3 Days That Will Change Your Business

Hey everyone, it's Mike with landscape businesscourse.com Today's a little bit different of an episode. I am going to share exactly what is happening at Landscape Summit, the conference we have coming up in less than two months. It's happening in Bellingham, Washington, right next to the Bellingham Airport, right next to it. For three days on January 17, 18th and 19th, I am going to talk about exactly what that conference is all about, what, what's going to be included and what we're going to talk about at the conference. So you've heard me talk a lot about the conference the past few months, just mentioning it before and after these episodes. And so I wanted to make some clarifications, I want to answer some questions and I really do hope that because today I get to see you January 17th at Landscape Summit conference. So what is Landscape Summit number one? It is not going to be a trade show. There's not going to be advertisers, there's not going to be anyone there with any sort of like trying to make money off of you, trying to sell you anything. This is going to be 100% strictly just nuts and bolts of your business, figuring things out in your business. And like I, the reason I'm making this conference is because I've gone to conferences before where I feel like there's a really good pit, really good 30, 40 minute presentation, five followed up by another 20 or 30 minutes of them trying to sell you on some product or something or telling you about how great they've done. Like this is not what this conference is about. I will be just talking about just facts, figures. We'll be looking at your numbers, your business, your website. We'll be looking at what your company is doing for marketing. And we're going to go through your business step by step in workshops. So this is the reason why I stepped away from the previous model we were going to use for the course or sorry for the, for Landscape Summit, the conference. We were going to have some great speakers come in. We were going to have it all set up that way and we changed it to be workshop based. So this is what's going to happen. We're going to go through certain parts of your business and actually create plans and strategy like calendars for the 2019 year. So as we start 2019, this is the conference you want to be at to get a strategy in place, get a plan in place, create a budget and really get 2019 to be the year you, your business takes off. I truly believe that this will be the first conference of many and that come our second year in 2020, there's going to be people that look back at this conference coming up here in a couple months and say it was the pivotal turning point for their company. And I truly believe that. So right now you can sign up as $99. We are definitely not making any money on that. I'll be putting money into this event, trying to get as many of us in person as possible. Course course members, people have listened to the podcast, even people that might not even be in the landscaping industry. This is for landscapers though. It's gonna be very dedicated to what we do in our industry. And I just look forward to seeing you in person. And I want to make this a thing. I want this to happen every year. I know that this year we might have 40, 50 people. I really hope one day it's more. But this is the kind of the coolest thing about this first event is it's gonna be very, very personable. So I'm going to actually be able to shake every single person's hands, meet every single one of you, look at your company, look at your website, look at your business analytics and be able to help you make some decisions. And so I'm going to walk through right now exactly what is happening at the conference and exactly what's happening. So day one is January 17th. This is a Thursday. So the conference runs Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and we start at 2pm and the reason for that is so that you can fly out Thursday morning from wherever you live and get here by the afternoon. So you've got to fly into Bellingham Airport, which is a little international airport close, right literally right across the parking lot from where we're having this, this conference. So the conference is at a brand new hotel they just built right next to the, to the airport and with the conference center is below. And we're going to start 2pm so you can fly in if you have time and you want to kind of make this more of a weekend, you know, fly out Wednesday and spend Wednesday night at the conference center. It's a great, great hotel, great food that's there and just really close to everything that you need. So 2pm we're going to start. 2 until 5pm Is going to be just registration. So theoretically you could really just get here at 4:35 o' clock and fly in later in the afternoon and still get in just fine at 5 o' clock because we're not going to really get started till 5pm So 5pm is going to be when we actually kick the thing off and I'm gonna be talking in front of everyone, but from 2 to 5 we have registration and I'm gonna be talking with all of you in the lobby and kind of the registration area. I'll be there. We can talk meet before the event gets started. But at 5pm, lights on, camera's on and we're going to be starting the event. So at that first, that first talk from 5 to 5:30, I'm going to be doing a keynote. And that keynote is going to be what holds you back? It's going to be a question. And so what is holding you back? We're going to identify those things so that throughout the rest of the conference you have the thing you need to overcome and the question that you need answered. What is holding you back? So that is going to be that keynote. And then what we're going to do the rest that evening, we're going to, or not the rest of the evening, but right after that we are going to actually some breakout sessions.

And those are going to be where we can meet other landscapers. So it's going to be for 30 minutes. And what you're going to do, we're going to break people up and you're going to meet rapid fire, meet other landscapers, get to know as many people as you possibly can. So the rest of the conference, you can see them in the lobby, you can see them at the restaurant, you know exactly who they are, you can learn from them, talk about what you're going through in your business, bounce ideas off of them, bounce some marketing ideas and see what is working for their company. So we're going to do some breakout sections and you can meet as many of the other attendees as possible. Then we're going to do from 6 to 8pm, we're going to do a keynote. And I will be keynote speaker for this one. And throughout the conference, instead of having a whole bunch of speakers, I will be doing most of the keynotes. I will be doing almost all of the workshops. I will literally be everything we talk about in the course, everything we talk about in this podcast, we're just going to go deeper and deeper and deeper and personalize the information for you as well as have live feedback in terms of questions and answers. So 6 to 8pm is going to be a keynote day. Number two, the first thing we're going to do at 9am is going to be a keynote. I'll be speaking again and we're going to be talking about creating A world class team. That is going to be the objective for that first keynote and then we're going to jump right into a marketing workshop. So that marketing workshop is going to be three hours long almost. It's going to go till 12, all the way till 12 noon. That's going to be a marketing workshop. So what we're going to do in this workshop is we are going to create a plan for your marketing strategy in 2019. We're going to take a calendar of 2019, we're going to allocate resources in terms of money and what we're going to be focusing on each month of the year and in terms of marketing, creating that strategy for you, creating a budget around that marketing plan is what we're going to be doing until noon. After we come back from, from lunch, we are going to have a 1pm workshop that starts at 1pm and that's when we go into financials. All right? So again we're going to be doing a workshop. Both of these are workshop based workshop and this is also a workshop. And at these workshops it's not going to be just me yapping away, it's going to be you looking your numbers, you going through your QuickBooks, you're going through your software system, you go into your website looking at the different types of marketing that you're doing, looking at types of marketing that we're talking about. We're going to be doing compare and contrast, looking at different pieces of print and online social, different ways of advertising, see what works and seeing what doesn't. That's going to be in the workshop for marketing. We're going to look at your marketing too on your website and the stuff that you're doing. We're going to also in that workshop for the financials, we're going to look over your P and L, where you're going to look over what has been working in terms of your financial statements and see where the gaps are, what are the industry averages, what are the norms, where should you be at given the certain place in your business and where you're at in your entrepreneurial journey? That's gonna be in that workshop that's gonna be finished up in that evening. On that Friday evening, the second day till 5:30, we will be doing a keynote. So I'll do another keynote and it will be in regards to what we covered that day, but it'll be a little bit more of a lecture style and, and teaching style. Whereas these are going to be a lot more workshop, workshop style based. And so if you do have your P and L, print that out, you know, but guess what, it's all online. So bring your laptop. This is definitely an event. You want to bring your laptop to your iPad, whatever you use to kind of see your numbers, see your website, track things within your business. Make sure you bring those. Someone asked me the other day, hey, I'm just starting out. I don't really have all these software systems in place. I don't have the procedures in place. Should I come to the conference? Absolutely. There's going to be a place where you're going to be talking to people that have already started these systems, started these procedures, and you can learn from them and cut literally years out of the learning curve and thousands and thousands of dollars of trying to figure out what works for marketing, figuring out what works out for your finances. And this is the place you want to be. It's 99 bucks. Like, if you're not happy after the conference with the information that you have gotten and the ideas that you have received and the relationships you've created with others, I am happy to give you your $99 back. Because I just know it's not gonna happen. This is gonna be absolutely the best event for landscapers, especially now. Cause it's so small, we're gonna have such tight connection that we create within this event. And so some people look at it as kind of negative. It's the first one, there's not very many people. But I truly believe it's gonna be the best event we ever have, simply because we'll get much more tight relationships going forward. And it's the network that you create with these other landscapers that you can ask questions with. Get to know me a little bit more. I can help you with some of the issues that you're going through in your business. And I promise you there's going to be ROI positive for your business. Day three, we're going to start things off with a keynote at 9 o'. Clock. As you can see, from basically 9 o' clock until 5:30, 6 o', clock, we are just going, going, going. There's an hour break in between for lunch and a couple tiny little breaks in between, but we're going to be, this is going to be a work day. I promise you that you're going to have a lot of fun with others and we're going to have fun in the evening and things, but during the day we're going to be working hard. Day number three, we are going to be starting off with a keynote and I'm going to be talking about why the Internet matters, looking at the future of the Internet, what it's doing in our industry and how it's going to change your business and how to take advantage of the Internet to completely change the way you're looking at your business from a marketing perspective. This is very, very important. Then we're going to start another.

Workshop that actually ties into the keynote from Thursday, sorry, from Friday here, and that's going to be on hiring. So this keynote, I'm sorry, this workshop is going to actually help you develop a hiring process that's going to go all the way till noon, 12 noon, until we take a break for lunch. And so we're going to talk about hiring processes, we're going to look at what you're doing, we're going to actually bring people up on the stage and we're going to actually go through these different scenarios of hiring and firing people. We're going to go through the scenarios of different ways to interview people, how, how to create a system for career fairs and the process that you need in place to get these Rockstar, these Rockstar team members that we talk about the day before so world class team members, what we're looking for and how we hire them is gonna be covered in this workshop. And creating your system and your procedure, making sure you have a handbook for your employees is happening all in that workshop. After lunch on day three, we are going to jump right into another workshop and it's gonna be project management. So if you have not started project based work in terms of landscaping, property cleanups and larger based work, and you're just doing lawn care, just doing fertilization, project management, this is going to definitely kick start your business. It's going to be the thing that allows you to double and triple the lifetime value of your customer and really starting to take on these larger products and make them efficient, make them what separates you from every other competitor in your industry that just are so in your market that is just a mo blow and go guy. You can really separate yourself and create long lasting relationships with customers that are going to pay you a lot more over the long term. And we're going to talk about project management. That's going to be a few hours for that project management workshop. I'm going to be bringing in staff from my company and we're going to be talking about our project management systems. I'm going to be bringing in staff from my company to talk about our hiring systems and the way we market and our financials. And so you're going to actually see not just from me, but from people on my team and exactly how we do things leading us into the Q and A session. So after all of these workshops, after all of the keynotes, there's going to be Q and A, but there's going to be a dedicated time because these are both a few hours each, these workshops. So at 6:30. Sorry, I'm looking over here because I have this schedule right there. At 6:30pm we are going to do Q and A for a couple hours. And I really look forward to this because after all of these ideas, all of these things that you've learned, all the connections you've made, the networks that you've developed, you're gonna have a lot of questions, how do I implement these things? And I want to answer those. So we're gonna have an open mic. I'm gonna answer all your questions at 6:30. It'll go for a couple hours, we'll wrap things up. And I promise you it's gonna be an absolute blast. It's 99 bucks. Just go onto landscapebusinesscourse.com conference. You can sign up there. If you have any questions, let me know. Just email me@landscapebusinesscoursemail.com the biggest question right now is can I fly into Seattle? And you absolutely can go to the website conference, landscapebusinesscourse.com conference and you'll see on there, if you fly into Seattle, there's literally a bus that goes from Seattle airport to Bellingham Airport. Takes a couple hours to get there, and it's like a shuttle, like a bus that goes back and forth. And it'll literally drop you off at the hotel that we're at. We're literally across the street from a Bellingham International Airport. So if you have any questions, let me know. I'd love to see you there. And I really do think in a few years we're gonna look back at Landscape Summit and we're gonna say the original gangsters came back in 2019 and there'll be a few of us there. And in five years there'll be probably a much bigger event, but we'll say we were the first ones. And I really do look forward to seeing you and helping your business grow. If you think after this conference that that $99 was not well spent, I will happily refund you. I think you are going to be getting so many ideas to grow your business and then ways to implement them that it'll far exceed any sort of time off that you have to take or I know there's other costs in terms of your traveling expenses and airfare. We're staying at, like, not the classiest, craziest, expensive resort. I've gone to conferences where you spend thousands of dollars. We do not need to do this for this conference. It's 110 bucks a night at this motel, hotel, conference center. Very nice, brand new, very nice. But yet I didn't want. I want to make it affordable for those just starting their business. So if you go onto the website and go to the conference link, you can sign up, but you can also use the link that's there to book your hotel nights. And you can start the night before if you want, on the conference and go all the way through to a day after the conference at the same rates that they're giving us. So I think they're giving us like 30% off for all the people that are using our link for the conference and signing up for the hotel. So book those nights, book your flight. I can't wait to see you there. I'm Mike Andes, landscape businesscourse.com.