The Social Media Strategy That Actually Makes You Money

In this episode of The Green Industry Podcast, host Paul Jamison breaks down how lawn care and landscaping business owners can turn social media followers into paying customers by focusing on the platforms that actually drive business growth. 🎟️ Equip Expo 👉 Save 50% off Equip Expo Ticket w/ Promo Code PAUL: Register Here https://go.equipexposition.com/promocode-paul 📚 Level Up Your Money (New Release) 👉 Get Your Paperback Copy! https://pauljamison.org/book 🎧 Level Up Your Money (Audiobook) 👉 Listen on Audible https://pauljamison.org/audiobook 📲 Connect with Paul - Visit Official Website https://www.thepauljamison.com/ 🛠️ Paul's Recommended Tools & Professionals Try the CRM Jobber - Click Here https://pauljamison.org/Jobber 📞 CallRail – Track where your leads are coming from: callrail.com https://partners.callrail.com/cc4gs529efdp 📚 The Landscaping Bookkeeper – Know your numbers, stress less: thelandscapingbookkeeper.com https://thelandscapingbookkeeper.com/ The Lawn Care Bootcamp - Click Here https://pauljamison.org/bootcamp 📈 Lawn Care Launch: Click Here https://thelandscapingbookkeeper.com/lawn-care-launch (new program for business owners) 🌐 Footbridge Media – Get a pro lawn care website: footbridgemedia.com https://www.footbridgemedia.com/paul-jamison?ref=pauljamison 📦 Business-Building Resources by Paul Price Increase Letter Template https://www.thepauljamison.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/2150230978 Contract Templates https://www.thepauljamison.com/resource_redirect/landing_pages/2150230978 📚 Paul's Most Popular Business Books How to Build a Thriving Lawn Care Business: Buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D4K835L4 Cut That Grass and Make That Cash: Buy on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SP7MQ13

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This episode is brought to you by Motive. Growing a landscaping company means more trucks, more trailers, and more equipment, and more revenue doesn't always mean more profit. Motive gives you one platform to see where your vehicles and equipment are, cut idle time and fuel waste, and protect your crews with AI dash cams. Motive customers report 20% annual savings on maintenance and fuel. See what it could do for your business at gomotive.com. Again, that's gomotive.com.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go-to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jameson, is the author of five bestselling books, including Cut That Grass and Make That Cash, and his latest, Level Up Your Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jamison.

• 1:07Speaker 00

  Are you using social media effectively? Is social media maybe distracting you from your purpose in life? Or are you using social media to get so many followers, so much engagement on social media, and those folks are converting into people who are paying you a whole bunch of money? Well, I'm going to be talking all about social media at Naylor Tally Pharaoh's LCR Summit, the week of Equip Expo, in good old Louisville, Kentucky. It's happening October 19th through 20th. And Naylor asked me to talk about how do you convert social media traffic to actually money in your bank account?

• 1:52Speaker 00

  And that's what I've been working on, preparing my presentation for that. So today I want to share with you kind of my notes as I kind of get everything together to serve Naylor's audience, October 19th and 20th in Louisville, Kentucky at the LCR Summit. So first and foremost, when it comes to social media. You need to have a clear, um, what we would call an avatar or understanding of who your ideal customer is. And this is going to be different for everybody who's at the LCR summit. There's going to be a whole bunch of people in the room. They're going to have a different answer to this question. And depending on what your answer is, is going to depend on what your

• 2:37Speaker 00

  strategy for social media is. So I'm going to give a couple of examples today and then share what the best blueprints and paths on social media are for that. And real quick, just to build credibility, I get millions and millions of, um, views a month, have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. And I have had, um, a lot of, um, success on, on social media. So this isn't, you know, this isn't some theory of, uh, I didn't ask chat GPT, how do you grow on social media? This is, I, I post on social media every single day. And then I look back on my posts and I'm like, okay, that one flopped, that one flopped, that one flopped.

• 3:19Speaker 00

  Wait a minute over here. That one's doing pretty good. Why is this one doing good? And I dig into it and I'm like, okay, well, I'll make more like that and I make more like that. And I was like, ooh, this one's doing real good. This one, and I'm, I'm deep in the weeds on social media every day. So anyway, well, credibility boost there. Okay. So if you're, if you're, if your ideal customer is a, let's say Mrs. Smith, who lives in a specific neighborhood in your local city, then you are going to build a whole different social media plan than let's say Joey Cobra Lee,

• 3:58Speaker 00

  who's my bookkeeper. And if Joey hired me, which he hasn't, but if he did, if he hired me to help him with the social media, he's not targeting, uh, Mrs. Smith, Joey lives in Pensacola, Florida. So he's not targeting Mrs. Smith in a specific neighborhood in Pensacola, Florida with this post. He's trying to attract landscape professionals who are all across, ideally probably the United States, English speaking, you know, countries.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  North America, we'll say USA. So that's a whole different type of content that he would be creating for that customer base than let's say, somebody who is in a lawn mowing business, and they want more lawn mowing customers in their local market verse, maybe somebody who's making lawn care content as entertainment. I have a friend SB mowing. Some of you guys have seen his videos before, and there's other guys that make content similar to his style, like Al Blades, and Phil's Lawn Care, and Lawn Care Juggernaut, and there's a whole bunch of them. And they're making all different type of content that's more entertainment based.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  And they're just targeting people who want to watch a good story and watch someone mow grass. And then they're kind of satisfied doing it, sitting on their couch, eating popcorn in their pajamas. So, step one is you need to be clear, because what happens, and this is not good, but people look at SB mowing like, oh, well, this is what he's doing. So and they start copying him. Or they look at me and like, oh, Paul's crushing it on social media. Let me do what he's doing. Or, oh, Joey Coburn is doing that. Let me. And you have to understand, you need to have a original plan for you, for your target customer, because what I'm going

• 5:58Speaker 00

  to talk about at Naylor's LCR Summit, and Louisville is getting paid, making money. How do you make money on social media? Well, step one is you need to identify, well, who's actually going to pay you money for your social media post? Is it going to be, you're going to post content and it's going to eventually be seen by Mrs. Smith, who lives in your targeted neighborhood, in your route dense area, in your local market, and you're going to try to you're going to try to recruit her as a lawn mowing customer, and you're going to try to upsell her core ariations and mulch installations and pine straw installations and all of that, and seasonal flowers and all of that?

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Then there's a certain type of content to be made. Now SB Moeen, he gets paid from YouTube, he gets paid from Facebook. They have, when you get a lot of views and a lot of watch time, they run commercials, right? You ever been watching YouTube? And I have little nieces and they figured out the skip ad button in the corner and they're so smart, little girls, and they're like, give me the remote and they'll hit that little skip ad, right? Well, if they did skip the ad, the, uh, an advertisement would play, right? And the way that works is the company who's running the ad, they're paying YouTube, which is owned by Google.

• 7:27Speaker 00

  And then Google shares a portion of that ad revenue with the creator of that video. So SB Moeen makes a video, gets a lot of views. There's a lot of ads run on his videos. So Google pays SB Moeen once a month, a portion of that ad revenue. And Facebook has a similar program called the Facebook Content Monetization Program. And so, one of the ways you can get paid on social media is from the platforms themselves. When your following gets big enough and your views get real, you know, big enough and your engagement gets, gets big enough. And so TikTok has a similar program. And Instagram,

• 8:13Speaker 00

  there, at the moment, there, I would put them like in fourth place. You got Facebook paying really good, YouTube paying really good, TikTok's paying really good. Instagram isn't paying as good. But anyway, those platforms pay you as well. So we're going to take a quick break. And coming up, I'm going to start getting into some details for you. I just wanted to paint the picture first before we get into it, that you would think about you. Are you trying to be like SP Moe and go out there, make a bunch of entertainment content and try to get a whole bunch of views and attract that audience, which is like a bunch of old ladies in their pajamas, eating, who knows what they're eating popcorn, maybe?

• 8:57Speaker 00

  I don't know. I try not to eat after like 5:00 PM. I ate dinner. Last night I was so tempted to eat. I ate dinner like 4:30 and I was getting so hungry, like eight or nine. I was like, don't do it. Don't do it. Cause my belly is getting big. I wanted to go, I don't want to get big. Like I say, don't eat late at night. But anyway, um, or are you trying to be like Joey Coburn Lee, where you're trying to reach in a specific audience, like in his case, landscape business owners who need help with their numbers, or most people who are going to be at the LCR summit, this is, this is what I'm actually most passionate about, is they're like, you know what? I have a really route dense area. I have one specific neighborhood. I'm trying to just conquer and take over all the yards in this neighborhood. I'm going

• 9:42Speaker 00

  to be the king of this neighborhood. I'm going to have so many yards in this neighborhood. I'm going to have more yards in this neighborhood than yards in this neighborhood. I mean, pretty much everyone in the neighborhood has, has you. And it's not like one of those HOAs where you sign up for the HOA and you get all the yards, but just a good marketing. Um, how do you use social media to kind of hyper target that local area so that you become the king of that, that, um, that neighborhood? We'll talk more about it coming right up.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Lawn care and landscaping pros, listen up. If you're tired of guessing your way through pricing, marketing, hiring and sales, this is your wake up call.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  The LCR summit hits downtown Louisville, October 19th and 20th at the Galt House. The same week is equipped and it's going to change the way you run your business forever. This is not another Sid and Listen event. It's two full days of hands-on workshops from leaders who've actually built what you're trying to build. Naylor Talia Faro shows you how to generate better leads through smarter marketing. Paul Jamison teaches content that converts. John Payjack breaks down your numbers so you'll stop working for cheap. Eric Triplet, the Digger reveals how he built a multimillion dollar business making more money with less work. Plus, you'll have a surprise guest speaker. Add in live Q and A panels, powerful

• 11:03Speaker 01

  networking, and an exclusive VIP dinner with all the speakers when you purchase at the platinum level. Grab tickets and info at lcrsummit.com or just tap the link in the podcast description. That's lcrsummit.com. Stop guessing. Start growing. Build the business you've always imagined at the LCR Summit.

• 11:26Speaker 00

  Most jobs go to the first contractor that picks up the phone, but you can't answer the phone when you're on a lawnmower. So here's a solution. It's called Voice Assist by Call Rail. I'm going to show you how it works. I'm going to call a pest control company that uses Voice Assist. Take a listen.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Hi, thanks for calling the pest patrol. I'm Betty, a virtual assistant. What's bugging you?

• 11:47Speaker 00

  Hey Betty, I wanted to see if you could schedule somebody to come out, take a look at my property, and give me a quote for pest control. I was looking for yearly service.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  Sure, I can help with that. Do you have any questions about our services before we get started collecting some details?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  What would it cost to come once a quarter?

• 12:04Speaker 03

  We offer a quarterly service plan with four treatments per year. The cost typically ranges from $350 to $480 annually. Keep in mind, final pricing depends on an in-person evaluation.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, let's get one scheduled.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Can I have your first and last name, please?

• 12:19Speaker 00

  Paul Jamison.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  I've got several openings. For example, on Thursday, March 19th, we have 10 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 11 a.m., and more throughout the afternoon. Would any of those work for you?

• 12:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, 10 a.m. works.

• 12:32Speaker 03

  Your appointment is confirmed for Thursday, March 19th at 10 a.m. and a confirmation email has been sent. Could you share the address of the location where you'd like the service?

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Sure, it's 1234 Main Street.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Is there anything else I can assist you with today?

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Oh, that's it. Thank you so much, Betty.

• 12:48Speaker 03

  Thank you for your call.

• 12:50Speaker 00

  Well, did you hear that? That's Call Rail's Voice Assist. It's so good, it speaks for itself. You can qualify more leads, book more jobs, and stop losing opportunities to businesses down the street. Try it for free at voiceassist.com. Again, that's voiceassist.com. All right, so for my first example, we're going to talk about Facebook. Right now, the recording of this podcast, which is

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Uh, summer, late summer, year 2026. It's beautiful time to be alive right now. The economy's booming like I've never seen it boom. I mean, it's, it's, it's, um, busting out the seams out here. It's, it's good times and in the Bible, it talks about the, um, the ants. They understand when it's summer and they go and they collect their food. There's a, uh, ancient saying, I don't even know where it came from, but they say make hay while the sun shines. Right now, the sun is shining. Life is good, times are good, and specifically in the social media streets. This is absolutely incredible.

• 14:03Speaker 00

  You can post something on social media

• 14:08Speaker 00

  for free. It's free to make a Facebook page. Free to make a YouTube channel.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  And you post something and their algorithm, which is so sophisticated and so many, um, nooks and crannies to it.

• 14:31Speaker 00

  It will send it out to the people who would be interested in that type of content. So if I go to a baseball game

• 14:43Speaker 00

  and I, you know, post a picture, I like the Cleveland Indians, all right? Think they changed their nickname. I still call them the Cleveland Indians. All right, I go Cleveland Indians game. I post a picture, you know, take me out to the ball game, right?

• 14:59Speaker 00

  And then maybe I, I, I post, um, again about the Cleveland Indians and their game. And now let's just say I post a hundred times in a row about the Cleveland Indians baseball.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Well, the algorithm is going to say, okay, Paul's content. And this is fictitious because I don't really do this, but I want to give you the example that, okay, Paul's content is about the Cleveland Indians, baseball team. All right. Well, now there's a whole algorithm out there that knows which people, when they're scrolling their fat finger on the phone, are consuming baseball content. It's called interest-based, you know, media here. So now it even knows specifically which people of those baseball fans like the Indians, like what they watch the most Indians content. So then it would eventually start sending my content to those folks.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  So this other people out there who like the Cleveland Indians, if I'm making content about the Cleveland Indians every day, my posts are going to start showing up in their feed. It's based on interest. So if you have no social media, you have no Facebook page, you have no YouTube channel, you have no Instagram, you have no TikTok, you have no Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, all the ones, you have none of them. Where do you get started? You get started, in my opinion, with a Facebook page and you are clear on who your ideal customer is. And that's why I tell people, don't copy what I'm doing unless you're trying to do what I'm doing.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  But for example, I had a lawn business I started in 2011. When I had that lawn business, I lived in a whole different state than I do now geographically. And I had a very clear route dense target area where I was trying to get my ideal customer. It was one main predominant neighborhood and then a few of the neighborhoods like right outside of that neighborhood, but right all in there, right, right in just a few mile radius, okay? Then eventually I started shifting gears to branding myself more as the landscaping expert for America, kind of like, you know, America's lawn guy. And I started getting

• 17:23Speaker 00

  brand deals and serving Lowe's Home Improvement and John Deere and Kubota and the Toro Company and Crest Commercial and Jobber. And so many of these awesome companies in our industry was Kohler Engines back in the day, but now it's Relco. And, and I started getting to travel to all these places. I, you know, I went to Echo, the power equipment company. I went to their headquarters multiple times, the Toro Company in Minnesota, multiple times, Kohler Engines, which is now Relco down in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, multiple times and Kubota in Texas. Anyway, all these amazing experiences, but I changed my target audience to where I wanted to serve

• 18:05Speaker 00

  the top brands in our industry who are trying to sell lawn mowers and backpack blowers and their softwares and all of that. That started to become my ideal customer, not Mrs. Smith in this specific neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. So with that being said, when I say start a Facebook page, if your goal is you're trying to get more lawn care customers in a specific neighborhood, then every post you make on Facebook, you want to think with the end in mind, okay, Mrs. Smith may watch this one day and I want to build her trust and credibility.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  And I want to upsell her on core aeration and mulch and pine straw and flowers and, you know, beyond just lawn mowing. And so you, you kind of make every post for her. Whereas my channel, I'm making every post, let's say for a, let's say the marketing decision maker at one of these big companies, right? If they go to my page, I want them to be like, oh, wow, Paul, he knows his stuff about lawn care. He's got obviously a, you know, a lot of engagement with people, you know, following him and caring about his opinion and what, like you, you need to know who are you trying to target with your post. So with that being said, I also

• 19:29Speaker 00

  want to give you a strong warning because I have been doing this. I started social media in 2020 around then and then it started growing more so I would say about 2022 to where it was like, you know, got pretty serious. And what I've learned since then is posting on social media, it takes so much time and effort. And in some cases, it can cost money if you if you pay for editors and stuff like that. And I'll be talking about all of this in L C R summit, but you just need to count the cost and know it's a lot. And so the

• 20:11Speaker 00

  mistake that folks make is they're like, okay, I'm gonna start a YouTube channel. I see S B Mo and he's got 3 million subscribers. He's got a YouTube channel. I see Mr. Beast and they and you just think that your videos are going to be like that. And you think that it's easy because when you watch it, it's easy to watch. But to create it, you have to create the content. Then you have the package and like upload the content with the title and the thumbnail and all of this. And then you have to do that consistently over time. And it, I can't tell you how many times I felt like I was burnt out that I was just, I was, I talked to several people in my inner circle,

• 20:50Speaker 00

  my close friends, just telling them, hey, I have reached a place of exhaustion and burnout. And then eventually I'll make some shifts and some get some rest and get rejuvenated and I'll get back back at it, ready to go. But now I have more realistic expectations that I understand how much focus it takes to create content consistently and make the content better and better and all of that. So with that being said, if you don't have any social media, trying it all right at once, might be too much to eat, you know, like to you biting off more than they can, you can chew. But if you could start off with one thing, I'd start off with a Facebook page.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  And then I would have my ideal customer, let's say it's Mrs. Smith. And she, my reason why I keep calling out a lady named Mrs. Smith is because I'm thinking, okay, if you have a lawn mowing

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Hopefully you've identified this is the main neighborhood, like the core neighborhood at the center of my route. Like I want this to be home, home base, like this neighborhood. And then within that neighborhood, you're like, okay, and this is my ideal yard. Let's say it's 4,000 square feet of turf and just this is the size that you're most comfortable with for a yard. And you just now you're like, oh, this is my ideal customer. And then I want a core aerator yard. I want to, I want to give her mulch every year. I want to do some tree trimming for like, you just have your, your, your dialed in on that customer. So now you know, okay, I'm, I got a Facebook page now, which is named after your business. And now you're posting every day,

• 22:29Speaker 00

  pictures, like pictures are so powerful on social media and they're very popular right now. So you just take a picture every day of your customer's property. You're just posting pictures every day, picture, picture, picture. You can sprinkle in some videos in there. You're, you're, you're mowing the grass. Your team members mowing the grass. Just post a little 10, 15 second video of that. Throw some music on it and upload, just start uploading every day. And that's how you get started. So I'll have a part two for this coming soon. I'm flushing out all my notes here for Naylor's event, but my main point I wanted to make today is Facebook page is where you get started on social media. Now, I personally also have a YouTube channel.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  I have a Tik Tok. I have an Instagram and I have a LinkedIn, but those are, we'll, we'll, we'll talk about those ones, but the, the, the place to get started, the most important one is creating a Facebook page and then actually creating content on there. And I would say, and I'm going to tell this to, to, you know, the folks in, in the room at Naylor's event, probably more important even than the Facebook page.

• 23:40Speaker 00

  Is some of you are like, I already know what you're gonna say, Paul. I already know. Google Business Profile. That one's powerful. So you want fresh pictures on there, fresh, any piece of content you can put on there, text, video, picture, fresh, fresh, fresh of you, you, you, your team, your team, your team, Google Business Profile. You want that thing looking spectacular and you also want to get five star Google rating and reviews on there as well. That's, that's powerful. And then I would say second place is Facebook page, but because Naylor specifically asked me to talk about like social media,

• 24:18Speaker 00

  um, you know, the platforms of Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok. Out of those big four, I think Facebook's the, the number one player to get involved with now. However, you also want your Google Business Profile. If I started a new lawn care business today and I had like a ranking, like, you know, that college football, they put like, yo, number one, oh, the Ohio State Buckeyes, right? Hey, I don't, I don't know if you ever want to be number one in the preseason because now you're like, you got a chip on your shoulder all year. The years that they won the national title, they didn't start out number one. They started out like, you know, way back in the pack and they snuck up on everyone and they had a chip. They had a chip on their shoulder and then they played angry and they went, I went, I went. But anyway, if you did a, a ranking system for social media, I would put,

• 25:01Speaker 00

  you know, if you could put Google Business Profile on the list, I'd have them at one and then I have a Facebook page at number two. All right. Well, we'll continue this conversation coming up. Thanks for listening. And I mentioned LCR Summit. So the week of Equip Expo, it's coming up very quickly. It starts October 19th and 20th in Louisville, Kentucky at Naylor's LCR Summit Louisville event. I'm going to be speaking there about social media. Jason Krill is going to be speaking there. Uh, there's a special guest going to be speaking there, um, to be announced soon. Eric Triplets is going to be speaking there, John Payjack, um, a whole bunch of other folks. I'm, I'm probably leaving people out. Um, but, uh, the big special guest speaker hasn't been announced yet, but, uh, I know

• 25:42Speaker 00

  who it is. So, um, all right. And then they're having a VIP dinner, um, with absolute delicious steak and everything. So, uh, should be some great times at Louisville, Kentucky. So anyway, you can save half off, 50% off your, uh, tickets to the LCR Summit. I'm really looking forward to that with promo code PAUL. So promo code PAUL will get you half off. Really looking forward to, um, Both the Equip Expo and LCR Summit, both happening that week in Louisville. And actually, the promo code PAUL will save you half off of both of those. So when you get your Equip Expo tickets, you use the promo code PAUL, you'll get half off of those tickets. And if you go to LCR Summit, which I highly recommend, use promo code PAUL to save 50% off your tickets there.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  All right, well, thanks for listening. Hope to catch you on the next episode. Peace.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry Podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.