Roots to Revenue

How I turned a hobby into a successful business - The Premier Lawns Story

• Robbie Lynn • Season 1 • Episode 16

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For the last podcast of the year, we are telling the Premier Lawns story of how Robbie turned a hobby into a successful business. 


From struggling in school to accidentally discovering his passion for greenkeeping, Robbie's journey is a testament to the power of perseverance and self-belief. 

His strategies for business growth, marketing, and building a successful team, as well as how he diversified his services and embraced new opportunities. 

He discussed the importance of networking, videos, and podcasts in his business strategy. His plans are to expand his content and manage multiple revenue streams.

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Robbie:

My first year of being self employed, I made the classic mistake of not charging enough. You have a mindset that you think people will not pay that. My first year it went from a thousand to seventeen thousand in a year, but that was the Covid effect. It just totally blew up on me and then I seen an opportunity. So this year, I'm not going to be taking on any new customers. Anybody fills in a form, I'll have to just say, look, I'm sorry. We're not taking on any new customers. What about you? And welcome to the Roots to Revenue podcast. This is a bit of a Christmas special. I have my Alan Linkie with me today. And Alan has given me some business mentoring and we thought we'd turn the tables around and he would interview me. But before we get into that, let me tell you about the sponsor. The channel is sponsored by Jobber. Jobber is my go to software. That does all my scheduling, my invoicing, my quoting. It's really good for anyone that's really busy and wants to free up the time in the business.

alan:

Robbie, thanks very much for the invitation to come along and chat. And it's great to see your podcast. So it is. I've been watching it religiously and interested in all the people that you have had on board. It's great to see how you're investing in other people. And that, that was what inspired me. It definitely does.

Robbie:

It's good to get people from, everyone from the industry and even like hear their stories about how, what it's like to work on a Coalface. It actually motivates myself.

alan:

Absolutely. Yeah, it definitely does. Robbie, you're very, very good natured in terms of bringing people on from UK as well, which was great. It shows that you're investing in the channel.

Robbie:

Just to give you a bit of a tidbit in the behind the scenes, it was easier to get, it was easier to get someone to. Come from England to do a podcast than it was to get someone here. A lot of people in Northern Ireland, you'd phone them up and say, do you want to come do a podcast? And if like, you had loved to do one. And then a couple of weeks later, you say, let's get a date in the diary. And they were like, Oh, I see it. What do you, what do you mean? So I networked with, I spent a large portion of the time networking.

alan:

Yes.

Robbie:

And just even networking with people in England that no one sent you on a comment to a podcast, they were like, yeah. What about the flights? I was like, I'll take care of the flights. We'll get you over. We'll do the broadcast. And it's worked really well. So we've just been approved for season two. So we're going to have season two is going to be a good mixture. There's going to be, there's more people from Northern Ireland now wanting to come into it. So we're going to have a mixture of people from England and people from here. That shows the

alan:

growth in the

Robbie:

channel.

alan:

I suppose today, Robbie, so I noticed quite a bit that you were investing so much in other people and interviewing other people and letting them talk about their business. So one of the things I wanted to do the day was just literally turn the tables on you. So it did. So I wanted to turn the tables on you and ask you about your business.

Robbie:

I'm not used to talking about myself. Usually most of my videos, it's either about lawns or it's about somebody else's business. Yeah.

alan:

Well this would be a great opportunity to sort of showcase the man behind the

Robbie:

the

alan:

business, isn't it? You know?

Robbie:

That's cool. Alright. Okay.

alan:

So tell me, Robbie, how did you get started in business yourself?

Robbie:

So, it's a bit of a, it's a, it's a bit of a long story. I'll try and I'll try and give it, I'll try and give it, I'll try and keep it sort without b all. Whenever I first, or whenever I went to school, I didn't really get on at school. I was one of those people that just, me and school didn't mix with. I managed to leave school without any qualifications which isn't, which is never really a good thing. For a long time I thought I was stupid, just to mitch off. I found school really frustrating, just really. And then I fell in the green keeping by accident and I loved it from day one. And as fortunate, I did that for 20 years and I was fortunate to have some really good bosses over the time and they took me under their wing and taught me different things and put me through different courses and whatnot. The last course I worked at was Clandy Boy. We do a lot of filming at Clandy Boy with Terry. Terry has been a pretty good inspiration to me and he had an assistant at the time and those two were really good. Whenever I went to Clandy Boy, They have a really,'cause they're one of the top golf clubs in Northern Ireland. Terry's a perfectionist. So when you get used to work and do a really high, a really high skill level. Mm-hmm And then whenever I started working for myself, I took that with me. I'd been working as a green keeper for about 16 years. And although had done different courses, I was bored. I just woke up one day bored and I was like, I'm gonna go to my local tech. and find out about doing the GCSEs and I went up and I had a look at different courses and I seen an HNC in business so they've since changed it since I did it but whenever I did it there was an HNC in business and then there was an HND which was two years and then the third year would have been the degree so it's the it's equivalent the first year of a degree so I did that. And that course set me free. So a lot of people say about how you can invest in yourself. Did you invest in yourself? Did you invest in your business? Doing that at HNC was one of the best things I've ever done because for a long time, I had the mindset that I was stupid and I couldn't do anything. But whenever I was doing the HNC, I learned something really important and I'd never learned how to learn things. And then in the second year, I was nearly through the course and we came to and I spent. hours studying it. I just, I couldn't get it to, it just wouldn't compute in my head. And I started to realise I think differently than everyone else about numbers. I never knew that, I never knew that you could be dyslexic with numbers. I never, I hadn't heard of dyspraxia. So, I was then, I managed to get through it, I managed to get over it, come and get through it. But then I started to realise, I think differently than numbers. And then when you start working for yourself, you're faced with numbers every day, and then you're starting to go. I actually see myself as disabled by numbers now. It turns out, I've never been tested, but I'm pretty sure that I have dyspraxia. So, that's one of the reasons why then, whenever I started my own business, I started using software to manage my business. Because it just made it, it made it all simple for me. And I've always just kept, so that's where my link from Jobber. I've been self employed now for 10 years, so after I finished my HNC, then I ended up going out on my own. I always wanted to work for myself. Apparently, 70 percent of the people that work for themselves are dyslexia, dyspraxia, because you want to, you think differently than everyone else, and you maybe don't fit just in that general thing that works for everyone. And I'd say, I'd say as well. My years spent in greenkeeping, which I absolutely loved. There's a lot of guys who, like myself, who maybe didn't do that well in school, but are quite intelligent, that are in horticulture, that maybe don't realise. Maybe if you're watching this and you're thinking, well I didn't do that well in school, maybe you want to have a think about it. Because it is a bit of a mindset change, you know, go back to school, try and improve it. The way I started my business then, I always wanted to work for myself and I did a lot of work with Terry inside Clandy Boy and outside Clandy Boy and he taught me how to do the lawn treatment. So then after I finished my course then I went self employed. and you, but it's like whenever you start, it's, so, I started up on a shoestring,

alan:

but I I, I, I wanted to sort of go back a little bit there, if you don't mind. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna touch on a couple of things there that you said was really interesting. It revealed a lot about you there. You were at school and you, you, you, you mentioned the Mitch word there. You Mitch off in school and I

Robbie:

bumped off. I was never there.

alan:

So you find school frustrating? Yeah.

Robbie:

Really, really frustrating, eh? Okay.

alan:

And the interesting thing about that, Robbie, is that schools tend to try and fit us into these wee boxes whereby they expect us to do what they want, and we're missing lots of people there that have maybe have a different way of thinking that like you had, you had a different way of thinking, you had a different way of looking at things, but you're very successful people. You mentioned that you felt stupid. Was that ever said to you by a teacher or anything?

Robbie:

Probably.

alan:

Yeah.

Robbie:

Probably. As a kid growing up in the 80s, Northern Ireland was a totally different place back then. Yes.

alan:

And the thing about it is, Robbie, what, what tends to happen is that, and you'll know this yourself, whenever people tell you something, you start to believe it.

Robbie:

Aye, you carry it up. You carry it with you. Yeah.

alan:

So you obviously had, you've a great dynamic about you. And it just showed you that in later life you flipped then to going back to college and, and studying in at c Yeah. Tell me about the challenge of that, of of actually having to go back as an adult learner and to, and to learn something.

Robbie:

And the first night in the cante, everybody's in there just themselves and they're sitting down and they're talking about their qualifications and they're like, probably, well, have you gotten out? And I did have my BQs and what somebody said, what tcs, I don't have any T CSEs. And there was, there was boys that laughed at me, yes. But they didn't finish the course. And I did so. Read into that what you want, but that HNC, getting that HNC just totally flipped. It totally flipped how I thought about myself, and it really set me free. And it just, now, I'm never ever going to win Mensa.

alan:

You don't know her all that. I'm

Robbie:

never ever going to win Mensa. I'm never ever going to go Mastermind, because my mind doesn't work like that. But I'm not as stupid as what I gave myself credit for, but I use that, that's, that's what drives me because I always, every day I always want to prove myself wrong. Since then I've always gone, let's, let's see what we can do today. So there's a drive

alan:

and a determination. Aye,

Robbie:

yep. And you've

alan:

proven that. Aye, 100%. And you've almost gone against everything that, that was in your background in terms of teachers putting us down and people writing us off because we don't hit those educational standards. But you're a complete expression of, if you have the drive and determination, you can achieve anything.

Robbie:

100%. So that

alan:

tells me then that in terms of starting a business, it's something that anybody could do.

Robbie:

Yep. Yeah, anybody can start a business, but I think where a lot of people fall down is they, whenever they start a business, then they think all that money that comes in, it all belongs to them. And that's where most businesses, I think, fail, because then they don't set enough aside for their expenses and whatnot. My first year of being self employed, I made the classic mistake of not charging enough. You have a mindset that you think people will not pay that you don't fully appreciate the expenses that are going to be.

alan:

That sort of brings me to another question in terms of in around some of the mistakes that you've made that you've learned from. Would you say then that what are those key mistakes that you have actually done during your time? starting up the business and what did you learn from them mentioned the cash flow thing there obviously cash flows cash flow is king for small businesses yeah

Robbie:

not not charging not charging enough i suppose is a real classic mistake and that was something that definitely you need to charge it because if you're not charging enough then you're always you can't reach the right customer because you don't have the money to spend on advertising. So whenever we first started up use flyers. But family, friends, myself, we spent hours, days pounding the streets. Flyers are really, if you're starting a business and you don't have any money, flyers are really good because they're cheap to produce and if you have a lot of time to put them out. But even as the business didn't get going, I'd always kept a good handful in the, in the van. So if you have, if you do some advertising or if somebody picks up the phone and they live a few miles away, From your, however, distance, you're going to be driving there to do their house, so we call it cloverleafing, but don't just do it once. Because a lot of people will see a flower and then throw it in the bin, but if they constantly see the flower, they'll start to go, alright, so anytime we would go to a customer's house and we don't have any else in the area, we would flower around their houses, but we would do that on every visit. Try and make an effort and do that on every visit and before you know it, you have three or four houses on that street or on that road and then all of a sudden people are seeing your van and they're seeing you and then that's how you grow. It's an easy way to grow around. Again, I suppose another thing that I really fell down with whenever I first started, I'd have driven halfway around the world to do a job. So I might have driven, you know, 20 miles in one direction and 10 miles in another and 10 miles in another. Especially lawn care. Lawn care is all about root density. Bye. The closer you can keep those houses together the better. At the start I just had the general hedge cutting, the lawn treatments, the grass cutting and I would have gone here, there and everywhere for it. Like I was driving miles to do small jobs and then I was driving miles to the next job. And then as your business starts to grow then you start to see different avenues. So I did, I used to do a lot of soft washing, used to do a lot of driveway cleaning. They were good up sales but again to get those customers you had to spend a lot on advertising. So Then I was looking at maybe the Newton Abbey in touch for anyone watching that doesn't know what that is. That's like a little free, ads for free, where the business pays to put the thing in. And it typically, it's a little flyer, and it has maybe 100 businesses in it. And it goes through letter boxes, 000 different homes. And then you just buy, so it really lets you segment your area. But, You end up thinking I cover all these different areas. It's maybe only 100 or 150 pound an advert but you're maybe doing three or four. If you just do it once, it's not good enough. People need to see that reoccurrence. So again, you're advertising maybe six months in a row to get that phone doing. So it was always just weighing up what works and what doesn't work. The driveway cleaning, the soft washing, there was really good money in it. But you're paying for the advertisement as well.

alan:

We'll come back to those couple of things, Robbie, because those are two, two areas that we definitely want to talk on. So you've got the growth strategy there in terms of how you grow your business. And then you've got the marketing strategy in terms of how you advertise your business to help it to grow. But what I'm really keen to know is, You obviously started off as a solo entrepreneur when you went out on your own to do the grass cutting and as you said, you did the washing and the soft washing and the power washing and you tried a number of different things. Yeah,

Robbie:

really like the lawn treatments, really the lawn treatments. In general, gardening was always the main focus.

alan:

You obviously started off with that as a solo entrepreneur yourself. What then flipped you into then changing it from being a solo entrepreneur into becoming a small business owner where you were employing staff and you were using technology much more and really thinking about making that transition from just being sort of self employed to creating a business that was actually going to generate your funds on an ongoing basis and something that would add value to you over the period of your life?

Robbie:

I think a lot of. People just, while we're touching that subject, because I know you've said to me in the past, what makes you a business? What makes you self employed? There's a lot of self employed people out there who would class themselves as a business, but not really fully appreciate that they're self employed. And the difference being self employed in the business would be if you have staff, that would be a pretty fair switch over. I think most guys after two or three years, you get the stage where you can either carry on yourself, but what happens if you get sick or you get alert. Something happens to you and you can't work, then your income just goes straight down. There's nothing, there's no safety net. Employing staff is a must, and plus it just gets to the stage where You need someone. Getting your first employees pretty tricky. I've been really fortunate in the past. I've had lots of really good employees. But whenever I first started, I maybe didn't have enough work to keep them in the winter. And they've left under their own vanishing. They've seen it coming and they've gone, well, maybe time to go. And then every year you're at the stage where you're bringing on someone in the spring, you're training them up. It takes three or four months to train someone the way, get someone to work the way I want them to work. They're leaving, Come whenever it starts to get quiet again, and that's really soul destroying as a, as a small business owner or as a self employed person. It's really frustrating. So then I went down the road of apprentices. So apprentices is really good, that I would encourage anyone that wants to take on their first employee to have a look at apprentices. Fair enough, they don't do the same amount of work that a, that somebody older would do. But it could be extremely rewarding, bringing on a young lad and training them up. And then I was fortunate enough just to get myself into a position then where I could take on an employee full time. I think the employee staff, it's less about being able to do the job because you can train people to do our job. It's all about, for me, it's all about attitude for employees. We can train people up as long as somebody has a good attitude, then they can definitely be a good asset to me. These days we go for experience less. And the attitude more, I think that's more, more important than anything. At the end of the day, I want to look after my employees and then my employees look after the customers and it's just one big circle. I just say there's a big circle.

alan:

Yeah. Hire for attitude, train for success.

Robbie:

Yep. That's it. Isn't it insane? Hire for

alan:

attitude, train for success. Tell me then, uh, we talked a little bit about, and you mentioned it earlier on, you talked about some of your growth strategies and you said that you had. Started off doing the lawn care and the lawn treatments, and then you diversified a little bit into doing the washing, the soft washing and the power washing. Tell me about some of the growth strategies that you have used.

Robbie:

Again, having employees and generating enough money for those employees. That's whenever I started a niece down into the soft washing and the driveway cleaning, because there's better money in that. There's a lot better money in power washing the driveway than there is, for example, cutting heads. I had, in around the same time, I had started to try and make videos. So one of the jobs I came up with in the winter that we could do for customers is gutter cleaning. Not getting ladders because ladders are no good. So we got a vacuum cleaner and we can clean gutters from the ground. That was a good bolt on to sell to existing customers. So I made a wee video to promote it and that video was terrible, that video was terrible. So I watched a few videos of making videos and it just says you have to just make them and accept that they're going to be bad and they'll improve with time and that's true. Each video gets incrementally better than the one before it and that's always been, that's always been the way.

alan:

You've demonstrated that You're, you've, you've, you're really, really good at observing what needs to happen. So you're quickly picked up that you're a service based business service based in that you're looking after the lawn cares, but you're actually calling with these customers who have a number of other needs as well. So you identified that they had those needs and then you diversified. So part of your growth strategy was diversification with your customer base.

Robbie:

I'm a great believer. Whenever you have your customers, if you have a good base of customers of selling. Exit more services to those customers. I've always focused on that instead of looking for more customers. I've always looked to sell more services to the same customers.

alan:

Brilliant. And that demonstrates real strength of character in terms of yours, but also that you were able to focus in on providing services to your customers and keeping the customer happy, which is what everybody tells us. When business keep the customer happy and they keep coming back is not what they say.

Robbie:

Something else you were saying whenever I first started. Networking is always really good to find new work. And a local landscaper who does really high end properties. He brought me into a garden, this was 10 years ago, and the fella had spent 100, 000 on his garden. He just wanted someone to be able to look after the lawn. So that landscaper, Trevor Ford Landscaping, he referred me to a lot of his high end customers. So right at the very start, I got a lot of really good customers. And that was good for me as well. And then again, you can upsell those customers. Other things like the driveway cleaning, the patio softwashing and whatnot, all different bits and bobs. But yeah, just always try and sell more services to the same customers.

alan:

Brilliant. So that leads me nicely on to my next question, which is really what marketing strategies have you used? So you mentioned earlier on that one of your marketing strategies was that was the print media, the flyers. Then you mentioned going into, into producing little videos and stuff like that. And then you mentioned networking. Tell me about the different, those different areas and which one of them. You find maybe the most successful and which one of them you've had to work out a little bit more

Robbie:

as the business has changed, it's it's changed with it. The flyers were really good at the start because your time rates and your cash per and then as you start to get more money than you're doing paid advertising that might be the ads for free then whenever you're wanting to be very specific. about, say, lawn treatments or soft washing or driveway cleaning, Google ads, but that could be very expensive. Then you start to do more social media. Networking's good as well, because you can find people that, like Trevor, he just wanted somebody that he could recommend that would do a good job. Trevor actually introduced me to something that I use quite often and I call it the Circle of Trust. I have a list of tradesmen that I recommend for different jobs. I don't take any cop from it. It's not like, oh, if you use, somebody says to me, do you know a landscape bird, do you know a referred, do you know a spark? I'd say, yes, I know the very boy for you. I don't take a cut of that, but he'll go and do a good job. And at some stage in the future, he'll then recommend me. The referral to the best customers intends to be, if somebody refers you, they tend to stay with you for a long time. It's come from a place of trust, usually. The networking really feeds into that. Some people don't recommend me, and that's fine. But I'm happy to recommend because then it keeps you, it keeps that customer in your circle. Keeps the customer in your circle because if you're recommending someone because they might come in, they might not have anyone else to recommend or you might say I don't know anyone and they'll go out and find someone and then before you know it they're in their circle and you might lose them. Have a list of different people Who can recommend different jobs to, and very occasionally those jobs come back to me.

alan:

So would you say then that networking has been your most successful marketing strategy?

Robbie:

Networking referrals is really, really big. As my business grew, then I joined the UK Loan Care Association. They've been really useful in giving me tips on how to grow my business. Plus, how to hire staff. They have a group and then they have occasional group meetings. get togethers once or twice a year, go and do those things. And while you might not learn that much there, it's all about having face time to in the fact with people. And then whenever you have an issue or they have an issue, they can pick up the phone or I can pick up the phone and say, look, John, having a bit of trouble with this. How would you do with, how would you deal with that? And even that in itself is amazing. As your business grows, you want to try and get involved in associations and trade bodies for your own business, whatever that niche may be.

alan:

Yeah, that's a great way of whenever your business is established, it's a great way of actually both networking, but also then having that support to keep you growing and growing with knowledge and information.

Robbie:

Being self employed or running a small business, it can be lonely. There's lots of other people that are exactly the same boat as you, will understand. the issues that you might be facing at that particular time.

alan:

Okay, so Robbie, we're talking a little bit about the different marketing strategies that you have used, and you mentioned creating videos. What sort of made that transition in your head to actually then start to create videos and using that as a marketing

Robbie:

tool? Whenever I made my first video about the colour cleaning, I didn't know anything about cameras, didn't, before I started YouTube, I didn't know anything about cameras, I made the video and in my head it wasn't very good and I wanted to, I wanted to make the videos better. And at the same time I was on YouTube and I seen that there was other guys on there. I started making my videos and then we were nearly making videos to network with each other. And I was making videos and the first load of videos were really aimed at other gardeners like myself. Just making content just because I wanted to make the videos better. And then I found that I really enjoyed doing it. Because I enjoy learning new things. I always, every day I want to learn something new. So I really enjoy learning new things and the videos really help with that. So then whenever COVID came along, what had actually happened, a lot of people started asking me questions about their lawn, how to get better. A lot of people all of a sudden trapped in their houses. And lots of people asked me about their lawn. So we started making videos just to answer those questions. And then before I knew it, in my first year, it took 14 months to get a thousand subscribers. And then in the first year, it went from a thousand to 17, 000 in a year. But that was the COVID effect. It just totally blew up on me. And then I seen an opportunity. And I, and I started to make more and more videos.

alan:

So you were able to pivot your business during a crisis period. Obviously there, there was no work. We were all locked in our homes and we couldn't go out. And if you remember that particular time, it was like the best weather we've ever had in Ireland in years. And then all of a sudden we're all in our backyard and going, Oh, look at the state of my lawn here. So they were reaching out to you. And you were able to pivot your business at a period whenever you weren't able to actually get out there and do any work from doing that then to utilizing your time to actually creating videos. And then, as you said, you blew up. So, in making that pivot then from the traditional lawn care business and providing services to home to now creating content for online use. That obviously must have been quite a challenge, Robbie.

Robbie:

I have a face for it though. I always wonder if I was a good looking fella, but I have more views. But, uh, no, for the first while, for the first while, I couldn't get in front of the camera at all. I was really, really nervous. And, you know, we're going to talk about something here. So I didn't have the self confidence and one of my customers, he is a hypnotist and he says to me, I'll give you some tips. We did a bit of a trade swap, but see, just sitting down with someone talking through how to having just a conversation with someone. And he was like, look, Just put stuff down in bullet points, what you want to talk about. Another tip they gave me, which was really good, go down into your local park and get your camera out and your phone and just walk around and talk to it. It just doesn't matter if you're talking about anything, you don't need to talk about, doesn't, you could talk about what you're doing for your shopping list, but just, it gets you used to talking to the camera in public and you find that no one pays any, somebody might go, yeah, but then they don't pay any more attention. And then you suddenly realize actually maybe I can do this. And then that's how I started to get the confidence to get in front of the camera. But as I say, I have a face for radio.

alan:

So it's quite interesting now you've made a pivotal switch. from being service provided to homes to now actually creating content for YouTube. You're now creating the videos and they're gaining traction. You're seeing your channel grow and now you're diversifying into a completely different market here. You still got the same niche, which is the lawn care business.

Robbie:

The lawn care is always going to be there.

alan:

So we've got the lawn care business and now you're using a different medium to talk about the lawn care business and you're helping people actually that You're not in a position to, you've increased your reach from being in Northern Ireland and, and doing that to actually now expanding into the whole of Europe, Ireland.

Robbie:

I'm going to give my dad a wee shout out because he does every single video. Whenever I started making videos, I didn't have a clue how to collect audio. Video obviously has two really important key components, video and sound. People will forgive you for bad sound, for bad visuals, but see if the sound's terrible, they'll leave. So I wasn't any good at collecting the sound at the start, so a lot of people, especially English folks, couldn't understand me. So we had to start putting English subtitles onto all the videos. So I used to do that myself, but me being pretty dyslexic, I found it hard going. So he stepped in and he said he would do it and he does every single video now, which is brilliant. We worked out then how to put the videos into different subtitles. So the videos now go in 10 different languages. And they're watching over a hundred countries worldwide. So I joke that no one gets to skip my videos. Brilliant.

alan:

Isn't that fabulous? How someone, if we think about that, that, that your journey from, from failed school, which you said you failed in school. We feel like

Robbie:

we feel like we left school with no qualifications. All of a sudden, all of a sudden gets millions of views. And

alan:

yeah, worldwide. It's not amazing, that just shows you what mindset can do Robbie and in terms of your mindset and your determination to actually prove everyone else wrong. It's not, I'm

Robbie:

never trying to prove everyone else wrong, I'm always trying to prove myself wrong. So that's a real mindset,

alan:

so you're actually working for yourself here, it's about

Robbie:

you. Yeah, it's always me aye. So,

alan:

yeah obviously you're doing the videos and the videos are growing really, really rapidly and you're getting a massive audience. What then created that, that jump then into creating a podcast channel and, Talking about reach to business, which is a little bit of a diversification from talking about lawn care, but you're now talking about business and helping business people to grow.

Robbie:

If I go right back to the start of how I made the videos, I was making videos and I was really using it like a tool to network with other gardeners and it was just to talk about how I ran my businesses and the challenges I faced and all that. And then as the channel started to grow and the viewership changed and the homeowners and want to learn about their lawn. So I missed that element. Any videos to do about business on the main channel now don't really do that well because my main viewers aren't that interested in it. And I always miss that. And then I've invested quite heavily into YouTube and I bought a lot of different tools and we started to build the studio here that we're filming in today. And then I thought, well, I have a couple of quiet months in, in the winter. So, I wonder could we make podcasts then? Jobber, who's actually, I've been working with the longest, they were a very natural fit for me. I approached them and I said, look, would you be interested in working with me on a podcast? And they jumped at it. So I went, yep. Cause I'd be extremely, most podcasts that start, stop right away. Cause it's really hard work. You think to yourself, oh, well, it doesn't take months to do a podcast. But even if you think, so last year or this year, this is the 19th podcast we've filmed this year, and we've brought people from all over the UK and had to pay for flights and bring them over and entertain them and what have you. So even that in itself is expensive. And then editing and the time it takes to edit and the time by time, the time it takes to break them up. And it's just, there's an awful lot of work to this. I would say the podcast is a business in itself. So really I have my long card business, I have my video business, and now the podcast is, I look at the podcast as a third business now. Because the amount of work that it takes, the amount of work it takes is just scary. You told me the amount of work it was going to take, I probably wouldn't have started it. But here we are, and it's going well for me. I really enjoy doing it, and I get to meet loads of really interesting people, and even that in itself, that drives, because I'm always, anytime I interview someone, I'm learning a lot from them. When I'm learning and then I'm taking stuff that they've maybe told me and I'm

alan:

implementing that in my own business. Yes. So it's again, it's a channel for marketing because what you're doing is you're learning from other, as you said, small business owners, and then you're taking that and using it into your, to your own business. So it's a support network. It's the networking. It's this growth mindset that you have, you've got a growth mindset that's obvious in terms of everything that you have done throughout your life, you're always growth focused, which is great. So that brings me on to what's next for Robbie. I'm

Robbie:

going to say so. Oh, let me see 2025. We took the phone numbers off. We took the phone numbers off the website a couple of years ago. So this is something else I'm going to talk about. Last year, I took the phone numbers off the website because a lot of people watch the videos. And then. They'd be like, they'd phone you up, and it used to be, it used to say anywhere you see my number, it used to be, so it's a double edged sword having a YouTube channel. They'd see, see that number and they'd phone you up and you'd be like, this line's for business line only, are you looking for a quote? And they'd be like, oh no, no, I just have a wee question for a video, you're like, leave the comments on the videos and we'll answer them as soon as we can. No, I just have a question, yadda yadda yadda, and it got to the stage where we couldn't pick up the phones. So I had to, I had to take the phone numbers off the website. But then this year in 2024, I really struggled to see any new customers because the videos are really, like I say, it was just so time consuming. Being self employed before, but if you're employed, you're working 40 hours a week. These days, 60 hours is nothing to work. Being self employed, especially trying to do videos, podcasts, everything that goes with it. So this year, I'm not going to be taking on any new customers. I'm closing, I'm just going to be taking, I'm just going to have to, I'll. Jobber has an autoresponder on it. Anybody fills in a form, I'll have to just say, look, I'm sorry, we're not taking on any new customers. I'm going to leave that get in touch, that get in touch quote there. Cause the odd customer, there might be somebody that I can't turn down. Cause every now and again, you know, a really good customer comes along, that you'd be mad to turn down. Generally, I don't on any new customers. I just want to focus on the videos and going. growing that. The future

alan:

for 2025 and beyond at the minute is to focus in on creating more content for for YouTube and then creating the podcasts. Yeah, you know,

Robbie:

yeah, I just want to grow, I just want to grow the video side of things. I really, I really enjoy that. I'm not going, as well as that, I'm not getting any, I'm not getting any younger. I'm not getting any younger, but the lawn treatments is always going to be there because that's, we take a lot of content from there.

alan:

So Robbie, we were talking about, uh, systems and processes there and setting up a business. And the transition you made from being self employed into becoming a business owner. So obviously that, that included recruiting staff. What are some of the tools that you started to use whenever you made that transition from being a solo entrepreneur then to a business? You've mentioned Jobber in the past, but tell me a little bit about Jobber and what they do, what that does for you and how it helps you.

Robbie:

Jobber is the backbone of my business. I feel like it does all my scheduling, my invoicing, my quoting. Even whenever customers, like I said, took the phone numbers off my website, but there's a box there, get in touch. So whenever somebody clicks that, it starts what I call the customer journey. Jobber is really, really smooth. So somebody fills that in, and I have a questionnaire so that I can figure out why or not I want to do this. customers are turned down, I figure out if they're a good fit for me. They also get an email to say that's been received. Then, that creates a, it's a CRM, so it creates a little bit about them. I capture their name, address, all the information I want from them. Then I'll phone them up and I'll say, John, I'm going to come out and see you to do a quote. Before I come, I'll send them a reminder, let them know I'm coming. If say I've got three or four quotes on that day, I'll send them a message from the app. I'm 15 minutes away, I'm half an hour away, they know I'm coming. So, even before they've met me, they've really, they've seen my videos. I'm sorry, they've seen my videos. And then, they've had a good email chain, before they've even met me. And, I've already sold myself to them. Before I, before they open that door, they're ready. So, I will go out, I'll do a quote. Because of the way I think about numbers, I've never, I'd never given somebody, I'd never say to you, it'll be 100 to do your lawn. I've always said, I'll send you a quote. Customers like that anyway. So, they can then approve that quote online. I'll get a little thing to say they have approved it. Within a couple of clicks I can turn that into a job. I can make the job, the one off job, reoccurring. How often I want it to come. I can request a card and file, which is really good for some services. So all our grass cutting, we have a card and file. Whenever Jason goes to do the work, he marks that job complete. The system takes payment. A few days later, the money's in my account. Customers love it, because it's convenient. They don't have to worry about it. So most customers pay me online via Stripe. So Stripe's baked into it. Something that's really good with Jobber. Anything new that comes to things. They were on the ball with Stripe years ago. So Stripe's far and away the most popular way people pay me. I like it too, because there's no It looks after it all. If a customer's late in paying me, It'll send them reminders to say your invoice is overdue. You can also do that with quotes. You can, if you send a quote to someone and they don't come back to you, Job will, Job will chase that up. There's so many things in your business that can be automated that you probably haven't thought of. And it frees you up. It just frees your time up when you go and do the job. And then Jobber does the rest. So that's why I really like it. Now they're starting to build them to have a sort of build in marketing tools. So if you use MailChimp, you can take your customers directly from and you can segment your customers. You can send them different meal shots directly from within the software that ask customers for reviews. So something that's doing this year and Jason's absolutely loving it. A little tip, so I'll send a certain amount of reminders to customers to deliver a review. Now I have something, this was something the jobber recommended, to ask, Jason gets a 10 tip anytime his name is mentioned in a review. You don't want people to leave just a 5 star review. If you've seen a review online and it says, Oh, this company did a wonderful job, 5 stars. But if you've seen a review and you say, Robbie and Jason came out and they did a wonderful job, or Jason looks after me on a fantastic way. Suddenly that's personal. So he gets a little tip from that. And then I get really good reviews. I find that it's a good way to incentivize a customer to leave your review. Because they know that employee is going to get a bonus from it and it doesn't cost them anything. So that's really good. So Jobber just frees up loads and loads of time. That's all Jobber does, it just frees up time. So if you're like, if you're a busy business owner and you're struggling with time. And then just the scheduling as well. So I can see all my jobs in a day and Jason can see all his jobs in a day. I track my expenses through it. At the end of the year then I give those expenses to my accountant. And he does my books. I know a lot of people would use QuickBooks, but I'd prefer just to have, for me, it's all in one place. And then the kind of has access to that. It's easy for me. There's no, I don't have to, I don't have to worry about the numbers because if you give me numbers, I'm gone.

alan:

Yeah. So it's basically an all in one platform. It's an

Robbie:

all in one platform. It does everything now. It just means we, sorry, it just means we go and do the job. The customer, loads and loads of customers comment on how smooth it is. Loads of customers like Robbie, that system you have is brilliant.

alan:

And that's obviously building up loyalty with your customers as well. And it's demonstrating your professionalism. So it lifts you up from being the runabout man in the job, just nipping in and cutting grass to being a professional business. It demonstrates your professionalism as well. So Robbie, we've been talking a lot about you and, and, and your business and how you've tracked your business with your growth mindset over the years, but I want to know a wee bit about the man behind the business. What makes you tick? What are the things that you're interested in doing outside of the business? Now obviously you spend a lot of time In the business and you're very creative in terms of you've got your lawn care business and your service business to your household. You've flipped into doing the videos and you're now doing the podcast. So that tells me that you've got a very active mind. What do you do to relax Robbie?

Robbie:

I like gaming. I like PC gaming. So I'm a bit of a bit of a tech buff so I suppose that's a game where I'm good with everything else and I'm good with videos and stuff. I like gaming. I like time to just spend time with my wife and my dog Bella. Going for walks, holidays and going for a nice meal and a bottle of wine somewhere. That's just happiness to me.

alan:

So tell me a little bit about obviously the key thing for being successful in business is to look after your family. everything. So it's, as a small business owner, we're having loads of these hats to wear. So we have a hat to wear for running the business as being the CEO. We have a hat to wear for being the health and safety manager. We have a hat to wear for being the marketing manager. You have all of these different hats to wear in terms of running your business. What would you say is the most challenging part of all of that?

Robbie:

Finding the time.

alan:

Finding the time.

Robbie:

Finding the time. You can't buy time. You can't buy time. There's just not enough. There's just not enough hours in the day. You can't buy time. That's one of the, the biggest challenge is I need to grow the business, but I'm not, I'm not, I'm bursting at capacity at the minute, but I'm not entirely sure. I'm a wee bit stuck in what direction I need to go from here. I need, I think I need to get to the stage where I need somebody that can do video editing and cameraman full time. I think that's probably the next, the next bit to free me up because at the minute I'm doing all the editing, all the I don't want myself. And that's really, really time consuming. That's my biggest challenge, is time. You can't buy time.

alan:

Yeah, time's obviously precious to us all. We've all only got 365 days in a year and we've all only got 20, 20, 24 hours in a day. So it's the best use of time that we obviously have and we need to be, we need to be masters of it. That requires a level of planning when making sure that we plan out for the future on a day to day basis. What about other aspects of your, of your free time? Free time, what's that? Free time, what's that? There is no free time. So you, obviously the, the creativity within you to think about the different things that is happening, that has to come from somewhere. So you obviously must be doing some studying as well in your free time and spending some time studying and seeing what other businesses are doing.

Robbie:

I suppose it comes back to as well, a lot of people think that all my videos, I know everything I'm talking about, but I don't, a lot of my videos, we research stuff. Everything has to be researched, it's always been important to me that anything we put out is factually correct. I'm always, I spend a lot of time thinking about the content that we're going to be making, even that itself is time consuming. In a lot of ways I spend far too long working, people don't really see the amount of time it takes to work, so if we were to make paid content for someone, that video could take a week. So you have, obviously you have to, the idea, you have to have the idea that what you're going to film about, if you just put the camera up and film, then nobody's going to be interested in it. There needs to be a bit of a story to it. It's, I can't, it's going to be a day's filming, that'll be a day for me and a day for Jason, and then probably a half day reshoot to tidy up or cover stuff maybe that a brand wants you to go on. So now we're on to four days, then I need to edit it. and pick thumbnails, titles, that's another day, no problem. Sometimes longer, sometimes videos can take up to 16 hours to edit, which is mental, depending on the length on them. Often a video, especially a paid video, where you're going to spend a bit more time on it, can take at least a week to make. It's just, the problem is just finding time. I don't really have time for anything. It's really, it's really hard to wear a lot of hats and I'm really struggling, and I suppose at the minute I'm really struggling. That's why bringing in the legs yourself is really good because you can talk through different issues and find out where you want to go.

alan:

Again, now you're in a transition period. So you can see that transition, that natural transition coming. You talked about whenever you were doing a lot of the work yourself and being self employed and you were making the transition into, to, to run on a business and having to employ people, you're now making a transition again into having multiple businesses and multiple revenue streams. You've got your premier loans business and how it's growing and being quite successful. You've got the, the YouTube. Which is a business in itself as well, and the time it's taken to create that. And you've now got the podcast, so you're making another transition now in terms of actually being a multiple business owner. Yeah. And having to balance all of the constraints. There's a lot of, yeah. Constraints. There's,

Robbie:

there's a lot of hat, there's a lot of hats to wear. There's a lot of hats to, there's a lot of hats to wear. I'm gonna have to downsize. One of the things I'm really doing, I'm gonna be downsizing primary lawns, the lawn treatment, it's gonna still be there. Because a lot of the content comes from there, but we're going to be downsizing it. So as we come to the end of the podcast, I just want to thank Alan. Where can the viewers find you if they want to get in contact, to find out about growing their own

alan:

business? Robbie, thanks. First of all, thanks very much for the opportunity to come and talk to you. You and I have had lots of chats this year about business and about growing our business and about doing a lot of different things. And I want to thank you for the opportunity to come along and turn the tables a little bit on you today, which I think really demonstrates some of the qualities that you have as a business owner and how you've taken it from small roots to now growing to growing quite deep roots. So brilliant. Thank you for that. I suppose if anybody wanted to contact me and wanted some help with their business. They can look me up on LinkedIn. My name is Alan Leckie and you'll find me on LinkedIn. We'll drop a link. Oh, thank you for that. Oh, that's lovely. And again, thanks very much for the opportunity to come and talk to you, Robbie. You've got a great business here. You've got a creative brain and a creative mind, and it just shows you where someone who, as you said yourself, failed in school can actually take it and change that. into being a very successful multi business owner. So well done Robby.

Robbie:

Thanks very much. Good man. Good man. That's a wrap.