Check out our March newsletter!
MARCH 2026 The Landscaper’s Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing Newsletter A LIFE WELL MADE You Know How to Build a Company, Now Build a Life
I’ve spent most of my adult life telling business owners to take action. Stop waiting. Stop overthinking. Launch the campaign. Make the hire. Fix the website. Do the thing. But recently, I was reminded, very personally, that this advice doesn’t just apply to business. It applies to life. My godfather, Terry Coffman, passed away earlier this year. Writing that still feels strange. Terry wasn’t just family. He was proof that it’s possible to go all in on your creative instincts and still build something meaningful and lasting. He was a visual artist, creating paintings and sculptures, as well as a singer-songwriter, author, educator, and leader. He served as president of the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and played a role in the redevelopment of Milwaukee’s historic Third Ward, helping turn old industrial warehouses into art studios, galleries, and restaurants that gave the area new life. I attended Marquette University as a theater major, and during those years, Terry and I collaborated on projects. We recorded music together in a professional studio in
downtown Milwaukee. I played mandolin on one of his albums, an album built around stories of his father from World War II. I played gigs with him. We talked about art, business, creativity, and discipline. Spending time with him felt natural, like we were cut from the same cloth. He was curious, driven, and relentless about making things. Not someday. Now.
His mindset stuck with me more than I realized.
Marketing became my career because of music. I learned how to promote bands before I ever promoted businesses. Creativity was never separate from work; it was the engine. But like a lot of business owners, as responsibilities pile up, it gets easy to tell yourself you’ll come back to the things you love later. When things slow down. When the company is bigger. When life gives you more time. Here’s what Terry’s life made impossible to ignore: Later is not guaranteed. Terry continued creating into his 70s. He didn’t retire from curiosity. He didn’t stop creating just because he’d already accomplished more than most people ever will. And then Lou Gehrig’s disease took that from him. Slowly. Watching someone so brilliant lose the ability to do what defined them is heartbreaking, but it’s also clarifying. Time is not an infinite resource. Talent doesn’t protect you. Success doesn’t buy you extra years. That’s why this March, the same month I turn 40, I’m going to mandolin camp. I’ve been playing mandolin since I was 16. Nearly 25 years. And I still have room to grow. I’ve put this off for years because business was busy,
because life was full, because there was always a reason to wait. Not anymore.
If you’re a business owner reading this, you already know how to commit. You do it every day for your clients, your team, and your company. My challenge to you is simple: Apply that same intensity to the parts of your life you keep postponing. The creative project. The physical goal. The skill you’ve always wanted to sharpen. Don’t wait until burnout forces you to remember who you were before the grind. Terry Coffman lived as a creator until he couldn’t anymore. I’m grateful I got to witness that up close. If you want to see his work, his books, his art, his music, visit TerrenceCoffman.com. Better yet, let his life be the nudge you didn’t know you needed.
Do it now.
JACK JOSTES, CEO RAMBLIN JACKSON
RamblinJackson.com • 1
Read It in Your Truck on a Rainy Day
Ring The Bell Spotlight
GSL’S 6-FIGURE DECEMBER
Growing Seasons Landscaping Turned Digital Marketing Into Commercial Wins
weight. Digital marketing is not about vanity metrics or traffic for traffic’s sake. It is about putting your company in front of the right people at the right moment with the right message.
There is a belief floating around the green industry that digital marketing does not work for commercial landscape companies. That it might help with residential jobs, but when it comes to serious contracts, real decision-makers, and six-figure projects, the phone is not going to ring because of a website or SEO.
is clear about who you serve and what you do best, it attracts clients who actually fit your business. GSL is not getting random tire-kickers. They are getting complex, high- value projects that match their experience, equipment, and long-term growth strategy.
Growing Seasons Landscaping did that. Three times in one month.
Justin O’Connor, owner of GSL, put it simply: “What we are doing is working, period.”
Hell Yes, this works.
Growing Seasons Landscaping put that myth in the ground.
That confidence did not come overnight. We rang the bell for GSL back in June last year because they invested in rebuilding their digital foundation, and it all started with a website that finally reflected their work. From there, the strategy expanded into targeted search visibility and messaging designed to speak directly to commercial and industrial buyers. The result is not just more leads, but better leads. This is why we Ring The Bell. Because stories like this show what is possible when landscape business owners stop accepting industry myths and start demanding marketing that pulls its
GSL is a commercial-focused landscape company that knows exactly who it wants to work with: industrial, environmental, and large-scale commercial sites. They are not chasing every lead. They are aiming for the right ones. And in December, their digital marketing efforts delivered three opportunities, each north of $100,000. One was for a solar farm. One was for a landfill site. The third was for an Amazon warehouse facility.
This win matters because it proves something important. When your marketing
A Sunrise Reminder From Cape Cod BEFORE THE HEAT HITS, TAKE CARE OF YOUR PEOPLE
season kickoff, talking stress. And she said something that every landscape business owner needs to hear right now: Taking care of your people has to be trained, not assumed. Julie spends real time teaching her crews about nutrition and hydration. Not as an afterthought. Not as a poster on the wall. As part of how she runs her business. Why? Because she has seen what happens when people do not eat or drink enough and push through long days in the heat. Workers pass out. Heat stroke on job sites. Burnout that knocks good people out of the industry entirely. This is the time of year when that happens. The phones are ringing. The backlog is full. Everyone is running hard. And that is exactly when safety slips if you let it. Here is the takeaway. Start talking about wellness in your daily huddles. Remind crews to hydrate before they feel thirsty. Talk about eating real food, not just caffeine and convenience. Make it normal. Make it repetitive. Make it part of your culture. You can replace trucks. You can replace equipment. You cannot easily replace trained, experienced people. Take care of them now, before the heat does it for you.
I was on Cape Cod recently, where I had the chance to speak at the LandsCape Cod (LCC) show and visit a client of mine. While there, I got a reminder that hit harder than any growth plan ever could. One morning, just after sunrise at Craigville Beach, I was walking with Julie Esteves of JuliaGarden Design. We were talking shop, talking
2 • (303) 544-2125
Read It in Your Tru
Schedule a 15-minute Marketing Brainstorm with one of our Landscape Marketing Assistants. In just 15 minutes, they will: • Offer game-changing feedback on your marketing ideas. • Find gaps in your existing campaigns. • Discuss your best marketing strategy. • Share next steps for success! This is a quick, easy, no-pressure call — and we’ll even send you beef jerky or candied almonds for your time. Visit LandscapersGuide.com/brainstorm to schedule your Marketing Brainstorm today. Ready to Level Up Your Marketing and Get More Hell Yes Customers?
UPCOMING EVENTS
Driving Landscape Repeat Business + Cross-sells with Email Marketing Thursday, March 26 • 10:00–11:00 a.m. MT ChatGPT For Landscape Sales Professionals Thursday, April 30 • 10:00–11:00 a.m. MT LandscapersGuide.com/events
TAKE A BREAK
RamblinJackson.com • 3
uck on a Rainy Day
PRST STD US POSTAGE PAID BOISE, ID PERMIT 411
1 What Entrepreneurs Forget Until It’s Almost Too Late 2 Ring the Bell Spotlight: GSL Proves Commercial Digital Marketing Delivers 2 Smart Landscape Business Owners Protect Their Best Asset 3 Upcoming Events 4 If You Have to Explain Your Name, It’s Already Broken INSIDE PO Box 1429 • Lyons, CO 80540 (303) 544-2125 • RamblinJackson.com
IF NO ONE UNDERSTANDS YOUR NAME, NO ONE IS CALLING Your Business Has Grown, But Has Your Name Kept Up?
If your business has been around for 20 years or more, here is a hard truth most landscape owners do not want to hear: Your business has evolved, but your name probably has not. At Ramblin Jackson, we often work with second-generation family businesses and founders who have been grinding for decades. Over that time, services expand, markets shift, and the type of client you want today looks nothing like the client you served in year five. But the name on your truck, website, and logo are frozen in time. And that creates a problem. If your business name is confusing, outdated, or impossible to search, it’s costing you money. Take Parker Homescape. When we first looked at the name, the obvious question was: What is a “homescape”? The answer
required an explanation, which is the last thing your marketing should ever do. Worse, no one is searching for “homescapes near me” online. We helped preserve the family legacy and clarified the offer by updating the name to Parker Landscape Design. Same company. Same reputation. Far clearer message. Instantly more searchable. Then there was another client whose name was so long and cluttered it bordered on self-sabotage: Rock and Rose, Inc. Landscape, Design, and Irrigation. It read like a legal document, not a business built to grow. Even worse, they kept mainly getting irrigation leads they didn’t want, simply because the name led Google to think they were an irrigation company. We simplified the name. Tightened the message. Aligned it with what they actually wanted to sell. Within months, they landed a seven-figure project from the internet.
That did not happen because of luck. It happened because their name finally matched their direction. Your business name is not a sentimental artifact. It is a tool. It should tell the market exactly who you are, what you do, and why you are the right choice. If your name reflects where you started instead of where you are going, you are dragging a weight uphill. If you are serious about 2026 and beyond, it’s time to ask the uncomfortable question: Does your name support your future, or fight it? If you want a straight answer, schedule a 15-minute Marketing Brainstorm with Ramblin Jackson at LandscapersGuide.com/ brainstorm. We’ll look at your name, logo, and positioning and tell you exactly what is helping and what is holding you back.
4 • (303) 544-2125
Get a Free, Personal Video Review of Your Website! • RamblinJackson.com
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator