This is Rodney with landscaping with zebras. Case, we have Bo here again.

All right, let's jump in. So, okay, you, you know, we had talked before about, you know, zebra escapes brand and, you know, kind of the evolution of it, yeah. And I really, personally, I love the story. Now break it down a little bit, you know, where did it start? And then walk us through the evolution of where zebra escapes is today.

Well, actually, it started by not wanting to we I didn't want to own our own company. It was I had so much fear of anxiety about it, so, yeah, like our last episode we had about education and everything. I had no I have no background. I didn't even finish high school.

Believe it or not, I do believe it. Do believe it. I mean, entrepreneurs, that's the way that it usually goes, you know. But anyways, continue.

So we started grinding it and the landscaping part of it, going door to door, knocking on doors, when the oh seven happened, oh eight, and knocking with the minivan and going from there. And we started getting enough work where we had two vehicles and we were called TK Haley yard care, Trinity Kylie here, three our three daughters. Oh, cool. And three to four years later, we brought a daughter in under foster care we end up adopting, and she did not like the name. Her name wasn't on that card, so she we thought about it long and hard and through talking to our pastor at church, we prayed and came up with Zebra scapes. Big reason was that was branding. I wanted to people to see the truck from a distance. And I had a lot of criticism at first, but now I'm it's been the biggest game changer in this business of marketing, branding, yeah,

you know what's interesting about it is that, I mean two things, the zebra scapes brand, you had mentioned, you got a lot of criticism. You know, as I think about it, it's like, well, what good idea in the beginning didn't have criticism. You know what? I mean, yeah, otherwise, then you're just going along with whatever, traditionally, that business did, so it's either the leaf and the shovel or the grass or the sun for landscaping brands, right? So that's usually what it was. You were like, You know what? I'm gonna switch it, and I'm gonna do something completely different, and I'm gonna go zebra, which is great. It's not just an animal. It's like, one of the most, you know, identifiable animals out there, yeah? And you know, you made that your brand. And, like I said, it's funny to me thinking about it, about how, you know, most really good ideas, most game changing ideas, always get the most criticism. Yeah, I never thought of that. It's really interesting. It is so, I mean, it makes sense to me that you got criticism. I I would have never criticized it. You know, I think that. I mean, I don't know what the criticism was, but I think the only cartoon really, because I would have thought, well, what is it? I mean, is it some kind of, Is it some kind of, like, zoo thing, yeah, well, what, you know, but then that would be the only thing, but at least I'd be talking about it, yeah, you know. And so now on that point, do you think that was the main reason you were able to kind of set your brand apart from other competitors in the

area? Oh, yeah. I mean, we, we were small then, and people would say, may I see your truck everywhere? And I say, Well, you just see that the three trucks driving around in circles, in because it's you just notice it more. And that truck do you have now? Well, probably

25 Yeah, yeah, just because I see them all over the place. Now, yeah,

so, but they see the and then when we went that route, we have a little ranch out there at Williamson Valley. And I didn't like horses. I thought I Googled it, and we got a zebra. And then that was on magazines and everywhere. So that was big in Marketing School.

Now, you know, it's interesting to me, as I as I think about, like separating, you know, your brand, or anybody's brand, apart from the competition, no matter what business you're in, I think it, you know, one of the things that I've seen, and I've been able to, like, really surround myself with some of the most successful people, and one of the greatest differences between them and other people in their space, is not something really technical. It is really simple. It's actually the amount that they talk about their business, the passion in which they are always talking about their business, like it doesn't matter where you are. You could be in the grocery store talking to somebody, you could be on social talking to somebody on podcast, uh, meeting with clients. I mean, you're just never not talking about your business. And so some people may think that's overwhelming or selfish or whatever, but it's like that is one of the biggest things that separates people is, is like, they're so passionate about it, yeah? And they just can't stop talking about it and so and how it helps people, right? Not just, oh, look at, I'm so passionate about my business because look at all this money it made me, but look at all these, like, case studies of people who I've been able to help and and get through hard times, and whatever it may be. But I think that is something that's really cool

about it, yeah, and that's what's cool about, you know, through the growth, like you talked about, the other one is you're just trying to make ends meet, put food on the table for your family, and then, you know, then you got the stress and the burden, and you're making sure you're not upside down. Then when you get to the point where we're very blessed where we are today, it's, how can we impact employees? 90s, and I love hearing stories about employees just saying how much they love zebra escapes. When you're talking about the family culture, like, you know what we're going to do for the Fourth of July parade, or how we're going to be in the community, and that's where you start multiplying. Your growth is when employees buy into the vision. Oh, 100% agree. So that's Yeah, one thing we hear at Zebra escapes is quality, integrity, efficiency, teamwork and relationships, and we build our core values off that, and that, that's what really we believe separates us also from our competitors, is for us to be someone, to be a lead here, if those there gotta fit their mold and their who they stand for, if not the same, the great fit for them, yeah, and 100% Yeah. So we drive hard on that here at this at Zebra scapes and how we can improve better. We're also big and being a part of their life and trying to make their life better. And we even started a paid for a Dave Ramsey thing to all our guys, like, hey, because a lot of them, they weren't raising maybe a split family, yeah. And there's, it's like, hey, let's get you on a Dave Ramsey app. Let's help you save that we can put money away, that you can own a car and you can own a house, yeah? And not just pay and put the money and say, hey, you know, I really don't, yeah, you gotta you improve their life. They're gonna prove your your business, right?

And they're seeing that that is that has been significant and like the quality of work, but also the culture within the company. Well, yeah, when

they see that, you really care about them, oh yeah, for sure. They they want to be more bought in yeah for Oh yeah, when they realize that, hey, trust me, years ago, I was all about business, trying to get bills paid, and just focusing on making sure. And then I had a setback. And like, hey, there's more to life. Yeah, and let's and then, like you said the last podcast is, you start prospering. More people around you grow, and then everybody starts growing. And yeah, a lot less stress. I

think that it also creates a more fulfilling environment, you know, for just even within yourself, because, oh yeah, it's the founder as the owner, as the person who has put everything into this to make it out, yep, which is something that you and I can, can, can relate, relate to. Yeah, absolutely. Is it at some point becomes more, right? And so it's like, Well, where is if it's just always about the grind and always about, you know what money to make it happen and and everything else, if there's nothing more to it, then why am I doing this? It becomes a real it becomes a real issue. And so I think that doing that, you find fulfillment in the work itself, for sure, right? And because you know how to make $1 right? You know how to go out and do the dollar, but now it's like, well, how do I leave more of an impact? And then there's like, legacy on top of that. But just the, just the fulfillment side, for me is it's like, wow. You know, when you can do something for somebody, and it's just out of the goodness of your heart, you're like, I know something that you need. I'm going to give that to you, and I hope that you do great things with it, and I don't want anything from you. Yeah, that I thought is really, really special, impactful. And because it's like, it's a win, win. If you know about it that way, some people are like, No, I'm gonna do this thing for you, and I expect this. And it's just not the same feeling. Yeah, there's a yucky feeling with that. You're right. It's

a, it's, I mean, the purpose is wrong. You talk to people football players that win the Super Bowl, and they they want to commit suicide afterwards, because they're fulfilled only for themselves. Or another

good example of that is, is, like, astronauts. Like, there was a group of astronauts that went to the moon for it was like, early on, and they went there, they came back, and it was like, well, now what? Yeah, like, I mean, what get like, how will it get better? You know, because you've just peaked. And so I think that, I mean, I do think that there, there is a bigger conversation there around, okay, well, you know, you have people around you that you that is, it's nurturing, and it's a place where that's your home, and that's your safe place, and, you know, as long as they're good, then everything else is is going to work out and be fine. I think there's that. But, you know, some people do take it pretty far. I mean, if you go to the moon, you come back, then what's next? Yeah. So, I mean, that's a really extreme example, but I think it goes along the same lines.

It does, yeah, when you, when you invest in other people in the community, when you watch someone grow, you can just see them grow, and you see as they grow, it's, it's a lot more fulfilling, like you said, yeah, no, absolutely, for sure. So true. So you have a marketing company yourself. What's the best thing you found for companies that really excel?

Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question, only because it's something that is, it's done wrong a lot, in my opinion, and what's done wrong, the small parts of marketing that people do, the things that actually make a difference, right? And so what my answer to that would be is people forget the story. They focus too much on the product, on the service, and they forget that there's a lot of different people who offer those same products and services. But what. Certain people don't have is the story. And so if people focused more on their story, I think that they would get so much further along, so much quicker. Because again, like you have a great story. I mean, I'm sure that there's lots of pains and and heartaches and struggles along the way, just as every business owner has faced. However, most business owners and most businesses like to focus on just the highlights. Focus on just the good things, all the success, not the failure. And I think that for like, to inspire other entrepreneurs, I would never have done this whole thing if it wasn't, if it wasn't for me, hearing stories about failure, yeah, because the moment you you come across, like, that's that little bit of failure, and you don't know it's coming, or you don't realize that that's part of the game. You're gonna be like, Whoa, that's that's not for me. You know, instead, you're gonna be like, No, this is what this is. I expected this. I anticipated this to happen. I now I know I just need to overcome it. So as far as businesses, small things that they can do, that was the question, right? Okay, so small things that businesses can do, something that costs no money, something that they can easily do right now, right is to take out their cell phone, put it on themselves and talk about their story. That is an incredibly underrated thing that most businesses do not do. Yeah, and there's a lot of things that there's a lot of reasons why people don't do that number. I personally think that the biggest reason why people don't do that is insecurity. Yeah, I agree. Is that they when they see their when they see themselves on the other side of the phone, they're like, you, I'm not doing this. Yeah? They don't like the way they look, they don't like the way they sound, they just don't like any of it. So they don't do it. Yeah, right. Then the other aspect is, is not understanding what it can do. They're like, well, if I just make videos, then my business will grow. The simple answer is yes. The more complicated answer is yes. But here's all the things that there's variables to it, right? Variables like, do you, are you able to communicate? Well, are you good communicator? Or do you, like, stumble all over the place? Do you, can you not finish a sentence? Yeah, you know, I'm like that. Sometimes I just cannot finish a sentence. Now, if you are that kind of person who struggles to do that written text, right? Write out your story. People love to read. There are some people who love reading and some people who would rather do anything else than read. So like, that's why there's great. That's why platforms are great. Like, Facebook is a great place to write things out, you know, because there's an older demographic on Facebook that would probably rather read than listen to or watch a video that has rap music and types things, right? Tiktok, maybe YouTube shorts, maybe Instagram reels. It's gonna be a different demographic. So to come back to the question, if you are a business owner, if you own a business that you want to grow and you don't want to break the bank doing so, then start telling your story. How did you start a coffee shop? How did you start this nightscaping business? How did you start a media company? How did you get your doctor practice up and running? How is it this great success? How did you do those things? Start telling the story and the good and the bad?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it is crazy. Like, think about, I love having this conversation, because it's it number one, it's not talked about that often, yeah, for sure, usually it's just out, here's how I got to this place, but you don't get the whole story as to how somebody got there. And so, you know, for me, that was a that was a huge thing for me, early on, was just talking to people. That's another thing is, is like, talk to other people who have done something that you would like to do. And so that's

a that's the biggest thing in my business. I did not do only

because they are they, they fear what somebody will think of them if they reach out. Right? So, for example, like, if I have somebody in my life, or if I have somebody who I see, wow, that person's killing it. In the media space, in the branding space, they have an agency that looks like it's killing it. And I'm like, I should reach out to them, because I know in my business, there are certain areas that I struggle in. I should reach out to them say, Hey, how did you overcome these challenges? How did you get through these little issues that you had? Yeah, because that's why I don't. I think that that is the thing that will get you along faster, but something that nobody ever does because they don't want the humility. They don't want to have the humility to say, hey, I don't know how to do this. Will you show me? They want to. They want everybody know that they have it all figured out, right? And I say that with such confidence, because that has been me over and over and over. I'm like, especially as an early entrepreneur, like, I was like, I want to make sure that from the get right out of the gates, people think I am just the most successful person, yeah, in this space, right? And the reality is, is, like, everybody knows you're not. Yeah, you're early on. And so, like, for me, it's like, okay, well, if I don't, if I know I don't know everything, then I'm gonna I need to have the humility to say I'm going to be the person who asks the most questions, so that I get to be the person who is the most educated in as many areas of my life as possible. Because if you don't ask, you'll never know. You'll just always be the person who pretends they know. I don't want to be that person. You're not going to grow, right? So I had a

point. I had the other day. You know, this winter is kind of unique. And I was talking to my competitor, and I was talking about business, and I go, how are you that we're busy? We're doing good. He goes, how about you? I said, Man, we're slow. I mean, we're not, I mean, we're barely we're out about one or two days. And he put his head down. He was, yeah, I'm completely dead. I leave my guys off. I didn't want to tell you, I'm, like, just be open. Like, why not just like, see and I just told him, like, Hey, I'm not going to be too proudful to tell you that we're barely have enough work to get by. And he ended up putting his head down, saying, I'd send that two guys off. It's like, that's the reality, though, yeah, his reality. But it

only, it only that, only was that only came out because you were transparent and had enough humility to say, well, you know, even from somebody who just got done saying, Well, we're so busy, we're this, you're like, Well, you know, we're struggling, we're here, we're there, we're not as we're not as busy as we would like. And then that is the thing that says, Dan, okay, well, I'm gonna be honest, yeah.

And the point is, just everybody goes to these struggles, every business has these highs and lows, yeah. I also used to be like, Why? Don't want to ask them, because, I know something, I don't want to tell them about business. It's like, like, the last one, if, if I can make them better, we're both better, yep. So why hide a gatekeeper? What you learn? Yeah? Gatekeep

the information. Yeah. Man, that's a big one too. Like, that's a tough one. But at the same time, it's exactly I mean, I think that's a mentality thing. I think if you're the kind of person that's like, Well, I'm gonna gatekeep all the information, I'm not gonna share with anyone, then I think that you're probably insecure. And again, I think every This goes for everyone, everyone I think has gone through this, is going through this, whatever the case. But I think if you are that person, and you're probably insecure about the success of your business in the first place. If you're the other person that's like, here's all, here's everything that I know, yeah, I'm going to give it to you. Then you're confident in the fact that, no matter what, you're going to go get yours, yep, like you're going to, you're going to achieve your level of success no matter what. Yeah, because you're just that confident, oh, you're just that much of a maniac when it comes to your business, you know? And so, you know, I just think that that's a huge differentiating factor when it comes to businesses, is, are you more of a maniac than your competitor? It just really does come down. Are you that? Are you? Are you crazy? Are you a crazy person? Yeah,

I love challenges. I thrive on challenges that motivates me.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that's why you're doing this, right? Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right this conversation around you're not a podcaster, that's right. I'm not a podcaster, but we have podcasts to do our best to spread the message as far and wide as possible, yeah, to

spread the message to coach and teach and so our big thing is education customers from turf to everything they want to know, and we're going to break that down as the time goes on to educate them and they can relay this message. Hopefully it's huge helpful and benefit that they understand the challenges of life and they're not alone. We're there with them. Yeah, I love that. So Bo, like all your experience at that and other businesses. What were some of the big marketing things that you've done or helped a business to go to the next leviating stories of taking up, I know this is off the cuff, but taking a company to the next level that you've seen happen?

Yeah, yeah. So I have two really good stories that I always like talking about, you know, as the one was a coffee shop, and one was a dentist, and both I still work really closely with. I'll start with the dentist. So there I was working with this dentist, telling the story, right? Talking about his story, talking about certain things that are in his field, certain things that make his business different. And then we just kept doing that. We added some funny, humorous stuff as well, some serious stuff as well. And he actually had a family come to him and say, Hey, we are switching dentists to come to you. And the reason we are doing that is because my kids want to go to the famous dentist. Wow.

We made him famous our social media.

So really. Yeah, obviously, he's not famous, yeah, you know. But the perspective, the perception, was that he's out there. He has this big brand. He's this person all the time. He's the person that they see on the screen. And so, you know, that made him famous in that family. That's cool, you know. And so they, that was the reason that they, they completely switched, you know? And he went to him, the other one with the coffee shop. This was really cool. So it's really hard in hospitality to track and really analyze, Okay, where is business coming from, right? That's the biggest thing when it comes to social media marketing, right? That's the biggest question is, what is the return on my investment with social media. And I'm not going to lie, it is a challenge tracking that, because it's like, well, what do you expect? I mean, do you do you think that people are going to come in and say, I'm and announce that they're here because of social media? It's not going to happen. So there are certain ways that you can make happen, but with this particular case, that's that is exactly what happened. There was, and this for some reason, just like, I say for some reason, like, where they're doing a good job. We're doing a good job with this place the over and over, like, weekend after weekend, there's a group of girls or a group of friends, or whatever, come from Phoenix, and they go to this coffee shop and they, they say, when they get there, like, they'll talk to a barista, they'll talk to the owner, and say, and pull up videos, really, and say, you know, we had to come try it like we love watching your stuff, you know. And a lot of it is, is humorous. A lot of it is, is funny. Some of its storytelling. It kind of depends on the brand, how deep you go into the story. Sometimes you just go deeper into the people, right? You just, like, really dive into the people at that particular business. And so that was another really cool one is that we just keep getting these, these little groups of audiences coming from Phoenix, and it's always from Phoenix. For some reason, it's like, never, like, we're from Chino, and we decided to pop in, and we're from Flagstaff, we decided about it really always, you know, people from Phoenix, and then on the back end of social, you can kind of look at the analytics and say, Okay, well, where, where are the people that we're reaching? And you can it breaks it down by state or by city. So like, you'll see that some people are coming from Gilbert, from Phoenix, from, you know, Prescott, obviously, if we're in Prescott, but you're able to see, like, yeah, actually, it's kind of crazy. Phoenix is the number one group of people that we're reaching, even over press get for that particular business. And so those are two, I mean, I have a bunch of different really cool stories and stuff, but those are two that, you know, kind of stand out.

That's cool, that's cool. No, it's social media is a new I mean, it's been around a bit, but it's getting bigger, and a lot of it is educating people and understanding what they have that they need. I think they need. I also think another thing

too, that's been kind of interesting. To watch happen is that the the more you talk about the business, the more blind the business becomes. Now let me just explain so the more you talk about the fact that you have coffee, the less people are going to be interested in the coffee. The more you talk about, like, pretty much anything else, or it doesn't really have to be talking, the more content that you create. That's not saying, Come buy my coffee. Oh yeah. People know you want them to buy your coffee. Yeah? Like you're the owner. You're talking about it. They know you want them to come right? So now it's like, well, how do we make it to where they they want to be a part of that, a culture of that is where I want to spend my time. That's where I want to spend my money. I know those people. I trust those people. Yeah, I relate to those people on some level. And here's the big thing too, is like, you will never reach everyone. Yeah? Like, you know, somebody may be watching this podcast, somebody may be watching a piece of content that's like, That is the stupidest thing I've ever seen, and that's okay, the faster you can weed out those people, yeah, from your brand, and for better you are, the better Yeah, talk to the people that that you're going to resonate with the most, and yeah, and forget the rest.

That says for sure. So anyway, I appreciate it. Bo It was great. Touching up with you, catching up again. Thanks again. Yeah,

thank you for having me on.