Lighting for Profits - Episode 213

From broke and burned out to business boss- Keith Kalfas shares his real, raw journey from mowing lawns on Detroit’s East Side to building a 6-figure landscaping empire. Learn how he ditched the 9-to-5, scaled fast with low startup costs, and became a voice for thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs. Whether you're just starting out or ready to grow, this podcast is your guide to freedom through business.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Lighting for Profits, the number one landscape lighting show in Michigan

Welcome to Lighting for Profits.

All light.

All light. All Light. Powered by EmeryAllen. Here is your host, Ryan Lee. A lot. A lot. All light.

What is up? What is up? Welcome to the number one. That's right, it's the number one landscape lighting show in Detroit, Michigan. It's crazy how, the world. We are taking over the world. People love landscape lighting all over the world, but especially in Detroit, Michigan. Today. We got an awesome show lined up, guys. If you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business or maybe even a landscaping business, you're definitely in the right place. We're here to educate, we're here to motivate, to help you dominate.

Keith Calfus is an author and podcaster. He also has his own podcast

So really looking forward today's show, we got the one, the only, Mr. Keith Calfus. if you do not know who this guy is, well, you're missing out and a lot of other people do. He's got a great following online. he's constantly on social media, he's speaking at all the big events. he's written books. He's written books. He's an author. He's done cool stuff. And what, I love about Keith is he's just real, like, he's, he's, he's done some good things in life, he's done some hard things in life and he shares all of his experiences. He kind of wears his emotion on his sleeve and just tells you how it is and here's what you need to do. And he's just, he's just, one of those people that's out changing the world. He's, he's constantly putting, out these things. So excited to have him on. Fellow, podcaster. He also has his own podcast, the Untrapped Podcast. And before, I hit the go live button, I was like, crap. I meant to ask him how he wants me to introduce him. So I guess when I introduce him, I'll just ask him, like, how do you want me to introduce you? But, really excited to have him on. and Keith is going to be joining us in just a few minutes.

How much does it cost to not have an admin for your business

So before we have him on, I usually have something on my mind. And today I've got something on my mind, that I want to talk about. and really it's going to kind of go a couple different directions. But, you know, if you ever like, wanted to buy something and your natural reaction or invest in something, buy, invest. We could do a whole podcast on that. But, typically we ask the question like, well, how much does it cost? Right? And, I want you guys to reframe that. Instead of asking, like, how much something cost, I want you to start asking, well, how much is it costing me to not do this thing? How much is it costing me to not have this person? Instead of asking, how much does it cost? How much is. What is it costing me now to not have this asset, this thing? Right. And specifically, what I want you to ask about, is how much is it costing you to not have an admin? Or if you have an admin and maybe you need a personal assistant, how much is it costing you to not have a personal assistant? Because I'll tell you, I remember, I remember the exact moment. This must have been, like, I don't know, 15 years ago when I realized I needed an admin for my lighting business. I was literally in the tree. I was in a tree changing a light bulb. Because I thought that's what an entrepreneur does. I thought an entrepreneur serves their client at the highest level. And if someone needs maintenance and the install team is busy, well, guess who gets to go? That's this guy. And I would climb that tree, and I change the light bulb, and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. And I. And I had a missed call, which was normal because I was busy working. And so I called it. Call the customer back. Super nice lady. And she tells me, oh, you know what?

We're good.

We're gonna. We're gonna, we're gonna go with someone else. What do you mean you're gonna go with someone else? Like, I can come out tomorrow. Oh, no, they're coming out tomorrow, but we're good. I'm like, what do you mean? She's like, yeah, you know, I mean, they answered their phone, and I'm like, so you're telling me, because I didn't answer my phone, that I don't even get to come out and give you an estimate for a landscape lighting, like a proposal? Yep. And she was super nice. She was from Texas. She was nice. There's not a lot of mean people in Texas. So it was hard for me to get mad at her. I was really mad at myself, because at the time, our, average job was $5,000. And I thought, holy cow, I just lost $5,000. And I had to go home and tell my wife I just lost $5,000. And what made it even worse was I started doing the math and I started going, wait a minute. Like, I've had other people that I couldn't even get a hold of, like this lady. At least answered her phone. But I have a lot of other people that I missed calls and they wouldn't answer their phone. So I'd never even scheduled an appointment with them. And that was probably 5,000. And then another one was 5,000. And you start doing the math and quickly it's 20, 30, 40, 50, $60,000 just in the last six months that I lost. That's how much it cost me to not have an admin. So I was asking myself the wrong question this whole time of like, well, I don't know if I can afford an admin. They're probably going to want 25 an hour, 30 an hour, and then I have to get an office and that's going to cost another two grand a month. And so in my mind I had convinced myself that I could not afford to invest in an administrator because I was, I was asking myself, well, how much does it cost? And the answer was always higher than the money I had. Right. But that's what an investment is. An investment is something where you pay in. It's like you give ten dollars in and you get twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, a hundred dollars out. And if we knew, see, we all were human, we want certainty. If we knew that it was going to work, we would do it, but we don't know. And that's what separates a good entrepreneur and a successful entrepreneur is how do you find the courage to take action Even though there's not certainty, there's not certainty that you're going to invest in the admin and everything's going to work out perfectly and they're going to recoup these, these deals that you weren't getting before, but that's what you got to do. And so I want to give you guys, I want to hopefully give you guys some hope. I want to give you guys some, ability to take risk. Because yes, it is risky hiring people, but when these people can give you a return on your investment, then it's costing you more to live your life without them. It's not a matter of how much does it cost to hire them because you're spending more right now because you're missing out on opportunities. There's opportunity costs. It's not going to show up on a P L. Right? You feel opportunity cost doesn't show up in your checking account. A lot of you guys run your business out of your checking account. So when you hire an admin, you buy back your time, you're able to focus on higher value activities. So what I want to do is just real quick and then again we got Keith Kelfus coming on and this guy is, love his energy, love everything he does.

There are many things that an admin can do for you that will pay for themselves

But I want to just share with you a couple things, a few things that, you know, people are like, well, if I hire an admin, I mean, I don't even have, I don't have enough work to keep him busy. And I'm like, are you sure? Because the problem is we've convinced ourselves that we're so good at what we do and it'd be too hard to replace ourselves. And we don't have that much admin stuff. So what are they going to do? Well, I've got a list of a ton of things. If, in fact, if you want to send me an email, I'll send you the whole list. Supportionleacoaching. com Send me an email, I'll send you the whole list. But there's daily tasks, there's weekly tasks, there's monthly, there's quarterly tasks. There's things that an admin can do for you that will allow you take so many things off your plate. So now you can focus on these high value activities, you can focus on high revenue generating activities that are going to pay for this person pretty much overnight. Again, like I told you, this story of mine where I was losing 5, 10, 15, $20,000 at a like every single month just because I didn't have someone answering my phone. So if you hire an admin and the only thing that happens, if the only thing that happens is they answer inbound calls, they're going to pay for themselves. But what if they can do more? Which they can. Now we're living in a, a world where information and, and, and speed is really important. You know, speed to lead. I mean, I couldn't call this lady back for about an hour and by then I had already lost her. Right now you need to call someone back within five minutes. And so if you're like, well, yeah, I tried this marketing company but their leads are garbage. And you're like, well, yeah, I followed up with them. I mean, yeah, they called in the morning, we called them in the afternoon. Well, it's not the marketing company's fault, it's your fault because you weren't following up fast enough. That's because you didn't have an admin because you can't do everything. Okay? We're not all superheroes, right? So, answering phone calls, answering web inquiries, speed to lead deals equals these deals. Deals closed. Okay, scheduling appointments. What about, confirming appointments like Right now you guys are probably so busy you don't have time to like confirm. Hey, just want to make sure we're still on for tomorrow or hey, we're on our way. We'll be there in an hour. What about just answering regular customer service? A lot of people don't ever get to the point in business where they get momentum. Guys, the year I sold my business, we had $600,000 in repeat business alone. And that wasn't because I was doing everything myself. It's because we had a team, because we were following up, we were checking with clients. Hey, just, you know, we're not, we're not asking for anything. We just want to make sure everything's going good for you.

Right?

When you do these follow ups, when you do these basic customer service check ins and you're actually responding to maintenance calls, within 24, 48 hours, you get more referrals, you get more repeat business, and things become a lot easier.

The admin should be the number one position that we hire in landscape lighting

So I want to make the argument the admin is like so important. It should be the number one position that we hire. We typically don't in landscape lighting, and I didn't either. And I don't know why that is. I think it's because we replaced the install first. We're like, yeah, I don't want to dig trenches. So we get that. But then at some point you got to pull the trigger, guys. You got to get the admin. They can help with billing, they can help with, like, I said follow ups, reminders, ordering, ordering materials. Like you don't have to order the materials. You can train an admin to do this. They can, they can, help you follow up on proposals. How many people are actually following up on opportunities? A lot of times we don't have time because we're worried about the next one. These are daily tasks that an admin can do from a weekly standpoint. Again, I'm just going to pick and choose a few here, but they can, do some research. They can contact vendors, they can, send review requests, updating your project boards, manage your schedule, prepping invoices, following up and collecting cash. I mean, who's following up? You guys have receivables sometimes of 50, 60, 100, $50,000, whatever. Who's collecting that money on a monthly standpoint? Like they can provide reports to you now. You have data to make decisions.

I encourage entrepreneurs to invest in an admin to help measure their success

Okay, I talk with all the, clients all the time. They don't know what their lead source is. How much do you guys have right now in your Pipeline. If you went and looked, can you, do you know where to look that up? And if you do, are you actually reviewing this on a weekly basis? Because when you look, you'll see, holy cow, I've got a hundred thousand, I've got half a million. I have one client that has over a million dollars in their pipeline of people they've met with that hasn't said yes, but they also haven't said no. Now, likely not a million dollars is going to close, but a certain percentage of it will. As long as someone's paying attention to it. They can help you measure things like your leads, your closes, your revenue, your closing rate, all these things. You can track KPIs. And what, maybe you're closing better on one lead source than another. And, and, and why, why is that? Is it a better client? Is it something you're doing different in the process? And now you can use data to make decisions. So you gotta get an admin, guys, I'm telling you. Like, it, makes your life so much easier. And business should be fun. Like, it sounds so cliche. They say, you know, I don't enjoy the journey. It's not about the destination type stuff. But it's so true. Like, if you're just like, suffering right now because you hope that one day you'll make a lot of money, like, that freaking sucks. There's probably a season where we all have to suffer a little. Like you, you learn a lot through those times where you just grind. But you got to get to the point where you go to work because you want to, not because you have to. You have to enjoy the journey. Every day should be. You should look forward to it. And again, we all have bad days, we all have bad weeks, we have bad months. Like, I get that. But generally speaking, like, life should be pretty awesome. You have the freedom to do what you want. You have the ability to be an entrepreneur and create your dream life that you want. And, it's a lot easier with a team. And so I want to encourage all of you guys to invest in an admin. Don't ask how much it's going to cost. How much is it costing you to not have an admin? I learned this the hard way. It cost me tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to not have an admin. So learn from my mistakes. You don't even have to learn from your mistakes. You can just learn from mine. and understand a lot of these decisions that you're going to make are not an expense they are an investment. they certainly can turn into an expense. You know, if you, if you make the right investment but then don't handle it right, don't provide the proper training, don't do things correctly. Yeah, it could turn into an expense. But, I want to encourage you guys to make more investments, make better investments in your life, in your business. And you guys will see you guys moving closer to your goals. So when you do this, you're going to be able to focus on selling. You're going to be able to focus now on training your team. You're going to be a better leader. You're going to be able to go out and network with more referral partners. You're going to be able to now have time to work on your business. You're essentially buying back your time when you hire an admin. So this will allow you some headspace. People ask me all the time, well, what do you, you say work on your business? What do you mean? Well, you'll have time to work on your business and you'll know what I mean. That's when you create those systems. That's when you work on your strategy and define where it is you're going as a company and how you're going to get there and reverse engineer it and be the architect. That's kind of the fun part of being an entrepreneur. So I want to encourage you guys to do that. Take action. If you have questions, you need something from me, you know how to reach me. Supportionleighcoaching. com see what do we got here? Oh, yeah.

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Keith Kelfus started his business flat broke with an eviction notice

All right, guys, I think it's time. Hope Keith's ready. I'm ready. So let's get the music coming. And, where's my, guest intro? Oh, there it is. Let's get the music going and get Keith on the show. Welcome to the show, Mr. Keith Kelfus. How are you, sir?

What's up? What's up?

Thanks for joining the show, man. I appreciate this.

Thanks for having me on your show.

Really, excited, fellow podcaster, I've gotten to see you a couple times, I guess, running around at different events or whatever, but love, your stuff. I'm. What do they say? I'm a big time fan, first time caller or, I don't know, say something like that. So excited to, talk shop, talk business. for those that don't know you, if you wouldn't mind, just do a quick intro of yourself. Who is the Keith Kelfus and, and what do you do?

I'm, Keith Kelfus from. Can you hear me loud and clear.

Yeah, hear you great.

I'm Keith Kelfus from Sterling Heights, Michigan. I've had my landscape business. We do landscaping and window cleaning. Our 14th season now. And I started my business flat broke with nothing, with an eviction notice. My, fiance, who's my wife now, we had an eviction notice on our door. I was broke, debt collectors calling me. I was terrified. Had to work dead end lawn care and landscaping jobs in my whole life. And I couldn't even make enough money to pay the bills. So anytime there was something that came up, just went into the debt pile. Well, that debt pile and everything got so big it spilled over. And I was forced into creating my own landscape business. So I'd cut grass all day, get home from work, take my wife's car, because I had smashed my other car, my, my car. And I, I would, I started, my own landscape business out of the trunk of my wife's car by posting ads on Craigslist. And it took me six weeks to replace the income for my job, literally 100 hours a week. And then I got a truck called the Blue Goose with rust all over it, and I borrowed a little bit of money from my wife, dumped out change, got that. And, it was like the sixth week on a Saturday morning. I was driving by myself on a Saturday morning to my own landscape job. Now I just started my business and there was a crack in the windshield and the sun, in the morning sun shined through that and it like illuminated me and I felt the warmth of the sun and I just broke down crying because I realized that I was, I was free and I had my own small business now. And I'm just in this rusty truck with the loud muffler all by myself. And I cried because I thought about all of my comrades or all my, the guys that I had grew up with landscaping. And they were still at that company that actually fired me because I was making YouTube videos at work. And it turned out to be a blessing. And so I didn't make any YouTube videos. I was just 100, focused on the business until I got a couple. I think I hit like 100 grand and I had a couple hundred clients radically undercharging. And. But then it occurred to me one day because I always love to make videos and YouTube videos and stuff like, and I used to do music. I was like, man, it took me 12 weeks, I mean six weeks to replace the income from my dead end job. I thought it would cost me 50 grand in equipment and all. Like, it didn't take anything but hustle and grit and determination. And so I'm like, I have to share this with the world. So I went all in on a YouTube channel. Nothing more than my smartphone. And I was creating up to, you know, five to 10 videos a day, just all over social media, really cussing like so ambitious that. And I was speaking to Joe. Joe is 25, he lives in a mobile home, his girlfriend's knocked up, he's about to have a baby. He's terrified. He's stuck in a dead end job, he's got debt collectors calling him and he doesn't know what to do. And he goes on, starts small business startups for under a thousand. I don't have a thousand small business startups for under a hundred bucks. Anything he could find, window cleaning, lawn care, landscaping. My videos pop up. He connects similar, story and binge watches all my videos, cries, laughs, and at some point realizes that he can do this too and goes on his journey to start his own business. So my videos now on YouTube. my channel is Keith Kelfus, formerly the landscaping employee Trap have videos have helped start over 10,000 businesses since 24. I mean 2014. And we've got like 80 million views online. I started a podcast in 2014. It was about, we're about to cross a million downloads. And so that's who I am. I help guys get started in this industry. And, and, what was I going to say? Yeah, I'm like, I'm like the startup guy. I've helped a lot of people start businesses and that's my passion. Man, I love it when this entrepreneurial seizure happens in a guy's mind where he goes from feeling trapped. Because my, my podcast is called the Untrapped Podcast. When a guy goes from feeling totally trapped to where that thing changes in his brain and he has this epiphany, wait, I can do this and I'm going to do this. And then he just goes all out on a mission. And the fear is that they, they're afraid of going full time. How are they going to take care of their family and pay their bills? And then they come through that fear, they go through full time and then they get swamped with. So they don't even know how to handle it. And now they have a new set of problems. So I'm fascinated by that. I've met thousands of people, face to face in person, and I've heard a lot of stories. And, so that's my passion and that's who I am. I'm Keith Kelfus.

Dude, I freaking love it, man. That's so cool.

Keith Kelfus is leaving this world better than when he came on

Like, just, just even in that quick intro to think about the ripple effect, I know you're big on impact. You're big on like, hey, what, what. How are you going to leave this world better than when you came onto it? And like, think about what you've already done, you know, like, gap in the gain. Like, I know you got this gap. We've talked. Like, you want, you want to like, take over the world, but like, I measure backwards for Keith Kelfus and I'm like, dude, most people wouldn't dream of doing what you've already done. So congrats, bro. Like, that's freaking epic. Well done.

Thank you, brother.

It's awesome, man.

So you, you started your business. You felt freedom after a while

talk to me a little bit about. So you, you started your business. You, you felt that, like, you felt that like, man, like, probably physically, emotionally, mentally, like, I did this. Like, I'm free now, right? I remember, I remember a similar moment. I remember a similar thing where I was like, can't believe I'm doing this. Like, this is the American dream. Like, I quit my job. I. I started my business and had a full time job for a year because I didn't have the balls to, like, commit. Then I finally committed and that's when I was like, oh my gosh. Like, this is it. I'm doing this and it was such a good feeling. And I, I look back now and I, I call that like the honeymoon phase. Because, it didn't matter how many hours you could throw at me. I'd work them. I'd out grind anyone, I'd out hustle. I mean, you and me, we would have like, we would just go toe to toe. I know it, it would be like, you think you can outwork me? Let's go. Right? But after a while, because I did feel untrapped, I was like, this is it. But then after a while, like you said, all these other problems started to come. Now I got to be a good manager. Now I got to be a good leader. And now I got to be a good marketer. Wait, you didn't tell me about this. did you have that, did you have that, that second phase where you felt trapped again in your own business? That was your freedom, that was your untrapped.

That's the five year itch. It's where or right around the fifth year, a lot of I'll just speak for landscapers, and I've confirmed this with a lot of people. you get to this point where you, you've done 190, 80, 70 hour weeks. You've missed family events. You've been in the seasonal depression and then the spring rush. You felt cash flow shortage. You've dealt with your trucks breaking down and dumping everything into this business. You've raised the prices and been fired by clients who you thought actually cared about you, but they would slit your throat for a nickel. You felt that level of betrayal from the people that you love telling you be. So you're getting it from all angles, right? And yet the money's still not showing up in the level you thought it would. You thought by this time you'd have a 10 million or whatever you think you thought. And when it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen long enough. The spirit of discouragement sets in. And that's that's a bastard right there. That's, that's a whole nother problem to deal with. And I have coached many men. I've been coaching startups since 2015 and I've my videos and have prevented, several suicides. I'm the guy that people call, you know, late, at night when they're at their wit's end. I'm the guy that want to get off stage speaking men, will follow me around until it's like now, I'm down a hallway and there's nobody left. And then it's just me and them. I'm like, why is this dude following me around? And then when there's nobody around and he gets me one on one, I'm, the dude that, you know, that they'll break down crying to with severe grief in their eyes, or they're at the edge or, you know, and it's like, I don't. I didn't choose to be that person. I'm nobody. I'm just. And I think it's just because the trans. The hyper vulnerability of stuff, and it's like, I learned it. Gino Wickman M. Wrote Traction, Get a Grip, Rocket Fuel. And like this what the heck is EOS type thing. And he said something that blew my mind in an interview. He said, it's called the empathetic witness. When you can be so present with somebody, you're not trying to fix their problem. Because the thing that pisses me, I, almost cussed, bro. My kids are.

They might listen. They probably. I want them to listen, but they don't.

The thing that pisses me off is when you're going through something in your business and you want to fix it. You're aware you have pain, but you're not at an awareness level to know what to do or you don't have the resources yet to fix it, and you vent that out to another person that you feel like you can trust. And instead of them being an empathetic witness and just being a present placeholder for, you know, wow, man, you're really going through it, bro. That's all. Like, just be there for that person until they can. Because through the process of talking it all out and getting it all out, when your nervous system relaxes and you speak your truth, even though if it's painful, your subconscious mind reshuffles the deck and you can. It starts to actually holistically piece things back together. You go, actually, now that I've got that out, like, I can do this. But what some people do, that makes me resentful and bitter. I've trusted other men that I thought were friends, and I've. I've vented them about my. About my business problems. And then they just start brow beating you, saying, well, you need to get your together, man. I'm really concerned about you. You need or you need to, or you just, like, that's not the time to beat someone up or tell them how to live their life. And, I had this old friend, he actually drank himself to death. He was my best friend. He'd say like, well, if you don't want me to tell you how you live your, live your effing life, don't tell me you're effing problems. And he was like, you need to put on your big boy pants and grow up. And he was just like, it was so harsh to have a friend like that. And looking back, I really appreciate him because it was that masculine truth that just cuts through the fat to truth. Sometimes that's necessary, but other times you could just be present. So the empathetic witness is kind of like, I get the role that I'm comfortable with. You just listen to somebody and where they're at and then they can have an opening to say, you know what? I do need help.

It reminds me of marriage counseling. I've been to marriage counseling. Like, seriously, My wife will vent to me and I automatically turn into your friends who are like, well, why don't you do this? And what about this? And what about this?

When you try to fix your wife's problems, it just makes everything worse

I.

Because I want to solve problems. I'm a problem solver and you asked me, in my opinion, to solve your problem. So I do this. And I've learned that that's not the correct thing. I am supposed to just be empathetically present and listen. It doesn't mean I'm good at it. I, I at least know now about the problem.

Right?

But that's, that's truly what happens in marriages. And why people fight is because it's like, well, I said this and then you tried to fix it. When you try to fix your wife's problems, it just makes everything worse. All she wants is someone to listen. And I, I think that's been my experience with it. And I, I do struggle with that, if I'm going to be honest.

That's very wise and very aware. If you read Men are from Mars, Women are from, are from Venus, and then the five Love Languages, these books talk about these things. And I think the entire human race, we're spiritually so far behind where we could be. We're like a bunch of chimpanzees running around judging and criticizing each other and like brow beating each other and forcing each other into this. It's like this jurisdiction of performance and we have this tied to their, our identity that our performance, or what we have materialistically or what we have to offer, provide, say as men, is completely tied to our self worth. So this is what I deal with behind the scenes, talking to other, other men that vent to me. It's interesting, but That's a whole nother rabbit hole.

A lot of businesses fall apart for a lot of different reasons

Well, talk about, for a minute you mentioned the five year itch. What did you do? Like, I mean this is why I think a lot of businesses fall apart for a lot of different reasons. It could be financial, it could be they don't have the drive, whatever. What did you do and what do you coach others? What do you help others do when you get to that spot where you're like, dude, should I just respond to the LinkedIn post and get a job? Should I, should I just submit my resume and quit? Like what, what, what, what do you recommend people do at that point?

Yeah, you know, I could cry because I'm very fortunate. My hustle to build a YouTube channel and the YouTube channel has opened up a lot of doors for me where not that I'm not worth it, because I am, but it gave me an unfair advantage to be able to have connections with all types of people who have built, you know, multi million and deca million dollar businesses that I could just call people and they would pick up the phone and people have made a tremendous amount of time for me and have talked to me and I've paid, I've paid tens of thousands of dollars and I, for coaching and things like that. So I put my money where my mouth is. But when I couldn't afford it or felt like I couldn't, I mean I've had people like Joshua Latimer and David Carroll and like the Michael Hinderliders and Patrick Clark and Brandon Vaughn and these type of people sit on the phone with me and walk me through things and I'd get off the phone with them. Like these people are busy. They have businesses, employees, families and they're sitting on the phone with me for 45 minutes to an hour and a half. I mean I've had Joshua Ladmer sit on the phone with me for like 90 minutes, bro, walking me through some, some deep issue that's a huge sticking blocking point for me. And he's like, bro, this thing's, you need to really break through this like and create that space. And then I would break through it and get to the next level and make more money. Like David Carroll has sat on the phone with me many times, bro, the founder of dope marketing and talk to me like a real friend. And I've gotten off the phone with these guys and so basically the five year itch is, is the point. It's like you here it is when the pain of staying the same gets worse. Than the pain of changing. You'll change when you feel like you're being squeezed under so much pressure that you're being squeezed and pushed through the cracks upward. The only thing in that crack is a little bit of light shining through and it feels impossible. You will, you will reach. And you have to get to the point where you trust somebody more than you trust yourself. When you're smart enough to know that you're getting sick of your own, when you can hear, when you speak, things that are discrediting your skills or your, like when you're downplaying your own hard work and you're, you're basically being a victim. You know, it like, it's, it's the. You have real issues and real concerns you. I mean, you might have like, somebody that's special needs that you're taking care of in your house. And most people don't have to deal with that. And it takes up a lot of time. You might have something going on in your family that's very toxic. And so that's, it's stopping you and holding you back from your business. But I'm telling you, the most successful people that I've met are people that deal with all the same. And they found a way. Because the human spirit is so resilient, they found a way to, to do it. So when you can say, you know what? I trust, I have to trust this other person, that they do have my best interests at heart. They're not a scam artist. They're not trying to rip me off. They're just here to help. Like, you let, like, like you're showing your teeth because you're, you're upset and you're like, you feel like a caged animal or you're like cornered or something. You had to say, like, coach, what I'm doing does. Here's the point. I got to. At the five year itch, I went freaking crazy and I just kept pulling the work harder lever and that wasn't working. And when you, when you've missed dinner so many times and you've missed date nights with your wife to the point where now your wife's threatening to divorce you, your family is trash talking you or say they're upset with you because you don't come to any family events, you don't have time to do anything. You're just working, working, working. And, and I remember I've paced around the house. This is years ago in front of my wife. I throw these grown man temper tantrums where I say money, money. It's all about money. Like, because. Because you're watching other people become way more successful, and somehow they know what levers to pull. And then you make it an identity crisis, or I must be stupid. There must be something wrong with me. All that stuff is a downward spiral that will dig you into a hole of despair and depression. And so once I started talking to these other guys that I was helping getting started, and I was a couple steps in front of them, and I'm watching them. I came through the five year itch by, And I watched them go through the same thing. I'm just like, oh, that's a fiveyear itch. But I came through it by when I finally let my guard down. And here's what I did. Like, when you're ready, when the student's ready, the teacher will appear. I literally just got on the phone and all right, I'm gonna cuss. Like, dude, everything I'm trying isn't working. I'm sick and tired of it. Just tell me what you're doing right now and I'll do it. I don't have any more pride. I don't have any more ego. I'm sick and tired. It's not working. Just tell me what the you're doing and I'll do it. When you call another man like that, 10:30 at night, he'll be like, all right, bro, I'll tell you what to do. And you just literally just stop doing everything that doesn't work. And you just go do what they told you to do. You'd be like, oh, a new avenue. This is actually working.

Dude. I'm, Everything I'm just taking notes on because it's so true. Like, it's so true. Most of us are too prideful to. To take advice from someone else. Because I can figure it out on my own. I don't need Keith's help. Like, do you know who I am? Right? And it's to that point where you said the pain of staying, however you said that the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change, right? That's huge. And like, man, that's just. That's just that, ah, hits hard. And when you're willing to learn from someone who's already been down the road, like, why. Why are you trying to re. Like, repave this road? Someone's already done it.

Keith Kelfus: Get uncomfortable to redefine your identity

Like, they already have the answers. And you feel calm in that vulnerable state. I hope people write down that script, by the way, word for Word. And I hope some people are making some calls tonight saying, all right, that's me. Like when Keith said that, that's me, I'm writing down the script, cussing and all. That's real good stuff, man. I think I've, I've gone through a lot of this stuff recently where I'm learning so much about myself through teaching others. It's, it's almost unfair for me. You talk about this unfair advantage. I actually get paid now to help other people, but I'm the one learning the most, like teaching and holding all this account. I mean, I'm like, this is crazy. What I've, what I've. The person I've become in the past five years is like insane. And it's this, it's a, completely different identity. I, I've learned that if I want to be like the Josh Latimer, if I want to be like the Brandon Vaughn, the Patrick Clark, the Keith Kelfus, well, I got to start acting like you. I got to start thinking like you. Because I'm about to call you anyway and ask you, what would you do? So I'm just going to like, put myself in your head and go, what would he do? What would Keith do? Okay, he would do this. I'm just going to do that. And it's crazy. It freaking works. Like, you start acting like someone you want to be because your existing identity isn't ready for that. Your existing identity wants to make excuses, wants to be prideful, wants to take a long time to make decisions, not take risk. We're humans. We have. We want to be, we want to be comfortable. Like, I don't want, we don't really want change. We don't really want accountability. That's pain. But if we've decided we want to go to this next level, we're going to have to experience some pain. We're gonna have to get uncomfortable.

Yeah. And proximity is power. So if you're scrolling on, tick tock and wasting time watching Netflix versus taking the minutes that you have and investing them and getting around kindred spirits and like minded people that are actually doing something are going to live events, mastermind groups, workshops, and virtually you. We have all access to all of it. It's like iron filings to a magnet.

Rubs off on you. So you're talking about identity. you know, who you are is the six people you associate with the most. It's like, it's powerful. Powerful. So amazing. Yeah.

You know, and it's interesting, you say, I Think there's, you probably do have some type of unfair advantage with your following and your subscriber and stuff like that. But those people that you met, I went up to them at events. I went up to, to Patrick Clark and I said, I, I don't know you, don't know me, I don't know you. I know that you can help me out. I, I've seen some of the stuff that you've had and your name keeps coming up. Can I get your number? He gave me his number. I did the same thing with Josh Latimer at an event. Now later I ended up paying Latimer like 40 or 50 grand to become my coach or whatever, but he didn't charge me 40 or 50 grand for his phone number. So anyone can get uncomfortable. Anyone can go, I ran into you in an event. Like anyone can. Like these people aren't so pretentious of like, do you know who I am? Like, you know, talk to my assistant's assistant if get in line. Like, these are just real good people that want to change the world and leave their impact. So I would encourage everyone to take Keith's advice here. Get uncomfortable. There's so many people willing to serve. There's so many people willing to help. And I think a lot of it, the more I've get into this is because like I, it's a very healing experience. If I can help someone. I feel like I solved a problem of my 8 year old self, my 20 year old self, my 30 year old self. Like it's, it's like therapy for me. I'm like, hell yeah, dude. We just, just check that off. It's like repenting for my old sins.

Keith Kalfa: How do you help people determine pricing in a given market

so let's talk about some, maybe some specifics. You talk about pricing a lot. You talk about value, how to, how to, how to, how to price on value instead of your competition. Don't you think most people, when they're like gonna price a service, like we, you know, just lighting for profits, whether you're talking landscaping or anything, don't you think most people just call their competition and be like, what's the market rate? Like, don't they do research and find out? Like, because I hear people like saying, what do you guys charge? Like what's the rate for landscape lighting? I'm like, that doesn't even matter. Like you have a business to run and you have your own numbers. But how do you, how do you coach others? How do you help people determine pricing in a given market?

That's amazing that you Said that that just gave me some insight because it, that doesn't matter. It comes down to your business. What, what are your margins you need to make and everything. So I just coached a guy, I do coaching on Mondays and I'll get that question. He's like, I'm in my second year of my business and we're doing this property demo with some tear out stuff and oh, everything's overgrown and I have no idea what to charge. And I'm nervous to tell the customer because how do you. And, and what I do is like there's like five different things. This is just my formula that I use. it's not right or wrong or good about it, just relative to the experience that I have in my business. And I mean, so one is the whole thing is completely made up. You pull a rabbit out of a hat and you just make it up. Two is knowing, the keys to the kingdom, which is as far as business speaking. I'm not talking about Jesus is the keys to the kingdom, but what I mean as far as business, your man hour rate, right? And then knowing what is your day rate or half a day rate, like how much do you need to make per day or per truck? Like what is your to? And you quantify and calculate all that through having a P L statement or a bookkeeper and knowing every single number, you know, costing this whole overhead, admin, everything and knowing what everything costs in your business, what does it cost to cover that plus to make what you need to make. And then the next is how much do I want to make off this job? It's like just, it's just per the job. I'm not talking, you know, so when it comes to pricing for this coaching client that I was talking to. So I take all these different numbers, mathematical numbers that are scientific all the way to art, which is the gut feeling of what is it going to take for you to feel good and not be pissed off and resentful while you're doing this? Take all those numbers, add them all together, and divide them by five, just like I'm saying, just like to find an average. And so if it's twelve hundred dollars a day, I'm not. There's not materials like landscape lights or in there or anything like that. There's not a material cost and that's just labor and dumping fees, you know, and a lot of property maintenance. What I'm talking about here. So because some guys. What do you mean? I make 3, 500. So it's like, okay, so you can do.

Is that like a WWF? Do you have, like a Keith, Kalfa's WWF, Persona?

What are you doing?

It's 3, 500.

Like that Randy.

That was totally Randy Savage.

Well, sometimes I have this old thing I used to do. It's like the mocking face. I have to talk, and then I'll get into something that actually pisses me off for real. And then it'll come out. Okay. And then it's really funny when I do it, but I can't. Anyways, I'm learning.

I want to. I want to get you through all the emotions. I want. I want the happy Keith. I want the sad Keith. I want the emotional. I want the pissed off. Psych. Take over the world. Yeah, we'll get.

There's a lot of people who have seen my content. They're like, I can't stand that guy. I can't listen to him. He's. He never gets to the point. He's all over the place. And then there's other people. Like, I love everything. I could listen to you all day. And then I read the comments. This guy's a scam artist. And rip off in the next comment. No, he's right on the money. I love this guy. I hate this. When you make YouTube videos, bro, you got to have thick skin, man.

It's like, I. I've read your comments and I've seen actually the wide array, but I only care about the ones that say, dude, Keith, you literally saved my life. Like, you, you, changed my life. Like, there's, there's. I don't know, you. You have some more data than I do, but there's thousands of people that have said those types of things, so, you know, who cares about everyone else?

Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, you can make a. I can make a video. I made videos from the bottom of my heart. The whole point was to impact someone's life in a positive way. Like to make a life changing, impactful decision for. And then somebody in the comment will say something so stupid that has nothing to do. And I was like, that just kind of shows like, where their head is at. And then I'm like, oh, that's sad. But I mean, it's just the Internet, bro.

You can go off of gut feeling all the time, but at some point

So I distracted you because we went Randy Savage there for a minute and we were talking about, what are we talking about? I know we're talking about pricing.

Yeah. So you, you have to find. You can go off of gut feeling all the time, but at some point, you're going to have to get mathematical and being around guys like you and around some of the other people we talked about. so there's one other thing. It's a sixth thing. It's just not, I guess you can have this part do part, be part of the reason how you decide your pricing. But it's, there's only. Where are you at? There's five things. You, your market, your marketing, your people, and your systems. So in your market you have a marketplace which is what is the socioeconomic strata of the clientele or the people around you and what is your competition providing? so if you're in your low barrier to entry business that doesn't require any special licenses or skills or something like landscape lighting off, obviously people aren't just jumping into that unless they're.

You.

Know what I mean? It's. So if how much money you can make is sometimes directly proportional to the amount of other people lined up willing to do the same exact thing. We've divided this into, three different personality types in our messaging ecosystem, which is one is Chuck in a truck. Two is Possibility Pete. Three is Abundant Anthony. So your worthiness, how much you value your, your, your business, your branding, your reputation, how much if you do out carry your competition, do you have integrity and show up like we just did a little small job, was 950 bucks and the lady was blown away and gave us like 106, gave 160 tip just because we picked up the phone and actually showed up for the quote and actually did the job. When we said we were going to do it and finished on time and did a great job, she was more blown away that we actually showed up. So it's like, I mean that's value. So the value perception is a real thing. But you can get to a point where you're you're out pricing the market. So what I tell guys when they're pricing, if they're frustrated, they're the guys that I coach at the level, chalking a truck and possibility Pete's in order to get to abundant Anthony is where, it's called expand the top as you dissolve the bottom. Dissolve the bottom as you expand the top, which you're really heavy on customers and you got work coming out of your ears. You start split testing, doing experiments. Okay, I'll, I'll raise all the prices on existing customers, only 10. But all new customers are getting a 23.5 price increase. And you can literally do like you're doing market Experiments and looking at your closing rate and you're raising the price that's outside of your comfort zone on all new clients, depending on how much work you have in it. It's like a constant mathematical fulcrum and you're cut. It's like playing a chess game. And when you start to look at the business as an experiment, I tell you, because you could get stuck in this identity crisis. Like Eminem said, man, I don't, I rap, what does he say? I rap. I don't rap about anything positive because I don't see anything positive around me. He said that back in the day. I thought about that because I grew up dirt poor on welfare and on ah, food stamps and my mom died of a drug overdose. Like I've, like, we lived in a couple homeless shelters. Like I've been through it. So when you grow up really, really poor and then you have a scarcity mindset and you run your business that way, you're actually attracting customers in a scarcity mindset. And now you've built this entire ecosystem and you're getting a haptic feedback loop. If you study like neuroscience, and what is this, the psycho cybernetic feedback loop. When you have low paying customers and you're charging low prices, you get what's it's called the low ball trap. It's this perpetual thing that you get stuck in where you keep accidentally just under quoting. And now you're being toted along the bottom of this thing and it's so stressful because you keep not making the money you thought you would have made. You're supposed to make it taking longer. And this perpetual thing becomes a belief system. Now you're reinforcing in these newbie guys. They'll start talking to other guys, complaining who are. And now they're in this ecosystem where they all believe the same. There's no work out here. I, I mean, or we can't find guys that, who care, we can't find employees. nobody wants to work, nobody wants to pay. And that you go over here to this a higher vibration or it's, it's higher calibration of these guys. Like you, you're an abundant consciousness. You hang around with guys that think around guys that think that way and it's like, whoa, it's a totally different thing. So you could come into the same market of these guys who are complaining and broke and you would crush it and you would know how to extract way more money out of that market. You would find the High value clients. You would serve at a way higher level. You attract higher level. Ah, calibrated employees. You would build a culture, and you would make it work. And these guys would be like, oh, it must be because you're. You're. Your dad helped you, or you like, what, I'm a grown ass. Like, it must because you're. You're a genius. like, they're. They probably wouldn't be able to handle it until they get to the point where it's so painful. They're like, all right, I'm doing something wrong. Just tell me how to do it. Ryan Lee, that's so good. You get what I'm saying?

Yeah, no, I feel.

I do.

I've been. Because I've been through all those phases. I was the guy that said, you. I, you can't charge those rates in my market. And people called me out, mentors called me out. What do you mean? Like, I've been through it. It's not that I'm like, yeah, I wonder what it's like to. To be unsuccessful and charge low prices. Like, I've been there, right? And then you get someone to challenge you, and the pain starts to hurt bad enough, so you change. Like, this stuff that we're talking about is real. It's not. Yeah. Some of it we did read in a book, and then we expanded on it and learned it, and we're like, well, that's why I suck at this thing. So now I got to change. Right. but a lot of it was just real life.

On pricing, I love what you said. There's lots of different ways to do it

So, you know, it's funny, on. On pricing, I love what you said. You're like, yeah, you can just, like, make it up. Like, we own our own businesses. I tell this to people. I'm like, you could just decide to charge a lot of people on landscape lighting. Charge, like, 250, 300 bucks a light. Our clients are charging, like, 500 bucks a light. I'm like, you could just do that. You can just do stuff. Like, Latimer, Josh Latimer taught me supply and demand pricing. And I. And I did it to an extent, a very, very small extent before I knew him. But then he changed my mind. I'm like, wait. Supply and demand could be like a daily thing, like a. Like an hourly thing. Like, I could just decide right now I'm gonna double my price. And. And if people buy, then it was a damn good thing I did. And if people don't, I can just lower my price. Like, what? It's, such a simple thing. He taught Me. But, like, no one's doing it like, you. You literally can make this stuff up. And if you start high and you need to negotiate or you need to circle back around with those people when they don't move forward, call them next week, give them a lower price. I mean, we're giving you guys permission to succeed. There's lots of different ways to do it. So I really like that. Just make up your price.

Yeah. And I believe if you feel that's an incongruency. So we're in the jurisdiction of commerce. That's adversarial. Which means you, can be the most. How about some people, they have a moral dilemma in their business. They want to be the nice guy. They want to bend over backwards, do everything, and have integrity. And that's all great. They say, I can't charge more money simply for the fact that I just want to make more money. So think about that. Because it feels greedy. It feels wrong. It feels like you're gonna go to hell. Put fill in the blank. Right. And so if you believe that that's true for you, I. I have this. This kind of a theory. Take a guy. This is. Think about. This is deep, bro. Take a guy who charges just a little bit more, but in his nervous system or in his thoughts, he feels like he's ripping off the customer, and he actually feels that way, and he goes through and does it anyway for. Maybe you just think about. I don't know, maybe he's vindictive and he's sick tired. He said, that's it. I'm, I'm doing this. I don't care. I don't care if it's wrong. Like, I've never been in that place. I wouldn't. Would never go there. But you just listen what I'm saying. Yeah, but the whole time he was still at, his price was still so low and so below, like, market value that he was still radically undercharging, but in his consciousness, he was ripping off the customer.

Yeah.

Therefore, he was. So think about this. Now, take somebody who charges already high prices, and now they're going to charge, like, premium white glove prices. Like, crazy high. So high. That's like, just. What. How could you like. But he does it with complete congruency and integrity and serves the customer at a high level of full belief. It's not like I haven't actually done this, but it's not like grimy or cringy or. There's nothing wrong with it. And the customer loves it. And they're serving at a high level. That's between you and the customer. Like, I, I, I'm, I'm actually obsessed with this kind of things because, like, because I grew up so poor and there's been times where I've made, you know, x amount thousands of dollars in a day or in a week. And some of the stuff I made the most money was the easiest, and I've worked the hardest for the least amount of money. It's like, here. Oh, yeah, here was my point to close all this. If you have, if you're on this moral dilemma, take everything and put it on a line item, like for real, on paper, on a spreadsheet, Excel or whatever, and be like, no, I have to make this much money because I have to put enough money into IRA each month to make sure the retirement. Or maybe I want to put my kids through college. Or maybe we have to save up to do this thing. Like, if you have an actual reason why that's justifiable. No, we have to have enough money because we gotta, we gotta get this shop so we can expand. I gotta make sure that my, like, Tommy Mello said this thing one time. He's like, people like, you chart, your prices are so high. How do you sleep at night? He's like, I sleep like a baby. People are like, what? You know, he, he said this thing.

Many entrepreneurs feel guilty for not charging more because their customers are cheap

He said, you know why? Because the single mom that works for me can't afford to put new brakes on her car so she can have a safe car. That's why my prices are high. Because my employees have a great place to work. They have a place where they can actually, you know, it's like. And I heard Joshua Latimer say, somebody, he's like, you know, we pay our employees a, ah, living wage. Like, you stand up and you have strength and resilience. I have my Yorkie with me. She wants that.

We're going viral. That's all we needed. Is this a trick to YouTube?

When you have a belief that's back for, like, roots and fruits, when your tree has deep roots, it can grow fruit. And if it's not growing fruits because the roots aren't deep enough. And sometimes the roots are rooted in your faith. And, if you lack that, it could be some type of generational curse or something. You might have come from a really poor family. And all they do is speak negativity about success and money and, and you might have somebody that's pulling you down and speaking death into you and your business because they're jealous and envious of you, and, and now you're going around afraid and you don't know why. It could be some type of like, karmic battle you're going through or something. I, I, I'm fascinated by all this stuff. And some people, like, that's crazy. But, yeah, I, well, I used.

To think like that. And it wasn't because my mom was like, don't be successful. Like, it was this. The culture here in Utah is very religious and I just, I just always thought kind of money was not evil, but, you know, the money's the root of all evil and all that stuff. And so you're like, well, you know, if you have a boat, like why you shouldn't have a boat, like, you should just go give to charity or whatever, right? So that, that translates into business. And so you do feel guilty at first. Like, at least I did, right? But then it's like, no, if you feel guilty, like, you should feel guilty for not charging more because now you can't afford to over deliver. You can't afford to take care of the customer. You can't afford to pay your people, that single mom, more than what she's worth. Everyone's like, well, how much are you paying? Like, if, if someone's worth 25 an hour, I want to pay them 30. Like, what if you just paid them more and had them do less? That is a cool life. Like, that's freaking awesome. So when you're charging enough now, you can over deliver for the client. When they call you, you can afford to respond within 24 hours and take care of them. You can afford to be like, hey, we didn't charge you for this. We decided to throw this in.

Like, what?

Like that's going over the top, you know? So I think too many people are focused on the wrong thing. They feel guilty when they should feel guilty for not charging more and they blame their customers. Oh, the customer's so cheap. No, you, you let them be cheap. that was on you.

Every service, business owner should have a YouTube channel and a social media account

can we Talk about your YouTube for a minute?

Let's do it, dude.

I, I mean, I'm blown away. I've been not intentional with YouTube. I haven't really been intentional with a lot of things. I mean, I post a lot of stuff and things like that, but curious your thoughts, I guess. First, before we talk about numbers and stuff like that, would you encourage in, in today's day and age with social media and stuff like that, do you encourage these blue collar people? Like, should we all be filming ourselves? Mow the lawn. like should we be talking about who we are? Personal brand? Like does every business, should every business be doing that? To, to some extent.

Yeah. you, I think that every service, business owner should have a YouTube channel and a social media account on every platform where they upload content regularly, even if it's just once a month. But it has to be part of the job, it has to be on a pulse. And because some people say SEO is dead, but YouTube and Facebook and even X, every platform is. if you read SEO black book by R.L. adams SEO for blogger bloggers Reputation Repair. And I've read all this book for like hundreds of books. But you know, these are domain authority sites and the Google's algorithm defines a domain authority site. Like these big monster sites that get you know, hundreds of millions of hits a month. People are coming, they hold huge weight and authority. So when your URL to your website gets indexed by Google takes about, about a year, sometimes six months if you buy your domain name, I mean your website and when you have all the little icons at the bottom of your website at YouTube, here's our Facebook, here's this, here's that and it matches amongst all the different citations online. And you're creating content and you're linking back in your website and your blog or the interconnecting hub to all of that and your, your URL is backlinked to these domain authority sites and you're regularly uploading a drip feeding content into the system. It's going to pump you up Google search, which is search engine ranking page and you want to get into the Google three pack organically and of course on a separate channel running paid ads. and so you're not co, mingling commingling the data between paid and what's organic, what I'm saying. But, but organically you're getting free marketing, organic marketing that's going to populate in the search engines when somebody types in landscaper near me and your videos will pop up. So if a customer is willing to, or getting ready to spend 10,000 bucks, right, or 50,000, they're probably gonna go to your website and go to your about page and if they're going to see some videos that pop up or they see a blog with embedded YouTube videos, oh they have a YouTube channel. Oh it's branded out and the branding matches the Instagram and matches the website and matches the pictures of the trucks and there's a video of you that comes up even if you're a Little rough around the edges and you hate being on camera. You're like, I'm Joe with Joe's Landscaping Outdoor Design. Or Joe's Lighting Landscaping and Lighting Design. And we're right here in Shelby Township, Michigan and I just want to flip my phone around my smartphone and show you. Excuse me, throat's a little dry. this, this job we're doing right now for a customer right here in Shelby Township. I'm really proud of this. And there's employees actually working. They're wearing the work shirt, they're installing the lighting. And over here, this side of the job is already finished. And in a second I'm going to show you what this looks like at, at night once. And then you just do the editing. You stop back in the evening it was done and it's all lit up and the ornamental trees are lit up at the landscaping. And you can literally just flip the camera around your phone and say, you know, this is what we do for clients just like you. We're a family owned business. We shop at the same grocery store, we go to the same church. I heard this from Joshua. Letter them like to let them know that we're right here, you know, and just call 1-555-1212 or click the link in the description below or go to Joe's Landscaping dot com. I'll put all the links below. And we're fully licensed, insured, highly referred. You can also watch our other videos. Like you're just a personable person. You're the real person. You're. It's. If you are overly polished. This actually works against me because I've been doing this so long and I have so many reps and doing media. Like when I do interviews and I go to like the Equip Expo and they put the camera crew is there and they put a camera and a microphone in my face. I could just rattle off content and they're like, that was easy. Like I do. But if you are like stuttering a little bit and you suck on camera, that's good because customers are like, this is the real deal. I wanna do when I hire a freaking drywall guy to come or something to my personal, my house to do something. And he shows up, he's a little rough around the edges. You could tell he hasn't shown shaved and he's like, where's the job? What? Like show me, show me the. And he's like, oh, dude, that's. Yeah, we have to do this. And he just gets right into it. He does. He's not even aware at that level how he's being perceived because he's not a, sorry, a YouTuber. I, I'm getting pissed off. I, as a homeowner I'm like, this is my guy. He's really an actual plumber for real. So it's like. Or he's a real handyman. So like they're gonna, they're gonna love you for you being you. And you're like, well it's like so you should create content on social media, especially on YouTube and post it. And if you're worried about how it is, I mean go, go spend 15, 2500 bucks. Or I have a video guy who's on retainer, he's a couple thousand bucks a month. I think I paid him 31, 000 last year. And have that guy show up once a week, right. And help you go on chat g, g PT and create scripts, plug all the information in your business, feed it your website, get chat GP I get, I always get GPT and GTP mixed up even though I'm a marketer because back in the day it was like that there was a car. Anyways,

Chat GPT.

GPT, yeah, feed it, get the pro version for 200amonth. I have it. And, and dump all your info, your website, everything into content. Have it help you create scripts and then sit down with a videographer. And now get a nice camera and some nice lighting and a good microphone so it's good. And have them help you make a highly produced video, that showcases your best work. And then you might want to put that high end video on the front end of your website to showcase the type of aspirational clients that you want to get. And then you can save the regular cell phone videos if you're just like your YouTube. But when you have this stuff, the customers get to know you, like you and trust you and want to hire you because you're building a, a rapport with them before they've even met you in person. So it's kind of cool because like oh, you're the guy in the video. So it's like you have to have a YouTube channel. In my opinion, if you want to be relevant today, you can still make it work because word of mouth, if you take care of your customers at a high level, referrals are huge.

Using referrals can improve your ability to close jobs, make more money

But so yeah, yeah, I mean you, you are right. Like referrals are good but a lot of people think, oh, I get a referral, I'm just going to call Keith. They still a lot of times get the referral, Google Keith or Keith's company. And so then all of a sudden what, what does that look like? That's your resume. And obviously if you go and Google your company, like your resume is pretty freaking awesome. So I would say even if you're highly word of mouth, this is a strategy that doesn't cost a lot of money. It can really improve your ability to close jobs. It can improve your ability to raise and charge a premium price. Like it's, it's not just about getting more leads, it's about improving the overall experience for your clients, about charging a premium price, making more money.

Keith Kelsey has 160,000 subscribers on YouTube

So how, I guess as we're closing up here, how did you get to 160,000 subscribers on YouTube? Like you've been doing this a while. Yeah. So what should people expect? Because the world we live in now is like, well, Keith gets 160,000 subscribers and his, his videos got 67, 000 views. And I do a video and it gets 28. So I'm, I'm not going to do it anymore. So talk to us a little bit about like that.

Like, yeah, so I was vlogging and making videos all the way back in like 2001. I mean, when the first day YouTube came out in 2004, I uploaded a video. Like I had been making videos forever and we used to make music videos and stuff. And like all I was, I mean it was like, after I got my business off the ground and I got at least established, I really wanted to start a dedicated YouTube channel about a topic. And a buddy of mine, Anthony Vitali, I'll never forget, he's like, bro. I'm like, but bro, I don't have any like real credibility in anything. He's like, well, you know how to start a landscape business. And he was like, why don't you teach people how to start a landscape? So I, I took this like 80 hour course by Evan Pagan. Evan Pagan, he's like one of the grandfathers of marketing. He's like with the Frank Kearns and the Dan Kennedys. And if you ask anybody who's like a marketer, they're like, Evan, Pagan, you know, he's like, he wrote this book called Opportunity. He's amazing. So his course was like 80 hours long. The Guru Blueprint home study course. So I spent like the winter with a notepad and a pen in front of the tv, just taking notes and diving deep into marketing psychology. And he said, One thing he said, after this session, I want you to go look in the mirror and say, in 12 months, my name will be the number one name in the world. Synonymous. This one key word on the Internet. And so I went and looked in the mirror. I said, in 12 months, Keith Kelfus will be the number one name synonymous with the word, the keyword landscaping on YouTube. And then I started making one to five. One day. I made 10 videos in a day, but I uploaded hundreds of videos with the keyword landscaping, landscaping, landscaping, tag, title, keyword, description. And then within like 12 months, I was the number one guy on YouTube, synonymous with. And I held that title for like five or six years straight. You type in landscaping all Keith Kelsey's videos. And so I. How I got to160,000 subscribers. I had this friend named geek to freak, and he was blowing up, and he. He got like millions of subscribers, had a bunch of channels. And I asked him one day, I was like, how in the heck do you have a, you know, your lawn care business and all this stuff and you're so successful on YouTube? How are you doing this, bro? Like, I would get frustrated and ask these questions and. And the first thing out of his mouth, he goes, whoa, number one, I'm obsessed with it. And then, blah, blah. I just stop right there. That's all I needed to know. He goes, I'm obsessed with it. So I, bro, I would, like, I would walk into family events in. In a restaurant, in public, just walk into the family event vlogging, and people are looking at me. But I was so into it, upset. Like, I was in the vlog. Everything was about the vlog. I mean, like, there was no normal life. It was. Everything was about the video. I couldn't even drive without mounting the camera to the front of the truck and then running out making. I gotta get this clip of me driving past with the drone. Like, I was completely insane. I didn't care what anybody thought. And I was like. And I wouldn't hang out with anybody unless they wanted to make a video. My own friends are like, dude, can't we hang out without you making a video? No. Or we're not hanging out. I don't care what you think. It's not that I didn't care. It's like, why would I waste time hanging out with you talking about all this amazing. You're saying this amazing stuff to me right now, and I'm putting a camera in your face, or I'm gonna go make videos.

I want to make videos.

Videos, videos, videos, videos now constantly. 24, 7, 365. I have six YouTube channels where I'm obsessed. You feel this obsession? I will, dude, I'll. I've made 20,000 pieces of content. We have 80 million views online. And it's now what? Dude, I just want to keep going. And I, like, I'm obsessed with it. I. For. There was a three month period recently I was making up to a hundred videos a day. I'm talking individual clips on my phone.

Keith Kelfus challenged listeners to inspire others before he dies

I have like, I have over 20 terabytes of hard drives of footage. I have SD chips showing up on autopilot from Amazon. Just, just non stop. And I have. Dude, do you feel this obsession? So and so I don't have. I should have a million subscribers. I want to touch as many people's lives as possible before I die. Because after you're dead and gone, you're gone. Like, how many people do you inspire before you die? So that. That's my answer. You have to be obsessed, bro.

Dude, well said. I'll tell you this. You've inspired me today. And my goal every day is to change someone's life, to inspire someone. today I know I got inspired. So I appreciate you coming on here. I, I've learned a lot in the last, you know, 60 minutes, 70 minutes that we were together. But, want to thank you for coming on here, man. and I hope people will not just listen. And people are, people are going to reach out. Like, dude, that Keith guy, solid, great podcast. And I appreciate that, I appreciate the kind words. But I want you guys to take action. I want you to not just text me and say, great podcast, but, like, tell me the one thing you're going to do. What's one thing you're going to change? What are you going to implement? What did you learn from Keith? It's going to help you become the next version of yourself. So thank you so much.

The lowest standard of all is perfection. I want you to just literally, I want you to. You just do a challenge is the best way. I'm gonna upload a video a day for the next 30 days on my phone. Even if it's a one hitter quitter, you just upload it, Just put it all over the Internet. And as a year or two goes by, you'll look back and you'll be like, that was actually dope. Like, I was just really just doing it. Like, wow. So that's how it works.

I like it. All right, take Keith up on his challenge. I love it.

Go to Keith Kelpis. com smartphone. You could do it all with your smartphone. And I have the whole free guide for you. There you go.

You do? All right, say it again. Keith kelpus. com smartphone.

There you go.

Okay, and then what else? I mean, you know, obviously we're going to help you get more. We're going to help you get closer to the, the million or millions. So subscribe to his, Keith Kelfus YouTube channel. And then how else, how else do you want people to stay connected with you?

Keith golf is everywhere.

All right, Keith Kelf is everywhere. Keith, you're a stud. Appreciate you, man.

All right, guys, now the hard part. Become your two point. Go do some take action

All right, guys, now the hard part. Go do some take action. It's fun listening. It's fun learning the hard part. Let's go do it. Become your two point. zero. Thanks everyone.