Hey, this is Wesley Smith with Tree Service, digital and Tree Service marketing profits podcast. Thanks for joining us for another episode.

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So today. I want to talk about the mindset of a business owner and why this is important for your business and kind of what to look for things that you have to embrace as a business owner. If you ever want to grow your business, right?

And we had to do the same thing in our business. With serving, you know, well over 60, Tree Service businesses across the country. We’ve had to embrace growth and embrace allowing other people to do things in the business, that’s going to serve our clients at the best, the best of our ability.

So these are things that we’re doing to. Um, and so I just wanted to do a quick podcast episode mindset, super important to when you’re a business owner because there’s a lot of things that you need to make changes on consistently things that are going to pop up that you’re going to need to make changes on that.

You have sometimes uncomfortable, but you just got to do it, right? You’ve got to embrace change in your business. So let’s kind of get into some of the main key points here.

Number one, you know, under the mindset of a business owner is you just can’t do everything yourself. Right?

And it’s going to start that way. I mean, you’re going to be the guy doing the work schedule in the estimates, doing the paperwork, doing the invoicing, doing the the cleanup, you know, getting the trucks repaired get in the trucks, you know cleaned out getting the trucks ready for jobs, hiring people, doing interviews.

All these things are going to fall under your umbrella when you first get started. It’s going to be your responsibility because you’re the business owner. You’re the whole thing, right? And everybody kind of starts that way. Unless you’re a deep pocket person that just wants to invest in a business or start hiring people.

But when you first get started, this is just going to be the way it is, right, you gotta just, you know, get going and build that momentum.

And as you do start, handing off things those other folks can do. And a lot of times other people can do things better than even you, right. And that’s hard to believe, but I’ve embraced this over the decade or so.

I’ve been in business for myself and so other people can do things better than you do. And so you can’t do everything yourself. Just remember that. Like if you’re the one truck one crew company, that’s how you start and that’s how you got to get going.

You’re Building your client base your build momentum. You’re getting your name out there, you getting the word out there. People are starting to know who your tree service businesses or any kind of business for that matter.

This really kind of goes for any type of business, but you’re doing everything yourself. If you do want to grow, there’s going to be a certain point in your business and maybe you’re thinking to yourself right now.

I’m at that point, right? Like we’re doing Work. But I’ve got 10 more jobs to do. I’ve got 10 more calls that came in today, for new people that want new estimates. Like how am I going to do this? I’m booked out a month. Two months, three months already, right?

So, you can’t do everything yourself. Number one. You just got to kind of understand that. Just let that sink in that. You just can’t do everything yourself. And you might think to yourself. You know, I’m the only one that can do this, right? I’m the only one that’s gonna be able to do this. Like, nobody’s gonna be able to do this.

That’s just simply not true and you got to go Get out of that thinking to, you know, let things go to kind of grow your business. So that kind of gets right into the number two bullet point here is you have to let go of things that take up a lot of your time to grow your business.

And what I mean by that is there’s a lot of different things in your business that have to be done. If you want to do it the right way, right? You want to clean up professionally after every tree job. You don’t want to leave debris and people’s yards.

Leave lines on the street for too long of a period of time. And if you have to do all of this yourself, those are things that Keeping you away from going on new jobs because you’ve got to go back with the loader and go pick up the logs or you got to go clean up or come back another day and do the debris, cleanup.

Whatever, if you had Crews, we had people and you were, you know, Outsourcing that lead and other people do these things in your business, then it would allow you to go create more relationships, go see more clients on estimates, be the sales person in your business type thing, right, instead of being the guy on the job every single time, and it’s going to start that way again, but if you get to that point where you’re Whelmed and overloaded with work, got to start getting comfortable being uncomfortable, right?

Got to start letting other people do things for you that are going to help you out and man. It’s a big change when it happens. It’s really kind of a sigh of relief, right? Other people can do things to help me out. Right? I don’t have to do all of this work every single day.

So you have to let go of things to grow. And there are people out there that are capable of doing what you need them to do for your business, right? That’s just all there is to it. There’s other people that can do what you’re doing and sometimes, Better.

So you have to let go of things to grow, right? That’s number two. And so, that’s just really, you know, that could be anything from gosh. I’m doing my own Google ads, and this is not just about marketing.

This is about every little thing. I’m calling customers and scheduling appointments, and estimates and rescheduling, and I’m having to follow up with people to collect the bills. I’m having to do all of the database entries. Every time I get a client that comes in an estimate or invoice for your appointment. I am having to enter that into my database.

I’m having to do this. This or do that. It’s just so much to do, right? Bookkeeping accounting. You name it. That it’s endless. When you’re in business for yourself rights, totally endless. So that gives me the number three.

So if you really want to grow your business, and you start thinking about how many clients and customers you’re touching daily weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually, you know, it is is just astounding it.

How many contacts you could have in a database, right? For your business. That is an asset that just continues to grow day after day, week after week month, after month quarter of Court, every single year because you’re entering every single new appointment you get for an estimate and customers and everything and everybody have invoiced, you’re entering them all into a database.

That’s going to enable you to have like, build a fence around your customer database, right? They’re going to hear from. So when you build a database, you can now communicate to that set of contacts monthly with a newsletter email. Male, you know or you can text them or you can call them you’ll just simply have them in your database.

And on top of that when somebody does call you down the road five, you know, maybe they call 5 months down the road for another tree job or a land clearing project or trimming the other set of trees. They didn’t do prior. The first time you came out, you’re going to have notes. In your database that says, hey, we visited, you know, Jon Jones house.

We trim three of his trees on the right side of his house over there. Now, he wants to do these other. Once you’re kind of going to the Or what you did for that client. Otherwise, you don’t you know, you’re not going to have that yellow piece of notebook paper on your pad that you had in the truck five months ago.

Still handy to pull up the notes for that particular customer, you know, more than likely, right. I mean if you do kudos to, you know, keep it up with those yellow note pads. Like I have one right now, you can see mine. So I ride on mine. I don’t keep everything there. Right? So you have to have a database for your business.

And so some of those examples are our bow star. I did a great review. Is our most are right for my business on this podcast. It’s on the YouTube channel. If you want to look it up, is our boast are right for my business or look up our bow star reviews. You’ll see my video right there and that’s a great database because it’s scalable. You can start small. If you’re only like, you know, a few employees and you can move your way up. They don’t have to start you at like a minimum or like a, you know, a flat fee that this is a one‑size‑fits‑all you can sort of a minimum are most are there, zarbor gold.

There’s single Ops, there’s jobber, you know, as an entry level one, so anything you can do to Old that database of your customers. Because here’s the thing, like, you’re serving so many dozens and dozens and dozens of customers a month, that builds up over a year two years, five years.

You imagine, five years down the road. If you put every single appointment that you went on every single estimate, every single customers in your database. After five years, that could be like 5,000. I could be like, 3000 5000 8000 contacts. Depending on what kind of volume you’re doing in your tree business. So it’s a big missed opportunity, if you’re not interested.

And everybody into your database as a tree service business, or any business for that matter, if you’re seeing this on the YouTube channel and your different type of anything, it doesn’t matter, but building a database of your customers and people that know your brand that you’ve went out an estimate for, maybe they weren’t ready.

Right? But that doesn’t mean they’re not in your database when you gave the estimate there in your database because you have the dispatch that appointment for the day.

So it’s in your database that just builds up its humongous and it’s a big asset for your business because if you ever go to sell your business, let’s say in 5 years, 10 years, 15 years. The buyer is going to love the fact that you’ve got 15,000 contacts in your database over the last 15 years in business, right? Or however many you put in there.

They’re gonna love that. It’s a huge asset, right? Because now, you can email Market to every single one of those contacts and you don’t bother them. You just let them know. You’re still here. Hey, you know, so there’s just a lot of really huge valuable points of building your database. So I just wanted to go over that.

That’s huge for building your business and you start that from day one or start that from right now. Like just draw a line in the sand and say look I got to get a database. I’ve got to put everybody in a database so that I have this down the road. It’s going to organize your business and quite frankly.

It’s the only way you’re really going to be able to systematically and intelligently, grow your business cause you’re gonna have data, you have numbers, you can have people’s contact information. Now, you can hire that office secretary right to plug into your database. Didn’t those? How to answer the phone enter leads into your database?

Dispatch Crews, dispatch salespeople to go to appointments. Like, you can’t grow without this in my In and not just pull your hair out. Right? This just organize your business keeps everybody on the same page. So that’s number three. Get a customer database software number for outsourced marketing right. Outsourced marketing.

So if you don’t do it every single day, it’s really going to bog you down. There’s just a lot of nuances to your a your website. Be your Google Maps, Google my business or Google Business listing as they call it today your Google AdWords, which is called Google ads account. Count your email marketing, right? Your social media.

If you do Direct Mail, all of these things are going to help you build your business faster and more systematically because now you’ve got a marketing budget, you’re going to get things out there. People are going to know your brand. You’re going to get more people see in your business and calling you for appointments.

Well, here’s the thing, if you’re doing all of that or trying or attempting to do all of that, it’s not going to get done correctly because you’ve got a million other fires to put out in your business. You’ve got a Other tasks to do in your business.

You’ve got to go clean up debris at a job that you did yesterday. Got to go, collect an invoice from somebody. You did last week. They still haven’t paid. You’ve got to go pick logs up on a job site that you took down five trees.

For you’ve got to go get the truck service. You’ve got to hire people, you’ve got an interview people. The marketing is going to get pushed to the side. Right?

And so there’s all these juggling things that you have to do. If you Outsource that to a company that knows what they’re doing. You’re actually going to save money because that company. He’s going to know how to do it.

They’re going to know to run everything more efficiently, get better results and in less amount of time and you’re gonna have somebody to lean on to do things for you. And that doesn’t mean you have to hire us. If you’re a tree service business, although I think we do a fantastic job, but it just means that you’re not going to have to do these things and worry and sweat about these things.

You’re going to have somebody else to handle that for you. And if you want to grow a business, I mean, you know you the Small Business Association says you need to be spending around five percent of your gross revenue. On marketing, right? Whether that’s your online, marketing offline, marketing, signs, truck wraps, whatever, right?

So if you’re doing a million dollars, a year is a tree company. That’s fifty thousand dollars a year. Roughly like we do this as a digital Agency for Tree Service businesses, like I spend, or we spend five to ten percent of our Revenue, maybe even 15 percent sometimes because we’re going to the trade associations.

We are doing Google AdWords. We are doing SEO. We have a website. We do social media ads. We do all of that stuff, right? So Spending thousands of dollars a month to get our name out there, which is the same as what a tree service, business should do in their local community. Right.

And that way you get more people coming in. But the only way to do that right is to lean on professionals who know what they’re doing to Brand your company, A and B get inbound lead flow, coming into your company, right? And so that’s the only way to do it is to Outsource that marketing because looked at me, think about it. You’re just not going to do a great job of it and then it’s going to be put on the back burner because let’s say you have a problem with your Google ads or you have a question about the, the Charges on your Google ads or your website goes offline. It’s messed up. It’s not working.

Well, if you try to do all of this stuff yourself, it’s just not going to get done. And how many customers are you going to lose? Because maybe they go to your website. It doesn’t load wonder if these guys are in business actually that their websites, not even coming up.

So that’s kind of crazy. Okay, or they go to your, Google, my business listing and you don’t have any reviews you need to be working on the reviews, which marketing company will help you get those a lot easier. It’s just a lot of things I could go into.

Down these paths to show you the the benefits. Right? Of embracing using professionals, to do things for your business is going to help you grow a lot faster, right? So if you try to keep everything in house and do everything yourself, you’re going to restrict how far you can go in your business because you just don’t have enough time or expertise in every little piece of your business.

Right? So, you know, the marketing needs to be out sourced. It’s something that’s going to consume a lot of your time. It can easily consume 10 to 20% of your day or ten twenty percent of your week. If things aren’t working correctly, your phone lines are what, you know, that the marketing is not going out ads or down websites down.

Need to get changes need to get this out this net. So it’s just one of those things that if you don’t Outsource, it’s going to create more headaches for you and your company along the way. So wanted to get thats number four is Outsource your marketing, you know, take that off your plate and let somebody that knows what they’re doing.

Take care of that for your business, to grow your business. So, let’s that gets us to, you know, so that’s pretty much what I would say. Or that part of your.

So that gets us in the number 5, which is Embrace change, get comfortable, being uncomfortable, and we touched on this and one of the former bullets they are. But I just wanted to talk about how you have to embrace change, right?

You can’t keep everything the same every day, in your business for years and years and years. If you do, you’re just not going to grow. Yeah. Maybe you did a little more Revenue this year than you did last year.

Maybe your revenues better than it was a couple of years ago, but you’re not going to really be able to take your business. Business to you know, two million dollars, three million dollars, five million dollars, ten million dollars. If you don’t Embrace change in your business and understand that other people have to be able to do things for your business, right?

That’s just a humongous thing that you’re going to have to embrace get comfortable being uncomfortable, which is letting other people. Take care of job, sites. Have somebody else run a crew, you know, hire an office manager outsourced, the marketing, you know, Outsource and get. A database so that you can keep all of your clients in a centralized software that everybody can plug into in your business. All of these things are going to be a little bit of a learning curve and they’re also going to be something that you have to just change and spend the time to change it.

But, you know, once you do, it’s going to literally take a big huge monkey off your back, and you’re going to be able to just move forward.

Take a deep breath and know that that’s being taken care of and being handled. Because if you don’t do these things, you’re going to be in the same place into your years. The same place in five years, and I know, I don’t know about you, but that’s one of my fears in business is being in the same place next year, as I was the year prior.

That’s not something I want to do. Right? I want to get comfortable being uncomfortable, continue moving forward. I don’t have to grow at lightning speed. But I want to make sure that year‑over‑year were growing and you know, we’re embracing change in our business.

So that’s kind of number five. I think that that’s super, super important. It’s just understanding that things are going to change. I think the only what is the the It’s like the only thing that is not changing his. I can’t remember the way the said, I’ll think of it in a second but there’s a really cool term about embracing change. I’ll think of it in a minute, but that leads me to number six is try new things. Right?

If you’ve, if you’ve constantly been doing things the same way, right, you know, I see people that still have yellow note pads for their business and there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re in a truck you got to take notes sometimes but you have still doing things the old way, paper invoices, you know, paper estimates and all that stuff.

Is fine, you know, but once you send everything to the digital side, with one of these softwares like, our boast are jobber. It’s so much faster. It’s so much easier. You don’t have to keep up with things. Everything’s in one spot. You don’t have to go. Oh man. My notebooks in the other truck. It’s not in this truck or oh man. I left this at home. I don’t have it. You’ve always got access to these things because they’re plugged into your software.

They’re plugged into your database. I don’t know about you, but I like to minimize headaches and my business and these things are going to help you minimize headaches. I think that’s the whole thing here. Is minimizing headaches in your business.

So hopefully this this podcast episode. This video helps you guys. I just wanted to put this together because there’s always going to be things that change. You got to try new things in your business.

And if you don’t Embrace those things and you don’t move forward, you don’t make a change. Well, then the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Right? We all know that we’ve all been there. We’ve all been guilty of that, right in the past. So I just wanted to do this to let you know. Know that these are things that you have to do to get comfortable in your business.

If you have any questions, you can go to Tree Service, digital.com. If you want to talk to us about your marketing, Outsourcing your marketing or anything of that matter, do that. You’re on the YouTube channel. Subscribe to this channel.

We get more content coming really, really good stuff, coming up down the pike and if you’re on the podcast listen to the audio, just go and subscribe to your favorite player there.

I look forward to seeing you guys on the next one. Thanks a lot guys. Have a good day.