Leaf Free 2023
Our yard is a wet mess.
Fall in the South is beautiful, with colorful leaves in the trees drifting slowly to the ground... but they create a real mess in the Winter when they’ve all fallen and are lying in your yard, half decayed and rain-soaked.
To make the gross leaves seem even grosser, our neighbors are like, perfect people. They’re the type of beautiful people who have a beautiful house and a beautiful leaf-free yard… they're truly lovely people and wonderful neighbors, but our front yard looks A MESS next to their immaculate lawn.
Luckily, entrepreneurship abounds, and someone left their business card tucked into our front door.
On a standard 2x4 index card, Scott wrote “Leaf Clean Up”, his name, and phone number, and stuck it in our front door. And I have to say, this may be the best business card I’ve ever seen.
What you do - Leaf Clean Up
Who you are - Some guy named “Scott”
How to get started - His phone number
Scott wasted no effort on the things that weren’t necessary for him to get his next sale.
He woke up one morning and said, “I’m awesome, I have everything I need to grow this business right now.” And he wrote his contact information on freaking index cards and stuck them to houses with gross soggy leaves in the yard — his ideal potential clients.
Not only was that a great strategy to get in front of people, the plain nature of these business cards really stuck out to me. They were handwritten, and solved a problem I had at that moment. My yard is full of soggy leaves, and we don’t have a yard guy (or a rake yet 😬 )…
I don’t care about a beautifully designed leaf-removal pamphlet. I didn’t need a carefully crafted email funnel walking me through the customer journey of realizing I need to hire someone to clean up my leaves. I just want the leaves gone, in the easiest and most straightforward way possible. When I saw Scott’s index card, I saw a solution to my problem.
Scott may have wished he had a website, a logo, or more services to offer. But he decided to focus on getting in front of people who need his service and actually making a sale before he spends his time and energy on things that can wait.
You have everything you need to start
Like Scott, you have everything you need to start, right now. There’s nothing you need that you don’t have. Have the confidence of Scott.
Maybe you want to start a non-profit — start blogging about the problem you want to solve and the solutions you see and share them in Facebook groups. Maybe you want to start freelancing as a web designer — build a 1-page website and write an email to friends and family telling them what you’re up to.
Unexpected stands out
A secondary benefit to the “start now with what you have and don’t get fancy” approach is tactically, it’s unexpected. Scott’s “business card” was so unexpectedly simple and straightforward, it stood out in the best way possible. We get handyman and lawn maintenance cards and flyers stuck in our mailbox all the time, and they mostly end up in the trash.
My guess is that Scott didn’t come up with “The Index Business Card” marketing strategy. My guess is that at some point, Scott had to choose between spending his resources on designing, purchasing, and printing beautiful business cards, or writing his core information on an index card and spending time distributing those index cards to houses with old soggy leaves in the yard.
The thing that’s going to capture a new client's attention tomorrow won’t be what worked yesterday. In today’s world, everyone has a nice social media account, or a lead magnet, or a digital ads strategy. Those things may well work for a more advanced business, but they require a lot of resources and time.
When you’re just starting out or trying to bootstrap and grow, you can use your lack of resources to your advantage. What can you do that stands out from these expected marketing strategies and puts you in front of the people who need what you have to offer? Bonus points if it makes you a little bit uncomfortable.
As we start this next year, I want to leave you with these two thoughts:
#1 You have everything you need to get started. Whether it’s the business idea you’ve been thinking about, a Squarespace template you want to build, or a skill you want to learn. I promise you’re as awesome as Scott. Take the very next step. No excuses, get started.
#2 Focus on the unexpectedly simple. Lead magnets, digital downloads, and social media posts are generic and, much like the leaves in my yard, can be seen everywhere. How can you stand out? How can you provide a no-brainer solution to someone the moment they need it? How can you slap an index card on a house with old soggy leaves in the yard?
And now, I’m off to call a guy about cleaning up some leaves…
Keep Building,
Will
