Are you working 80-100 hour weeks, only to make dismal profits?
What would you do if you saved 50 hours a week AND made more money? For Jake Harris, owner of the $3M design/build firm Jake's Designs, having a dialed in Sales Process -- and strong marketing funnel -- enabled him to work more reasonable hours to free up time for his family and to coach high school football.
Interview with Jake Harris:
Jack Jostes:
Alright folks. Here we are with Jake Harris from Jake's Designs down in Colorado Springs. One of my clients, somebody I really admire. Jake, I wanted to interview you because you actually inspired me with the way that you're running your business and your family. One of the things that I've enjoyed learning about you is that in addition to running Colorado Springs, top landscape design company, you also are a football coach and you guys have won the state championship three years now. Is that three years in a row? Or was there a break there?
Jake Harris:
Nope. That's years straight.
Jack Jostes:
Okay. So what's happened this year?
Jake Harris:
Nothing, absolutely nothing with COVID.
Jack Jostes:
I know.
Jake Harris:
Everything, I don't even know what to do with myself right now. So yeah, and our governor said, "No football season this fall, and we will fire that up February 22nd." Is when they're planning on allowing us to play.
Jack Jostes:
Well yeah, that's a real bummer that it's not happening this fall, but I bet you guys would be winning state fourth year in a row if it was. So we'll have to see what happens next year. One of the ways that you're actually able to do that, and for those of you listening, maybe you don't coach football or whatever it is for me, it's actually hunting. That's the thing that I love doing. Is designing your business in a way that creates that freedom for you to enjoy that time with your family or that personal hobby or whatever it is. And one of the key things to do that is having a dialed-in sales process. So before we get into the sales process, Jake, tell us what mistakes did you make in the past that before you have a really good sales process, what was life like? What were some of the problems you were having?
Jake Harris:
Yeah, so we just celebrated 20 years in business here. And so we've got a lot of hard knocks, going through here. I would say probably my biggest mistake was not marketing correctly and in turn not getting enough leads. So when that phone call rang, way back in the day, I didn't know if it was going to ring again that day or if it was going to ring again that week, or maybe not even ring again that month. So I think, in turn I had to chase every single thing that came through, whether I thought it was going to be a great fit for the company or not. Now that we've got ourselves more, more established and hired a great company like Ramblin Jackson to get our leads flowing through there, we've got plenty of leads to pick through and make sure that we are finding the exact right people that think that we're a good fit for them and we got to make sure they're a good fit for us too, because not everybody that rings through is going to be a good fit.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, for sure. It really is all about finding the right fit clients, mutual fits. There's such a big range in landscaping of work that can be done. And a lot of it, you guys don't do, you don't even want to do it. If you don't have your marketing dialed in, it really puts you at risk of having to take on every job. What else was life like when you were having to do that? So that doesn't sound fun, but I mean, I'm sure people are listening, who are there now, what was it like?
Jake Harris:
It was 80 to 100 hour weeks. Thank goodness I didn't have my kids yet. Because that's my main thing right now is being a great dad, being a great husband. Those are my two number one goals in life without a doubt. I had a very understanding wife that supported me throughout those beginning days of the 80 to 100 hour weeks. It was going out there and like I said, as soon as that phone rang, let's get a meeting together. I didn't pre-call anybody, barely knew what they wanted done. I would get out there and I thought if I got this face in front of people that you know what, we're going to get that job and we're going to go through with it.
Jake Harris:
So, I would go through, I would drive half an hour to an hour to go meet these people. I would spend minimum an hour with them, sometimes two hours with them walking around their landscape, doing the tap dance, doing all that, didn't charge for design, didn't charge for any of my consultation, didn't charge for the bids or anything like that. And so then I... Another half an hour to an hour back to the office, good, four to six hours designing something and another probably two hours bidding it out and send it out via email. Sometimes they bid and sometimes they went into witness protection program and I never heard from them again.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah.
Jake Harris:
I just felt like it was a lot of waste of time.
Jack Jostes:
Well, that sounds like a lot of... The first many years of running my own business was doing that, working that amount of time and in some ways I don't know, it's unavoidable to learn how to run your business other than to have that experience. Now when you are 20 years, you said that part of the ability to sell and then have that time with your family was the marketing part. Marketing and sales are, are related, they are separate. Which shift do you think happened for you first? Was it realizing that you needed better marketing to get more leads?
Jake Harris:
You got to have the leads flowing. If you don't have the leads flowing, your butt cheeks pucker up and you get nervous. I've got 24 employees right now. So there's a lot of families that we got to feed through this company right now. If we don't have jobs on our board coming up for these guys, they get nervous too. I don't blame them. So it's staying booked out and to stay booked out, you got to have a certain amount of lead... Obviously depending on what size company you are, how much work you can produce and that kind of stuff. But you've got to have a certain amount of leads coming through to make sure that everybody's mouth gets fed. It's not just my family, it's 24 other families that work in the company as well. That's the way I look at it.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, absolutely. It's really... One of the things that we've shared with me in another interview that we've done together, that I absolutely agree is that as the owner and leader of the company, it's really your responsibility to do that marketing and make sure that that pipeline is filled up. Because you have all those people, the whole operation really depends on it. It doesn't mean that you are personally doing all of the marketing yourself. It might mean that you're hiring a vendor who does it, but that you have your eye on that ball at all times is part of the mindset there.
Jack Jostes:
So I guess what I was getting at was... Which changed first for you? Was it the... Did you get your marketing dialed in and then your sales process? Or was it the sales process and then you realized you needed more marketing? Talk to us about the evolution to where you are now, where you've got your marketing dialed in, and you've also got a sales pipeline or a sales process rather that works for you.
Jake Harris:
So, that's a great question. I think I have my marketing dialed in before my sales process. I hired my first designer and estimator about nine years ago. I hired my second one about five or six years ago. So training them on what we do, but I think the marketing came first. I was always pretty handy at that, led groups, did some home shows, which I hate doing those things, but that was my number one goal with you, is to stop doing those doggone things. I think that might be one positive thing that came out of COVID, is maybe I don't have to do those anymore. But I think I had the marketing fairly dialed in, the online thing.
Jake Harris:
I'm just going to plug you again, man. I worked with several different SEO specialists and they're going to get me on the first page of Google and made me all these guarantees and stuff. I think that was school of hard knocks, educate myself a little bit about that. But now that I've been working with Ramblin Jackson and again, Jack did not bring me on here to plug him, but at the end of the day, I'm going to sing his praises because he deserves it.
Jake Harris:
Working with you guys and seeing those results come up through, it's been night and day as far as getting the amount of leads that we really need to keep everybody busy here and these last couple of years. I mean, long answer your question but I think I had marketing dialed in and then hired a business coach. God, that was like five years ago, something like that. And then started dialing in that sales process a lot better. I was just a dude that was running around with free estimates on the side of his truck and it's just like, wow, you're opening a can of worms. And I still see those guys all over town and I kind of giggle a little bit that those guys are running around and probably go to the tap dance and maybe not getting much traction on that.
Jack Jostes:
Right. Well, I appreciate what you just said about us and the results we've gotten for you. One of the reasons though, I have to say though, is that you again, believe that you're in the business of doing marketing and sales. And so many contractors, landscape contractors are in the business of only doing quality work and quality work means I don't need to do sales and marketing and they are not exclusive. You got to do them both. So thank you for having the whole thing dialed in and doing good work. Honestly, it makes it a lot easier for me to get results when my clients have amazing photos of their work and actually do a good job and have good reviews. The reviews are a big part of it.
Jake Harris:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
Because you can have the best "marketing" in the world, but if the marketplace is not happy with you and they indicate that in the reviews, none of this is going to work. So, really doing a good job in marketing, you got to do both. Yeah. And so you did a lot of what I'd call gorilla marketing between the networking groups, between getting referrals. I remember, I think you've done some print marketing campaigns as well. For sure, the signage, the free estimate people they'll always be here. Right? And at some point you start getting so many leads that it's just not possible to go and estimate all of them. And so that's where the sales process evolves now that... Hey well, now that I'm not freaked out about getting enough leads, now I need to figure out what to do with them. So, let's talk about what is your sales process and for the people who aren't really familiar with you and Jake's designs, with people all over the country listening, what do you guys do and what's kind of the range from what you charge in round numbers?
Jake Harris:
Sure. So we're a landscape design build firm, 100% residential. So again, design-build no maintenance stuff involved at all. Don't own any mowers, weed eaters, any of that kind of stuff, lots of skid loaders, lots of trucks, lots of equipment in that sense. So yeah, we've been doing that 20 years here in Colorado Springs. I feel like we're easily top three in Colorado Springs, as far as what we're able to do and what we're able to design install and main thing is providing a great experience. That's when I found out, once you start providing a great experience for people, you can charge whatever you want, really. As long as they see value in it and position yourself as one of the top people in your area and people will see value in that and they'll end up paying more for you.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, absolutely. The experience of working with your company is everything, right? Because if you produce a great backyard or a front yard or whatever you're building for people, but it takes 10 months longer than you agreed to. I don't know, you're making a mess on their driveway every day and you're charging them more than you said you would... What are all the things that clients hate that they will pay whatever they can to not work with you at some point.
Jake Harris:
Right. And not [crosstalk 00:15:46] neighbors and not doing a lot of that and other monkey stuff.
Jack Jostes:
Right. So, Jake tell us, let's talk about the actual sales process here.
Jake Harris:
Okay.
Jack Jostes:
So, let's pretend that you get a lead through the website or someone calls in. What are kind of the steps of the sales process and just walk us through, why do you do them?
Jake Harris:
Okay. So the steps of my sales process is we're going to encourage people to try to email us pictures of what their project looks like. And then once we get those pictures, this doesn't always happen. Some of them don't always email the pictures, but we try to give them a little bit of homework, to email some pictures. What a good time of day to give you a call and we do it all distantly now and have done this process here for about the last five years. Then we call the homeowner and we started going through what are your goals and objectives here? Thank you for sending these photos. I see the space that you're talking about now, kind of what's in your head?
Jake Harris:
What are you thinking you want to accomplish here? Then obviously... I talk about the budget right away. It used to be a really, really hard thing for me to do and you're going to find as well, people don't want to just start throwing out what their budget is, because most people think that they have a... If they have a $40,000 budget, maybe they have a $30,000 job and you're going to stick it to them. But at the end of the day, it's quite opposite. Most people have $40,000 budget and a $50,000 job and that's our job to tell them. So I just start bracketing. So what are you looking for? Thank you for sending the pictures. What's your budget and they'll hems and haw and they will come up with any other thing to say other than what their actual budget is.
Jake Harris:
So, I'll just start bracketing them. Oh, I heard you talked about a fire pit. Our fire pits at some of our base models of a natural gas were $3,500. We can build these fire pits. I've built a fire pit up to $10,000. You're looking at a retaining wall. I see you got about this many square feet where, you know what? We can build retaining walls about $35 a square foot. We can build retaining walls that are 65, $70 a square foot. So I just start bracketing them and kind of getting the laundry list and I'll take notes as I'm doing it. "So you're looking anywhere between a $60,000 and $80,000 project, what do you think we should do next?" And we charged for designs. We do charge $85 an hour for our design fees and our consultations.
Jake Harris:
So, that weeds out a lot of people right there. Basically this process weeds out a lot of tire kickers, the guys that want to go get eight free estimates from people and who knows if they're going to do the work or not. So that's kind of the start of the sales process of kind of pre-calling them, seeing if they're serious about getting the job done, seeing if they have realistic budget expectations and they can afford what they want. That's my favorite. My favorite question for a client is what do you think we should do next? So I know I'm doing a lot of talking here. I'll ask a lot of open-ended questions. I'll shut up and I'll listen. People want to be listened to, say back kind of what they're saying to you.
Jake Harris:
So what I'm hearing you say is you want a nice place in the evening to where your family can go out and sit around a fire pit and enjoy some peace and quiet, that kind of stuff, reverb back to them what they're saying, and then get them in a budget range, see if they're comfortable with it, and then ask them, what do you think we should do next? And just showed up. A lot of truths will come out at that point in time.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, I agree. That is the most exciting question to ask. The silence after it, there's just nothing as exciting as that. Is there?
Jake Harris:
Yeah. And I'll let it sit. I'll let that silence sit as long as it needs to sit.
Jack Jostes:
I love that question. I asked that question too. I'm curious. Have you studied Sandler Sales Training at all?
Jake Harris:
I have not.
Jack Jostes:
Okay. Cause that, that is a Sandler Sales question. What do you want to do next?
Jake Harris:
That was one I picked up from my business coach. He's a really good dude, really-
Jack Jostes:
Good. Yeah. Well, it's good. And it's good because you're asking questions. You're helping them understand the budget. Because talking about money can be really uncomfortable for people. I mean, and chances are, unless your client is in sales or owns a business, they probably don't talk to many people about money ever. They probably don't even talk to their spouse about it very well, right? If they're like most people.
Jake Harris:
The general public has no idea what stuff costs as far as contractors. I'm not just talking landscaping, I'm talking windows, I'm talking remodels, I'm talking... Anybody in the trades, I just think average people just really don't know what stuff costs. I mean, we're looking at a remodel for our kitchen, my wife and God bless her heart, she's a teacher. I go, "How much do you..." We got all the ideas out on the table and went, "So about how much do you think this should cost?" Oh, about 10,000. In my mind I had 100 grand, nobody like that.
Jack Jostes:
Right.
Jake Harris:
It's just educating people and you used to make me angry. It's like, "Oh, they just think I'm cheap and they undervalued me." They just don't know. So you just got to educate them and then if they're jerks afterwards, then you can be mad.
Jack Jostes:
I agree. So educating them, before we get into the educating part. So the rough outline of your process is you're getting them to email some photos of their ideal project. We have a feature on your website where they can upload... There's a button right on the homepage, upload a photo and I know from analytics that people are filling that out. So you're getting them to kind of dream a bit about what they want. You're having a phone call where you're bracketing them for budget. And if they agree, let's pretend that they agree to that budget. That'll be between 60 and $80,000. What should we do next? Well yeah, that sounds about right. I don't know what to do next. Jake, what do we do?
Jake Harris:
So, what we do right after that is... And they're also agreeing to design fees at that point in time and I'll bracket that. So, if we come out here to your place, we're going to fully expect to sign a design contract with you and for jobs like this, just to backyard, you do want some intricacies in here. We're usually about a 10 to 12 hours design process on that. "Is that okay with you?" "Yeah, that's perfect." Let's get a meeting in the books." So we'll get a meeting in the books, send one of my designer estimators out there. So that's how I really... I mean, that's how I really freed up my time. I think it's a thing of contractors. They do it to themselves all the time.
Jake Harris:
They want to wear too many doggone hats. They want to be the estimator. They want to be the designer. They want to be the foreman. They want to be the marketer. They want to be the, I mean, there's just so many hats to wear in a business that sooner or later, you got to hand them off and you got to trust people, hire great people and then get the hell out of their way and trust them with their decisions. So, I mean, I wanted to insert that in there because if I didn't have great people working for me, I would not have the time to do what I want to do in football and family and everything else. But at the end of the day, we'll fully expect to sign a design contract with and I'll get a designer out there and we've got a great design book that we put together of, "Oh, you want retaining walls? Here's eight different ways that we've done retaining walls. Oh, you want a fire pit? Here's 10 different ways we've done fire pits" And different styles. Not everybody has the same style.
Jack Jostes:
Sure.
Jake Harris:
So we've put together a great design book that, that you want a water feature, we can do it pondless. This is what that looks like with a pond. That's what that looks like. You want a bubbling boulder, this is what that looks like. So that's a great sales tool for us out on site, gets people's juices flowing and allows you to get in their head to see exactly what type of style that they're looking for. And so you're not spinning your wheels throughout the design process.
Jack Jostes:
That's a print design book that they bring with-
Jake Harris:
Yeah. Shutterfly, super easy to make up. We add photos to it every single year. It's become about a 20 page book now. In the back end of it, we've got, "Here's all the trees." Because, everybody wants to talk about vegetation right away. "But here's all the trees that grow well in the area. All the evergreen trees, shrubs, grasses, perennials." All that stuff. So it gets the conversation going and gets you in their head of what they're really aiming for. So we'll have that meeting do a good site analysis, look at drainage patterns, and everything that matters in the design process. Then we'll ask for about two weeks, is what we asked for.
Jake Harris:
We're going to get going on this for you. We're going to go back to the meeting, take a bunch of pictures, obviously. We're going to go back to the office. We're going to get this drawn up for you. We use CAD programs to draw our stuff up, so good professional presentation, when we do get the final piece to the client. So we'll go back, get the whole design done, get the bid worked up, have another meeting with him, present all that to him. Schedule change or changes in, in design at that point in time if they need it. We'll finally get down to a number that we can agree on, a design that we can agree on. And then we do require a 10% down, 10% of total job costs, nonrefundable, put that down for you guys to get in our schedule.
Jack Jostes:
Great. And so how... Just do you have an idea of how many people who move... How many people, let's kind of break this down in the sales process? How many people get to that phone call and are you actually doing that phone call? Is that you-
Jake Harris:
I do. It depends on how many leads we're getting. This spring, at one point in time in April, we got doggone, near 80 new leads in one week. So all Dennis summit, all Debbie, some of those up with our salespeople, which we have two of. Then, if there's a huge overflow, I'll jump on there and do that process too. So I've trained our salespeople in this process and it's all about practice and it's weird because I'll sit there on a cell phone and they'll sit there and a cell phone, a room away. I'll act like a homeowner that doesn't know anything and I'll ask them some hard questions and it's just repetitive training and building confidence in it.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. So you're doing some role playing with your salespeople to train them.
Jake Harris:
For sure.
Jack Jostes:
Absolutely. That's one of the best things you can do. And do they initially resist doing that with you? Do they-
Jake Harris:
Every time. Every single one of them.
Jack Jostes:
Every time. But I'll bet that they'll tell you later that it's helpful. Right?
Jake Harris:
Well. It is helpful. They have told me that later and some of the feedback I've gotten from my salespeople is, "Oh my God, I used to spend 12 hours on a design and trying to please these people just to not get the job."
Jack Jostes:
For sure.
Jake Harris:
And to be honest, we're probably... Out of all the leads that we get, we're probably only meeting with about 10% of the people that call in.
Jack Jostes:
Okay. That was about the number I was going to ask for. So all the leads that you're getting through the phone, you're only-
Jake Harris:
One out of 10.
Jack Jostes:
One out of 10, you're going to actually meet with.
Jake Harris:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
And so they have verbally approved, "Yeah. We would pay for the design process."
Jake Harris:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
Right? "We're in your budget ballpark." Then how many of those people who then pay for the design, how many of them close to construction?
Jake Harris:
Nine out of 10.
Jack Jostes:
Right on. That's how it should be. That's how it should be because if they've already paid you, right? The chance of them interviewing somebody else and paying another landscaper for a design is very small. And two, by that time you're going to take great care of them. Right? They're now a client of yours. Why do you think one out of 10 don't hire you? I mean, what are the reasons?
Jake Harris:
So I think the biggest thing is... So, they'll buy the design, they'll pay for the design. And at that point in time, we'll hand all the paperwork over to them, whether it be digital copy or hard copy, sometimes both. They're cheap and they want to go out and find somebody that can do it just a little bit cheaper. So they'll take that design, they'll shop it out.
Jack Jostes:
Okay.
Jake Harris:
This is what's going to happen. But on the opposite side of that, on the nine people that do go with us, I truly believe it's not because they've already paid us money for the design, I believe it's because we've developed a relationship at that point in time. We know what their dog name is, we know how many kids they have. We know some of the issues that they're dealing within their household and in their life, by talking to them about what their goals or objectives are and we know what lifestyle that they live and lead and we know what they expect and we know what to deliver and people take comfort in that.
Jack Jostes:
Wow. Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's all about building a relationship and when I talk about this with people, I guarantee that people are shocked right now that you say no, or you don't bid on 90% of the leads that come in.
Jake Harris:
Yeah. But again you're going to have that volume. If you don't have that volume, your butt is going to pucker up and you're going to start going back to your old ways.
Jack Jostes:
That's right. That's why you always want to be marketing even when your pipeline's really full. It just, I believe... What impact did this have on your profitability? I mean, let's say like, look at where you're at now versus the days of Jake working 80 to 100 hours a week, talking to everybody with a pulse kind of thing.
Jake Harris:
So it's great. It obviously increased profitability, because when we're booked out... I got three crews out right now and if you call us today, we wouldn't be able to step on your site and actually start installing anything until November. It's August 24th right now. So at the end of the day, you're able to increase your prices as your schedule fills up, because you know you got work coming down, down the pipe and then on top of that, it's just managing your crews and coming up with great systems and again, hiring great people to lead your crews and getting the hell out of their way.
Jack Jostes:
So, once you got your, your marketing dialed in, you got the sales process dialed in, you got to the point where you could even have, how many designers are doing it now? How many people are out to? You've got two full time people who are out doing that. What do you do as the owner of the company? What do you focus on? And when you reach that point, did you ever find that you were depressed or bored or anything? What was that like when you kind of reached that level?
Jake Harris:
Depressed definitely not, bored I've got a little bit of ADHD, so I'm really never bored. I was proud. I mean, that's what... Again, I've been in business for 20 years and gone through a lot of seminars obviously around the construction industry in particular the landscape industry. And I always, whenever I would walk into these rooms, these big ballrooms or whatever, when I'm going to these seminars, I would find the oldest crustiest dude there that I thought had been in the gig the longest. I would sit right next to him and I would try to develop a relationship with him and start picking his brain. It was always, you need to work on your business and not in your business. You need to work on your business. And that's just an old adage that is really, really tough to figure out, man.
Jake Harris:
It was really hard for me to figure out. I honestly don't think I really started working on my business. Honestly, once I hired that business coach, about five or six years ago, I spent the first 14 years fully working in my business, thinking that I was building it and doing great things, come to find out that I was doing the wrong thing. So my main responsibilities are... Number one responsibilities you've heard here before, obviously is keep that phone ringing and do that through the avenues of making sure your signage is fresh on all your trucks, make sure your signage is fresh on all your job sites that they allow you to put signage up at, making sure your website is fresh and clean and neat and has the content that it needs and all that. And then, I'm still a part of a leads group, gone through a few of those and some of them, we're definitely the junior varsity squad.
Jake Harris:
I feel like I found the varsity squad right now in my neighborhood that I go to that once a week and great things come out of that as well. I got 60 other people pushing my company out there in that leads group and they got me pushing theirs too. So with everybody that we meet. So it's that it's making sure the accounting and I do outsource my accounting, but making sure that, that's all on point checking numbers. Job costing is probably the most important thing that I've implemented, because you can be sitting there ballpark pricing people, $2,000 for a fire pit and you may have lost every single fire pit that you installed for $2,000. You may have lost $1,000 off of that. So making sure your job costing is on point and what's it really costing us to produce this work so that the next time we go through and ballpark somebody, we can give them a good, accurate estimate and just kind of keep people motivated.
Jake Harris:
It's a tough industry. I think two things that you got to do in the trades industry, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year is to market and find good people. Because, you're going to... People are gonna outgrow you, you're going to outgrow people and you want to make sure that that pipeline is good and full too. So when you do get the work, you're able to produce it at a high level.
Jack Jostes:
Absolutely. And what are some of the things... Everyone is feeling the shortage of laborers. It's a tough market. There's a lot of demand for landscaping right now, especially in the COVID world. So finding... And it's hot like right now in Colorado, it's brutally hot.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. It's dangerously hot and dry here. There are tons of fires happening right now. But that aside, how are you finding, what are you finding... Anything marketing-wise that pertains to recruiting that's working for you?
Jake Harris:
It's really a lot of word of mouth. I always tap into the people who are already working for me and that are doing it at a high level. They know what it takes. They know what hours we work. They know what it feels like to work in a 95 degree day with zero percent humidity and a dusty backyard and like everything that we do. I'm not going to glamorize any of it. So that's the first thing I do, is check with the current people that I'm working with and see if they have any friends or acquaintances or anything like that, that they think would be good at what we do and would enjoy what we do. Other than that, I'm the type of guy that's, I'll be pumping my gas at a gas station and I'll see a cat walk across the walk across the parking lot and dudes got ripped up jeans and he's got a sunburned neck and just kind of looks a little bit rough neck, maybe. I don't know, just looks like a hardworking dude and I'll go up and I'll talk to him, say, "Hey man."
Jake Harris:
I'll just strike up a conversation and you know what, maybe he may be totally happy employed by who he's currently employed with. That's awesome. I'll still hand them a card say, "Hey, if anything goes haywire, I'd love to talk to you." Or he may be absolutely miserable and looking for something. So, I'll do a lot of that type of stuff too. Then being a football coach for the high school team doesn't hurt too bad because not every kid's going to college nowadays and some of those guys want to come out and get some summer work in. I've got one kid that he graduated three years ago, he's on one of my crews working his way to be a project manager. So I'm keeping every funnel open that you can on that man.
Jack Jostes:
That's really smart. Tell us about what are you doing with football as a coach? And now that... What's your fall schedule like? So that was something that was inspiring to me was I remember meeting with you and we were trying to schedule something and you're like, "Hey man, I can't do that. I'm working out at this time. I'm coaching at this time, I'm working at this time. I can meet with you then." I was like, "Right on, you have it figured out." And I know that-
Jake Harris:
Don't let somebody else think so. I don't know that I always feel like I haven't totally figured days.
Jack Jostes:
Well, I know that... I mean, and that changes every season almost with my family of what works for the family and how do all these pieces fit together? But I guess what does your ideal fall look like? Tell us a little bit about that.
Jake Harris:
So you're right. This year COVID-19 kind of called off our fall season. So I'm a little stir crazy right now, to be honest with you. I want to get out on the field and coach some kids, but not able to do that right now. But in years past, we would have just finished up two weeks' tour days. What those look like at 6:30 in the morning is our report time. Usually get us out of there by about 10:30. So I would just leave all work on the table, go to practices, get that checked off for those first two weeks. Then I would go to work. I'd probably show up at the office about 10:30, 11 o'clock and I work till about four or five in the evening and then come home and be a dad and be a husband.
Jake Harris:
Then today would have been our first week of... We would have been playing our first regular season game this Friday. We switched all of our practices to afternoons because the kids are at school during the day. So, that basically looked like get to the office around seven o'clock in the morning, work, work, work bust out of there about one o'clock. The place that I would work out at is literally two minutes away from the place that I coach at. So, go get in a quick one hour workout, show up at the school about 2:30, be on the field about 2:45, coach the kids, 5:30 rolls around, practice wraps up, come back home, be a dad, be a husband and try to wear all those hats in one day.
Jack Jostes:
That's amazing. That sounds like a really great day. What was hard about that? For the people listening, who are afraid, maybe they've gotten to the point where their business is that successful, but they won't let... They're telling themselves, "Oh, I can't, I can't go do that because if I'm not at the office from 6:00 AM till 8:00 at night, no one else is going to work hard. Or if I do this, I'm afraid." Or whatever head trash comes in.
Jake Harris:
You hit the nail on the head, right there, is trusting people. You know what, I feel like I've hired a great staff. Even if, one of the lower rung guys that just came on about a month ago wants to... Thinks that he can slack off, I've got guys that have been there five to six years. I have my construction managers. Him and I have been working shoulder to shoulder for 19 years. So he was at the very, almost inception of this company, him and I have been working shoulder to shoulder and he takes great pride in what we do and what we've built and I take care of him very well, financially and everything else and make sure that he has everything that he needs. So make sure that, that's a good symbiotic give, take relationship. But yeah, that's absolutely the hardest thing, is in trusting people with making their own decisions. Even if it's not going to be the same decision that you make, you got to back it, you have to back it.
Jake Harris:
Are they always going to make the best decisions in the world? No, they're not, but you got to ride with it, because you've already entrusted them with it and you've got... And you know what, if they don't make a good decision, I've found they feel terrible about it. And they're definitely learning a lesson and they're probably not going to make that same decision again. So that was the hardest part, is in trusting people with decisions and you know what, when you got... We're on target to do 3,000,000 this year. If you're running a $3,000,000 business, you're not going to be able to make every decision in there and keep your sanity. It's just not possible.
Jack Jostes:
You find that at this point, when you have those people that you trust who are... For sure you're going to have some people trying to get away with stuff when you're not around, but you have those people who are kind of second-in-command, are they supporting you ultimately in that lifestyle choice that you're making, where like, "Hey guys, I'm going to be out coaching football." Are they excited in supporting you for that?
Jake Harris:
They are and I appreciate him for that. I'm really glad that you asked that question. Because, five years ago when I was invited onto this staff... So I've been doing this five years. Five years ago when I was invited onto the football staff, I knew it was going to take a lot of time. I knew I was going to get a lot out of it though as well. That was my very first conversation, was obviously with my family. Of, "These are going to be the demands on us and you know what, we're probably not going to take a vacation in the fall because I need to be around. This is what it's gonna look like."
Jake Harris:
Once I got buy off from them, that was the very next thing that I did, was went back down to the office, got all my second-in-commands in the same room and I had the exact same conversation with them of, "These are gonna be my time demands. And the last thing that I want is you guys working and I'm out coaching football and them having the perception of, I'm just sitting here working for the man and he's out there having fun." I wanted no regret and it was like... I was dead serious about it. I was like, "If any of you guys are going to have that, I won't do this." Because, that's... Obviously it's my livelihood. I'll go family, business, football is kind of how I put that in perspective. If football was going to interfere with any of that and run my business into the ground, it wasn't something that I was going to entertain.
Jack Jostes:
How did that conversation go? Was anyone... You don't need to say who they were, was anybody like, "Man, this is a bunch of footy." Or was everybody-
Jake Harris:
Everybody was really on board with it. It was really cool. I took it from the approach of, "You know what, by being a business owner, I think I'm a little bit better coach. By being a coach, I can take some of the things that I learned from coaching these kids and incorporate that into the business as well on how to motivate people." It was like, that was one thing the very first year. It was just like man, I can get these kids out on the field, to go run through that brick wall. And they'll ask me which brick that I want hit. And like, I don't pay these guys. It's just, it was intrinsic motivation on these guys. I started digging into that mindset and stuff and like, "How do I intrinsically motivate?" It's easy to extrinsically motivate people by money, by paying them and by giving them bonuses and giving them that kind of stuff, but what really makes people tick? It's different for everybody. But how do you intrinsically motivate people to accomplish some of the goals that you all want to accomplish?
Jack Jostes:
Do you use any like psychological assessments or anything to help figure that out or how do you uncover that with people?
Jake Harris:
Conversation, building the relationships, pulling people to the side on job sites and having an open-hearted conversation with them, not just about work, about what their life is like and what their goals are and why are they here and what do they want out of it? Just building that trust pipeline.
Jack Jostes:
Good. What's been the most rewarding thing about being a coach, over the last five years and making that shift.
Jake Harris:
So it was about middle of season one, I knew I was going to build great relationships. I knew we were going to win games. I knew I was going to help young men improve their lives, give them guidance, give them advice where they need it, that kind of stuff. But I have the opportunity to coach the best position group in football and that's the offensive line. These guys, if I had a daughter, I would want my daughter to marry a lineman. Because, they're the most loyal human beings on the planet. They don't need credit for anything. They just want to go out and work hard. And so I would have weekly dinners at my house that I would host that I would invite the top 80 lineman on the team, over.
Jake Harris:
Again, I would ask open ended questions to learn about these kids. It was every Tuesday night cook a big meal for them. Man, I make zero money coaching. I ended up about five grand in the hole every single year by these dinners and stuff, but worth every penny. I'll just ask them open ended questions. I'll shut up and listen to them and learn about these kids' lives. We'll share a mail and I'll be in awe about how much food they actually consume and stuff. But it was about probably the fourth or fifth dinner that we had that I looked to my left and one of my kids was one of my sons was sitting on my left. I looked at my right, my other son was sitting on my right and they just had huge eyes.
Jake Harris:
I mean, some of these kids I'm coaching are 6'5 300 pound kids, big, big. So at the end of the day, I saw both of my boys engaged in the conversation, listening to what it takes at the next level of working hard, of getting good grades of listening to your parents. Like I said, I get a coach, some wonderful human beings. And for my kids to hear that from somebody besides their father was priceless to me, that was absolutely the biggest takeaway. That's the biggest payoff I've gotten out of football. I've gotten a ton of them. Believe me, state championships are fun. Getting kids scholarships to go to college, that's a blast. Talking to college coaches, all that stuff. But something that I... And I expected all those things when I signed up, but something that I didn't expect was the influence it was going to have on my sons and what cool looks like at the next level and putting that directly in front of their face, so they couldn't miss it. That was by far the biggest pay off.
Jack Jostes:
Wow. Well, I thought we were just going to talk about sales and stuff, but this is why I love doing the work that I do is, is to help people like you impact the people in your company and in your community as a coach. And so thanks so much for doing this interview, Jake. We're out of time, but for those of you who are listening and if you're in the land of 80 to 100 hour weeks and you're meeting with everyone, just imagine what would be possible if you got your sales and marketing dialed in? What would you do with, I don't know, another 40 or 50 hours of your week? One, you could spend some more time with your family and two, you might be able to contribute to something great like coaching or whatever else it is. So a really inspiring story. I'm glad we got to record this Jake, and thanks again for coming on the show.
Jake Harris:
Yeah. Thanks for having me on. And just a reminder to people out there, get involved in your community. No matter what you're doing, get involved in your community. Everything that I do in my community, I make sure that they know what I do for a living. That's another great avenue for marketing. I've already earned trust with a lot of these parents and you bet your ass every person that knows me as a coach also knows what I do in my professional life too. So that's a great, great avenue as well.
Jack Jostes:
Great. Jake, if people have other questions, want to contact you, how can people get ahold of you?
Jake Harris:
Just hit me up, www.jakesdesigns.com. It has the link to the office, I'm not giving anybody my personal cell phone number. But it has a link to the office. Leave a message or you might give me answering. I'll be sure to get back to you or there's a link on there to my email as well. I'm happy to talk to anybody about what you're facing and see if any of my past experience could help you out.
Jack Jostes:
Great. Thanks so much for making yourself available for that. All right, everyone. Thanks for checking out this interview. For more inspiring stories, tips, tricks, tactics on sales and marketing for your landscaping company, check out other podcast episodes. We're on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube and you can see full transcripts and links and everything at landscapersguide.com/podcast. Thanks so much. Look forward to seeing you next Friday.