Lighting for Profits - Episode 198

What began with a failed lighting company in 1996 turned into a remarkable journey of resilience, risk-taking, and reinvention. From publishing a sports newspaper to leading national sales and co-founding a thriving landscape and lighting business, each step built the foundation. Now, as Senior Sales Director at Wintergreen Corporation, this story proves that setbacks are setups for a brighter future.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. We are going worldwide today with some interesting topics

Welcome to Lighting for Profits.

All light, all light, all light. Powered by Emory Allen. Here is your host, Ryan Lee. Oh, light. All light, all light. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the number one landscape lighting show in Omaha, Nebraska. We are definitely going worldwide today, folks. Gonna be a great show. If you're looking to start or grow, let's just call it an outdoor lighting company. You're definitely in the right place. We're going to be talking about Christmas lights. I hope you're excited. I know I am. We got the one, the only, Mr. Mike Marlowe coming to join us on the show today. So, we're here to educate, we're here to motivate, but we just want you to dominate. So you guys ready? Let's do this. super excited. Got a great show. Like I said, we got Mike Marlowe coming on the show. Been, in the Christmas light industry a long time. In fact, I was just reading his bio. I'm like, dang. He launched his first holiday lighting company in 1996. I think I was a sophomore in high school. So, Mike's awesome. He is a constant contributor to the outdoor lighting industry. whether it's at expos or events or online social media, all this stuff. So we're going to talk about, a lot of different things. I mean, we've got tariffs. I know a lot of people are like, what's going to happen? They've already had prices raised. We're going to talk a little bit, but we're not going to talk the whole show about tariffs. We're going to talk about commercial selling. You make a few different angles, today's show. So if you want to grow your, outdoor lighting business, make sure you stick around. Excited to have Mike on. Thank you guys so much for your support too. it's crazy because once, once I start asking for referrals, we start getting them or referrals. Reviews. I'll take the referrals too. But, thank you for the reviews, guys. It means a ton of. It's so freaking awesome. So thank you, guys. If you're on Apple or Spotify and you want to give that five star review, there you go. Just go do it. And people are writing nice things. That's even nicer. So thank you guys so much. hey, before we have Mike on again, we got Mike Marlowe coming on just a few minutes.

Landscape Lighting Secrets attracts different levels of people based on their success

I want to share something. This last week was epic. I had the chance to hang out with the lighting legends. So some people don't know what the lighting legends are so when I started Landscape Lighting Secrets about five years ago, it was just Landscape Lighting Secrets. And, over time, we attracted different levels of people. Some people got more traction, advanced faster than others, further than others. Some people kind of stayed small. some people didn't last. They only stayed in the program a year. Whatever. but we've got now different levels. And so what we did is we created different levels in the program. So when you join Landscape Lighting Secrets, you start at Spark, okay. And then after Spark, you graduate to Ignite. After Ignite, you graduate to Luminary. And after Luminary, you, you graduate to finally be that lighting legend. It's our top level. So, Lighting Legends is a really just upper level group within Landscape Lighting Secrets. We meet in person three times a year to mastermind on our business. And masterminding is like, we're having discussions, like, really vulnerable stuff. Usually there's some tears, not always. but we're talking about how to grow our businesses and not just surface level stuff. And it's not just about raising your prices. Although the fundamentals come into all the conversations. We're talking about how to build a legacy. It's not just about lighting anymore. It's about building a legacy. And it's so cool to see these legends come together and do things that maybe they would have done on their own, but maybe not. Probably not, and definitely not as fast. So we're, we are seriously collapsing time with this group. And everyone's there to level up and get better and put their egos aside, and it's phenomenal.

Lighting Legends meetup in Utah focused on going from amateur to professional

So, so the theme of, this, this meetup was the first time we met in Utah, which I was super stoked because, there's a first time for everything. And this was our first Lighting Legends meetup in Utah. Landscape, Lighting Pro of Utah hosted. That's Keith Rosser's company. And, it was awesome. Just a great few days masterminding, and leveling up our businesses. The theme was called Turning Pro Now. and it's really just going from amateur to professional. And you might think, well, if you know who's in it, like, these guys are already pro. They're already doing millions per year, and they run very good businesses. Well, if you ask them, they're amateurs, right? They're, they're, they're pushing their ego aside and they're, no, I want to go pro. It's not like I just want to make it into the NBA. Like, you could make it into the NBA and just sit on the Bench. Or you could be a starter. Or you could be a starter, or you could go be an all Star, or you could play in the Olympics. Like, there's different levels to this game, right? And so these guys are really trying to go pro, and it was cool. I actually arranged this tour of this huge H Vac company in Utah. I don't know if it's the largest, but it probably is the largest in Utah. it's called Any Hour, and they do free tours, but they. They did a VIP Lighting Legends tour, which was really, really cool. And, this company does over $500 million per year. $500 million per year. 110 million here in Utah. And what's crazy to think is that just, like, it was either 12 or 14 years. So I'll say 14 years. Even though I think it might have been 12. Only 14 years ago, they were doing just $2 million per year. And they've been around since 1951. So imagine being around since 1951 and getting to $2 million in revenue after, like, you know, 40 years, 60 years or whatever, right? But then something happened. Someone decided to get intentional. Someone decided to get intentional about their growth, and that's when the magic started. And they went from 2 million to 6 million. 6 million to 12 million. 12 million to 36. Like, there was literally years where they were doubling or tripling revenues. Okay, that's insane. But it didn't just happen, like, randomly after. You wait 60 years and you just, like, something happens. Someone got intentional. And, when they got intentional, the growth was rapid. I mean, huge, huge, revenue years, right? And now, again, just in Utah, they're doing over 110 million. They spend. When I asked about percentage of revenue on marketing, they said they spend 8% now. And that's because they already own the market share. Like, that's their, like, coasting 8%, right? When there was years when they were in growth mode, it was much higher than that. So imagine spending 15, 20% of your revenue. A lot of people might be like, what? That's crazy. Like, that's my money. Well, when you view it as an expense, it is crazy. But when you see it as an investment, see, they're willing to invest $800,000 of their $100 million into marketing because they have a lot of trucks that they need to keep on the road every day, like, 350 trucks. They can't rely on word of mouth. Like, once you build this machine, you got to keep feeding it, right? And they even did mention that like, you know what, there was a time, there's season where those numbers can fluctuate. So that was the first thing that I took away from it. And yes, profit is king. All I ever talk about is profit. The show is called Lighting for Profits. Like most business owners are not making enough money. They're not profiting enough money, so they can't afford to pay themselves, pay their team members over, deliver for their clients. Like, the number one reason businesses fail is because they run out of money, which means they don't have enough profit. Right. But there is a time where it makes sense to invest some of those profits into your future growth. Because bragging about how you made 20% doesn't do anything. Okay, what did you do with the 20%? That's really what matters.

H Vac company invests hundreds of thousands of dollars into training for every department

So it's okay if you have a year where I would say even if you had zero profit, but you were able to hire management leadership, invest in marketing to fund the future growth, no problem with that. Now if you have zero profit and that doesn't happen, that's called a non profit. And you should get out of business and just go do non profit activities. Go volunteer in South America or something. but here's what surprised me. Most guys, we're touring this facility, which was actually a campus, multiple buildings. They're like taking over the city of Orem. Okay, if you guys ever want to do the tour, send me a message and I'll hook you up. But we went into this room, they had multiple training rooms. Some of them weren't being used that day one we go into, there was 50 plus people in this room. And there was music and there was excitement and a really positive energy. This was their excavation department. Now why would H Vac company have an excavation department? Well, because they end up doing a lot of digging for their plumbing department. All right? And so they have a whole excavation team. I guess that's what happens when you do $500 million a year. You, like, keep starting divisions. So they have like 50 people in there. And here's what's crazy. This is wild. Every single department comes in and gets training. And they're there for, they say 90 minutes, but it's probably two hours. When all is said and done, they come in not once a month, not once a year, once a week to do training. So imagine having 350 people at, an average of two hours. That's 700 hours. And I don't know what their average pay is, but let's just say $30 an hour. Which I think is low. I think they make more than that. Well, let's just say that that's $21,000 per week that this company is investing into training. That's a million dollars a year. Like, that's crazy. I was like, what? And the excitement was. It was in this room, guys, they're doing basically 90 minutes to train, build company culture, reinforce the core values, and do, like, scorecard checkups. And it's not like these people dread it. I mean, most people, face it, aren't doing meetings. But if you are doing meetings, they're boring. Boring, right? Like, they're just like, hey, guys, come on in. All right, let's get started. and we got a five star review from, Deborah over here. And, here's the thing. Here's all the things that are going wrong. Like, we need to do better here. We need to do better here. We need to do better here. Like, no one wants to come to those meetings. Those people are out looking for jobs after those meetings. No one in this room that we saw at any hour. Those people are not looking for jobs. Like, I can tell you right now, they're not looking for jobs. They were excited to be there. They had so many cool things. They're like throwing darts at a dartboard to earn cash, and they get to throw more darts if they get a better scorecard. Like, they have all these reasons to win. It's a culture of winning. And these aren't. It's not core values that are just written on a wall. Like, these are core values that they're living, they see every single week. And they're living it. Right. I was just blown away. They're not just reading about core values in a manual on the first day. They literally were living them. and this company, these people, all their team members, they were not amateurs. They were professionals. They were pros all around. They understood the game in a way that most never will, and they acted like professionals. And it was obvious. I mean, and we went from, like, the marketing department to the CSRs to everything. These guys were pros.

Challenge: Go from amateur to pro in one business area

So I want to give you guys a challenge. And the challenge is to go pro on purpose. Okay? And you got to get intentional. This is where most people are letting life happen to them. They're letting their business run rampant, and you're just trying to keep the wheels from falling off. You got to get intentional. You got to get ahead of it. You got to put the fire out before it even starts. Instead of being reactive and putting the Fires out afterward. You got to get proactive, get intentional, and get and go from amateur to pro. And so this is how you do it. You start today, you pick one area of your business, one area where you feel like you've been operating as an amateur and decide right now to go pro. So I, came up with a few different examples. It could mean actually, budgeting for marketing instead of, let's just see what comes in. Okay, Are you making data driven decisions? Are you just winging it? That's what most do. And if you wing it, it doesn't work because you try marketing once. Guess what? I already know the end. Don't do it because it's just a waste of money. You don't just try marketing. You come up with a marketing strategy. Trying marketing once is amateur. Creating a strategy and building a predictable marketing machine, that's what a pro does. Another example could be creating a weekly training rhythm. I mean, how many of you are bringing in your teams? Your, even if it's just one person, take time off work like you're not producing revenue. Come in two hours to not just do a boring meeting, but actually training and get them hyped up. Instead of talking about all the negative stuff, you're talking about the things that they need help with. And remember, your common sense is not everyone else's common sense. So while it's easy for you to say, well, yeah, you just do the thing. Well, they might need more training, they might need reinforcement, because if they were so good at it and their common sense was your common sense, they'd probably own a business as well. Okay, so create a weekly training rhythm. Another one could be reviewing your core values with your staff, not just writing them on a wall. And again, there's different opportunities and examples where you can live the core values instead of just reading them on a wall and then finally tracking KPIs and holding scorecard check ins. Okay, the pros, they don't wait for momentum. They go out and create it. So what's your move? I want to challenge you. What are you going to stop dabbling in? And what are you going to start dominating? Remember, amateurs, they wait for growth. And the pros, they plan for it. So take me up on this challenge. Please take me up on this challenge. Your future self will thank you and, just an incredible experience to go see something like that. It wasn't just inspirational. It was like taking notes, like, holy cow, I got to do this. I got to implement this really, really cool stuff. So is that the background Music I meant to play. I can't remember.

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Ryan: We've got Mr. Mike Marlowe coming on the show

all right, guys, now the moment we've all been waiting for. I hope you guys are ready and if you're here live, please feel free to join the discussion. We've got Mr. Mike Marlowe coming on the show and I did. Doing a little surprise here. Let's see if we can hear this. Oh, is that. Oh, we got a custom intro, guys. If you don't know Mike Marlowe, you're about to. And I want you wherever you're at, unless you're driving to get on your feet. For the woman, the only Christmas light man of the year, Mike Marlowe. Welcome, welcome. what's up, Mr. Mike Marlo?

What is up? I always love your intros, Ryan. Thank you very much. It's, so made me blush. I'm not that guy.

I was, I was, you know, I had a few extra minutes and I was like, I need to find like a Christmas light intro.

Yeah, I love it.

I came across that one. So, yeah, thanks for coming here. Thanks for being on the show.

Yeah, like I said, it's. It's always a pleasure to come on. So I appreciate the invite.

Well, I'm excited, man. what's up? Greg Matthews, he was part of the tour at the any hour and seeing all that stuff. What's up, Bear? Thanks for being here.

Hey, Bear, what's Up, big guy.

And we got. Oh, Robino landscape. What's up, Joe? Robino. I know he just mentioned we got a couple shows left until our 200. This is 198, Mike. This is episode one.

I wonder what episode was I had back in the first time I was on?

it was early on. I don't. I don't know. Yeah.

Be interesting.

No, it's kind of crazy to think we're 200 shows in. It just goes to show you, like, when you just put your head down and, like. Because I don't have, like, a goal, like, oh, let's get to 200, and then it's over. It's just like, you know, I'm on a mission here, and there's a message. I want to be heard and I want other people's voices heard. And we're not done yet, so maybe we'll go to 201.

Good content. If you think about that over the years, a lot of good content out there to help people. So. Which is good.

It's been fun. I feel like we've had, a lot of different personalities and a lot of different messages and all that stuff, so. Appreciate you being part of the journey as well.

Yeah, no, it's. I remember right when you were getting going when we first met, so that's awesome.

I know. Well, I look back, I'm like, dude, I. I didn't know anyone like you. You've been in this game a long time. And. And we. We were kind of reminiscing before the show. I met you without knowing that you were Mike Marlowe.

Yeah.

I went to, like, a holiday lighting training in Texas. Keller, Texas. And then Fast forward, like 10 years later, I meet you. I'm like, wait, you. You were that guy? Like that. You were that guy?

Well, back then. And just like, still now, as we were talking about, we still both don't go think that we're the guy. We just keep on trying. I think that's the beauty of, being a business owner or going out and about. It is like, you gotta. You're never satisfied.

Yep.

And just gotta keep on trying because there's. You can put a goal out there. It doesn't mean anything because you hit it. There's always gonna be another one past it.

You've had a lot of opportunities come to you through Lights for Christmas

Well, I feel like you've been pretty resilient. You've had a lot of opportunities come to you. Some have worked out, some haven't. Some have been intentional, some haven't. and, you know, right before light, you know, you came and supported us at Light it Up Expo, which I'm extremely grateful for. That was the first time we were doing that. And, you know, I, I hope that people support us, but not everybody does, you know. And you were, you were willing. You said, heck, yeah, I want to be there. I want to be a part of it. but it was also in a period of transition where Lights for Christmas was. It was like, you're like, I gotta tell you something, but I can't tell you.

Yeah, like a secret. But I had to kind of keep it behind wrapped doors until I, you know. And that was. It was a. It was a year process, you know, it wasn't one thing that was intentional. To see something that I started up with, with a group with Lights for Christmas. I didn't want to see it, like, go away, but I think it's still. But there was a home for it. And it just. That's where some of those conversations, turn into us, joining the Wintergreen family as. And part of their brands that they're doing. And, I can tell you it was. I didn't know about it. I was nervous going through this process. I was very. A lot of anxiety, a lot of unknown. And, you know, because when you start thinking about as a business owner or just things like that, you're trying to take care of the employees that work for you as well as, you know, what are you going to do with all this stuff that you have here in stock? And, the folks at Wintergreen saw the value after I started explaining, you know, what we've done in a short period of time, and they were really pleased on, and very surprised at how far we've gone with. With the limited resources that we did have.

Wintergreen is going to be a brand within the Wintergreen Corporation

Let's talk about that a little bit because, you know, I knew you for, for being with Lights for Christmas. And then all of a sudden now you're. You got Winter Green on and repping their brand and stuff like that. I think there's, like, you said a lot to think through, not only your team members, but your clients and everything else and how that's going to affect relationships. what does that look like now? Like, does Lights for Christmas still exist in conjunction with Wintergreen and kind of. What is that? What are those?

It's a good question. we're still going through some of that, kind of that transitional what it is, but it is going to be a brand within the Wintergreen Corporation, umbrella. And that brand, you know, we're directing towards Maybe doing, well, actually we already started a lot of training resources for folks that want to kind of learn a little bit more or how to scale their business, but then do some added values. Like I'm all big about added values. Anybody wants to be in the business and we're trying to do our best to kind of make sure that we are a resource that's in that, in the, in the space and it can be a reliable resource to kind of go from. There's are a lot of people out there doing trainings. There are a lot of people that have those programs. I'm, just taking my 30 years experience from. Like you said earlier, I, I failed miserably back in 1996. 97. So. And. But somehow I stuck in this business and then the curse still stayed with me. So now I'm 800 years. If we think about dog years, I kind of figured I managed it pretty well.

I think Christmas lighting, that's a good thing. Christmas lighting really is dog years. It is.

you. For those that haven't been in the business or if you had a taste of the business, first of all, it is a curse because you look at buildings and trees a whole different way anymore. And then you go into the chaotic. I need to, you know, get all these jobs done. You got like 12 hours and because there's not enough time. Time is the measurable that you can't get back.

Yeah, that's tough.

You're a franchise owner for Blingle lighting company

So. And then what happened with Blingle? Are you still with Blingle? What's, what's the relationship there?

No, I am so Blingo. When we took our local, my local business, me and my partner Taylor, we got approached to, you know, kind of sell off our rights or at least use our business model, to be able to open up the franchise model for Blingle. In the beginning, I helped get them started. They have a whole franchise team that's running that. Very, very skilled. And I'm kind of like the poster boy because you'll see me on the ads and you'll see me on their website in. But also I am a franchise owner, you know, so we changed our model to be a franchise owner for Omaha and Lincoln. learned a lot about that process from where we were at at that current stage. I've actually, we've doubled, our business in the holiday in the lighting game with landscape lighting and permanent lighting and holiday lighting mixed in.

Nice.

And so then we. So then. And then as that goes on, I become more of that, just like him. For a lot of folks that might, that listen to you as a resour, to help their business, as a business coach, as a, as a trainer. And that's kind of part of my forte of why I'm around or what I do. And if you think about it, you know, it's like you have to kind of pay it forward because back then, I remember when I failed, I didn't have anybody to call on then. I mean, and they were still trying to. People I did talk to were still trying to figure it out themselves. There wasn't, there wasn't this scalable model that you see since I'd, say 2005, 2008. And built off from that.

Yeah, I think, you know, I think a lot of that has to do with social media. And it used to be that you had to go to an event to get any type of connection and networking. Now we're human, so we still like to do that. But like, you could send someone a DM and get a hold of almost anybody, Facebook groups, all that stuff. It's, it's also accelerated the, the learning, but it's also accelerated kind of the advancement of these industries.

Where do you think the Christmas lighting industry is right now

Do you, where do you think the Christmas lighting industry is right now? I still see a lot of people coming in. I mean, there's still people that didn't know what Christmas lights was. It was in a business. And then on the other side of it, you got these veterans that have been doing it for 30, 40 years. Where, where do you, where do you see it?

you know, I always kind of look at this industry as kind of like a seesaw. There's always people going to get off and always people going to get on. And it's both sides, it's kind of leveling out. I think the demand is always going to be there no matter what. And we're creatures of nature of, especially in America, we, we want to buy stuff that we don't need. I mean, you look at Best Buy and all these other places, we, we don't need this stuff, but we do enjoy it and we do put a smile, puts a smile on our face. And we love to see it, you know, and that's the, that's the beauty of making us feel good. And I always kind of look at that as, the Christmas spirit or the holiday spirit in that time of time frame when you start thinking about the companies coming in. I'm a big advocate. I think you need to have some kind of training or some kind of baseline. Because the one thing that I've seen over the years is just the pricing fluctuation all over the place in different regions. some regions get more and then some areas have just been decimated because everybody doesn't know what they're doing and they're just doing it for a low dollar amount and they should be asking for a lot more money because it is a, it is a grind do. If you want to scale to 200, 300, 400 clients, you have to have a good business model and you can't be thinking that you're going to do it at the low end, chase to the bottom pricing because that's not going to work.

Well, you're speaking to the choir here, man.

I figured I'd hit a chord there.

So don't get me going. Come on. I'm trying to stay focused here and not talk about praising.

What do you think permanent lighting is doing to the Christmas light industry

what, what do you think the permanent lighting industry is doing to the Christmas light or the holiday lighting industry?

I think it definitely gives those, those lighting companies another revenue stream in the off season. I think I see a lot, I, I, I don't, I know we do it here for our current business in Omaha and Lincoln and we do quite a bit. You know. do I see that it's ruining or takes away from the Christmas traditional retrofit look type thing? I don't think it does. I think what you're going to find is a lot of the homes that want the permanent lighting on it are really the homes that probably wouldn't be paying year over year. They would do it for a couple years and then they would get out of the Christmas side, you know. Or, or because I just, I just think that that's just my take.

I do worry a little bit lower home value.

Yeah, a little. I mean I, I see that a lot. Especially in our market. You know, we're starting to, you know, you're not going to get into your million dollar homes and think you're going to throw it on there because there's too much architecture on those homes to throw perma lighting on. I start seeing it more into your 350 to 600 range more the right before the big custom homes side of it. And that's, that's just my opinion. I know we've done a lot. I feel like it's great for commercial, the commercial projects that we have done have been a thousand feet or more on, you know, hospitals and car dealerships and furniture stores. So those are things That I think it would be more suited for that product sometimes in the residential. So.

Are companies abandoning Christmas lighting? Are their sales dropping

So are you guys seeing that, like when these companies are adopting more permanent, are they abandoning Christmas lighting? Are their sales dropping?

I sure hope not. I think that that would be, I think that would be the, a worst mistake. Because when you think about the, this, the stackables that you can get, out of the Christmas lighting business, and I call stackables is like 50 homes. You're only going to lose 10 the next year, you're going to add another 50 or 100 and eventually you'll get to that 200 to 300 as you stack them. That's fourth quarter bank money. Business coming in, service business coming in. And then you just got to scale to that to make it done. You could use subs you can do, buy more trailers, trucks bring temps in. There's a lot of ways to scale properly.

Well, and I think when it, when permanent first came out, everyone's like, oh, crap, I'm not bringing that up because then I'm not going to have a business. But roof lines are just a portion of Christmas lighting.

I mean, I still think you're recurring on the foliage, the recent garlands. There's a lot of, there's a lot of decorating groups out there that don't do permalining, that don't even sell foliage. They just want to just do many lights and roof lines. That's it. Yeah, I'm good with that. But I think that the, you know, every house could be another. They could be doubling their, their ticket on every job if they, if they just learn how to sell it.

You had, you had some product in your hand, you had that, oh.

I'm a habit of putting something. Do I talk. Oh. So here's a fun fact. I'll share something with you. I just learned this a couple weeks ago and I really didn't think about it until. So this is. If everybody can see this. This is a slide plug. I'm talking a slide plug that you start off a C9 roof line baseline on the SPT2 or SPT1 core. It doesn't matter. So this was invented back in 1950. The patent in 1950 was approved in 1950. It expired in 1972. The reason why I brought this up is because I was asking, because of the tariffs, why aren't these being made in the United States? And then it turned out that they were by Gilbert Manufacturing. So that's why back in the day, everybody that would say, oh, you want A Gilbert plug. You want to give a plug, everybody use this as the aspect, as the tissue or the Kleenex of the tissues, if you want to call it by a name. And but if I look, if I think about that somebody in 1950, smart individual because they did the patent on a couple other things in the retrofit sockets and all that stuff that was in 1950. So then I started thinking about, well, why, what happened back in 1950. All those GIs are coming back from World War II. Everybody started being. The suburban world was starting to build and then that became more of all this Christmas and the feel good of what we wanted to be as a country. And that's why they say it's the, you know, the generation of men and all that kind of stuff. But think about the. I would say billions of feet that have been decorated on homes because of one plug that was made in 1950, 75 years ago.

That's actually wild. Yeah.

So, that's what blows my mind because I was just. Because if you don't have this, you don't have a holiday lighting industry. Nobody thinks about going and putting roof lines up, you know, and that's, that's what I think about is like you. We don't talk about where. I mean you. These are all fun facts. Not saying that you're going to use it in a sales pitch, but I might, I don't know if I'm pretty interjected. Somebody wants to know, like did you ever know about this? You can.

That's awesome. Yeah.

For everybody who's listening, slide plug 1950.

It is kind of cool to think back. I mean it doesn't really matter what we're talking about. Like someone was inspired, like someone started it. Someone created something that then like changed industries, changed thought processes, whatever it is like that's pretty killer.

So what's being. What's being created now and then 75 years from now, what. What's that going to be like? I mean hopefully we're gonna put those roof lights up and nobody, everybody just, just. Yeah, there's a drone to do it.

AI is taking over. We might not even be alive for the. We got two weeks left, guys. I don't even know If I'll be 100 episodes probably my AI. That's crazy.

I do want to get to tariffs because I think a lot of people are concerned

Well, okay, I want to talk to. I do want to get to tariffs because I think a lot of people are probably a little concerned and trying to figure out.

Yeah, we obviously, we all watch the news, we all understand, we talk to our suppliers what's going on? you know one thing about it, it's like you got the main hub of China and you're going to deal with tariffs. The one thing forget about that. Some people are like oh, more tariffs. Well a lot of this stuff was already tariff now before now some of it's wasn't tariff like foliage and Christmas trees weren't tariffed. now it's tariffs right and there. And it's coming in a lot higher than 25 on sometimes because the way the codes are. so then. But like you look at wire decor, there's ways that you can kind of get an HTTS code to get it into the country that you might have a very low tariff. Those are all being cracked down in the ports now because there's a lot of, there's a lot of shadiness that goes on and trying to get stuff and so they're doing a lot more crackdown as well.

Yeah, I think aren't there? I mean I'm sure people are changing forms and saying oh this wasn't a million dollars, it was $10,000 worth of.

Yeah, I mean they're doing a lot of that stuff. So I think, I think when we start thinking about the day and age as being a business owner that has to buy product that's reliable on something outside of our country, we're going to be hit with an extra fee. I think the big part is just make sure that everybody needs to review their pricing and make sure that they're. They're going off landed pricing before they start doing the markups and everything that. And just update your records before it's too late.

So when the, when the tariffs went from whatever they were to a million thousand percent, whatever did. Did everyone. Did the manufacturers and importers. Did you guys stop, did you not order anything or did you like. It was, it was.

Some of this stuff was in production. You know one of the one thing is that you know the folks at Wintergreen, they said they will never What was told to me and was like they'll never like cancel an order on a factory. You know it they'll you know because like what happened is so then because we didn't know when the end was going to happen or if there was ever going to be. I don't think it's ever going to be ending that they were finding warehouse space in China or the factories would have to be able to have space to be able to store it. Which most a lot of factories don't have that space because they want.

To get it in business as usual. Except this. These containers are going to be 175% or whatever.

Yeah, yeah. And so then, and then, so there's, there's a lot of things that happen. So there's some things that have been put on hold. There was, you know, at times big companies had 80 containers just sitting there waiting to go. Because, because before, when it was the first, the first run of this terrorist for this year, it was about. You had to have it leave China in a certain date. Then when the, the last one that came around, it had to be through the port at that time or arrive at the port. and to make sure they avoid those, those that tax rate. when the tariff side of it, I think when the big part is, is that it's now you're going to start seeing an influx of everybody rushing to get their containers on the water. And now your shipping costs have already gone up 3 to $6,000 a container. And I'm sure that's not going to be done because that's the one thing that I don't think it's regulated enough.

Because like right now, in order to get things by September, when do you have to get things on the water?

the next two weeks. Now September is out of the water Now I think you got to look at October.

Really.

Yeah, you're looking October. you might be able to get some. Depends on what port you send it in. You might be able to get better. But I mean, granted, if you think about it can. It has to get booked. And when you. And every container that gets booked, there's always. They overbook it just kind of like airlines sometimes. Right. And so then you got, so then you just got to make sure you get on, on a boat and that's usually about 18 to 20 days just to get to a port.

So the, the tariffs come down, shipping costs are going to go up because now everyone wants to ship. So to the end user, to the contractor, what, what do we expect? Do we expect these.

I would say, like if you think about them, a bulb price, like a C9 bulb or let's say a plug here, typically you might see it at a wholesale 60, 75 cents, give or take. I'm just doing a range here. You're probably going to find yourself another $0.15 to $0.20 more in buying this at the bottom end. And that's just an example. Don't hold me to the numbers, but that gives you where you see the perspective. because There is a lot of the extra costs of just doing the business from a supply standpoint, how do we get it to, to where it needs to go? If you get on a program that did free shipping, so those are all being calculated.

When you do pricing, if someone places an order with you right now, a pre order, whatever, are they guaranteed that price?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, we honor our pricing. So whatever. All the pre orders that we did early this year, we didn't. We honored it. So. And we only during that process, we raised the price, like March 15th or something like that, just to kind of bear a little bit more from our wholesale price. and that was. But we didn't go back and add, you know, 25 tariffs on top of our pre orders.

And, and I guess I want to clarify when I say pre order, like that's exchanging money like I'm paying you, not just saying I want that product.

Oh, yeah, yeah, they're doing a down payment and signing an invoice. it's more of a skin in the game, if we could want to call it that. Yeah, we're gonna, we'll deliver it later this third, fourth quarter. unless they want it earlier and then we have it, so.

Landscape lighting industry hasn't been impacted as dramatically as Christmas lighting

Well, I just think it's important to bring up because the, the landscape lighting industry hasn't been impacted at the same level of Christmas lighting. It's still being impacted, but it's a little bit different. But we had a member of our program who, who like pre sold this thing, but they didn't order materials because they didn't know that tariffs were going to be a thing. And then all of a sudden, you know, the pool's being built. Like, there's, there's a lot of reasons why the product just doesn't happen right away. Their project. But then they go to order it and it's like, oh, no, it's, you know, higher. Yeah, well, like now they're like, shit, I should have just bought all the stuff. And it's like, true, you should have. But they didn't get a deposit from the client and all that stuff. So, it's just a new world we live in where like, if you do sell a job, you have a client, like, it's important to get the deposit, it's important to order the materials, like pay for them. And, and yes, you've got to have the ability to. In your case, they're not. You guys still have the material, but at least they know they're locked in.

And they're locked in. It's like secure in product. And I think that's a one, one lesson as you grow your business, especially if you're just doing holiday. And this is all you do other than other things. You have to. Like you said earlier about, the company you and your legends wouldn't visit, it's about reinvesting. You can reinvest into marketing, but it also, you can reinvest in the product and inventory because you know, if you take the ability of marketing that you will have more jobs. And you knew, you know, that you can buy it at a certain lower cost and secure that product. Now you're not waiting for schedule for stuff to come in, and you can streamline your business a little bit more by doing that. And nowadays everybody doing leasing, they're building that, they're building their inventory empire, if you want to call it that. So then all you gotta, do is just make sure they rotate some of the older products out and go through that in the off season.

What do you teach people? Leasing or selling?

I've done both. Personally. Leasing, is what we currently do right now. It's usually I teach it both ways because I want them to. I want that the business owner or the manager, whoever's making that decision, I want them to make that decision. I don't want to tell them how to do it. So I give them both, both models. I, show them the benefits between both models, how they can, the pros and cons of each one.

But right now, you guys are in your own business. You're doing leasing?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, we're doing leasing. We, you know, we got over a million dollars of inventory in our empire, and we rotate through and we'll get it all out every, every fourth quarter.

What's the key to maintaining high profit margins in a competitive industry

All right? The show's. The show's all about profits, lighting for profits. What's the key to maintaining high profit margins in a competitive industry like holiday lighting?

you gotta be really good on your service side. You know, I think where you can start losing money is your labor. You, have to understand a, good system when your team gets to a job and what they need to do and get on to the next job, scheduling those jobs close enough so you're not doing a lot of windshield time. buying product is, you know, I don't look at a 5 cents or 10 cents. I'm not gonna worry about something like that. It's just more because I know my numbers. And we usually go through the numbers of what our storage is, what, what miscellaneous cords are going to be, and we build that into every lease price and you know, we have markup, we put our labor into it. We found that because of our, our growth of a company, we had to start charging more per man hour in our estimates because of our overhead and because of our, our you know, just to keep our margins and our, I call it the Mendoza line of operations as a company. So you got to factor that in. And that's where I start seeing a lot of companies that want to grow, they grew but then they look back and go, I don't really have a lot of nest egg to go and buy another trailer or how do I reinvest this? It's because their pricing is off and their pricing is off or their operations are off. One of the two.

A lot of people are hesitant to raise their price per man hour because they think well, I'm already the highest guy or it's just there's so many other people and there's someone willing to do it for half my price. How do you maintain the value proposition as you raise your price?

Well, I think it comes down to using a good CRM system that has communication, high communication as a customer focus. Part of that customer focus has to be when you get a bid, what your follow up sales funnel process is going to be. because if we're going to be going and say a $10,000 project or even 20,000, you need to treat it like it's you know, $100,000 project no matter what. Because that company is emotionally buying if, especially if it's a residential, they're emotionally engaged in wanting this done right. even when you get in the business transactions, it's still, you have to communicate and you need to be in front of them because it's like you're building your own nest egg of friends and clients, to go through. but yeah, I think, bottom line, I think is if you can come out and be very communicative, you can actually then raise your right, your pricing because your services will grow because experience.

That'S good stuff man. I like the treat, treat everything like a hundred thousand dollar project because let's face it, we get a small project, we're like, yeah, they can wait a couple days, you know, like I'll get back to them later, whatever. But if you, if you truly treated everyone like they were giving you a hundred thousand dollars, life would not be that hard.

And I bet you everybody remember you because you treated them better than anybody else.

Yeah, that's good stuff man.

Yeah.

A lot of entrepreneurs are natural sales people, but it doesn't matter

Because let's talk about, go ahead.

So I just, I just believe in that. I think it's good karma will come around. And you guys, it's all. In our world, we have to make friends. Especially if you're on the front side selling your company and your services. And if you're not good at it, hire somebody that is. Don't think that you're going to be the guy because you, you write the checks. Hire somebody that can be better.

Well, you know what's interesting about that? I mean, a lot of entrepreneurs are natural sales people. I would say some of them are better than others, clearly. But that's, that's typically the last role that we give up. You know, we give up installation or phones or whatever. But that being said, there is a thing like I remember when I first sold, when I sold my first ten thousand dollar job, I was like, ho, holy shit. You show the $5,000 deposit check to Lindsay. Like someone believed in me. This is crazy. we don't even have a logo. You know, like crazy stuff. And then you don't have like, probably my first hundred of those. I mean there's a, it was exciting for a long time, but after like the honeymoon phase, you're like, it's just $10,000. Like, it's not that big of a deal. So when you do bring in someone who's a new sales guy, like, they have a different excitement level because that's, that's like, that's what they get excited about. We lose power and energy and momentum because we still have to run a business. Yeah, we still have to put up with the headaches and the fires and all this other stuff.

Well, isn't the cliche, it's like, you know, are you in your business or you're working on your business or are you in the business? You know, like, I always kind of say, are you in the trenches or are you looking down in the trenches? You know, and the trenches can be very overwhelming, for anybody because you. There's so much to know.

Yeah. The sooner I'm telling you guys, the sooner we can get out of our own way, replace ourselves in our business. The valuation goes through the roof. And not everyone wants to sell their business right now, but it doesn't matter. Like, your client experience is going to be better. Your employees, like your team members are going to be happier. Like everything gets better when we get rid of ourselves. Hashtag.

Yeah.

Ah.

I mean, essentially, you know, obviously I've always done the wholesale game, but you know, I like the startup side of the business, you know. But then after a while, like you said, the honeymoon's over. Then I was like, all right, well, we'll have somebody else run this, you know.

Yeah.

Commercial projects for me were frustrating and I gave up

Well, let's talk about commercial, projects. Yeah, this is something where you're good at. You're a pro. And, we talk about amateurs, professionals. This is something that, like, I'm taking notes on every time I talk to you because I never figured it out. Like, I can, I can give you the blueprint all day long for high end residential charging, premium prices, twice what your competition's charging, give you all that stuff. But commercial projects for me were frustrating and I gave up. And I, I do have some regret because I'm like, dang, dude. I see other people that didn't give up and they know how to do RFPs and they know how to do this and they know how to do that, and they're landing half a million dollar projects. And like, I just, I just never did.

What holds people back when trying to get started in the commercial game

So can we talk about like, how, like what holds people back and how to get started in the commercial game?

Yeah. And this goes back to, from my experience, back in the day when I first started, I just, I looked at it like I want to play. I knew I was good and I was high, passionate about the holiday lighting. And I knew I can come in and explain what I want to do to people or like their businesses and stuff. So I remember walking into this bank cold call, straight up cold, didn't have a lead, didn't know whatever. I was like, I'm just going to ask for the branch manager, president. I walked in, it happened to be the, the branch the president worked in. And I don't, I, I can't make this stuff up. I got lucky or whatever and I sat down with him. I had like a little cheesy ass flyer. You know, this is back, way back when you don't know how to. What we were doing. It's like crayon. But I just told him about what I can do and I said, this is a service and that I can provide. And he's like, all right, give me a quote on this building and two other buildings. And then I closed the deal a couple days later with them after I gave him this pricing. But I wouldn't have. I won't. I. One thing I learned a long time ago doing sales is that if you don't get out of your car and go talk to somebody, you're never going to do it. You're never, it's not going to come to you. You got to go get it. And if you want that business, that's kind of my model is if you want the business, you have to get, go after it. Now you can go do networking events and get some leads that way and stuff. But I still think some of the old school, 80s and 70s out of the phone book, just start walking down the path of a business and just start knocking down. I mean, I used to sell copiers and faxes and that was the worst job I've ever had. It's like selling insurance or you know, something, but, but I have to go to school.

Insurance, you actually make money? I think.

Yeah. Selling, selling copiers. No, you don't do that. And it's very, it's kind of like where salespeople go there today. So, but, so I got out of there fast. But I just remember having to go to these small towns and just knock on every business and see if they needed something and then keep track of. And everybody was in three year contracts. And it's like, I don't want to be in this business for three years. I don't really like what I'm doing. So I had to find something else. But it did teach me a lesson of, not being afraid to open a door and having a conversation.

I love it. Well, I used to think when I started my business and even up until like, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I used to have a plan B. And my plan B was like, well, I'll just go knock doors and clean windows. Yeah, like, and, and I got rid of plan B because I'm like, well, if you have plan B, then plan A can fail. Like now I'm like, no, there's plan A and there's plan A. Like this is going to work. But I can appreciate when people have plan B because I used to have one. And I'm just telling you, like, there's so much success out there, it's waiting for that hungry person, that hungry person that's willing to knock on the doors, willing to get rejected by potentially 99 out of 100 people to get that one $20,000 deal. And it's like most people don't have that grit. They're not willing to do it.

No. And I think, and I always say this in part of my trainings is that look, there's, there's a lot of opening doors nowadays than there were back in the day. you can make kick ass videos and speed videos, whatever. You can do a lot of things that way and get it out there. I still think that there's a lot of, when it comes down to commercial, you got to be in front of the right people and that's presenting in front of a chamber, presenting to different associations, maybe apartment association to bar and restaurant association. But you got to find an avenue to be able to express that. And I always kind of say, if you're going to be in a lighting game, no matter what you do in lighting, then being the. Be the best you can be and be an ambassador of lighting.

Nice. So get out of your car, go talk to somebody present to chambers. Where else could you drum up some, some leads?

So the, the chambers is one thing. you can even just make a bunch of calls into property management groups. that's another one. HOA listings. If, if your, your city or region, has a listing online that's like, like we're, we're kind of blessed. City of Omaha had like a 300 page PDF of all the HOAS are listed with all the presidents fight, VPs, treasurer, whoever's on the board. And all you gotta do is just contact them. And then we just do, we just did a mailer out down and then we started getting jobs and we did that for years, you know, to kind of get our name out there.

You've got to create urgency with your sales calls, Mike says

What's the messaging? We want to give you a quote.

you really, it just comes down to like, hey, you just got to show a good couple lifestyle shots. it says, you basically say, hey, we're here as a holiday lighting service and just don't do a couple of blurbs out there about what you do as your service. And then, you know, taking on new. And just I think it's key taking on new clients because I always kind of looked at businesses is like, if you think about like when we started, I still treated, treat. Treated my, my company like we were doing a million dollars. I wanted everybody to think that we were so busy that it was like, because you got to create urgency. Especially you're talking to somebody in May and April, you know, you got to take that urgency. Like look, I said I might have some time. I said let me look at my schedule. But that sometimes your marketing and your message to the clients is, hey, we really got to get this in. I got to get the product ordered and then we got to be ready to go by September. So those are just small, little, they don't go much, but it's like just a little bit of blurb to kind of create that urgency and I, you know, I think the big thing is just get a good flyer, get a good hand hand out, something that, that they, they can use and they'll remember you by.

I like it. Well, there's a huge, there's huge difference in tone, like, tone and conversation of like, we're desperate and we need this, or, listen, we're in high demand. You're. You're completely elevating your status to this point of like, I'm not even sure if we can get to you. So that they're like, well, no, I'm. I'm. I'm sure we can decide by Monday. If, if we decide by Monday, Mike, is that, does that give you enough time?

Like, it works. I mean, because it's, you know, if, if no one likes to be told no, but you're still giving out the quality professional service. You're just communicating with a different way. So then you can get that, that, that sales close, ratio a little bit closer rather than waiting months before it to happen or a year, you know.

Yeah. When my, My. Well, I don't know if it was my first sales job, but my first sales job out of college, it was software sells, and they told us, they go, you need to cold call 100 people a day. M. And if you do that, you're probably going to get a hold of, you know, 20, and you'll probably talk to five people and you'll close one deal. Well, I was like, okay, I got. I was so ignorant. I didn't know anything else. So I just did 100. And some days I did 120. And, some days I did 80 because I got hold of more people and I had more presentation. Michael was 100, and I was, I became the top rep, and I wasn't any smarter than these people. Like, there was people that were smoother than me and they sounded better and they were whatever. But like, they would put in 20 calls a day, and they were just jacking around and like, doing whatever, taking long lunches. And like, it truly is. Sales is always a numbers game. And even if you suck at sales, you just need to get in front of more people. You know what I mean? Like, you're still going to close somebody. Somebody's gonna like you. Even if you're ugly, they're still gonna buy from you because you're ugly. So you just have to reach out to 300 people to get your one cell. It's always, it's always a numbers game. Yeah.

And that's why, I mean, I remember I did some insight sales like that before too, and it was 60, 80 calls, but they, they tracked you by talk time, you know, and then that was a matrix and you know, all you gotta do is follow the, the model and ah, your results will show it. It will.

Everyone's so worried about the output, like, well, I need to make 10,000, I need to make 100,000, whatever. And that's just the wrong thing to focus on. The, the input is what matters. If you're, if you're contacting so many people per hour, per day, per week, per year, the success is going to follow. They're just worried about the wrong variable here.

Yeah. And I think. And that goes back into like, if you're doing sales, I think in our day and age, there's a lot of good books to read, there's a lot of good things you can listen on podcasts, whatever. You still should be honing in your messaging because one little word can change somebody calling you and not calling you. A different voicemail or different tone, a different approach can change a lot of.

Those things big time. So let's say we get in front of someone, they're like, yeah, we'd love it. And they say the scary three letters. This used to be so scary to me, Mike. They're like, yeah, just, you know, we'll send you an RFP and go from there. And I'm like, yeah.

This guy says, well, do you need help with rfp? I can help you put some specs in there to make it work better so you get the right product for the project.

You help them put together the rfp. Yeah, love it. That's huge.

I mean, you know, kind of puts you a little more favoritism. I mean, we, we want, we won, one of our largest contract. I mean, we're talking quarter million or more. And it was a mandatory meeting. Guess who showed up? We did. Nobody else did.

Wow.

And you're talking a quarter million dollars. And I had, we had no competitors.

So I think it's because it's intimidating. Like again, I had to Google what RFP was, back then. And it's a request for a proposal. And then I, I see all these things and I'm like, I gotta fill this out. No crap, I gotta have insurance.

So then we got insurance, check, all that stuff. Sometimes you're like, I gotta write a check. You know, how's this work?

So what, how do you make that, that process less intimidating?

Just, I think you reach out to some, like, folks like myself or others that are in this industry that have gone through it.

Okay.

And then, and just ask the questions and, and then go through your readings. As a, as a business owner, you would go through that, or a manager, sales manager.

A lot of government contracts are all RFPs

But then you would. I would. If you had questions, you got to find somebody to give you the right answers. I think that's just get stuck and then not go forward.

And I didn't, I didn't have that back in the day. So I was like, screw this. I'm gonna go sell a residential job tonight.

A lot of the government contracts are all RFPs. And you know, then you got to go in and pay the service to be part of like their portal, their vendor portal or something like that to be. So then that costs money. And unless you're willing to put that investment into, you're never going to get the job.

All right, so someone's gets their RFP and like, crap, I don't know what to do. They can just call you. You'll help them fill that out.

We'll just walk, walk through it. You got to read it by. A lot of times. There's a lot of stuff you don't need to read. You just got to get right to the grid of it and say, hey, can I do this or not? As a service, do you have the capability to do this job? We don't. I, I don't want anybody going and thinking that I'm gonna go do all these quotes for RFPs and then find out they don't. They don't have the personnel or the infrastructure to be able to handle that. That's one thing we gotta, I want to evaluate and. Because that's, I think that's key.

What else, what else go further.

They can. I mean, I think it's. I'm not trying to say don't try. I just, I want to make sure that they're reading it thoroughly, to understand the scope of the work.

But you guys have had great success with these commercial projects.

Yeah, we do close to a million dollars in commercial for a lighting holiday.

And the average size job is larger, I'm assuming.

Yeah, there's some big jobs, but then there's just a bunch of property managers. Just strip malls and outdoor malls, things like that. But it still comes down to time. And you just got to schedule the time, how many people you put to it. We've got really good about, scoping that. So you're not just having a bunch of bodies stand around or just not enough people on a job.

I'M assuming a lot of these you can get done earlier in the year as well, right?

Yeah. You, we start in September on a lot of them are further or sooner. some things you can, like even some of the ones downtown we can start putting lights up in the tree, start in August.

Okay.

You know and so there's you know, you can't just you, it's then you still got a power crew that comes through and make sure everything's powered up properly. Then there's a test runs and, and this is before you even present it to the, the property manager that's in charge of that project. So there's a lot of steps but that's where the high communication goes in when you, when you can do it right and your high communication because you're confident in your work and you're confident in your team, then it's really just it's just like talking to a homeowner on your first job.

Are most of the commercial ones, are they like a multi year contract?

a lot of them are, yeah. Like the one that we got a couple six years and three years. the six year one's great, you know because it's like they keep, there's even stack stipends that they'll, they'll add more product into each year.

And then how do you maintain the relationship with either the HOA or if it's a property manager? I mean we know relationships matter but they still have their, their governing guidelines of like we got to get three bids or whatever. How do you maintain that so that you know next year that when the three years comes up that you're able to land that again.

And I think, I think that goes back and I don't know where I heard this or someone told me this years ago as says you got to touch your clients at least minimum four times a year. You know, that could be different times of the year, not just hey, we're getting ready to show up next week type thing. but if you're staying high communication and visibility with your brand, your company brand, I, I think that goes a long ways of making sure that you're relevant and you stay relevant inside their eyes. Because they're going to have turnover too because a lot of property managers will, they'll handle like 25 to 30 projects or buildings or something like that across their area. They could go on to another company and we've seen that happen a lot. And then they just call and say I got some new buildings, I need you to quote.

Yeah, that's huge. And I think most people are like, well, we talk once when it's time to do the project and when it's time to get paid.

Yeah. And I think when you think about the permanent lighting, you know, that's almost gets you another exposure of conversation with commercial. and that's what we started to do in the off season. It's like, hey, I know we do in recent garlands, but we ever thought about, let's go permanent lighting on the roof line and because it. That'll saves us time so we can go do other jobs.

Well, yeah, because you can do that in June or.

Yeah, I can do it June. Leave it up and just maintain it and then rock and roll.

Mike Marlowe says getting referrals still comes down to common sense

So, I think the biggest message about commercial is that I think there's a lot of companies that reach out to me for me to kind of teach them the secret sauce, if you want to call it that. I think it still comes down to just good old common sense of just getting out there and being in front of people.

Love it, man. It's so crazy because it really is. I was talking in some. One of our group calls today, Inside Secrets, and it's like they're having never. We have a strategy. We teach about how to get more referral partners from your existing clients. And they were having some struggles with that. And I say at the end of the day, I mean, how many projects did you drive by in the last week that someone was building a pool, building a house, doing the landscaping? Like, oh, all over the place. Like, how many did you stop at and talk to? Yeah, like, I'm willing to do whatever it takes. I'm not going to fail. I'm not going to let my family starve. So again, like, plan B is like, you got to go out there and get uncomfortable. Go. Go knock some doors.

Yeah. You talk about referrals, like, in between other businesses to kind of correlate.

Yeah.

We've been big on not putting ourselves on the island as a company. And one of the things about that is that we don't want. We want to be able to work with other lawn care companies, landscape companies, even lighting companies, because everybody will get overflow and we'll get overflow. So we need to be able to kind of move some things around so then at the end, the client is taken care of.

Yeah.

I like Patrick. Patrick's a good dude.

Patrick Carter's in the house.

He's a good dude.

Patrick was leading our lighting design call earlier today, so Nice He's. He's awesome, dude. okay, well, I think we're done. you are going to do an offer for the lighting for profits listeners. Yeah.

So, yeah, so if anybody wants to reach out to me, obviously you can reach out to me at Mike. Just type in Mike Marlowe Christmas. You'll find me on a lot of social pages. But then if you want to get a hold of me on my Cell phone at 402-490-4895, or just email me at. Yeah, I'll probably get to get stalked a lot from that M. Different number.

Huh?

Huh?

This is dangerous. Did you just give him my number?

Yeah. Yeah.

Mike, stop.

Or it's just M. Marlow at Wintergreen Corp. so, yeah. So anybody contacts me, for the. Between now and the end of this month, get a coupon code out there for 15 off for anything you want to buy through Wintergreen. we do have Christmas in July coming up. We got some good specials, options for some free shipping. Nobody likes to pay for shipping. I'll tell you right now, you do pay for shipping, but I'm just going to say you get free shipping. I know we're. I know you got a, you know, higher level, you know, intellect type group, so everybody knows that.

So, yeah, like, we'll do free shipping. So. Okay, well, reach out to Mike, guys. and I highly recommend following. You've got. Do you have a Facebook group still?

Yeah, I do. Yeah. It's still the professional. The one. I don't even remember the name anymore. I can't change. I should make it a little bit easier, but it's out there. it's one of the. I don't. It's more public. I don't really. I know as it's private, I had to keep the spammer guys out of there, so I had to kind of close that down a little bit.

Yeah, no worries. I mean, I would just say connect with Mike online. I know.

I'll send you a link to it if you guys.

Good content, good things and stuff like that. So, Mike, I really appreciate you coming on here, man. Thanks for sharing the gold nuggets.

Thanks for the invite.

Ryan: I treat everyone like they're worth a hundred grand

It's always a pleasure, Ryan. I keep on doing what you're doing. I love it.

I appreciate that. It's a good reminder. I'm gonna start making sure that I. I treat everyone like they're worth a hundred grand. I think that's, That's probably my big takeaway for the day.

Yeah, I think you do it. Anyway, so I think that's natural.

110 grand. 200 grand. A million. That's huge. Because honestly, like, my. My daughter was saying yesterday, she's like, well, doesn't dad. She was talking about her friend and whatever, and. And then she's like, well, who's dad? Dad has a boss. And. And my wife's like, no, he's the boss. I'm like, no, I have a lot of bosses. Yeah, they're all my clients. they're. They're the ones that pay the bills, so I gotta. I gotta.

That's why I like making friends, you know, because then if you're gonna have good days and bad days, no matter what, every business has good days and bad, bad days. And if you have a good friend as a client, you can have those bad days and still be a good friend. And then it. The, It'll get better, you know, so it's just one thing.

Mike is giving you 15 off the rest of the month

Love it. All right, Mike, thanks for coming on, man. Always, love connecting with you and sharing ideas. Appreciate you taking time to be on the show today.

You're welcome. Thank you very much.

Okay, guys, reach out to Mike right now. Like he said, he's giving you 15 off the rest of the month. Just mentioned lighting for profits, and he's going to hook you up. Let's go and call him on his cell phone and text him and stuff.

Stalk me.

All right, See you guys.