Beginning my firm, I felt assured about two issues. The primary was that I had a profitable concept: An Uber for garden care. I had spent the earlier 15 years working my very own native garden care firm, and I knew from expertise each how tough it was for a home-owner to get a dependable garden mowing service and the way difficult it was to make a residing mowing yards. I felt a expertise platform might resolve this downside for each side of {the marketplace}.
I additionally knew I didn’t need to increase cash. Though, throughout me, I used to be watching firms touting themselves as “the Uber for [insert service here]” increase tens of millions of {dollars}, I used to be additionally seeing so a lot of them crash and burn just a few years later. I used to be okay rising somewhat extra slowly if it meant we have been constructing one thing that might final.
Thus started a decade of slowly and steadily rising GreenPal, culminating in us hitting $30 million in income final 12 months. Whereas it’s onerous to sum up ten years of progress in a single article, listed below are among the main steps alongside the way in which that helped us attain this milestone.
12 months 1: Discovering our first prospects
$20,000 in income
The primary 12 months in enterprise, we didn’t have any type of person acquisition technique. My co-founders and I had spent practically a 12 months constructing the primary model of the app, and after we completed, we thought, “Man, that was actually onerous, glad that’s accomplished.”
We didn’t notice the onerous work had solely simply begun. We shortly realized that in the event you construct it, they may not come. Our customers weren’t simply going to indicate up—we needed to go discover them.
So, we set a objective of getting our first 100 prospects so we might get suggestions (and a few preliminary income), and set to work pounding the pavement, passing out door hangers and flyers throughout Nashville. We had no concept what we have been doing and doubtless handed out 300,000 to 400,000 flyers to land these first prospects and get the ball rolling.
12 months 2: Understanding our prospects
$40,000 in income
With some prospects below our belt, we used their suggestions to refine our product, however we additionally received their enter to assist inform our advertising technique. We requested each single buyer in these early days: How do you usually rent a garden care service?
Time and again, we heard the identical solutions: They might ask household and associates for suggestions first but when that didn’t flip something up, they’d Google “garden care service close by” out of desperation.
We knew profitable on word-of-mouth would take time. We wanted to maintain engaged on perfecting our product and repair supply earlier than folks would begin speaking about us. However determining get prospects from Google appeared like one thing we might sort out within the meantime.
We determined to optimize our web site and create content material to attempt to compete for “garden care service Nashville,”—which we shortly realized was going to be extremely onerous with how little area authority we had. So, we pivoted to concentrate on decrease competitors key phrases in cities close by: Smyrna garden grass-cutting service, Brentwood yard upkeep firm, and many others. By writing content material for these smaller bed room communities, we started to rank humbly on web page one for these key phrases and slowly began constructing traction. Furthermore, we have been studying the web optimization sport and constructing a repeatable course of for creating content material to rank for our goal key phrases on a town-by-town foundation.
As you in all probability know, web optimization is a protracted play, and it was undoubtedly a gradual burn at first. However I’m glad we received the momentum going early and constructed a playbook that we’d return to time and again sooner or later.
12 months 3: Letting the momentum construct
$120,000 in income
Many small firms spend money on progress on the expense of the shoppers they have already got, but it surely all the time appeared crystal clear to me that it was going to be simpler to maintain prospects than discover new ones. In some ways, not elevating cash was a aggressive benefit as a result of it pressured us to concentrate on the one factor that mattered (the client) and gave us the time to verify we have been serving them to the most effective of our skills.
So, whereas we waited for our web optimization investments to repay, we additionally have been all the time centered on holding our current prospects completely happy. There are 1,000,000 issues that may go improper with a garden care service, and we skilled each one on our path of product improvement: Our service professionals did not present up on time, they solely mowed the entrance yard, they left a gate open and left the canine out, you title it. Not solely did we now have to construct the tech to ship a constant service, we had to determine incentivize and train our distributors to do a very good job and maintain them accountable in the event that they didn’t.
We nonetheless weren’t paying ourselves a wage at this level as a result of each dime went again into hiring builders and designers, hiring web optimization analysts and content material creators, and investing in all the things we might to develop the enterprise.
Across the finish of 12 months three, a number of issues clicked directly. For one, we lastly had a product that delighted the overwhelming majority of individuals: Once they pushed the button to rent any individual, that individual confirmed up on time and did an ideal job. On high of that, we began seeing traction from web optimization. I keep in mind someday that 20 prospects signed up, and I didn’t know who any of them have been—I lastly felt like perhaps, presumably, this might truly work.
12 months 4: Encouraging phrase of mouth
$360,000 in income
With extra prospects discovering us by means of search after which having a very good expertise with the product, we began to see traction from word-of-mouth advertising. As soon as you’ve got received a very good product that’s delighting extra folks than not, you get what’s referred to as “over-the-shoulder virality.” When folks discover one thing that makes their life somewhat bit simpler, they need to speak about it.
So, whereas we experimented with some referral packages to encourage phrase of mouth, they have been largely a waste of time. The success actually hinged on assembly folks the place they have been (on-line trying to find an answer to their downside of discovering good garden care), after which delivering on that promise so that they wished to inform everybody they knew about this nice hack they found.
12 months 5 – 8: Preserve following our playbook as we scale
$1,080,000 to $9,720,000 in income
With a strong service mannequin in place, the subsequent few years have been about growth. In 12 months 5, we launched in Atlanta, Tampa, and St. Louis. In 12 months six, we launched Columbus, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In 12 months seven, we launched in about 20 extra cities, and from that time ahead simply stored rising. (We’re at present in over 300 cities across the U.S.)
In every new metropolis we added, we centered on doing extra of what was already working as a substitute of making an attempt to be the most effective at a number of issues. A whole lot of startups take a look at these huge firms which might be all over the place—crushing web optimization, paid advertising, a referral program, social media—and suppose that’s what they should do to succeed. However most small companies don’t have their budgets, and a lot of our success got here from honing in on one channel, as a substitute of spreading ourselves too skinny.
We had a small presence on social media. We did some paid advertising in new cities simply to juice the natural piece. However, principally, we centered on carpeting the web with our content material and getting that content material to rank and convert properly.
12 months 9: Experimenting to search out our subsequent channel
$17,496,000 in income
We’ve solely not too long ago reached the purpose the place we had sufficient income that I felt we might spend money on experimenting to search out our subsequent huge advertising channel. Though we’ve achieved enormous progress strides, garden care is a $99 billion greenback business, so we’re nonetheless only a drop within the bucket.
Prior to now few years, we’ve been doing quite a lot of analysis and improvement round our advertising, however there’s all the time a tradeoff between making an attempt to bust open a brand new channel versus doubling down on what we’re already good at.
For example, we’ve examined some influencer campaigns (sure, consider it or not, garden care TikTok is a factor). Whereas this noticed some traction—inside a 12 months, we have been in a position to develop the income we attracted from influencer advertising by 500 %—that’s nonetheless such a small quantity of income in comparison with natural search, which nonetheless drives half of our customers immediately. It begs the query: Ought to we attempt to put extra fuel on these new methods? Or would we be higher off investing that cash into hiring one other content material author or hiring a technical web optimization specialist?
In our early years, we have been proper to place extra assets into what we have been already good at. However now, we’ll need to develop into unlocking one other channel. And since we don’t but know what that’s actually going to be, we’re going to only preserve experimenting.
12 months 10: Celebrating each win
$30 million in income
Clearly, we’ve had some fairly huge milestones to rejoice alongside the way in which. However a lot of our success has been about taking our progress step-by-step. It took us ceaselessly to get our first 100 prospects, however I knew if we might get to 100, we might get to 1,000, and if we might get to 1,000, we might get to 10,000, and so forth. Recognizing and celebrating these small wins actually stored us motivated.
My recommendation to different small enterprise homeowners: Don’t get bent off form if your organization isn’t enormous but. Know that the efforts you’re placing in don’t add up, they compound over time. That’s how we received to the place we’re immediately, and I can’t wait to see the place it carries us over the subsequent ten years.
