Well, welcome to the Daily Grateful. I'm Michael Croes. Today, we're going to talk about Marketing for small businesses stick with us How you doing in 1985? I Decided I wanted to start a business and my brother was going to help me.
He was in the Navy but he was stationed in St. Petersburg, Florida, which is very close to me and he was doing recruiting down there. He worked as a recruiter at the Coast Guard Station, but he was doing recruiting for the Navy. I know it sounds complicated Anyway, I got talking to him and we started bouncing things off of each other and then I said I don't have a lot of money to promote a business You know, we've got I've got a equipment got a truck I got you know, I got all the equipment that I think we need to do it But I don't have a lot of money to promote the business So back then I went to the Clearwater library where I found a book and it was the very first edition of this book It's called Gorilla Marketing by J.
Conrad Livingston and I picked that book up Now by the way, I just picked up the latest edition of that book not terribly long ago And it is not at all like the original version and today's version the talking You know, what is Gorilla Marketing today the need for Gorilla Marketing? 16 monumental secrets of Gorilla Marketing. Yeah, that's all good But it goes into mostly online stuff and using the Internet well in 1985 when I say the Internet That's when we my son Zach used to say it when he was like 12. He said yeah check it out on the Internet He always had that expression.
He's 31 now. I should ask him if he still does that but anyway I picked up the book here just recently, but back then I picked up the book and I read it You know and all of a sudden after reading this book. I said, yeah, I think we can do this and they said, you know How do you get customers? You know, what is it?
What is you know the important things? And one of the things that they talked about in an original book was the power of showing up in person So in other words go to the area where you wanted to start your business for me That was Tarpon Springs, Florida Because that's how where I happened to live and so I wanted to do Tarpon Springs palm harbor Maybe into Pasco County holiday, Florida Newport, Ritchie, Florida right in that area But basically wanted to close it in as close as I possibly could to Tarpon Springs So we tried a bunch of things, but here's the thing that we came up with that was cheap now My brother is no longer with us. So I'm not going to be telling on him. I'd be wouldn't mind if I did down at the Coast Guard Center They had a mimeograph machine Remember those when you were in school and you had this really weird smell yet to make a Stencil for it.
Well, I created two flyers that were both on eight and a half by eleven pages or his size paper and One of them said Save your lawn right on the top by the way This was not an original idea to me because a gentleman who I knew in this business for years by the name of Hal Gordon He started doing it this way because guess what? He read the same damn book. I did So I said okay, so he for its lawn care He put save your lawn was a was a title and then without using a lot of words as a middle matter of fact Is a little words as possible at the time we were spraying lawns for thirty dollars This is 1985 if I were doing that today, it would probably be closer to seventy five dollars But then it was thirty dollars and so it says so underneath that it says lawn care Thirty dollars six times a year and then a little paragraph that says includes insect control broadleaf weed control fertilizer The whole bit and this and then it had a very big call to action He's really big in this book about talking about calls to action You know how many people will create something you know and never give a call to action I see it all the time. It's just really I'm amazed by it.
Anyway call to action, which was call now That was a call to action call now And then there was our phone number and we had you know I'd gone out and boy this is going way back when you had to get a telephone line where there was no cell phones And if it was a business line it was more expensive a lot more expensive, but I went and I got a business line That was a very big investment and then I found this paper supply place in Clearwater where I could buy 5,000 sheets of green paper or 5,000 sheets of yellow paper So for the lawn care I picked up this very light nifty looking green paper and for the pest control specialty I know my pest control special was the title on that was We kill roaches. I think that's what it was and then and then underneath that is a pest control special and believe it or not It was fifteen dollars a month Which was stupid, but anyway, and it says it involves us coming out to your house once a month treating your house when blah blah By making sure you don't have bugs give us a call and the phone number and I took it You know in my brother I then made I created these things not with a computer So I didn't have a computer because there were no computers in those days There was a product called press type that I could buy at the office supply store I bought it from a place called jiffy print They and the press type was really cool came on wax paper and it had you know really nice Lettering and you would lay it down and you'd I take a a ruler with a very light pencil and do a straight line And I would put my headline in one thing and then I would put the price in another one and then all of that and then We had a carbon ribbon typewriter that we had access to didn't own it But had access to it and I put all the little stuff on there and then down at the bottom the call to action And the phone number and all of that call today right now do it darn it So then I went down to My brother got off work at six o'clock. So no he got he got off working at eight o'clock But I would come down there at five o'clock because he was there by himself Just basically doing paperwork and we figured out how to use the the machine and We made the stencil I you know I used the press night and we started off with the lawn care One and we made a stencil for it which you had another little thing that would burn the stencil and then we put it in there And I felt like I was in high school because I felt like I was an AV guy at the high school We turned this thing out and we started cranking these things out I got to tell you the quality of these things was god awful But there was green paper big head line headline save your lawn right there boom goes it I might save your lawn and I said okay now what my friend Hal Gordon had taught me is that you roll these things up Really tight in a circle and put a little rubber band on it And I went to the same office supply store and I bought a whole bag couple bags of these little tiny rubber bands That would fit on there But the headline would show because you're rolling it up in such a way that what you saw on that rolled up piece of paper was your headline Okay, save your lawn. That's what you saw bright green paper So I sat there and I'll never forget this because Miami vice had just come on television It was 1985 and I sat there in my living room and I would roll these things up and put them in a black plastic bag And I just started working I was Thursday night Miami vice was on and I just rolled these things up until like three o'clock in the morning And with the help, you know, my brother even came over and helped and he says I'm gonna take some of these home for you And we're gonna do in there.
He takes them so the next night was Friday night And we still didn't have them done so we kept going and we kept going and we kept going and then by Sunday They were all done 5,000 of these things were all done And I said, okay And we loaded all these black plastic bags into his car and he drove and we drove very slowly through all these neighborhoods in Interpen Springs and in Palm Harbor that we wanted to cover We wanted to put 5,000 of these things out in the neighborhoods that we wanted to cover Neighborhoods by the way that had nice lawns or you know, you could tell people were taking care of their lawns We'd routed this thing out So we went drove very slowly and I would have a bag and I wouldn't throw them on the yard I would drop them on the ground by the mailbox because everybody where I live has their mailbox out to the street And I would just drop them on the ground so when you walk to your mailbox You look down and you saw this great green rolled up piece of paper that said save your lawn and And you'd roll it up and look at it So we put 5,000 of these things out on a Sunday night We started just after dark because I didn't want to do it in daylight We just after dark and we it took us several hours We got 5,000 of these things out in one night And I had no idea if this was gonna work But I do know that the next day I'd made it You know, I had made an outline for the pest control special one And we went back down and I bought 5,000 sheets of bright. It was actually called goldenrod paper And I had that ready to go down and the phone was ringing and I was getting really nervous I mean, I was getting really really nervous but Long about Tuesday or Wednesday the phone started ringing And they're saying tell me a little bit more about the lawn care And I was and next thing, you know that very first week We sold I think it was seven Services to where we were said we had seven customers that first week that we were going to do every two months at 30 dollars each You know, I I was so excited so That Friday. I'm back down at the coast guard station We burned another stencil and my brother said we can't keep using their stencils So I bought stencils and I you know took it down there and we did the pest control one I said well, then it was bag all those things up had them all bagged up by you know by Sunday night late Sunday night And on Monday, I think it was on Monday. We went out that night after dark And I started dropping you know instead of a green piece of paper It was yellow and I was really surprised because that's I'm saying to myself I wonder how many of the green ones I'm gonna still see laying on the ground and very few hardly any I mean less than five if that and so we just started dropping these pest control specials down boom boom boom boom boom boom $15 a month.
I mean, how does it get any better than that? And we put those all out again the next day phones not ringing off that but the phone is still ringing On the lawn care ones. We're selling more lawn care ones jobs You know, I'm going out selling them doing them right there and I said wow, this is cool This is like really cool And uh, you know, all of a sudden that just started working and the next thing you know The pest control one started calling in and by the way, what was good about this is we weren't Doing marketing to where like if you put an ad in the newspaper It covered a large area and you would we would have to drive to St. Pete or something 20 miles away Uh, you know newspapers was the next biggest advertising thing in those days So this was better than that.
Although it was hard work I mean really hard work and you know getting a lot of that done by the way I talked to how about that And he says how are you doing with that? I said, I'm selling jobs every day people are calling me to buy Because one of the things about that came out in this book is that you don't want to go out and knock on doors and sell things Because yeah, you might talk somebody into it and you know, but on a surface if you talk them into it They're gonna cancel you they're gonna they might you know, do it and then you'll do one You know one application and then they'll just call and say we don't need this anymore They would usually call it night when the answering machine picked up, but you know, but if they call you That means they are the ones who want business. They want to buy what you're selling and we have this geographically, you know going So what we did is we expanded the areas that we were putting these things down and religiously every week We would print up 5,000 of either the lawn care or 5,000 of the pest control And every week 5,000 of these damn things wound up on people's lawns We did not duplicate an area for six weeks. In other words, we wouldn't come into fairway of states in Dunedin For six weeks after we did it the first time, but six weeks later, we're doing it again So as people were seeing them and what was absolutely amazing is that these people would hang on to these things You have no idea how long people would hang on to these things We would sell I'd sell a job and they'd go yeah, looking them in the garage They had to think thumbtacked, you know onto their board in the garage and people just hung on to these things We're really good and you weren't competing with any other advertising or anything like that I said that this is fabulous and for very little money We're doing this.
It's totally paying for itself as we go along and it was wonderful So how do you duplicate that now? I'm kind of retired, so I'm not doing that But if I were doing that I don't know if I would I don't know I might do the brochures again if I was young But I'll tell you what I met a guy At the I used to go to these Tuesday night meetings that were basically marketing meetings I started going to those in 2008 went to him for years And I remember meeting a young man at one of those things who was starting a lawn mowing service And I said good I said he goes I need and I forget the number of customers he needed just to work himself and keep himself busy And I think he said he needed 35 customers And these 35 people were paying him. I don't know how much a month, but that was going to take care of him He had a pickup truck. He had you know self-propelled lawn mowers.
He had edgers. He had line trimmers He had all the stuff he needed to do it And that's how he started up. Well, guess how he did it? He decided he wanted to only work in the little town on west central florida called Dunedin And that's all he wanted to do was Dunedin, which was one zip code And he went down this new thing that everybody was talking about back in those days And it was called facebook and he researched advertising on facebook And he was he started out spending three dollars a day on facebook ads I will know your lawn for I don't know he put a price in there up to a certain size lawn Every week if you sign up for our regular service, it costs this much and it was very simple ad As a matter of fact, it reminded me of our brochure But it was on the internet and he was able to do that in the zip code of Dunedin Right there.
That's the only place the ads dropped and he spent five dollars a day And I said, and how did it go? He said we didn't get anything for a while He said but every day the phone would ring And I'd go out and I'd sell a lawn to start mulling and then another one and then another one And then you're working in the neighborhood and another one and it didn't take him But about three to four weeks to totally fill up his route. He shut off his advertising Happy sky in the world and this is what he was doing. He loved working outside.
He loved doing that He was selling extra jobs to these people. Some people wanted landscaping. He was selling that to them He was making a powerful living using guerrilla marketing tactics But instead of the brochures that we did in 1985 He was you know in 2009. I think or 2010 He was using facebook marketing And you know what he did he had that business going He would still come to the Tuesday night meetings and he kept that business for a little over a year And he decided he wanted to move to Miami because he had family in Miami So he said I'm going to Miami He sold this business off to a guy that I knew professionally who had a pretty good size lawn mowing business And he sold all of his customers for 100 pennies on the dollar So in other words, if he was doing $5,000 a month He wanted three months worth of payment from this guy to buy these customers And guy paid him and the guy took over his customers And I knew that this was going to be a good match because this guy was really good at mowing lawns And the kid that I knew off to Miami He went and he did the same thing in area of Miami that he was moving to the same thing And so it was a perfect match using guerrilla marketing tactics and it worked wonderful Uh, is this something that could help you in a business?
I think it is as a matter of fact, I know it is By the way, let's fast forward a little bit. Jay Conrad Livingston He moved to the area that I lived in, he moved over to Tampa And the people who put on our Tuesday night meetings actually had him speak at something And I went and I met him And I brought my original guerrilla marketing book And I asked him to autograph it for him and I told him my story And I told him the story of the young man from Miami And he just sat there and smiled. He said, yeah, this works This works. He then passed away not terribly long after that And there's a new version of the book out It's okay.
It's good. You get a lot of great ideas on it Alright, I'm Michael Croes. This is The Daily Great