you press a few buttons and boom, those numbers spit out like it's not. You don't have to have some crazy in depth spreadsheet to do it. You can track it all inside of element. Not hard to do, and that is the power of element, right? So, so just stop with me for a second and level with me, if you don't have the software and you're hesitant to spend four to 500 bucks a month on it, right? So let's say you spend five grand a month or 500 bucks a month on it. Month on it. You're going to spend six grand a year on on software, roughly. So you're gonna spend six grand a year on element. But you're gonna have all these numbers, you're gonna have these metrics to be able to look at. You're gonna take these metrics, plug them into LMN. I mean, plug them into this spreadsheet for marketing purposes, right? Figure out what this data is. Excuse me, had a big you on there. Figure out what this mark, what this what these numbers need to be, and I want you to do, let me look and see this. I want to pull this up because I want to be able to actually read you like some numbers that are kind of close. Where is it at? Where is it that? Where's that? Where's that? Excel sheet anyway. I don't know where it went. Oh, here it is. Found it. Found it one second. So you have this stuff, right? You spend six grand, you get this data, you put it in here. Well, the Guess what? Now I know, here's an example, right? And you can play with these numbers. I know that if I spend 1400 bucks a month, managed by said company, 400 bucks a month, I'm pretty confidently going to get 19 to 20 leads at a 35% close rate. That's going to give me seven new customers, and my average job is seven 500 bucks. So I'm going to bill I'm going to generate 49,000 new dollars per month, for a total increase of 588,000 for the year. For the year, right? So I'm going to generate 600,000 more dollars off of three grand a month marketing that's including ad spend. So that's $36,000 plus no six for 40 grand. So I'm going to spend 40 grand and I'm going to generate 600,000 to generate 600,000 pretty good return, don't you think I would say so it's a pretty good return. But guess what? You don't know those things because you don't have the data. You're just emotionally saying, Oh, I'm never going to figure it out. Or I don't know, or the marketing just doesn't there's no guarantee. I've said there's no guarantee many times. I still say there's no guarantee in marketing. But when you ask someone present me something like this, and this is also a baseline to track them on too, right? So this is accountability. This is where, if I'm three months in and I've spent and I've spent 10 G's with you, and I haven't got anything, I'm going to come. Back and be like, Hey, buddy, look here. This is what we were forecasting. We're nowhere close to this. We got to figure something out, or I'm getting my money back, right? So this is accountability. That's why I'm saying and that, trust me, that's not the mindset I go into it with. It's not a hey, let me prove you wrong type thing. It's a hey, this is great. Let's make it work, because I want to generate 600,000 more dollars a year, and that's only on three grand a month, right? You bump that up to five grand a month in ad spend, you're sitting at 60 new customers a month. I mean, 21 new customers a month, 60 leads a month, $700 job price one $1.8 million generated in a year just off of that plan right there, off of 6060, G's a year, right? Like guys, the math, math, it's all analytics. And that's the problem with a lot of us small guys, is we don't understand the finance enough to realize it is just numbers, the math, just maths. It either does or it doesn't. You can't fix this. If you don't have the Analytics to track it, you don't have the numbers to track it. So how can you fix it inside of element? And this is not an element pitch either. This is me telling you. This is why we use the software. People ask you, oh, I can just use a notebook. That yard bit works fine. Jobber works fine. It does, sure it does. Yardbird works. Yardbird works great. Use yard book for four or five years. Jobber great. I use it for my trash can cleaning company. They're great. CRMs. They're not helping you know your numbers like this, though, and this is what knowing your numbers means. This is more. There's more to knowing your numbers than just Am I making profit or not? These are the decisions that help you make. These are the numbers that help you make calculated decisions as you grow the company. And if you don't have, you don't have the number says you're just it's just a guessing game. You're just guessing with 4050, $60,000, potentially, like, why would you do that? Why would you waste that money? You wouldn't. No sane man would pay six grand a year. Bake it into your budget. Again, you're not even paying for the customers are paying for it. Sure that cash is coming out of your account, but it's getting built with your customers on every single job right. Sign up for the software. They have amazing deals for the end of the year. Use go Jeremiah. You save some money there. Let me know if you sign up. I will. Or if you want to sign up, I will get you like you won't have to go through the through the normal sales funnel. I will directly put you in touch with sales guy there that will get you signed up for a demo and get you onto the product before the end of the year. Like, that's how quick we can make it happen, and you will get that service. Like, here, I put you straight there. You don't go through the normal the normal pool. That's the benefit of listening to the show, but you got to take action on it. And it's not easy. It's hard. I've had people signing up the last couple weeks and months, and they're like, Hey, can you help me here? Can you help me here? Can you help me with this? Can you help me with that? Yes, I'm happy to help. I can't devote my whole life to it. That's the purpose of LMN. That's the purpose of their support team, right? Use their support team. Utilize them, please. But I will help you where I can. And I know that it's tough because I did it two years ago. Like it sucked for six eight months. It was terrible. I did not enjoy it. But guess what? I stuck through the pain in the process, and I got the results. I'm telling you. It works back to where I was going with this whole show in the beginning. How do we what are things that we're working on for this year, moving forward, right? How do we get this marketing plan in place, getting a legit marketing pipeline and funnel in place? This is one of the ways. This whole spill the last 15 minutes. This is one of the ways, right? So we're going to do some things locally as well. We're going to, I'm attending a few more local community groups. So just different associations, customs, kind of what I'm wanting to do, find those in your area. They all have them, whether it be networking groups. Look, I'm sitting here looking to sign right now, by the way, For leasing information, call this number and it's got the leasing the the land, the property owner on the sign like you get, you get straight to the source. Hey, I know who owns this land, and have a number straight to their office. Call that number, by the way, they will get you in touch with something with the property management company, if you can talk to them the right way. Again, add value, but I don't remember what I'm saying. I don't know. Total brain blank. These are things that we're doing. This is how we're going to grow. This is how we're going to make a difference. This is how we will see. Me. Major changes in the new year, we're going to, like I said, we're gonna implement this marketing plan, and it's gonna cost some money, it's gonna have an investment, but it's gonna there's gonna be good changes. There's gonna be good changes, and I think we're going to see a lot of positive things to come of it in the new year and as we continue to grow, one of the things to think about and realize is, how do we how do we actually take and make more analytical decisions instead of emotional decisions. So this is just an example, right? But what are some other areas that I can take and make good decisions based off of data that we have? And how can I get more data? And it's not always easy either. Sometimes it is hard to get this data. It's not always as easy as pushing a button. It does take a button. It does take a little bit of work, but I promise you, it's worth it in the end. And I'm not a numbers guy. I don't really like numbers, but I promise you, it makes a difference. So start with a marketing plan. That is one of the biggest things that we are making an effort to do in the new year, because I know No, no, that it will change a lot of things because we fixed a lot of our problems this summer. We fixed those, we fixed our labor issues like we have those figured out. We have plans in place to really grow the right way, but we have to just get the leads coming in, and once the leads are coming in, then we can build out based off our foundation the right way. So we are really, really, really honing in on just a couple things. Our focus is property management companies. Property management companies partner with HOAs, right? Sometimes HOAs are privately board ran. They don't have an outside property management company, which we actually just picked up one of those. And then churches and commercial, just commercial in general. I love churches. I like doing church facilities. We're putting bids in on some large commercial landscaping right now on church and so I'm excited for that, but I want the maintenance on some of these churches as well. And so we're going to see what we can do. And then we're going to target a lot of effort towards those as well. So anyway, as we continue, the sales system has to be also completed. So that's part two to this, right? Part one is like, let's get the marketing system fixed. Part two is, let's get the sales system completed, because if we're going to have 40 to 50 new leads coming in, 60 new leads a month, that's two a day minimum, right? And if you don't have you have some dry days, you're going to have four or five, six in a day, potentially. So how can we fix the system to say, Okay, we're going to see the elites coming in. How do I manage these? Well, how do I make sure that we don't lose any of these through the cracks? Right? So right now we have it set up where, like, everything's manual follow up. We're not we're not necessarily pursuing quotes well, and we have deals that are slowly dying like we have jobs that are slowly getting missed because we just let them go. Our objective is to get to a 40 to 45% close rate. That's my goal, and we're not going to get there without fixing some of these things. So like really improving.