Bonus Episode: I Didn’t Appreciate It Until I Almost Lost It

[Music] hello everyone welcome to the 21 hats podcast I'm your host Lauren Feldman this week in a special bonus episode Greg wittock founder of Aquascape explains how he invented the backyard pond industry how he improvised a business model and how he almost lost it all after failing at franchising wittock decided to give away his pond building expertise and marketing to landscape contractors in what he calls a franchise system without a franchise fee and it worked always candid to a fault here accounts here how the business shot to $59 million in annual sales why it then stagnated for 10 years and what he ultimately figured out about social media marketing plus he also explains why the first rule of customer service is don't give them what they ask for give them what they want Even In Good Times owning and running a business can be a lonely Pursuit our hope is that these weekly conversations will let owners know they are not alone in facing challenges same thing with our daily newsletter the 21 hats Morning Report which highlights the most important news of the day for business owners and which you can subscribe to at 21h hats.com where you can also find transcripts of our podcast episodes and lots of other articles and interviews this week's episode is titled I didn't appreciate it until I almost lost it I want to welcome you Greg Woodstock it is so great to talk to you today we go back a long time I met you after the great Bo Burlingham did a cover story for you uh about you uh for Inc magazine that I was fortunate enough to uh to work on as well as an editor we met soon thereafter we did a couple of panel sessions uh at an Inc 500 conference I don't know if you remember that oh absolutely I was a great time and I really enjoyed that entire experience with with you and with Bo and that was a very exciting time and and who knew that we were on the precipice of a disaster with 2008 coming a few years down the road from that a lot has happened since then that's for sure but before we get into some of that and and I do want to get into some of that g give me a snapshot where does Aquascape stand today um how big is the business how do you describe what Aquascape does today well we are this started out of my P passion for Turtles fish and frogs uh Built My First Pond back in 1982 and made every possible problem with that it was I went to the library because of course this is well before the age of of the internet and all of the books that told you to build ponds were from England and Japan and uh they said to make it out of concrete and my first Pond made out of concrete leaked turned green and even my prized Turtles M migrated away Lauren and that was the beginning of my Odyssey you know I was completely not dissuaded with uh my my my hobby and after seven years of ripping out and rebuilding my first pond that's when uh neighbors and relatives started to come over and look at it one day the UPS guy delivered a package to the front door and I said come around back and I was in my yard Ming with my pond and he said I'd love to have one of these at my house and I said I can do that and so back when I was a junior at Ohio State University I started uh Aquascape up I told my mom and dad all I need as a strong back a wheel bear on a shovel and I already had a strong black play playing football and that that winter I got a wheel bear on a shovel beneath the Christmas tree and in 1991 Aquascape was formed as a summertime fun job as I was going through college so initially you were building the pools yourself how long did that last that was the first two seasons so 1991 and 1992 I had done a total of 17 water features in those two years and then on August 2nd of 1992 11 years before the article came on Inc magazine that's when really my business took off because of an article that I had in the Chicago Tribune I had hundreds of people calling and I ended up selling 81 jobs and that's when my fun summertime gig became my career my dad came into the business which was part of the ink magazine article because you know that was a lot of family tension back then the business just really exploded from there you know resupplying other contractors to build water features and and that's through that you know that Infamous run from you know 99 through 2002 with ink 500 recognition four years in a row and then kind of prevailing with the 2003 article that I think to this day Lauren I might be the only guy that uh entrepreneur that's been on the cover of ink Magazine with my shirt off something with my fish and my Bond that's probably a pretty good bet yeah you know I don't know if you know this or remember this but they shot that in the summer but they didn't like the lighting and so they came back to shoot the same picture in October and and in Chicago in October the water is not very warm and so I sat in that water for an hour freezing my you know what all and after all was said and done they used the original picture and I'm like that just so typical you know what I knew that story except for the we use the original picture the original I'm like wow to typical that is too funny sort of at some point you shifted from being predominantly about making the pools to supplying people who make the pools when did that happen yes so uh from 91 through 94 I was just building ponds for other people landscape contractor started subcontracting the pond guy out to build the ponds and then they saw how I was doing it and they said hey we'd like to try this can we buy the products and so I ended up getting a US patent at 24 in 1994 for my mechanical skimmer and biological filter for the ponds and then in 1995 in April I ended up mailing 26,000 cataloges to a rented list from dun and Brad street and I think that year I did $191,000 in mail order business and 424,000 of installs but the writing was on the wall because the next year I did 1.9 million in um mail order and then it just took off from there and where are you today what's your focus now uh the focus now is I mean we still build ponds we like to say we're the only manufacturer of water feature equipment in the world that actually is out there every day that's our R&D Department building water features everybody else just makes a widget and says by it uh Aquascape um had a peak sales of 59 million back in 2007 in 2008 we lost $12 million of Topline revenue and we we went down all the way to almost $30 million and uh and we've been building it up ever since and uh we're ahead of budget for the first quarter of 2022 with a estimated revenue of 72 and a half million wow how many employees do you have about 130 which ironically is less than we had back in uh 2007 when we did even less in sales but we our our models change we're no longer a mail order business we go through distribution um we have call center support obviously warehouse distribution the construction business you know and everything else but the the primary business is resupplying conts all over the world from Australia to England to to Africa are patented products and uh products to build ponds so what percentage of your business is selling products versus the installation of an actual Pond oh gez three million is the local market of 72 million so whatever that is oh I see yeah but that's our R&D and and Lauren what's really cool is Aquascape has transitioned you know back in the day when mail order and you can mail cataloges and everything and people would actually look at the mail versus just get junk mail we had a kind of a dead period in there from you know right after 08 for a while but now with social media we're a very very strong driven social media company with YouTube Facebook Instagram even Tik Tok that's your marketing that is the marketing and uh as the CEO this is my 31st year in business I would say the majority of my personal time is spent um on the creation of social media I talk to business owners all the time and I I think Marketing in general social media in particular are such pain points people struggle with it so much what have you figured out well listen we caught lightning in the bottle back in uh you know the late 90s when we had our mail order business uh and then of course you know with the kind of the the recession that happened in ' 08 there also was kind of a you know downturn in in direct mail marketing and until probably the last 3 or 4 years we didn't really have a repeatable system like we do now which is you know the the Instagram Facebook Tik Tok YouTube and uh so now it's just it's just a machine that just keeps growing because the nice thing is we have unlimited content because we still build ponds and my primary my time spent is visiting my top customers and vlogging which is basically the way to capture things on YouTube vlogging their projects and I love it because I get to travel still my hobby see beautiful water features connect with the customers visit my end consumer the people that are actually living you know with the water features and so for me it's a it's a a great investment of my time and I'm not a classic entrepreneur I'm not good at managing people so I have a president that runs the place which is why I'm talking to you right now from Utah because I'm living out in Utah most of the time now that that we got a house out here they keep you out of the way is that the idea well I kind of when I'm in the office yes they I I to I really don't have a job at the office besides high five at everybody and doing the first job of a CEO which is to guide and guard the company culture but uh I I do that more and more now from on the road and uh through social media because I'm not in the office very much do you need to differentiate the videos you're creating um or can you just go to uh a different Pond that you've installed every day and create a video and post it on multiple channels is that enough uh no we we do differentiate yeah that's a good question so my channel is Greg withstock the pong guy on YouTube and Facebook and Tik Tok and Instagram and I'm really about the lifestyle so basically showing the beauty shots the team Aquascape is the construction so it shows how we build these water features and then we even have Ed the pond Professor which is the Science Guy and then we have the corporate Channel which is just Aquascape Inc so all four of those different social media channels whether it's Tik Tok YouTube Instagram or Facebook they kind of you know follow the the line of what the focus of the audience would be because we kind of you know sometimes we have consumers looking at it sometimes we have contractors sometimes Architects so they can follow whatever channels that they want to but they each want appeal to a specific type of audience and that are interested in a specific type of thing so the videos about how you actually build and construct these ponds would that be watched primarily by doyour sers or by contractors yeah and that would be team Aquascape so I don't cover that on Greg Wu the pond guy because I F I do the finished Beauty shots how do you measure the return on investment how do you know what's working well that's a good question um there is some somewhat subjective in Rel relationship to um you know how many total subscribers and Views you get uh you know that's one way to look at it but the biggest thing that we have is you know we're promoting you know we're kind of like the AR Air Force kind of doing all the national marketing and our we promote our certified OES counter Network and uh people we we see the increase in monthly you know click-throughs through finding a certified C on our website and then we hear tons of positive you know reinforcement from our certified acaes contractors saying hey our phones are ringing off the hook people are watching your Vlogs and finding them and then they're hiring us which is of course the ultimate goal do you see a big difference in terms of how many views your videos get Especially Yours the ones that you make specifically is there a big difference depending on you know what type of pond it is or whether the person you you built it for is a celebrity well that we call those collaborations so anytime we get a celebrity Bel like to this day our biggest you know single video was you know Shaquille O'Neal well that's one of the top guys you know out there from a marketing perspective and we shot a a number of videos now and you know pictures with him with his Aquascape water feature down in Georgia at his house down in Georgia where he's on DN uh but there's other celebrities that we do and there's also a lot of digital influencers so these are guys that might have uh uh aquarium uh channels or reptile channels or gardening channels and when we build them a pond um obviously uh we're going to get exposure to their audiences and we see a lot more views on collaboration videos than we do just in the generic videos but then every once in a while Lauren people will just it'll get into the YouTube algorithm or the Facebook or Instagram algorithm and will go viral you know just a regular post and really on those there is no Rhyme or Reason it's just that we just happen to hit the right formula on the right day and got shared by the right amount of people and then all of a sudden that video goes viral and you know it's got over a million views you know in a week what impact did the pandemic have on you well this is interesting because we when we were talking about setting up this call you you had predicted correctly that it would be positive for our business that specializes in you know people people staying at home but wanting to get outside yeah so you know 72 million will be our record year for sales and it's because it's because of the social media where people are funding us but it's also because people are investing in their properties I think anything to do with Home Improvement right now whether you're Carpenter an electrician a plumber or a pond Builder I think it's positive because people are are in investing in their properties what about in terms of the manufacturing side of it do do you make that the products you sell yourself or do you Outsource that yes it's all our it's all our tools and dieses and our products unfortunately um we cannot keep anything in stock because or I shouldn't say anything but a huge proportion of our stuff is is a challenge to get I mean everything from raw materials to labor shortages um to just you know we're just out stripping our tooling so uh we've been have we've been forced to Pivot a little bit in the last six months and bring inhouse a lot of the finishing of our Plastic Products if it's big and bulky it's domestic if it's electronic and small it's Asia um so the factories over in Asia I mean they're huge they're producing you know our specified pumps with our tools and dies and they're doing the same thing in the States but as you know there's a big labor crunch right now and so we've added shifts so we have you know shifts that work before work after work you know so we got three shifts going just to finish the tooling of the products that come in uh just on the Finishing Products but you know all one of my favorite quotes Lauren is all businesses is fixing problems and these are good problems to have where we barely can keep up with demand have you tried to bring back some of the uh Manufacturing in Asia to to this country just to avoid uh the shipping issues well it's not just the shipping you know with a 25 25% search charge there really aren't factories for their do domestic pump manufacturers currently still don't exist right now they're looking at India and Vietnam to replace Place China with the tariffs but there's not real domestic manufacturing going on of those small electronic type things like that in the states so basically the only thing that we produce which is the majority of our products from a from a dollar standpoint are our filters the Plastics the rubbers the you know the liners of the ponds all that stuff is is manufactured domestically but then there's raw material shortages you know and so like I said all businesses is fixing problems if it's not one thing it's another but if I remember from Bo Burlingham story I think one of the things that you built the business on was the notion that you never wanted to have back order problems am I right you're a very good memory we used to fly our flag at half mast if we didn't have uh the product in stock two things two things have changed with that uh one we are no longer directly supplying the the customers out there it's almost exclusively through distribution so hopefully the Distributors always what does that mean who do you sell to then uh you know you're you're talking about um wholesale uh places that landscape contractors would buy products whether they're Rock yards or irrigation houses you know places where a contractor in a local market would go to buy wholesale materials so we have over 500 Distribution points you know just in America alone that have our products in stock so we sometimes those products are out of stock there and we have to resupply them but our goal is to always have our products in the in the in the marketplace when we sold direct and we had Direct to contractor uh sales we would fly the flag at half Mass if we were out of a product we don't have the ability to do that anymore because we're we don't have the Optics to the end consumer because we're going through distribution and our goal is just to keep the product line filled up for our customers because as you would probably expect when a contractor needs a product it's not he's not ordering it a month in advance he needs it now right so one of the really fascinating things about Bose's story way back when was that you figured out that for your business to succeed you had to help lots of other businesses succeed you were selling your products to contractors who if they couldn't make a profit uh installing one of your pools with your products they weren't going to succeed and you weren't going to succeed so you started teaching them you know running seminars around the country doing whatever you could to make sure that they not only you know knew the mechanics of how to install the pool but knew how to do it and turn a profit has that gone away do you not have to do that anymore oh no we are of course it's a different world now you know we have the Aquascape University you know online so people could get you know electronic you know communication we have pondemonium every year so people come in from all over the world for pondemonium we've been virtual the last two years we're excited in um August of this year to be live in person again tell us what pandemonium is pandemonium is a basically a tribal Gathering of of contractors and retailers from all over the world that would come and make the pilgrimage to you know Chicago land where we're at and uh basically this is where the seminars get taught from everything from how to build upon to how to how to do your backend office and and you know financials and everything else so our basic philosophy was when you purchase from Aquascape it's a franchise system without a franchise fee so it's everything that would go to running a successful business and we use the blueprint and the model of our $3 million local market construction maintenance and retail stores for people to pattern themselves off of so we're constantly educating and updating on that not just the social things but through you know backend Logistics like you know a website for you know a portal for them to go on and do their e-learning and then you know events like pandemonium so even though you're selling to Distributors now you ultimately do feel as though your business depends on the success of those contractors oh I the Distributors are I'm hands off on they basically selling our our our nuts and bolts and and I'm I'm dealing directly with the the contractors the retailers and the consumers out there that are carrying our products and buying our products and living the Aquascape lifestyle so 1% of my energies is around distribution because just it's just basically fulfillment um 99 point something percent of my energies is around creating a demand for my product educating the customers that are doing it to do it properly my goal is to create demand for my products and then success for the people that are selling them I've never heard anybody refer to a franchise business without the franchise fee before and it it almost it sounds s like an oxymoron it sounds like a failed business I mean why would you want to have a franchise system without the fee and presumably without the contracts guaranteeing that people are going to pay you you're you're providing the education without the certainty that somebody is actually going to use your product that's correct how does that work technically they could take all of the benefits of of us teaching them and training them and everything else and buy a competitor's product but then then you have a little thing called brand you know when I started this industry Lauren there really was no waterfeature industry people were of course building concrete ponds and and going to Home Depot and going to Spa stores and Jimmy rigging up filter systems for a pond but um when I started Aquascape there was no manufacturer professional grade Pond equipment out there so we've not only created the product but we showed them the process to install our system and it's 20 products and 20 steps whether it's a fountains scape or a pond or a pondless waterfall whatever these decorative water features are that we're installing there's a methodology behind it so when they buy other you can technically swap our filters for someone else's filters but there's no training there's there's no education behind that because they're not actually installing the product so when I say Aquascape is the only manufacturer of water feature equipment in the world that has a full-time R&D Department building and designing and retailing water features maintaining them we truly are so really 95 of the top 100 water feature builders in in the world are using Aquascape systems wow so you know it seems obvious today that this has worked but but the notion when you first tried it of providing that education and not requiring somebody to pay you a franchise fee or lock in uh you know purchases through a contract did did you have doubts about whether that would work what what gave you the confidence to create that business model in 199 4 I spent all of my profits from 1993 which is at the time $50,000 and invested with a company out of Indiana called Fran Corp which was basically a franchise a company that helped you set your franchise up and I spent all my money and then I went to my very I said okay I'm gonna have to make my very first sale successful because I need to make show that this model is replicatable so I went to Columbus Ohio where I had relationships having graduated from that school and I remember talking to a contractor a landscape contractor I talked to a few of them and I narrowed it down to one guy that I thought would be the you know fairly large business couple million dollar company that would be a good representative for Aquascape as our first franchisee and then I told them listen this cost me $50,000 to get these two giant binders which are Systems Operations procedures how to run a Aquascape franchise system here's your ZIP codes that I would give you uh through this acquisition and instead of charging you $100,000 or even $50,000 which is my cost I'm gonna charge you $225,000 which will and and then and then you're going to get me to make sure that your model's successful because I want to be able to use you as a poster toil for other franchises and he said great you got a deal and I went to shake his hand his name was Rick and before I could pull it away he goes that does include your F-150 truck too doesn't it and Lauren I'm telling you in a split second I realized right then and there that my idea of taking my unique knowledge my patented products and selling limited franchises based on you know area codes zip codes I would not be able to successful because contractors don't have 2550 let alone $100,000 sitting in their pocket ready to burn a hole in it waiting for a franchise opportunity and so I remember I had I've always had a lot of coaches in my life and I went back to a guy who at the time was a partner at Arthur Anderson on the Consulting side of the business not the accounting side which is now Accenture and he said to me Lauren he said the one thing that no entrepreneur nobody that's pissed off wants to hear and I told him my entire ideas failed these guys don't have this kind of money sitting around I wasted a year of my life and all my profits and he goes this will be a great lesson or something gonna come out of this and I was pissed off I did not want to hear that and of course uh uh his name was Lance Dickinson he was correct because uh within six months I had retooled the entire thing and said if I can't sell it with exclusivities of territories I'll just give it away and hopefully they're buy my products now at the time nobody was manufacturing professional grade products but that's my always my philosophies I I'll give it away and hopefully they'll buy it because I can provide so much added value and so far so good like I said 95 of the top 100 Pond Builders are with Aquascape and that contractor Rick I mean he must have had a truck right he had lots of trucks he he had a fleet of trucks and and we've since we we haven't I wouldn't say we've stayed in touch but we've since seen each other since then and he kicks himself he goes man I should have got that that would have been a good deal but I'm like I'm glad it didn't because if I would have sold him a franchise it wouldn't have taken me down you know failure is is a great teacher of course just like you know my friend from Arthur Anderson told me and instead of taking that concept and trying to push a boulder up a hill and sell individual franchises I gave it away and then let let the same people in the same Market let the let the rising you know you know cream to the crop with who the top whoever is going to be successful in that market and that's exactly how it works to this day and I call a tribe I'll have multiple multiple certified oy cers in a market and they end up helping each other because a Pond's done right and a customer serveice it's going to grow The Pie versus a pond done RW and a customer serve wrong so certified o contractors I have this great communal tribe of people that are all helping each other succeed in business because if the next guys having success then it's going to just grow the pie and the awareness for what it is that we do with decorative water features I know a lot of the education that you provided to contractors focused on the mechanics of building the pond I know you had a you know I think a 20-step process that you you took people through um but it was also focused on doing things as efficiently as possible so that you yeah if you can do do it in one day your your profits are a lot better than if you do it in two days has that changed or are you still providing that kind of support to contractors great questions back in the day I used to travel to you know 60 cities every winter I do five cities one week before the next and just crashed for three days traveling around doing my dog and pony show um I don't do that anymore now they come to me we have the Aquascape Academy online we also have the Aquascape Academy in person and I am sitting there Lauren you know 31 years after I I I started this business and I'm telling them the exact same things I told them 30 years ago with the 20 products and the 20 steps and don't give a customer what they ask for give them what they want and nothing has changed wa wait wait what does that mean don't give them what they ask for give them what they want it's one of my favorite fit phrases because when a customer asks you as a professional that's coming to your your house for something what they're really asking you for is your opinion and if you give the customer what they ask for a 5 foot waterfall in a flat backyard because that's what they ask for more times than not it's going to look like a volcano spewing lava instead of a natural waterfall so what we say is Well ma'am we actually don't go recommend going above 24 inches in a flat backyard because it the slope over Ang going will look out of scale and every time you say this and you show them the pictures and you're presenting yourself as a professional they just say okay and they go with you but if you don't have that confidence that training that understanding of things and the customer says they want a 5 foot high waterfall in the flat backyard and you build it and it leaks and it looks like a volcano sping lava and the customer is not happy then it's your butt in the sling so the first rule of success with water features don't give a customer what they ask for give them what they want you could make an argument that you're kind of the Henry Ford of the pond IND industry right you figured out how to do this in a way that uh could be repeated and uh you know turned it into an industrial solution but you've had challenges along the way you you you mentioned one of them uh from the Inc article and that was the relationship with your father who helped you get off the ground who ran the business with you but then you guys had a falling out and he actually went off and started a competing business at one point how did that end up well would we all love to have a crystal ball we always God as a sense of humor but uh my dad my dad was an engineer he had a great skill set but I really believed that in the vision which is still to strong to this day which is about the lifestyle living the Aquascape lifestyle so where my dad focused on the engineering technical specifications of the water features I focused on the living the lifestyle I said listen our customers aren't going to want to puts around with their filters they're going to want to low maintenance ecosystem water feature that they can have a glass of wine or a beer and sit with at the end of the day or a cup of coffee on a in the morning reading the paper um and that was really the successful winning approach so he went off tried to really spend the time focused on the design of the engineering of the product where I focused on the living of the lifestyle that of course happened to have a product as well the push in the angle was not the product the push in the angle was a lifestyle so for nine years really didn't talk that Inc article you know that that came out really kind of exposed that that relationship but you know that AR article came out in 2003 and in 2006 my dad called me and said you know I'm ready to sell and and and and and join your team again so in 2006 we ended up purchasing his business and and my dad came back into the business we put him exactly where he should have always been which is a well- needed in company and he was on the engineering side of the business and he did that for a couple years and then went down to Florida where he could play golf more and enjoy the weather and he was bored down there so he started Ponda water features and to this day as a 77 year old guy he's still out there building ponds down in Florida oh that's amazing and your relationship was repaired 100% we do not talk business we talk Buckeye football and photography uh but uh yeah our relationship is great today thank you that's great I'm really glad to hear that talking about challenges you had your heart set on building a a $100 million company and my recollection is that you kind of got ahead of yourself a little bit and got overextended did that coincide with the the recession period oh 100% you know this is where you also have a guy that has a sense of humor type of a thing that I said earlier because everything I touched turned to gold for the first 16 years and then uh year 17 which was you know uh 2018 you know I did the exact same things I did in in year 16 and I had $12 million left to show for it because the world changed I'm going to tell you the hard hardest thing was not just you know the downfall of the of the sales you know Revenue back in 2018 do you mean 2008 I mean 2008 that's what I mean but it was you know 10 years I would almost say afterwards where we didn't really have a replicatable machine from a marketing standpoint because by that time mail order had been done until social media really started taking off again and things started growing again so it's just been the last few years I had about a 10-year window where it was just kind of you know single digit growth there and now all of a sudden it's back to double digits again I think you first started to struggle before the recession hit is that right no 2006 sales were 59 million 2007 they were 59 so they was flat so I had always had double digit growth for the first you know 15 years and then you know 16th year was is flat and 17th year was 2008 when everything crashed but you had a period where you I think you you brought on some new people and the culture changed a little bit the biggest mistake that I made was I had only managed a company that had had double digit growth and so when things you know evened out in 2007 and then you know the wheels fell off the bus in 2008 I brought brought in a turnaround guy and the turnaround guy had no connection to the teammates at Aquascape you know I was unsure of myself you know I was a at the time I would have been a 38-year old kid and uh I didn't realize that um you know I didn't realize the importance of culture and team even though I thought I did and we brought an outsider in and and he didn't know the people and he didn't and and he was you know chainsaw Al Dunlap or whatever you would call it and he lasted about a year and a half and uh I saw what was happening to my team and I I met him for breakfast and I let him go on the spot and I've never looked back since then I promoted my controller who became my CFO and she's been my president now she's been with me for over 20 years and she was the one that kind of financially guided us through the you know the economic downfall and she runs a show today the managers report to her but most of my management team Lauren went through that period with me so we got a pretty strong management team that's been there 20 plus years you refer to him as a a turnaround guy what did you think was the problem he had to solve when you brought him in I had been used to managing a business that had double digit growth that all of a sudden went flat and then the wheels fell off and I didn't have the self-confidence nor the knoow uh to kind of manage the financial crisis but my CFO like I said stuff up to the plate which is why eventually she replaced him quite soon after that in 2010 as the president I'm an entrepreneur I'm a marketer you know I'm a promoter I I'm a hobbyist you know and I didn't but now I believe had that skill set added to my repertoire because I went through it and and and certainly the team has that skill set because we've been through it so we managed the downturn we managed the grind which was very difficult 10 years of kind of flat sales and now we're enjoying the upside again knowing that behind every Mountaintop there's a valy tell me about the grind how how did that affect you was how frustrating was it that you couldn't get back to the Double Digit growth for 10 years I was scared in ' 08 and then I was frustrated you know from 10 through you know 18 or whatever and uh it was because you know we were doing everything we could possibly could but I didn't have a formula for for bringing on new new customers now we're beating them away with a stick because you know we just have this incredible presence on on social media and people are finding us and people are spending money investing in their properties so the the bottom line is we have a replicatable marketing system and we also have the demand for our products again that was a little bit lulled when you know the economic downturn and then people weren't investing in their properties like they are today how did you figure out the formula uh initially on social media I mean it's not like social media didn't exist before 2018 well I guess really because it's kind of the age of the influencers so I wouldn't I would say in the last five years Lauren is when digital influencers really started to pop up in big you know masses I mean they had something that I wanted which was eyeballs I had something which they wanted which was water features and I would exchange my water features for their eyeballs and that exposure I mean I remember the first time I built upon for Logan you know back in you know the end of 2017 I got I gained 10,000 subscribers overnight so you kind of fell into it it wasn't a strategy initially you just built a pond for the right person well I built a pond for the right person then I kept building PE ponds for the right people yeah I didn't come up with a strategy to say this would be but I said vlogging is Big so it was really the vlogging and then the offshoots of the vlogging were the Instagram and the Tik Tok and the Facebook um but but kind of one handwashes the other and you know just I mean in the last month I've gained um over 500,000 new followers just in the last month in the last month so I took all my library of content on my YouTube channels which I had done you know I've now done over a thousand Vlogs between those three channels and I packaged it in a deal and sold it to a to a third party who then repurposes it on Facebook and they've been going gang fire in the last that only happened a month ago and uh um in the last month I've gained a half a million followers with past content YouTube content edited for Facebook you know I've never heard of that the idea of selling uh content that's been up for a while to a third party who repackages it they edit it so if I have a 10 to 12 minute video on Youtube it'll be a three to five minute video on Facebook they you know they put ads on it or they you know they sell to advert ERS that's how they make their money that's how they make their money and and then I really don't any money that comes from ad revenue is just icing on the cake of course the cake for me is eyeballs to our content which drives demand for our product and that's their business they do this for other people as well obviously yes um that that is their business yeah it's a firm out of France that has worldwide offices and they and most most YouTubers don't have a presence on Facebook because they're they're tend tend to be younger and they and it's not just Facebook it could be Snapchat Instagram and did you find them or did they find you this is kind of funny I literally dropped my bit my my business card in at a uh at a conference and they kept calling me calling me calling me and I thought whatever and then I I had a buddy that I built upon for another influencer with three million followers on YouTube sign up with them and he goes you got to look into the jelly smack and that's the name of the company so because he had such success I I I basically returned an email from a you know guy that's soliciting me from a trade show and uh when we finally went live I mean it was it was we sold it for a couple hundred thousand dollar our content and now when it went it live you know I'm winning because I'm getting new eyeballs and they're winning because they're getting ad Revenue that's really interesting this is where why content is so important too because it's Evergreen marketing upon that I built or videotaped five years ago someone's gonna find for the first time this year and and and that past work is going to pay dividends now so what's your thinking today there was a time when you were convinced that you were going to be uh you're going to hit $100 million in annual revenue pretty soon and that was an important goal to you a lot of time has passed it hasn't happened yet it sounds like it's going to happen is that still a meaningful goal to you do you care uh I do I wouldn't say it's as meaningful but I know that the potential is there that was always what it was it wasn't about the dollar figure it was like about the potential and by the way before 100 million Doll came I said this is a $50 million business so when I started my idea to to to give away franchise is my first business plan was this is going to be a $50 million business it quickly grow I surpassed that and so my next Milestone was 100 million if I could go back in time and I would never want to go through the experiences that The Valleys that I went through but I never really appreciate in fact when I did 59 million Lauren uh in sales back in um 06 and ' 07 I was pissed off I didn't do 60 right and now when when the economic downturn happened and then and then the grind happened I was just appreciative that I still had a business you know I mean I started this business was able to do you know $59 million because of my love for turtles in my backyard pond I mean how cool is that and I didn't appreciate that when I had done that I thought you know of course this is what happened and then when I almost lost it that's when I appreciated what you know I actually had and so I'm never going to lose that appreciation whether I'm doing 72 million or a 100 million the number was always more about the potential of what I can do and I still believe that strongly it's an easily $100 million business especially internationally but the downturn made me appreciate what I had and I didn't appreciate it before I bet you end up talking to young entrepreneurs who remind you of yourself who have that drive to to hit a big ambitious goal do you share this with them so the majority of entrepreneurs that I talk to are people that want to have a profession about what I've done you know in this industry and so this is where you know of course I give them the techniques about not giving a customer what they ask for for give them what they want and such like that but I what what I've what I've served for a long time and and it's and you know this is 2008 we're talking about that I went through this Focus your energies on helping other people get what they want if you can help other people get what they want you get what you want so I want my customers to have successful businesses which means you know put a 5 foot high waterfall and a flat backyard if I can help them be profitable with their business because they understand their financials if I could help them succeed then my business will be successful and so I share a lot with aspiring entrepreneurs if I'm talking to a business class at a university stop focusing on what you can get start focusing on what you can give and if you give enough get other people get what they want then you too will get what you want so the last thing I want to ask you about I don't know if you remember this but we did a panel discussion at an Inc 500 I want to guess it was in Savannah but I could be wrong about that I remember Savannah it was a discussion about what entrepreneurs should do with their money if they manage to take some money off the table and um if if they are fortunate enough to be able to invest some money elsewhere and not just in their business and if I recall correctly please correct me if I'm wrong but I think at the time you said that you had taken some money off the table and you were putting every last penny of it into too's stock oh my God you are hilarious am I right you are a 100% right I took my entire 401K which whatever I don't remember what it was at the the time I was so Smitten by the brand new technology too which is like basically a DVR today you know they were the pioneers and everybody just knocked off their software I took my entire 401K quote unquote retirement plan and put that 100% into too stock which was not the wisest thing but it wasn't also a huge huge amount of money at the time but yes I did did that work I mean they got bought or something well I I I could tell you it's probably a break even because my wife um my wife went behind me and diversified our portfolio fortunately I love that she handles the money Lauren to this day she she she runs the household and she handles the money fortunately I've been able to pull some money out we bought a second home out in Park City Utah I'm spending most of my time traveling from there but I'm 51 years old I I can't imagine not doing this at 61 71 or even 81 I'm just having so much fun Greg wittock thank you so much for taking this time I really enjoyed the conversation hey good reconnecting bu and uh thanks for having me my pleasure wait wait don't leave yet if you have a question or a comment that you'd like the 21 hats owners to address send it to me by replying to your Morning Report or by email at Lauren 21h hats.com that's l r n21 hats.com do it now before you forget and don't be afraid to tell Jay what you really think you can take it and if you got something out of this conversation help us reach more business owners tell a friend subscribe and review us wherever you get your podcasts follow us on Twitter subscribe to the morning report at 21h hats.com this episode was produced by Jess Theron founder of blank word Productions okay now you can leave thanks for listening everyone