And then I got to say another amazing, the best sales tool for me ever. Like the number one sales hack in the world is to get your face on camera. Because I talk about trust. The trust is built when they see my design and they see the finished product look the same. That's trust. They trust that if I sell them, something is going to be built like that. If they put my face on camera and I say, this is how much base I put in, this is how I cut my brick, or I say, this is what my guys are going to do. But if I'm just the face of my business and I'm transparent with myself and they get to know my personality, you know they can feel my passion through my voice.
That's ultimate sales tool. So and especially the size of the markets that some of you guys are in. I mean, I'm in a town of 20,000 people. I'm for sure the only guy who is putting my face on camera. Right. And I we even do we even see this with our sales reps. Like, you know, some of our sales reps are picking up new work because they're just putting their face on camera. Because the bottom line is people are going to buy from you when you trust you, like they're going to hand you ten grand. 20 grand. They got to trust you. Right. So it's like, how do you get them to trust you with your design, with your social media, with your portfolio?
To me, that makes it all easier. So don't beat yourself up over not getting this lead. Not getting this lead. Just keep building it like that. And those leads will start to come around your cause. Nine out of ten now because you're doing all these things I just talked about. So yeah, just to kind of touch on putting yourself on camera once you get to a certain point, consider hiring a videographer or a photographer professional. Have them follow a project from start to finish and be there the first day before you put a shovel in the dirt. Get the befores. Have them show up a couple times during the build while they do that. Go on camera, talk about what you're doing and then when it's done, have them come out.
Sunrise. Sunset when it looks its best. And do a tour of it. You know, you might not nail it the first time, but that's what going live on your phone or going on your story. Just from your phone that's going to help. You're going to get some reps. And so if you're not comfortable, you can kind of knock those out just during the week. Make it casual. Hey, we're on site. We're working on this show, the problems you're solving. And then the big part of this too is if you if you have them make a YouTube video, that YouTube video is going to show up on search rankings, right? Always put the location where you're, where your market is.
So people search for hardscaping in Hudson, Wisconsin. Well, now that video shows up, now they're going to watch it. Now they're going to start to recognize you. Oh, what else do they have? They're going to go to your Facebook page. They're going to go to your Instagram. Oh they're working on a project today. Let's see what like they're real people. Like they don't just go to some website that hasn't been updated in five years. So that's the whole point of get your face on camera. We just want to get as many contact points as we can. It's going to take some time, but if you have like, a library of footage and all these other YouTube videos, that's going to build the trust and trust leads to sales.
And that's honestly such, the super sales hack that we always talk about. So it's worked for Dan. I mean, we started making these videos, the Hometown Hardscapes, and you just became the guy here in town. I mean, it was just through the roof almost instantly. And, you guys can start doing that. And honestly, if you guys are doing lawn and landscape and you want to get into hardscape, you don't even show the lawn in landscaping anymore. Show the hardscape project, do one at your house, do one at your parents house, your friends house, and just start promoting that. Only promote what you want to do from here on out. And if it's hardscaping, get that stuff on camera.
No one's going to know about it if you if it's not out there on the web. So just kind of my $0.02 and it's it's worked for Dan. It's worked for a lot of our members. We love seeing, our members go on camera and getting, you know, updates on their site. And, and some of them are going on YouTube. It's it's such a powerful tool nowadays. So definitely consider that. Yep, I love it. And we've seen you I mean, I can tell you ten guys on social media right now, if you follow their Instagram accounts, you would see them not on social media. Then you see their face all over social media. The size of their projects go up, the size of their company goes up, their impact in their neighborhood goes up.
When I was advertising and doing and doing you, you know, still doing YouTube videos, but when I started doing the YouTube videos and I started advertising on social media, I was booked out for two years. And, and, you know, people would ask me, why are you still advertising? It's like, I want the biggest and the best jobs and the biggest and the best jobs, the celebrities who are going to hire you, like my man Jeff or anybody who's going to bring you. So I got called down to Knoxville, Tennessee. You know, this is going on four years ago now. But that guy in Knoxville reached out to me on Instagram because he was watching my YouTube videos in his theater room with his family for over a year.
He just got to know me. He got to know my face. He got to know who I was. And, you know, we talked about like, why he didn't hire someone in Knoxville. And now, you know, we got my guy Moralez, my guy Dodson. We got guys in Knoxville who are showing their face on camera who are part of the herd group and learned it from us to go and do that. But but Jim, my client in Knoxville, said nobody in Knoxville was putting their face on camera and being as transparent as you and I lived in Wisconsin. So he's like, no offense to the guy in Knoxville, but I didn't know any of them. So he called the guy from Wisconsin who he knew because he watched all my Hometown Hardscapes videos.
So to me, that has just been the premise there. And anyone else who shows their face on camera, I guarantee you I always say it changes your life. It literally does because a client is going to call you up and be like, what's up, Jasper, how are you doing, man? I seen you out there the other day, and they're going to act like they know you and and they're going to automatically trust you. You know, you got a nice personality. Good smile, good looking guy. He's the guy I'm going to hire. This other guy came over. I don't even know what he looks like, where he is all the time, what he's doing. So getting your face on camera. I can't say enough about that.
Look at what you know, how we sell this job. It starts on the forefront, right? It starts on the forefront of doing the right things to give yourself a name. So I can't stress the fact of getting yourself on camera enough. A lot of the ways some guys start that as they go on the Facebook group. I've seen this multiple times. They go on the Facebook group, excuse me? They do a lunchtime live and they get their self in front of, you know, 300 people. We got in there right now. It's no pressure. No one's going to say anything to you. They get their face on camera a few times and we've had guys start out that way.
And now those same guys are hiring professional videographers to make them up, follow around with a camera, you know, and they're hitting levels that they never seen coming just by getting their face on camera. So just got to get that out there I know you see it's sunny down there with Marco. I mean, who would have thought? But did Marco ever think he was going to be on camera? Right. There's an example right there. On one of my designs. It's the phone number. But the big thing is the QR code. The QR code is taking them directly to the website and that's where you want them. I feel like that's where you that's where you want your leads to.
All go first. I mean, it's one thing to talk to them on the phone. You can say whatever you want. Even when I do get a phone call, I direct them to the website after, you know, during that call, like, okay, yeah, after we hang up here, please go to our website, fill out the quote request. Look around while you're there. We got a lot of information, a lot of cool projects. You know, that we have on there. I don't even direct them to social media or anything. It's straight to the website. Because it's a qualifier. It's not just to show off your work as a qualifier. If they're not willing to get off that phone call with you and take that extra step to go research you, they don't give a shit about you.
They're just they're just shopping. I like that, you know? They're just they just need somebody with the cheap price, you know? So if they go down that rabbit hole, so to speak, like we do, you know, social media, sometimes if they're going to research me and then, like, fill out the quote request form, that's a qualifier in itself. Then the questions, those are qualifiers that are in that quote request form. You know, we want to know what you're in, but how much you want to invest. You know what type of project backyard front yard, you know things like that. That's all qualifying. And then all that has to get done before we even step foot on a property.
I like the, you know, piece of advice there is give them the next step. Exactly. I feel like we have to give the client the next step. Yeah. Majority of the time. Yeah, right. I wasted so much time our first two years just jumping at every single lead that came and like, dang, like this is the first year, year four, where there's weekends now that I'm not working. Yeah, I'm not in the field. I'm not in the field. It's it's hard for a lot of us to say though. Yeah, exactly. I mean and year four, I think I did it. Let's see. I've been at the camper. I mentioned my camper out here. That's when I, that's when I just shut it down. Yeah.
And it was like Saturdays. I'm not working anymore. It's this our third summer there. So year four for me as well. Yeah I thought Saturdays are just another workday. Yeah. It was just Sunday. I'm. I own my own business. I just have to work. But then I have a, 14 year old and a 13 year old and it's like, no, but no, it really like, just call getting more aggressive with the qualifying. Yeah. Actually now is giving me more time on my weekends. Yeah. Because I'm not I'm not chasing a lead. Right. And I'm not sitting there putting in all that backend work, putting a proposal together for them to be like, oh, well now, yeah.
You know, now that you say that, I can probably think of multiple Saturdays where it's like, oh, I'm finally ready to go take a look at your project. And then Saturdays were my Saturdays and Sundays were my don't ever go out and do onsite consultations and work on all the proposals and get everything ready for Monday or whatever project you don't hear from them again and you never hear from. Yeah, that goes to you or they're, you know, say, oh, we're not interested anymore. Give you, you know, every excuse on the book, but, no, it's, it's that is a big, big piece of advice. I hope, you know, you guys release out to the herdsmen.
Just get aggressive with qualifying. Yeah, I love it. Because it doesn't matter how cool it projects you new, what knowledge you have in the industry if you're spinning wheels on bullshit clients. Yeah. You're not going to get anywhere. You're going to be frustrated. You're going to be so frustrated, mentally exhausted. You know, it's going to start affecting your work. You know. You know, and I like how your questionnaire or the qualifications are. Do you want exactly what I provide. Yeah. This is what I provide right here. High end outdoor living spaces. This is what's included in those living spaces. Oh, yeah. Do you want a living space like this? Like, leave that up to them to tell you that they want that and that you're the best.
The best response is no response from them. Yeah. So I get off that phone call. No, seriously. Right. Because I direct them to the website. Yeah. So I know I'm like okay. And I get, you know, I get notifications. Yeah. As soon as I get, you know, I'm good to go online is like filling it out right away. Exactly. So as soon as we get off the phone, I didn't waste, what, maybe about five, ten minutes of my time on the call. Yeah, they didn't fill out the quote request form. Cool. Yeah. They're not wasting it any more time on that. On that lead. You know, that's like that's some time. How many times would it be like, yeah, I'll come out tomorrow with that.
Five in that 5 or 10 minutes and not have any. I think that's what we learn as we as we grow and as we go here. But that's great advice and and stuff that it's stuff that maybe I didn't like. Pay attention to the advice or get the advice when I was doing it. Yeah. So if we can tell anybody else, anybody starting out not to do that because we both did it for sure. I went through it. I went through the ringer. I can't tell you how many hours and just days, you know? And our time is valuable. Everybody's time is valuable. Yeah. And, especially owner operators and people in our in our craft.
Yeah, they call it, and just life period. Yeah. A very life period is every hour of the day is valuable. You know, if you and my ten year old son before I want to do this job. And I know fortunately, we are looked at still as the worker. Yeah, we're just a service. Yeah. We're not a human. Yeah. So a majority of these clients and to some extent, yeah, I mean, there is some clients that actually treat us like humans and treats with respect the majority of them. We're just a service. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, and so you can't let that you can't let leads like that take advantage of you or treat you like that.
Yeah. So I like being on your ground, you know, boundaries as a business owner. Because if you let a lead, you know, walk all over you and direct you and basically control how you're going to move, it's over. Yeah. It's they'll take full advantage. And when you're, when you're going in the industry. Right. And I get it, you're hungry. You're going to be blind to that. You're blind. We were so focused on building you know, and sometimes, you know it's worked out for some people. I get it. If you want to jump at every single lead and you get one out of 15, cool. Yeah. You know, do you but you're going to burn out real quick.
I 100% burn out. That's quick. Yeah. If you can at least kind of get the stress of just constantly getting told no. Yeah. And wasting all that time for a no. If you can just eliminate that. I feel like, you know, you're going to go through enough your business. I know better more stuff, enough stuff to worry about. I focus on being a great, great at this. Great. Yeah. You know. Exactly. Welcome to Hardscape Mentor. The go to training platform for learning real job site skills anytime, anywhere. We've created 300 plus video lessons covering everything from design to build patios, walls, inlays, flagstone, turf, resin, sand and more. You can watch anytime, anywhere from your phone, tablet or computer.
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