Lighting for Profits - Episode 221

Step into the mind of a true lighting pioneer with over 35 years of innovation in product development across every channel of the lighting industry. As a long-time ALA member serving on key engineering subcommittees and a contributor to UL Technical Committees for Standards 1838, 1598, and 153, our guest brings unmatched expertise and insight.

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Episode Transcript

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All light. Let's go

Welcome to Lighting for Profits. All light, all light, all lie powered by EmeryAllen. Here is your host, Ryan Lee. All light. All light. All light. Let's go.

Lighting for Profits powered by EmeryAllen. Tom Garber coming on in a few minutes

It's another Tuesday. It's Lighting for Profits powered by EmeryAllen. So excited for today. We got, probably our biggest supporter. I mean we got Mr. Tom Garber from Emory Allen. So excited to have him on the show. And before we have Tom on, I mean, I gotta say a couple things. Number one, thank you guys. I was just talking to Tom before the show. Like I'm extremely blessed. I'm extremely grateful for, I got an awesome life and, and actually to be able to do this show every week is an honor, a privilege. I just appreciate your guys's support so much. So thank you so much. And just on top of that, we're still chasing a hundred reviews, A hundred reviews on Apple. We're getting close, but we need some more five star reviews on Apple. So if you have an Apple account, go on there, hook me up. And if you're looking to start or grow a landscape lighting business, you're definitely in the right place. you're probably busy with holiday lighting right now. We're just a couple days before Thanksgiving, so I know how that rush goes. But we're here to educate, we're here to motivate, to help you dominate. So by the way guys, coming up and I just want to make the announcement because it's not coming up soon. We still have some time before the event. But right now we have our Black Friday special. So if you are planning on coming to Light It Up Expo, why wait to get your ticket right now? Just use promo code Black Friday and you'll save $325 off your ticket. Okay, so if you're coming, you might as well save. And that's off of general admission or VIP. We still have some VIP slots. So go to lightitup expo. com and use promo code Black Friday to get the hookup. So that's probably the last warning you're gonna get. So take care of that now right after you do that five star review on Apple. again guys, in just a few minutes we got Tom Garber joining us on the show and he is the owner of Emory Allen. And Emory Allen has, done a lot to support us over the years. In fact, he's been our main sponsor here for Lighting for Profits. He's done a lot for us with Landscape Lighting Secrets. when we did Landscape Lighting Lives and he's our platinum, sponsor for Light it Up Expo. So super grateful to him, his family, the whole team at Emory Allen, for, all their support, and really helping boost the, exterior lighting industry.

My son gets his report card and he pulls a D in math

Before I have Tom on, you know, it was, it was about a month ago, we got an email from my son's school. And last, quarter. My son's in eighth grade, so just give you some context here. But last quarter, gets his report card, and he pulled a D in math. A D? I'm like, oh, my gosh, Max. Like, it's a good thing. I love you so much, and I'm not going to get into the whole debate about, like, grades in school and stuff like that too much, but I kind of am. So my wife reaches out to the teacher and is like, listen, I, mean, what does he need to do? How can we help? Like, what's the plan to improve? And the teacher responds, you know what? He's doing so much better this quarter. Like, last quarter is like. It was just a D. It was like a D minus. I think it was bad. And so, she goes, hey, actually, he's doing so much better this quarter. And so we're okay. You know what? Like, because we got. We got on him making sure he was doing his homework, turning his assignments, doing all the stuff, right? He kind of had just, like, free range before. Now he's got like a. He's got. We're teaching him discipline and responsibility and all this stuff. We forgot to do that, okay? So now he's doing it, and he's doing much better. So we're like, great. Well, about a week ago, we get the progress reports, like midterms or something like that. And I'm thinking he's gotta be. Gotta have that thing up to a B. I mean, I see the homework he's doing and everything else, and, I couldn't believe it when I open up the grade and it's literally a D plus. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, dude, you go from a D to a D plus. And I mean, I'm like, did she say he's doing so much better? Like, is. Is the difference between a D and a D plus, like, really so much better. And, my wife decides, you know, Lindsay's like, hey, I'm gonna go in. I'm gonna meet with the teacher. And, like, see, we got to put together a game plan here, you know, because, like, clearly, like, she thinks much better is different than our version of much better, right? And so she Goes in the other day, 7am early morning before school. Max is there and everything. And she. She literally looks at my wife and says, you know, they're talking and stuff like that. And it's almost proudly like, hey, well, you know, at least a D. Passing is. Is passing. I'm like. I mean, when I heard that, I wasn't even there. When I heard that, I'm like, I'm feeling like, anger, disappointment, disbelief. Like, are you serious? Like, at least it's passing. I mean, that's. That's exactly what the world is teaching right now, right? The world is, like, conditioning our kids to. To be average, to be mediocre, to. To just do the bare minimum. Put. Put themselves on the. You know, pat themselves on the back like they just won the super bowl, right? And here's the thing, and this is probably going to be uncomfortable for some, but, like, the system, okay, the world needs average, right? the system needs people who will show up, just do the minimum, never question if they're. If they're capable of more. It needs people who are content with mediocrity, because mediocrity is predictable. You see, Mediocrity is manageable. It's controllable. But here's the deal. You, if you're listening to this, you are not average. You're an entrepreneur. You signed up for something different. Now, maybe you didn't know, Like, I didn't know when I signed up that I was going to have to chase above average, but you took on the assignment of excellence. And let me be clear here. Excellence cannot. Excellence and mediocrity cannot coexist. Okay? One of our family core values. one of our family core values is we seek excellence. And it, you know, and it specifically says that instead of like, yeah, we seek. Okay, we seek passing. Like, what the heck? What was that? we don't seek slightly better than last quarter. Like, we don't seek raising just a little bit, right? We seek excellence. That is one of our core values. And so imagine my frustration as a leader of my family when I'm like, no, this is our core value. We seek excellence. But then he goes to school for seven, eight hours a day, and a leader in the school, someone he's supposed to look up to, is basically saying, you know, relax. D plus is fine. It's good enough. You're passing. And she's just like, okay, get him out of here. As long as we get them to the ninth grade. It's eighth grade. It doesn't even matter. Well, I Believe it matters. I believe it's these stepping stones, right? And it's not fine. I don't think it's fine.

In our house, passing is not the standard, right? We seek excellence

I don't think it's good enough. In our house, passing is not the standard, right? We seek excellence. And here's the deal. If you run a business and you want growth and you want the dream life that you keep dreaming about, you keep telling yourself you want, you want to stop worrying about your team members, you want to stop worrying about the bills, you want to hire better people, you want to take more vacations, you want to be present with your family, you want to build an actual legacy, then let me give it to you straight that there is no such thing as just a passing entrepreneur. If you're just passing, maybe, maybe you call yourself an entrepreneur, but you're just self employed, right? And you don't get rewarded as an entrepreneur. You just don't get rewarded for showing up. You don't get paid for doing good enough. You don't earn freedom by doing the bare minimum. Success demands discomfort, okay? Success demands doing the thing that you don't want to do long after the average person decides they've done enough, okay? Success demands that you raise your own bar because no one else is going to raise it for you, right? I mean, you can get motivated, you can, come to light it up, whatever, you can feel good, but like, you have to draw the line in the sand. You have to decide that today's the day that you're going to level up, that you're going to stop doing what everyone else is doing and start doing what your future successful version of yourself would already be doing. And the thing is, the world, you guys, and this is just crazy. Like, as you could tell, I'm a little fired up that like our teachers are just being like, yeah, it's okay, you're passing, you know, just move on, right? But the, the world's never going to pressure you to be excellent. In fact, it's, it's going to beg you to be average. Because that's what's what the system needs. It's going to hand you excuses, distractions, easy outs, these participation trophies and passing grades that my son is now getting, like, come on, you're screwing up my, my family core value here. And, and it's because average is safe. You know, average doesn't disrupt anything. Average doesn't challenge the system. It's comfortable. And I, fear that too many probably listening to this are too comfortable. And again, it's counterintuitive. Because the human body is designed to be comfortable. You know, like as cavemen. If we were hungry, we'd just go kill something and then that was it. Like, we didn't go, like, build up a big supply. If it was cold outside, we go get warm. If it's too hot, we get cold. Like, everything we can do to just minimize, whatever. But as entrepreneurs, we're not average. We can't afford to be average. Okay? You're not supposed to be average. You're an entrepreneur. And that means you're literally the person who steps up and says, I will create something better than what exists. I will create something better than what already exists. And that is excellence. That is leadership. That's why mediocrity isn't just below your standard. It's dangerous.

M okay, so here's my call out to you today: Seek excellence in everything

M okay, so here's my call out to you today. If you really want more. And sometimes we just say that because, you know, I've made goals before because like, one of my friends or peers or someone who I looked up to, like, had a goal, I'm like, yeah, I want to do that too. But like, I didn't really want it and I didn't really want to put in the same level of effort and energy, you know, And I was just trying to, like, live off of their energy. But once you decide what you really want, if you're tired of plateauing, if you're tired of the same year repeated over and over and over, if you're tired of being stuck, then stop accepting, passing, stop celebrating, doing a lot better than last quarter. Stop living this D plus energy while claiming that you want the A plus outcomes. Okay? So I want you to seek excellence in everything. Seek excellence in your habits, in your leadership, in your pricing, in your marketing, in your follow ups, seek excellence in your decisions. And finally seek excellence in your identity. M Because the world, the world, they might reward mediocrity, right? But your goals never will. Your goals will never reward mediocrity. So today is the day. Draw the line in the sand, get fed up, do the thing you've been putting off. You know what that is? You know what things you need to do. You know, if you need to take a pause and, take time to hire better people next time, you know, if you need to sit down and actually come up with a plan for 2026, a marketing budget, a plan, a real goal, something to achieve for. Because if you don't, you're not going to go after it because it's going to get hard and things aren't going to go. They're not going to work. Every time you try a marketing campaign and it might not work, but you have to double down. You have to stay in the game long enough to win, right? So do the thing, whatever that is for you. Everyone has a different thing. But do the thing that you've been putting off. Get intentional. And start acting like the version of yourself who already has everything that you want. And, that's all I got to say.

The truth applies perfectly to lighting. It's what's on the inside that counts

So, I want to thank Emory Allen. Let's see. Where's our, Oh, I got. This is cool, you guys. This one's a good one. I just wrote this this afternoon. Do you remember. Do you remember wanting to date that hot girl in high school? You know, you finally get the courage to ask her out, she says yes. You go on a date only to find out that her good looks are the only good thing about her. Do you remember? She's not even nice. She's stuck up, she's judgmental, and quite frankly, she's boring. Well, that, my friend, is when you learned one of life's most important lessons. It's what's on the inside that counts. And the truth applies perfectly to lighting. You can pick the sexiest, most expensive fixture on the shelf, but if it's hiding a cheap, low cri. Low quality lamp inside, you're wasting your time and your reputation. That's why I recommend Emory Allen. Because it's what's on the inside that counts. It's what's inside. Their lamps is the difference between looks good and absolutely shines. Emory Allen. It's what's on the inside that counts. So reach out, you guys. I mean, he's going to be on the show here in a minute, but email Tom G. Ralen. com to learn more and take advantage of their contractor pricing. And don't forget to mention that you heard about him here on Lighting for Profits. Just email tom g@emeralen. com and he will hook you up with that discounted contractor pricing. Thanks, Tom G. Thanks, Emery Allen. The whole team over there, the whole family. Let's go. I don't know. I just wrote that. I thought it was pretty good.

Mr. Tom Garber is a guest on the show this week

all right, I think it's time you guys came here to talk with Tom. G. I think so. Let's get him on. What do you say? Where's my, guest intro? Oh, there it is. There we go. Welcome to the show, Mr. Tom Garber. What's up, Tom?

I'm, wearing it.

Oh, that looks so good. Looks so good. Lighting for profits. Powered by Emory Allen. We're twinning out.

That's right. Right.

There it is. Powered by Emory Allen, folks.

That's right.

Well, thanks for coming on.

I loved your monologue. I can relate. I can relate to Max's D's, and I can relate to the. The pretty girl that there was nothing inside.

Yeah, it's what's on the inside that counts. You guys came up with that.

That was great.

You guys came up with that saying a while ago. And I was just thinking like, yeah, it is what's on the inside that counts. I remember going after the, hot girl. And it was like, what am I doing?

I know, I know. So anyway, but yeah, I don't know.

If it's too much like, you know, like, because I tell all my kids, I'm like, truly, I don't care what the grade is, you guys, but the grades are usually a trailing indicator of the effort that you're putting in. So if. If my kids are just dumb, like, I'm okay with that. You know, like, if they just don't get math or whatever. But it's when they're, like, not turning in assignments, they're like, you know, they're not studying, they're not trying. I'm like, okay, I have a problem with that. So, but the teachers, they don't care. They just want to get them pass and move on to the next grade.

Crying it's the teachers. It's not Max. It's the teachers.

I know. I only got mad at him for a day. He can do whatever he wants now again.

Oh, well, I'm just glad I'm over that.

Emory Allen: We're going to do something different today

so this is my show. You didn't tell anybody what we were going to talk about or anything like that? We're going to do something different. This is my show. Powered by Emory Allen, right? You agree to that?

I mean, it is powered by Emory Allen, so, yeah, I think I do agree to that.

So we're going to do something a little bit different today.

Ryan Lee started Lighting for Profits after selling his lighting business

I'm going to turn the table and we're going to talk about Ryan Lee and Lighting for Profits. I mean, you know, I think a lot of people get bits and pieces of what you're doing here, what you're doing there. But this episode, this podcast, what number is this? 235.

21.

221. I was close. you know, they'll be able to go to 221 and find out more about Lighting for Profits, Ryan Lee and what this Whole thing is about. So, you know, I just think that this is a good opportunity and find out. How did this all start? How'd you get started with lighting for profits?

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll do this. I mean, it is your show. I do owe you something, right? Because I know when we launched the podcast, I was like, man, I don't know. If I take a sponsor, does that mean I'm under their thumb? Does that mean they can sabotage my show and start asking me questions? Right? So I guess that was in the fine print somewhere. I'll just. I'll just agree to this. yeah. I mean, you know what? Like, when I sold my lighting business, Really, I had 12 years. I had the business for 12 years, and there was a lot of stuff that went out into that, but it was, I sold it. I didn't know what I wanted to do. You know, I don't know if people know this, but a singular landscape lighting business, you don't sell for tens of millions of dollars. It's not, It's not a wealth creator. You know, I still have had to work, and so I was kind of trying to figure out, okay, what do I really want to do with my life? I felt like it was a time to reset. And, I started getting into some digital marketing. I was doing, like, websites, Facebook ads for people, getting them online reviews. I had a bunch of friends, own businesses, and they basically came to me and they go, hey, so how did. We really liked what you did? We saw how you grew your business, and you seemed really good at marketing. Could you run our marketing? And I was like, okay, like. And honestly, Tom and I usually don't share numbers a whole lot. I don't know if it's a brag or whatever. I just share the number. I was making 15 grand a month within, like, six weeks just by people reaching out to me. And I was like, okay, like, that's. That's kind of cool, you know? the challenge was this. This was right before COVID I had a client who was a pest control company. I got him, like, 60 leads one month. Okay. With Facebook ads, and he loved me. The next month, he calls me complaining.

Dude, what's up?

man, I see you riding your dirt bike in Utah. You know, Must be nice. We only got 30 leads. And I'm like, only 30 leads? Like, who are you? Like, that's awesome. You know? Like, did I not deliver? Yeah, but last month, you did this. And. And so I was just. I. There was experiences like, that. That kind of kept happening. I'm like, do I really want to do this? I got. And as I grew, I was gonna have to hire more people and for fulfillment and stuff. So I was at this marketing conference, learning more about marketing, everything, and I literally, there was. There was someone up on stage talking about how they sold information. And they go, yeah, I have this course on how to raise goats. And they were making a lot of money selling a course, how to raise goats. I'm like, this is the dumbest thing ever. And there was this discussion about, like, what are you a pro at? What are you the best at? What are you better at than anyone? And I'm like, I don't. I'm not that kind of guy. I'm good snowboarding, I'm good at skiing, dirt biking, hiking. Like, I like a lot of stuff, but I would never consider myself better than everybody, you know? And they go, no, that's not the point. You're not better than everyone. You're better than some people. And, you're just further along, not even really better. You just know more. Right? And I really kind of started thinking that through, and I realized, man, I do remember, I'm a lot further along now in my landscape lighting journey than I was year one, year five, year old. You're seven, right? And so that's really what inspired all this. And right after that marketing event, Covid happened, which was, you know, Covid, half my clients fired me. If you remember, no one knew what was going to happen, when the world was going to end, whatever. So they're like, we just want to turn off our marketing. We're not sure. Whatever. I'm like, cool.

Landscape Lighting Secrets was launched in 2009

I was getting tired of you complaining anyway. And that gave me the time and the space to just launch Landscape Lighting Secrets. And. And, didn't even have a name at first, but the space to just go, okay, I'm going to put together this program, not knowing if it's going to work, but. And all I did was just to come up with content was like, speak to my. My younger self. Like, what. What would I. What would I wish someone would have said when I got stuck? Or like, I talk about pricing so much. Cause no one told me to raise my prices until like five years in, you know, all that stuff. So that's kind of how it all got launched.

Did you start Lighting for Profits before you started Landscape Lighting Secrets

Did you start Lighting for Profits, the podcast before you started Landscape Lighting Secrets?

No, I started. At first it was just landscape, Lighting Secrets. And what happened was I, in order to get my name out there. I wasn't in Facebook groups. I didn't go to aolp. I didn't. There was no. There was no, you know, there was no podcast, listened to anything like that. And I didn't care. I just thought all that stuff was dumb anyway. Right. But I started doing a bunch of, Facebook lives, and I kind of started building an audience on there. People would show up and start commenting and stuff. I did these, webinars with Ryan Jason, and I said, like, he was emailing me some things. I said, hey, let's put together a webinar. He and I, you know, agree and have a lot of alignment on some of these business principles. And so we started these webinars. And I don't even remember where I had this idea to do a podcast, which is crazy because I never even listened to podcasts or anything like that. But I was like, hey, if I do a podcast, then instead of doing like a webinar once a month, I could do it like every week. And I thought that was good because, you know, a lot of lighting people are busy. They don't have time to, like, register for a webinar and sit there and pay attention. But they do have time, as they're going in between jobs to listen to things. And, so it was in 20. I launched Landscape Lighting Secrets in 2020. And then we launched, Lighting for Profits in 2021. It was a year later.

I see. Okay.

Landscape Lighting Secrets helps people with their landscape lighting business

so in Landscape Lighting Secrets, what was it that you originally started to do?

Well, so to be honest, I, I had no idea that, like, that I could even do what I'm doing now. And, you know, I. I kind of stumbled upon this at this marketing event. Right. And so I knew. The only thing I knew is this, Tom. I taught Lindsay how to snowboard. Okay. Right after we got married. And I was a terrible teacher. She was cussing me out, falling, hitting her head. This was before helmets. I mean, it was bad. And I was like, she's like, how do I turn? I'm like, you just turn. Like, that was me teaching, you know, just turn. And so the thought of me trying to teach people how to, like, you know, grow a lighting business, just. I was like, I don't know if I. If I know how to do that. I know how to do the thing, but I don't know how to teach the thing. And so I hired a coach. There was a really well known guy, his name was Sam Ovens. And, all the people that had really good success hired the Same guy. And he wasn't the cheapest, of course. but I reached out to him, I hired him and he told me because I'm like, yeah, what do I teach? What do I do? And basically he ran me through this simulation, this exercise, a bunch of worksheets and stuff like that, and extracting stuff from my brain. He just really, it's like, let's just front load this thing. Like, what can you get, what can you help people with the most instead of just being like, yeah, you know, you got this. And like a motivator, like, what can you do to actually help them get a return on their investment and get like a quick win? And, and when we narrow that down, it kind of comes down to three things. It's like, well, I know I can help them raise their price. I mean, yeah, we have to like brainwash them a little bit and tell them that they're worth that, but we actually have tools and scripts and strategies to command not just raise your price, but like, give them the confidence. So that was number one. And what's cool is if we help someone raise their price, like let's say a small, you know, maybe it's mid sized company, I don't know. For me it's small. If, if you have like a lighting company that's like a $300,000 landscape lighting company, if they're selling their lights installed at like 250, $300 a light, if we help them raise their price by $50 a light and they sell, that means they buy a thousand fixtures, that's $50,000. Sure. So like as long as my price is less than $50,000, it's kind of a good deal. Right? So that was what we started with when we, we have other things that we kind of started with. But that was the number one thing. I was like, I, I don't want these guys to come in here and be like, I don't know, it's risky. Like, what if I, like, what if it doesn't work? You know, it's like, well, no, we just help you make your money back right away. So it doesn't matter if it like the rest of it doesn't work. You know what I mean?

So what was, what was the next step after Landscape Lighting Secrets? What was the next, type of thing that you started to do to help people with their landscape lighting business?

Yeah, so, you know, we launched Landscape Lighting Secrets and everything went good. We got our four founding members and we started to get some more traction and then a referral and someone hears about you. But honestly, Lighting for Profits, the podcast was, was the next thing, you know, we started to kind of build momentum, build, build a community, build a following. And, and there's people that listen to this that I've never met. I'll randomly meet them at an event or something like, oh my gosh, I've listened to every episode. I'm like, they've never commented. You know, most people are in the shadows. They don't really want to, they don't want to really reveal their name, whatever. But you meet these people behind the scenes and you realize, man, we've helped a lot of people. But because of that, people would find, they find the show and they'd go, hey, I'm not in landscape lighting. Like, I, I do Christmas lights or I do something else. Could you like, I, I have, I've had clients ask me like five or six clients if I do landscape lighting and I just tell them no, could you help me do landscape lighting? And I was like, like the first, probably 20 people, I just told them no. I was like, I can't help you. and then after a while people would ask and I was like, you know, go to like, you know, a distribution, like irrigation supply house, or go call these manufacturers. And you know, and sometimes that was okay, sometimes it wasn't. they would come back and say, well, that didn't work. Can you help me? Can I just hire you? Do you, do you not have, like, training? And I was like, no, I was, I just built Landscape Lighting Secrets to help existing landscape lighting businesses, you know, like, get unstuck. You're at 300k, let's get you to 600k. You're at 600k, let's get you to a million. If you're at a million, you're stuck at a million. Let's get you to two. You're at two, let's get you to four. Like, that was the goal. But I had so many people asking me to help them get started. That's why we launched Landscape Lighting Live, which was our two day in person training experience, to really help people, you know, get started in the industry and get proper training on design and installation and make sure they're using, you know, quality products and quality installation methods and things like that. So that was, that was. The next thing is like, let's teach people how to do lighting, so that they do it the right way and not just go grab some lights. And, you know, some of these guys get into the industry. They don't even use wire connectors. They just twist the wire together and put tape on there or something like that. We wanted to avoid that.

Right.

Landscape Lighting Live took people to other areas of your coaching business

And, how many landscape lighting lives did you do?

I don't. I don't actually know that the answer. I think we did, like, I don't know, five or six.

I think I went to every one of them and I thought the number was closer to 8.

It could have been.

It seemed like we were, ah, there are some light. Got dark here really quick.

Yeah, we were, we were. It could have been. I. And I'm not saying we're done forever, but we. We did quite a few and we. Oh, I mean, they sold out every time. There was hot demand for those things.

There's a lot of work, ton of work. You and your staff and. And all of that. So it was a lot of work.

And it. The thing that was cool, though, is then we started having people that would bring like, another person, or maybe they already knew landscape lighting, but they didn't have a way to train them, so they'd bring like, their new hire, which was cool. You know, it's like it wasn't. There really wasn't anything like that where you could just go attend this, like, in person and. And learn and. And we didn't just teach design and install. We tried to, like, put our whole landscape lighting secret credentials, which is. It takes people almost over a year to go through some of this stuff, try to put that into two days. So they didn't get everything, but they got kind of the icing on the cake around our pricing strategies, our sales, marketing, all that as well.

And, then Landscape Lighting Live took people to other areas of your coaching business, right?

Yep. Yeah. So what's that.

What are those called? Those. That part of your coaching?

Landscape Lighting Academy is truly on demand training for landscape lighting professionals

Well, so what happened after. I mean, one, it was a lot of work. And I, you know, I made the decision a few years ago that I'm not like, I. The big things for me, when you look at our company and, you know, if you talk to Jerrica Darcy, they'll tell you, like, we're about helping people create freedom in their business. I love impact. Like, if I can have impact and I make less money, that's. That's what I'm in this for. Right. And I want to build a legacy and I want to help other people do that. So freedom, impact, legacy is what we're all about. well, if I have to go and, like, give up my own freedom, impact, legacy to go do this, like, it's just not worth it for me, you know. And that's kind of what was happening. I was saying yes to everything. Someone wanted something cool. I'll speak here, I'll do this, I'll put on this convention, I'll do whatever. And it was starting to get out of hand. And so I figured out a way to still deliver what people were asking for, but still keep my family unit together. And so that's when we launched Lighting Academy. And it's online. It's not in person, but it's online. And we have like actual training videos of like classroom and in the field that you'd have at, Landscape Lighting Live. But it's almost better because it's recorded. I mean, you have a question to stop, rewind it, like go through it. You can use, you know, people are using it now to train their team, so every time they onboard a new team member, it's there. They don't have to wait for the one or two landscape lighting lives that might be three months from now, six months from now, whatever. So it's truly on demand training. And I, it's, I wouldn't, I won't say it's better because it's just different. The cool thing about in person is, I mean these hallway discussions and picking people's brains and you don't get that, with an on demand course. But the on demand course comes with support calls. So every week you can jump on a call, with one of our mentors, it's Patrick Harders for design and Andy Thomas for install. And, and there's other people there, so there's still a networking element. It's just on zoom instead of in person. So, yeah, we just kind of keep iterating based on what the market's requesting and what I'm kind of willing to do, you know. Right.

And how many different lessons are there in the academy?

I don't know. It's insane. It's, it's, we have everything from design, so talking like fixture placement and light levels and, and things like that to installation techniques, fixtures, manufacturers, distributors. A lot of people say, yeah, I'm, where do I, where do I get started? What product? Right. they'll ask questions like that. there's ah, how to set up a demo kit, really everything that you need to really go out and do your very first install. and we. They're broken up into small chunks, you know, so if someone maybe already knows how to install, but they want to learn more about design. They could do that if they already know how to install. they could, they could skip that per se. But yeah, it goes in order so that they learn everything. And again, it's our same, it's the same I guess information that we were teaching at Landscape Lighting Live is just delivered an on, on demand portal. And again, like I said, people love it because they, they don't have to like fly anywhere, they don't have to like bring their team, like they can deliver it. So people will send me pictures and they're doing like their weekly team meetings and it's like a selfie and they, it's like our stuff in the background and they'll just use it even as a weekly refresher. Like, hey guys, I noticed that we kind of dropped the ball over here. We need to review these checklists. So like one of the things is checklists on job site checklists. Are you doing these walk arounds and stuff like that? So it's not just a one and done. It's really something that's part of building, culture and making sure that your team continues to live the standards that you trained them on.

Does Academy get into any other types of lighting, permanent lighting or anything

Does Academy get into any other types of lighting, permanent lighting or anything like that, or is it right now strictly landscape lighting?

Yeah, great question. It will. Right now it's only landscape lighting, but the reason we called it Lighting Academy instead of landscape lighting is because that's, that would be the future. So we'll have if you know, right now it's just landscape lighting, but we will have modules on design and installation for permanent lighting as well as Christmas, and holiday lighting as well.

Right, Right. So then there are other offshoots, whatever. There's Summit. You want to explain what that's all about?

Yep. And again, all this stuff is just like, you start something and then you just don't know. Like I can only see. You know, a lot of people are afraid to start something because they don't know if you're going from LA to New York. It's like there's a lot of bad things that could happen along the way. And what if you run out of gas and fall off a cliff and blah, blah, blah. Right. I don't think like that. I just, I just need to see like the 100 yards ahead of me. So if I'm driving down a road at night, I just need to see those headlights. Right. And that's far enough for me to be able to stop, slow down, whatever, and I might have to turn around. I Might have to be like, you know what, we're not doing landscape lighting live anymore. We're gonna go back over here and turn over here and do Lighting Academy. Right? But I don't need to know everything. And so what's happened over time is we'll launch. We launch Landscape Lighting Secrets. It's awesome. It's on demand. We have Zoom meetings, support calls. I mean, it's so cool. These people are jumping on phone calls offline. You're building relationships, everything's great, but it's a little bit hard because you are on Zoom. You know, like, sometimes the meetings are so structured, we're talking about sales. It's not just like a happy hour where you're getting to know each other. Right. And so our members were asking, hey, when are we doing an in person meetup? And I'm like, I guess, I guess we should do an in person meetup. And, that's really what Secret Summit is all about. It's like once a year, we invite everyone inside Landscape Lighting Secrets to come together for in person two day event. We're not really talking a whole lot about landscape lighting, as you know. maybe, you know, in hallway discussions, it always gets on that. But in terms of our, our meeting and our topics, it's more about, like, personal development. It's more about, understanding your finances and growing your business. It's heavy on, like, building a legacy, building that freedom, right? And it gives people a chance to get together. And what's magical about that is once they come to that, sometimes they're competitors in the room. You know, we had a couple guys from Boston at this last one, and you're like, oh, man, Boston, Boston. People just fight. I feel like they should just fight. But they didn't at all. They became good friends. And now all sudden they're picking up the phone and talking to each other. And it builds just such good relationships so that, now they have more rapport when they're on these zoom meetings. And they're more likely to open up and share things and be vulnerable and, and ask questions and not feel m wonder like who, who else is on this call. Right. So, yeah, Secret Summit, that's been huge for us. We'll. We'll always have that. And this year we just announced, actually as part of membership of Landscape Lighting Secrets, we're not just doing one in person meetup. That one's our formal one that will continue Secret Summit. But now we have two. We added two. They're called Friday Fly Ins. And I can't remember the dates, but it's like one in May and one in July where you fly in. And I don't know if Lindsay knows this yet, but right here in my living room, we're going to host our Friday, fly in. So any. Any members. There's no extra charge for that, anything like that. And, a little bit more informal. I mean, you know, you've been to Secret Summit. It's very choreographed with, a lot of different elements. This one we're going to have small Mastermind put someone in the hot seat in front of everyone, pick apart their business, see if we see that we can help them out, and then again, just have these intimate conversations. I've got some cool business friends here in Utah, so we'll get some guest speakers. We might even go visit some other local businesses around here. And, So, yeah, just keep adding to it based on kind of what. Where we see people struggling and where we think we can add value and.

You know, by, you know, attending, a lot of these events.

You've got some pretty, uh, incredible guest speakers, um,

You've got some pretty, incredible guest speakers, and I don't know. And they're from, like, all over the country. I don't know how you got to know all of these guys, but, who's the, who's the bookkeeper? What's his name?

Which one.

Guy likes to drink beer?

Oh, Dan Plata.

Yeah, that's it. Ah, where's he from? Like, Minnesota or something like that?

Yeah, I think they're born drinking beer. Yeah, they just drink beer.

The bottle deer or something like that. But, where did you meet Dan from?

So I met Dan trying, to think where I met him. I know I was in a, Mastermind, where I joined a mastermind years ago. Every quarter I'd fly to Nashville and we'd meet up. And wouldn't you know, the name of the mastermind was called bbb. And I wonder why he joined. It was called Bookkeeping Beer. No, not booking. That's his thing. Bookkeeping Beer and bs. It was, business. Bourbon. And.

I mean, what a great guy. And you know, how much he has to offer. you know, everybody that, you know, attends, and I'm sure people have reached out to him afterwards to help them with their business. There was another. There was another guy, and it was a couple of years ago that started out, in a small business, and he had just doubled his business and doubled his business, and I think he was at about $40 million. And it wasn't in landscape lighting. It was in A lot of, it was in a lot of other different businesses. And I. I can't remember because I just, I just met him once.

but, well, you know, what I do is if I go to an event and there's someone impressive, I go up and talk to him and I'm like. And sometimes I don't even know much about him. I went up to one guy one time, and I was like, I've. I've seen you around. I know you're impressive. I. I gotta just get your number. Like, I. I don't have anything for you right now. I don't have any way to, you know, reciprocate value. And he's like, yeah, sure, here's my number. And I. I've got that. My back pocket. And I haven't. Haven't used that phone call yet. Right. Dan Plata is just perfect example. Like, I just, like, I. I had seen him talk, and I was like, dude, this guy. This guy knows his stuff, and he's funny and, like, you know, relatable and stuff, which is huge. And, Dan, actually inside Landscape Lighting Secrets, he leads, a call once a month. You can get on and, like, put budgets together. He's like your private. Not private cfo, but, like, we only have a couple people that show up to these calls. And so it's called our profit power hour. You can show up and hang out with Dan and get real live help on your business. He runs another call called, Culture and Crew. So around recruiting and training and retention. So it's not just that once a year, you have access to them. I mean, literally twice a month, you get access to these people.

Sure. And then, Jimmy Tompkins, he spoke last time a couple of days, and he's with, help me out here.

Lights for decorators. Yep, lights for decorators and Omni. And I mean, dude, just his session. I mean, I. People were blown away. That was that secret summit. They were like, holy cow, like, major eye opener. And. And I could tell they wanted more of it. So that. That was good, you know, and. And he did. He does a really good job. Same thing. He's not just some, like, polished up guy in a business suit, you know, talking down to these people. He's in the trenches with them. talking like, hey, here's what I did to grow my business. And here's how. These are the numbers you need to know, and here's how to calculate them.

The lighting business is all about relationships and developing those relationships

M. And let's do it right now. Let's. Let's Help you, you know, and, I just love surrounding myself with people like that because, they don't. They don't care. And you're the same way. You're not there to sell a product. You're there to serve and add value in any way. And yeah, it's a byproduct, like you're going to get some sales, but the intention just comes through in the way that you speak and the way you position yourself. And yeah, I. I'm extremely blessed to have an awesome circle of badass business owners and people that are educators. And it's. It's really, really cool.

I mean, I, I've always said that the lighting business in general, not just landscape lighting, but any part of the lighting business in general, is all about relationships and developing those relationships and, and through. Through business, through networking, through events and all of that. But I look at the few years that, you know, I went to these events and met all of these guys, I wouldn't have met them in a lifetime. So the networking alone that you get from attending these events is incredible. You know, if you wanted to spin your business off and do permanent lighting and go talk to Jimmy or, you know, you're having problems in your business with, bookkeeping or something like that, and talk to Dan, and you've had marketing people in and all of this, I mean, I find that very, very invaluable that you can go to one place and find all this information.

Yeah, it. It truly is. I. I tell. I tell members of our community all the time. There's no excuse to fail anymore. Like, you're gonna have a bad day, maybe a bad week, maybe a bad month, maybe a bad year. But, like, it's not possible to fail. We have too much. We have. We have all these people available, you know, and if I don't have the answer, I'll call any one of those people that you named and find the answer, you know, like, sure, whatever it is.

But, you know, and this is, again, something that I love about, you know, this industry in general, is when you walk through the doors or get on the phone with your folks, you know, all the boxing gloves come off. They're not competitors anymore. They're friends. They're here for a reason, for a common goal, to be able to, be able to solve problems and all of that. You can reach out to any one of these guys. And, you know, I could call Andy. If I'm doing something on my house, I say, andy, I have a problem with this. Or Greg, Matthews or Chris or any of these guys. And there's nothing. No expectations in return. You know, they're glad to help. And, you know, that's. You know, that's pretty incredible.

Greg Matthews and Billy Coggins spoke at Secret Summit about landscape lighting

Well, I mean, to your point, at Secret Summit, I had asked Greg Matthews and Billy Coggins. They're in our. We have different, like, levels to landscape lighting Secrets. They're in our top program called Lighting Legends. And I said, hey, I would. I. I know everyone would love it if you guys would just get up there and talk for a little bit. And, gosh, it was so good. I mean, when are you gonna have Greg? Greg has built this business that he's like a unicorn. I mean, it's like, how do you do this? Right? And he gets up there and just tells people exactly what he's doing. Billy, same thing. He breaks it down and tell. He knows he has literally, like, two competitors in the room.

Sure.

When he breaks down, this is where I was at revenue five years ago, four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, one. You know, this year. This is what is working for us now with marketing. This is what's not. I'm like, that's. That's pretty dang cool when people are willing to do that. And it's like, man. And that's why I'm doing this. I wish I would have. I'm trying to build something that, like, I wish I would have had this, and I wish I could ask someone this. And it's just. It's so cool to see it come together where the culture. I don't know personally how to build culture. I know how to, like, facilitate it a little bit, but I think you need the right people to build culture, and they're. They're doing it themselves. And I think it's based on, like. We don't just have, like a. Like, not anyone can join our program. When, in fact, people get pissed at me. They come and do these, like, strategy sessions, and I call them out on their. Their plan. Like, if. If you knew what you were doing, then why aren't you further along? And it kind of gets heated sometimes. And, M. If they're not ready to have these big boy conversations, they usually get mad at me and don't join. And so we kind of like, weed them out, I would say, you know, but the people that are ready to be vulnerable, they. They understand. Okay, I'm gonna have to get uncomfortable. I'm gonna have to share things that I probably normally wouldn't share with another group. I'm Gonna have to do this, I'm gonna have to do that. And so it's just cool to see because, I mean, you, you, you've been to these rooms. You, you see what's happening. They're sharing, they're like, I can't even choreograph some of this stuff. On, our 10k ideas, when they went like an hour long, longer than we were supposed to, they were like, I got another idea. I got this and I got this. I'm like, this is so cool. That was magical.

Yeah, it's kind of like the men's group of landscape lighting or of lighting, you know, where you're vulnerable, you open up and you talk amongst yourselves and you know, you will walk away with something. Getting something out of it.

Yeah. And we're always trying to, we're always trying to include the women. We've, we've, you know, got a couple women. It's definitely a male dominated industry. but we're always trying to get them and they've always got, they're always more organized and got better ideas than the guys anyway. So.

Yeah, no, that's great.

You talk about your different tiers and levels and you have the legends group

So you had all, you know, you talk about your different tiers and levels and you have the legends group and explain that a little bit. What is that about?

Yep, again, I mean, you know, when we started, there was only four people. So don't need to separate them. We need every single one of them. Right. But over time, you grow and you have people that have. Now we've had, we have people that have been in the program for maybe five years. I haven't done the math, I think five years now. And, then you have someone who's brand new coming in and you have people that are doing 5 million a year, and you have people that are doing, you know, zero a year, 50 grand, whatever, you know. And so they have different questions, they have different needs, they have different challenges. And so, you know, if you were on the same call every time and like, there's always that new person, everyone wants to help, but it's like, okay, well, at some point I need value. I don't want to just help people. I also need help. Right, too. So we had to separate the groups a little bit. We still have calls where, like, everyone can be on them, but now we have separated ones where it's like legends. I mean, we're solving much different problems than, like, how do I get more leads? You know, I mean, like, they have plenty of leads, they got plenty of money. Their problems are, okay, how do I actually replace myself. How do I. How do I become a better leader? How do I build a legacy where this thing can just run without me? And yeah, if I want to go do a design, I'll do it, but that's whatever. Whereas a newer company, they need to really dial in their sales process and they need to start working on their client journey. And there's different things. So, our intro level program, and it doesn't matter if you're a $3 million company, you're going to come in at what's called Spark. Spark is our. Like, this is where you start because you need to apply our systems that are proven at this point to work. All right? So you apply our pricing and our sales and our marketing systems. Once you understand those, then you can move from Spark to Ignite. Okay. Ignite is. And Spark, by the way, the focus is revenue. We want to, like, boost these guys revenue up as fast as possible. We're always concerned about profitability, but not as much because we just know that if we can get a bunch of customers into their business, then the second year, when they move to Ignite, now, we can start working on profitability, we can start getting more repeat business. We can apply some of these other systems that we have built. So starts with Spark, really revenue focused, then it goes to Ignite, which is really profitable because what we found is people were making a lot of money and then they would like, hire their replacement, get a shop, get a truck, and then they're broke. Like, hold on, you can't. You're not like, one of the ten commandments of landscape lighting secrets is you're not allowed to be broke, so you can't be broke. In our program when I'm preaching profit, the podcast is lighting for profits, right? So it's like, how do you scale and maintain profitability? That's really the focus of it, the Ignite group. And then you move up to, Luminary. And Luminary is really more about, okay, let's. How do we replace ourselves? Starting that, that process of really getting outside the business, moving to more general manager. And then, finally Legends is really focused on legacy. And, you know, there's. I. I think I can share this. I mean, there's discussions of like, do I. Is lighting my thing? Like, do I. Do I want to, like, get this on autopilot and, and maybe even jump into another industry? Do I want to go start 40 locations? I mean, there's. There's lots of different plans there, but it's definitely higher Level discussions in that group. Right.

So, next year we got a lot of things coming up. Landscape lighting related. We have, AOLP in February, which you will be speaking at. Correct?

Correct. Yep. Yeah, I'm actually speaking. I don't think I'm the. Yeah, I'm speaking in the opening, of the first day and then closing it out the second day. Right.

and then you have your big event which is in March.

Yeah. So Light it Up Expo is another just kind of new addition that this thing is going to be around a long time. Because the reason I did this is I had a lot of people asking me about permanent lighting, about holiday lighting. And I'm like, dude, I just, I just want to be the landscape lighting guy. Why can't I just be the landscape lighting guy? Right. And then as we were doing our landscape lighting lives and then you see, like if you want to get trained on permanent lighting, like where do you go? You just have to go to like the manufacturer. But then like, what if you don't like that manufacturer? What if you want to see what else is out there? You know, same with holiday lighting. Like, hey, we, they'll provide training. Some do it for free, some are paid. But there's options. But like, what if I don't? What if I want to just see what else is out there? And there's really no trade show to bring everything together. and that's why we started Light it Up Expo because it is truly an exterior lighting show where we'll have vendors from landscape lighting manufacturers, distributors, service providers, marketing companies, any, anyone you would need to help you grow your business. And yeah, I mean for you there's competition. You're, you know, Emory Allen's a platinum sponsor, so you might go, yeah, we don't have competition. But there's other manufacturers there. Right. And so, I believe that that's what's best for the industry is let's bring everyone together. And when you have competition, it causes everyone to elevate. I mean in, in my. If as if I have competition, I'm like, okay, what can I do to be better today?

Light it Up Expo will have three pre show classes for new lighting professionals

How can I serve my client at a higher level? So I believe it's the way to elevate the industry. we have trade show element where people can go around to the booths and let's say you were already doing landscape lighting but you wanted to bolt on permanent lighting, then you can go check that out. In fact, this year we're going to have three pre show classes. This is in Addition to the actual Light it Up Expo, where if you're like brand new and you've never done a landscape lighting install, or you've never done permanent lighting, or you've never done holiday lighting, or you have a guy again, a new hire, whatever you want to send them to, it, you'll be able to send them before the show. It's about a day and a half hands. Ah, on training experience where similar to like the landscape lighting lives. We were doing design, install, pricing, sales, marketing. you know, it's a day and a half, so it's not like you're not going to leave there and, you know, be a royal lighting God. You're just going to know how to get started.

Landscape Lighting Live is scheduled for March in Orlando, Florida

How many vendors are going to be there?

It's hard to say. I think, I think we'll have about 30 to 40 booths total.

Okay. And, how many attendees are you expecting?

about. We're going for 200, I think. Last year we had 125 attendees. And it was a little bit different last year because we, you know, we did that thing with home service workshop, but I think we had about 25 booths, probably about 25 vendors for the, on the lighting side, 125 attendees. So, yeah, I mean, we picked up a lot of momentum. People loved it. I mean, our. Everybody was like, holy cow. This, this is. I, I see your vision. Like, I see how this is going to be. So eventually it's going to be a bigger show. You know, some of the other things we do are more intimate groups like Secret Summit and stuff like that. But this is going to be a big show. This will be where anyone. I mean, I'm talking if you're a landscaper that does like, ah, I do five or ten jobs a year. You come here, you're going to learn how to do 30 or 40 jobs a year. You're going to learn how to raise your price and Instead of do $6,000 jobs, do $16,000 jobs. Like, if you're in the outdoor lighting industry, this is the place to be. there's going to be some motivational stuff. Sure. But a lot of it is like, now this is exactly what I did to grow my business. And that's what people loved about it. We had, you know, I spoke there. We had Josh Latimer. I mean, the guy's like the king of marketing, telling everyone exactly what to do to grow their business. Here's the free methods, here's the paid methods. we had, Kenny Kaufman, who was on the show not too long ago, talking about his exit. and he's also teaches in our program every month. But just it's. It's so cool because it's a big show with a small feel because you can go and approach these speakers in the hallway and they stick around, they want to engage, they want to kind of like on their. On the stage. They only have 45 minutes, you know, maybe an hour. And so they can't teach you everything. So then you can go find them and, and kind of have that hallway discussion. And like, did you mean this or what would you do specifically for me in my situation? You know? So, yeah, it's, a little bit of everything in terms of, like, speakers, trade show. we'll have some breakout sessions so people can choose, like, hey, maybe I want to go listen, to this for marketing, or maybe I need help with recruiting. and they can kind of choose which area they want to go get help on. Right, right.

And that's coming up in March. And what are the dates on that again?

Yep. March 4th through 6th in Orlando, Florida. right now, literally today or this week. I don't know what day it ends. It's Black Friday, so probably ends on Friday. is, our Black Friday special. So you can save 325 off. Now, promo code, Black Friday. That. That'll be our best price that anyone will get. It's. You could, right. You know, Landscape Lighting Live. But just as a reference, we used to charge 1800 bucks, right. And we'd sell out. I mean, there's 50 people. They'd sell out. This show at full price is only 649. and again, we're able to do that because at Landscape Lighting Live, we didn't have vendors. We didn't have like, sponsors and stuff like that. So it's actually with the help of. Of you guys that we can lower that ticket price and get more people there. Lunch, is included both days. but we couldn't do it. We would have to charge a lot of money with the amount of value that we're delivering to put on these events. It's very, very expensive. But because we have the support of the vendors and the sponsors, that's the only. That's the only way we can do these shows. You know, otherwise we'd have to charge $10,000 a ticket. And how many people are going to charge. Pay ten grand?

Yeah. Really?

Where do you think landscape lighting is going with AI and all that

I know we only have a couple of minutes left, and the last thing that I really wanted to ask is where do you think this is going? Where do you think the landscape lighting and all of that. I know you talked to somebody last week. I think it was jso. You're talking about AI and all that, but just landscape lighting in general. Where do you think it's going?

I know. I didn't know what I thought about that conversation. I was like, stop talking. You're gonna make me sick. but he brought up. He brought up some really good points, and that's why I was so pissed. so it's. Man, it's so hard to say because honestly, what we were talking about, AI is changing things so quickly, so it's hard to make predictions. But I will say this, and I. And I've said this for years, and I still believe it's true. When you look at the Runway of industries, you know, like, I've had several people tell me that are in landscape lighting, go, man, I should have started a roofing business. You know? And they're saying that because you can make a lot of money in roofing, right? but the landscape lighting, specifically the landscape lighting industry, is so magical to me for several reasons. Because you. If you've ever done a lighting project, especially like your first few, right, you do that and you see the. How you change. It's truly transformation. They say sales isn't selling anything. It's really. You're just selling transformation. And landscape lighting is the epitome of it, because you can go and give someone transformation in one day. If they build a pool, it takes six, eight months, nine months, a year, they build a house, same thing. So the transformation just isn't the same because it takes so long. Whereas, like, lighting, you can in. In like eight hours. Like, they. They leave for work, they come home, they turn on and they. They pull up to their house and like, that's my house. That transfer transformation is magical. So the product, this lighting design, this lighting experience, our product is so unique, if you look at that compared to other industries, okay? So it's super sexy for that. And I believe when you look at, like, other industries like Christmas lighting, holiday lighting, permanent lighting, they are easier to get leads for because they've hit this point of saturation where you get a certain number of homes in the neighborhood where it becomes the norm. And then you get this emotion called fomo, fear of missing out in marketing, which drives demand. And landscape lighting has not hit that yet. It is not hit that in maybe in a couple neighborhoods, maybe. But even in these nice, nice, really nice neighborhoods, it just hasn't happened. So when I look at the Runway, I'm like, wow, you look at all these different industries and things that you could do. I believe we've got at least a five year, probably a ten year Runway of landscape lighting truly taking off. And when you hit that point of saturation, there's going to be changes, there's going to be more competition. I'm not afraid of more. I, we need more competition because that's what drives the saturation, to drive demand. So we need more people marketing, right? And people that are like, no, don't bring in more people to industry. Okay, Then you do more advertising, you need to do more direct mail, raise awareness, do more education, because that's usually how it's done, right? And if people are afraid to do that, well, then someone's going to figure it out. A, competition is going to come in and realize that whoever can afford to spend the most to acquire a customer is going to win. And that's what's going to happen. We're going to get some big dogs that understand these other industries that are not afraid to spend money to make money. They're going to increase awareness and their systems are going to take over and it won't matter if you can beat their price. They're going to be so dialed in on how they interact with clients. And that's what we teach at Landscape Lighting Secrets. We don't have competition. Once you come in our funnel, you know, as a homeowner, like, you're gonna buy from us because we give you every reason to buy from us and every reason to not buy from your competition. Why would you not do that? So I believe we got an exciting five to 10 years of massive growth. And I know that's hard. If you've been in the industry for 30 years, you're like, oh, it's already so, you know, whatever. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but it's gonna be right. There's gonna be massive growth in landscape lighting as it gets more and more saturated.

Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I mean, look, we, ah, Emory Allen, we deal with all different parts of the markets from interior, decorative, residential, commercial, or we're doing the gamut. Landscape lighting is the least utilized lighting in a residence of anything else. Everybody's got bath lights and everybody's got, you know, dining room lights and, you know, portable lamps and all of that. What percentage of the homes out there really have landscape lights? And it's, it's under single digits and it's probably less than 5%, to tell you the truth.

Absolutely. Even in, like, the nice areas, you know, like, if you just say only these areas in million dollar homes and up, how many of them actually have professionally designed and installed lighting? They might have a few yard lights thrown in by their landscaper, but that's not the same thing. And, and even if you include that, still single digits.

Yeah, absolutely.

I got a question for you before we wrap up. What's that

I got a question for you, Tom.

I. What's that?

I got a question for you before we wrap up.

Okay.

I. I may have asked this, I don't know, but, like, what inspired you? Like, early on, you. You've been everything we do. Emory Allen is there. You guys stand behind us. Hey, Ryan, how. How else can we help? It's like, I don't know what else. Like, you guys have been awesome. So what inspired you when. When we launched the podcast to be like, hey, we want to be involved in this? yeah. What was behind that?

I mean, there's a lot of different things. sometimes, you know very quickly that something is just right, whether, you know, it's, you know, a religious feeling of the Holy Spirit or whatever you want to call it, saying, listen, you need to do this. And I believe that if more people follow their hearts like that and don't shy away from business or opportunities, that they would go a lot farther. And, and so when we first talked and you called me and apologized and I got on your website and your podcast and I saw what you do, I went to my son Matthew and I said, we gotta back this guy because it's going somewhere, Landscape lighting is gonna be. Is going to take off, and I want to be as much of part of this as I possibly can. And here we are.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's really cool to hear. I remember actually being on, your son Matthew was like, asking me all these questions, like, how many downloads do you have? And all this stuff? And I was like, oh, crap. Like, that was not very sexy at the time, you know. And he's going, yeah, I did some research and it typically you pay, like, I don't know what the rate was, but he had, he had done his homework and he's like, typically for podcasts, this is what you pay per download. I'm like, okay, so we have like 10 downloads. So like, that's why I was just like, I was seriously surprised, grateful, like emotional at the same time. Like, man, I don't know these people very well. it's, it's, it's a Blessing that they want to be involved with this. Because all I had at the time was my vision. You know what I mean? I didn't have data to say, you guys should do this.

And sometimes you just need to listen and, you know, do what your heart says, and you just go. You just do it. And, you know, we have the can do, will do attitude we always have, and it's always treat others like you would want to be treated yourself. So, that's kind of where we stand.

Ryan Lee: Thanks for hijacking the show for the afternoon

I know that we're beyond the 6 o' clock deadline here on the East Coast. I want to, thank you for letting me hijack your show for the day, for the afternoon. I think it's great that people have episode 221 to go to learn more about Lighting for Profits and landscape Lighting Secrets and everything that Ryan Lee and associates have to offer. and if people wanted to reach out and say, hey, I want to, you know, talk to Ryan. What's your email address? It's not. Tom.gmeryallen. com.

That'S what I was gonna say. Tom. G dot com. No, I mean, yeah, if you want. And actually, I'm doing. I still do these, you know, these calls with people. So you can go to our website, landscape lightingsecrets. com. click start now. Follow the steps from there. Or if you just Want to email supportyanlee coaching. com. darcy, can get you hooked up on my calendar. So, yeah, Tom, that was fun. Actually, I will, have to have you back on because I was supposed to interview you today versus the other way around, but that was a lot of fun. Thanks for hijacking the show.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family and everybody out there. And, we'll talk to you, shortly.

Love it. Thanks so much for your support, Tom. Emory Allen, the whole team, the whole family, it's. It's awesome. I mean, you guys have always, been so generous and, and. And just, you know, it's helped us grow, even with our relationships with other vendors. And I know. And I know you know that, which is crazy because you're like, we're supporting our competition. it's just. It's just wonderful to, again, have. Have someone like yourself in my circle. So thanks so much, Tom. Appreciate you.

Thank you. Y' all have a good night.

All right, guys. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Get some rest. Thanks, Tom

All right, guys. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Enjoy your time off. Get some rest. Thanks, Tom.

Thank you.