Son buys Dad’s business. What happens next is amazing.

Tim

What about up a tree?

Glenn

They’re generally snakes and possums in trees, mate.

Tim

Right. So what’s the reaction when you come face to face with a Joe black?

Glenn

Well, it’s been a while. It’s been a while since I’ve been up on a tree but generally, we’ll spot it before we get up there. We have guys to come and grab me out. So…

Tim

Alright, mate. Let’s talk about the less serious stuff. Now, your dad started the business 30 years ago from what I understand.

Glenn

Yeah.

Tim

And then in 2002, you returned as a young whippersnapper from overseas and decided to transform the business. What was wrong with it?

Glenn

Well, there was probably a lot wrong with it coming outside and looking in. Dad pretty much wind down the business to a $1,200 a week enterprise. It was bad wages for him and it drove him out of the house and he was happy doing that. So when I got back from the UK, I’ve sort of said to him, “Look, I would like to get back into the family business” because I’ve been doing it since I was 12.” So he said, “Yeah, let’s go for it.” So when I got back, I was horrified to see they’ve given away all those contracts and it was just doing ma and pa stuff in backyards. So when I got back, I coughed up a bit of a shock and had to go straight into tools and start the business from scratch from about that time.

Tim

Did you come back from traveling for overseas with the intention of working in the business for the rest of your life?

Glenn

No. I took a 5 year hiatus and I didn’t really think too much about coming back because I’ve worked it in all my life and as far as I was concerned, I’ve done that path and I wanted to move forward but the longer I was away, I had this yearning to come back and be a part of the family business and to get back and find my love for trees. So, it was kind of bizarre. I didn’t start of thinking at my bed, here I am.

Tim

So, the idea of transforming the business like your old man’s running it because it was a way to get him out of the house. You want to transform it, how’d that go down with your dad?

Glenn

Oh, terrible. So for the first 4 years, until that 2006, I was a silent, silent, silent partner. I was very much just, “no this is not the way. We need to go this way, and this is how it’s been done forever and ever.” I kept pushing the point and we had robust discussions and it was one particular day and Dad said, “Look, we don’t have any work. I‘ve got no quotes. I don’t know what we’re going to do.” And I said, “Well, look, how about you give me your pager and you phone, go have a cup of coffee and I’ll sort it out.” From taking his phone, I managed to book 3 weeks’ worth of work and 2 weeks’ worth of quotes because he was so overwhelmed by where he got to in business, he couldn’t see straight, so…

Tim

or where he hadn’t got to.

Glenn

or where he hadn’t got to, so I guess, looking back at what dad was doing, he was providing for the family for a certain outcome. He wasn’t looking it as a business that would go forward and have up to 8 or 10 staff working for him and sort of making a name in the industry. He was just looking at paying the bills.

Tim

2 very different goals. It serves a purpose for him and it done what I needed to up to a point.

Glenn

Yeah.

Tim

But now, you were kind of seeing at as a much bigger picture and in fact, interestingly enough, before he hit record, you even drop the word franchising which we’ll touch on later but you know, you’ve clearly come in to, you know, whether you want to build it. Do you want to build an empire?

Glenn

I definitely like to have a north and a south. I don’t know if I’d like to have an empire but I definitely like to see this cover all of Brisbane, absolutely. Not just stretched with one crew, I’d like to see many, many crews or even a separate franchise on one side of town.

Tim

What did you start putting in place, Glenn, when you said to your old man, “Look, I’m going to turn this ship around.” What did you start putting in place?

Glenn

Mate, I’m sitting in the exact chair where it happened in.

Tim

Really? Can you feel the vibe?

Glenn

I’ve got the vibe. It’s back. It’s back. So, I said to dad, “Look, I’ve got to go and buy a whiteboard. There’s no way I can do this because I’m very, very visual.”

Tim

Listen, I was talking to a mate only this week who said the per square meter with your whiteboard you have has a direct relationship to the success of your business.

Glenn

Well, I’ll tell you how it happened. I said to Dad, “I don’t know how to do this,” because Dad was using different numbered quote books and there was no numerical order of anything. We didn’t have a database, we didn’t have anything. We’re as bad sometimes as people that would just writing on receipts, you know, like in just in doing that way.

Tim

Yeah.

Glenn

So I said to Dad, “First of all, we’re going to get this whiteboard.” So I put the whiteboard up and I wrote Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and put all the working with tallying. Then I worked out an Excel spreadsheet and we just start recording all the quotes and all the rest of it. The worst part was trying to get the quotes to him because he didn’t want to help, he didn’t want to listen. He said, “How are you going to do it?” well, anyway, so what was really apparent right from that moment was setting out role descriptions for the directives. So, I sat down with my wife and we worked out exactly what roles my dad and I have in the business, a moderate change from being a leading hand on the crew to the actual marketer, phone girl, job distributor, complaint angular and money-taker all at once. So we write out these role descriptions and I was able to get Dad doing what he did best and that was selling and people. He was marvelous at it. He was just phenomenal. Once we got that in store, that in the whiteboard, it was incredible.

Tim

During this time, you talked about robust relationship with your dad. What was the relationship like? I mean, I don’t want to sort of pry but I think in order to understand this dynamic like you had a good relationship with your old man growing up?

Glenn

Yeah.

Tim

Yeah?

Glenn

Look, I guess for me, Dad was very working cause as long as I can remember. He was always telling me how he worked as a 15-year old with his brother’s ID so he keeps getting 19-year old wages and all sort to carry on and so from a very, very early age, it was instilled in me to work hard to get to where you want to go. So, my relationship with my dad really stem from work, so from about 12 was about the time I started cutting firewood with him and I developed this relationship. There’s only 17 years difference between him and I so we became more like brothers, you could say, than father and son while we’re at work and then, you know, and now I think was some of the hardest things for Dad too because he was such a good tradesman and a good salesman. Where he lacked was the foresight to go forward, just to get to the next step.

Tim

This is, by the way, pretty common. What we’re hearing, what he happened to do was at the age of 17, be responsible for bringing a bloke in the world, i.e. you, who’s only retentive, ambitious and  wants to build something.

Glenn

Right. Well, accidentally. To give you another idea, at the age of 16, I was nearly 90 kilos and I was built like the son of the house and I worked at the level of a 21-year old. I could make tradesmen look stupid at 16.

Tim

It was 90 kilos, Glenn, of meat pies and sausage rolls or of pure muscle?

Glenn

Of pure muscle, 6 feet 2, 90 kilos. Now, I’m a little bit.

Tim

A mean lean chopping machine.

Glenn

A little chubby at these days.

Tim

Right. Join the club.

Glenn:  So the relationship with him was good. It was tough because we expected a lot from each other and our work ethics was incredible. To give you one other idea, Tim, before I left his side, there was only 3 of us working. It was Dad, a mate of mine and me and we were turning over huge amounts of work and then now, I’ve got 5 guys that work for me on crew and they are like probably processing another $1,500 a day more than what we were as a 3-man crew. I guess, this goes to show, on operators, you adjust, you sweat it out. You make it work. You make it every dollar count.

Tim

And therein lies the conundrum of every small business owner of how to replace myself because I do it best, I go it to where it is day, the whole reason the business is turning over whatever it is turning over is because I did it. It’s like geez, how do you find others?

Glenn:  That’s exactly right. When you find them, you got to keep them and you got to make sure that they understand your goals and your objectives and you just got to make sure that they’re in for the long haul.

Tim

We’ll talk about stuff retention shortly, Glenn, because I know you’re big on it. Just finish in that conversation with your old man, did you ever punch on?

Glenn:  There was once when I hit the side of the truck and for many years to come, I used to, when I get inductions from my staff, I’d say, “If you kick it up, that’s what’s going to happen to you.” And it was an imprint of 41 knuckles inside the door.

Tim

Oww…

Glenn

But Dad and I never ever fought because we were always get frustrated with each other but at the end of the day, my job on crew was to make sure that he stays alive because I was the rope, I was the rigger, I was the guy at the ground. So, the respect between both of us was always unspoken and it was typical father-son. He would tell everyone how much he loves me and then yell at me the next corner and say, “You’re not doing the job properly,” but the respect there between the two of us was immense.

Tim

Welcome to parenthood. What I understand, I’m trying to kind of figure it out the flow of things here, Glenn. In 2011, your old man put the business up for sale but didn’t get any takers so you bought it. Is that right?

Glenn

Yeah, basically Dad wanted to get out, he had enough. He had enough of stuff and…

Tim

So, it was still his business, you’d come in, made a whole lot of changes, it was doing better but…

Glenn

Yeah.

Tim

Why didn’t he just give it to you?

Glenn

Well, that’s what actually happened. I was a silent partner, I own half the gear. There wasn’t a written partnership agreement but I own half of everything and we just split everything down the middle. When we come to decide that we want to sell the business, because I was a part of that. I said to Dad, “Yeah, look, I want to move on. I want to move up the coast and move up in… This is great, let’s sell it.” But the closer we got to selling it, I could see all its potential and all the stuff that I’ve done from 2007 I think have really kicked in hard. I thought, I don’t want to let this go because there’s so much more to do and I had this plan of going paperless and automating everything through iPads and then doing all this other stuff so I said to Dad, “Look, I’ll take on basically all the debt and you just sign it all over to me and I’ll go forward and I’ll employ your for 3 days a week selling and then when you’re ready go to 2, then go to 1 and then just happy days.” That was the idea but Dad got really sick at the end of 2012 and since has left but that was sad that he had to leave but it’s still come a long way since.

Tim

Left the business right so he kind of just had enough. He’s now in retirement, is he?

Glenn

Yeah. He’s plowed along, doing bits and pieces. He started another business in professional art hanging but that’s another story for another day.

Tim

Thought you’re going to say he started another tree business just to get off your nose.

 

Glenn

No, no…

Tim

Love it, mate. That’s a very interesting insight and thank you for that, into a family business discussion we haven’t had a lot on this show so I think that’s really interesting. What’s the key learning from that, from going into business with your old man?

Glenn

Oh, god, there’s so many. I think if anyone’s going to start on a family business. You both got to contribute in 100%. If you both haven’t got a similar goal, so even though Dad and I have different attitudes toward to what we’re doing, we both had the same goal and that was to try and deliver the best service we could at the ability that we have at that time. So, if you’re going to go into partnership or in your family business, you both have to have the same goal or it will not work.

Tim

Can I add to that? And I guess it’s all partnerships but communication…

Glenn

Most definitely.

Tim

Open communication, honest communication.

Glenn

Yeah, and that was really interesting because whenever we’re having our monthly meetings, if I said something at the monthly meeting that my parents didn’t like, we would nearly have a family argument. So, we introduced my wife to come in and facilitate the meeting and she’s a professional in her own right and she holds the group meetings so there was no silly goings on including for myself so we’re able to speak really, really, sharp and succinctly and go “right this from a business point of view has to happen” and along would be joining the same. So many meetings just went completely off track into a completely different area because no one was there to actually man it.

Tim

Interesting. Listeners, I’m talking to Glenn Walton who is the owner of Brisbane Tree Experts and it’s been a great discussion so far on starting a family business and building a family business, and now I want to move in, Glenn, to talking about how you’ve gone about marketing Brisbane Tree Experts going forward because you’re doing some pretty fancy stuff and some of these results that I’m seeing, you instigated an SEO strategy that saved 30 grand a year?

Glenn

Yeah.

Tim

I want to hear about that. You instigated a website revamp that resulted in 860% increase in web traffic in the first 12 months. That’s a good number, my friend! But first, one of the things you did was a rebrand, so how many businesses, this is interesting, rebrands often don’t happen, you see people just going with the same visual identity for many, many years, what did you do?

Glenn

The company was always known as being a large tree removal company and in the industry, we call each other, coming from that background with no education in the industry logger stock and when we’re very much, guys would come in and sort the trees out, get rid of them and do whatever. Part of the rebranding was is that we wanted to change our corporate and social responsibility into a green one. So, my father was horrified when I told him because…

Tim

Bloody tree huggers

Glenn

Well, look, you know when you look at the figures, we still cut at around about 75% of removal work and unfortunately for us, it’s just the way people are intricate about their trees. Our challenge is to educate them about their trees so that we’re not removing, which is another story for another day. So, when it came to rebranding, we got a graphic designer to look at the brand, at the logo funk it up if you like. It looks great. We actually bought the font that goes along with it so we’ve got our own individualized font. It’s still the same logo that we had but it just looks a lot nicer and a lot cleaner. We took the website from being traditionally boring and just about trees and just about what we can do for people and showed of the features and maybe not the benefits of using us.

Tim

Okay, so that website revamp was very imminent, it’s incredible– are you probably operating a relatively low base but still, an 860% increase in web traffic. What do you reckon of all the things you did on the website, what was the major thing that contributed to that increase?

Glenn

I think we’ve simplified it and we’re able to deliver and identify immediate information. It was like people when they are coming to look for a tree company, they are buying now. They’re not looking at our website kind of “aren’t they great, those guys. We could use them one day,” that’s further from the case. When you’re reading around to get a tree care guy,

Tim

You’re ready.

Glenn

You are ready, your money’s hot, your credit cards and your wallet, you’ll be spending. And there’s a couple of change that we only implemented recently as well on the website alone. We’ve got a corporate video on there now and we’ve got a call to action by alone on the phone. We’ve got buy-in pages for March and different products and stuff.

Tim

Let’s just start to dissect those. The corporate video is excellent, I call them a video business card or a mini business documentary, which I think yours got some real emotion to it. It’s excellent and it’s a real story telling. That got down locally I guess, where the idea for that come from?

Glenn

Yeah, a guy from Sydney.

Tim

From Sydney? Okay, you flew him up to your joint?

Glenn

No. He was on holidays in Barrow and all was filmed in Barrow Bay.

Tim

Beautiful.

Glenn

So, we met in halfway. Had lovely day with him, had lunch and the video.

Tim

You’ve got that on your website. I’ve seen in on YouTube. It has a few hundred views, how do you use it? Do you actively include it on emails to prospects? What else do you do with it?

Glenn

We definitely use it when we’re doing more commercial in corporate work. Absolutely, so we would flip that on as a link for them to watch. I direct people to the website constantly. It’s the first thing that comes out of my mouth, “You don’t believe me? Go to the website.” Now, it’s my website but you’d be surprised how many people go to our website after talking to them and they will buy immediately after they watched the first 3 minutes of that film.

Tim

Yup.

Glenn

And I get the calls. I get “We loved your website. We loved your video. We want to use you.” And the way that we’ve done this, we got the video there and we’ve got the call to action right next to it, so we’re getting the majority of the hits off the front page of our website. We did it in the first, 2 or 3 minutes.

Tim

What do you call the call to action? I’m looking at your site now. Do you mean that get in touch form?

Glenn

Get in touch. Yes, it’s the get in touch form.

Tim

Right. Okay, so–

Glenn

I hate the fact that it’s called the getting in touch form.

Tim

Yeah, I would have thought you have a probably stronger call to action I know. A guest a couple of weeks ago from Health, the owner of health.com.au, a private health insurance company; it’s really important to them. They call to action and it’s basically get a quote, request a quote, I think it was. Tell me, those forms, I see them in a lot of websites, if I was to fill that form right now and hit submit, how long before I get a phone call from someone?

Glenn

Within the day. If it’s after our working hours, you’ll get it the next day. My PA who’s natural, she works out of her house about 60Ks away and part of her job obviously is to go through all of those emails and respond to them. So not only do you get an email back saying thank you but you also get a copy of our eBook. The eBook gives you 11 questions to ask tradesman, tree working tradesman or tree care worker tradesman when they come to your door. So it’s just something to prequalify the guys that they thought they have out or getting out and even for us, they could say, “Well, in your book with it said…” and we’ll go, “Well, actually, yeah, this is my next point, he would go,” and we go from there.

Tim

Mate, I love that. I can’t see that booklet on the website. You’re keeping that dry until someone makes an inquiry.

Glenn

Yeah. It’s an added value. We do have it as link.

Tim

Yep.

Glenn

No one except for family and friends read it.

Tim

Can I suggest, I would have thought with the right headline, the right call to action that that would be a good thing to give away upfront and the headline would be something like, “Don’t book a tree lopper until you’ve read this.”

Glenn

We have thinking about how to get it out because again, it’s a waste of–

Tim

Yeah. Absolutely, that’s a kind of thing you want to get out far and wide and you would calls-to-action littered it through it. Yeah, now I’d be ordering, I think that one, because it’s such a great idea having it.

Glenn

We tried it. I think that the success of the video and our slides are very important to us as well, like we have a big slide about at the top and it highlights our monthly specials, what we specialize in, awards that we’ve won and all rest of it, and of course this is all of Drupal system so I have full control of my website…

Tim

Drupal being that content management system.

Glenn

It’s true, yeah, correct. So I’ve got full managing rights to this website and everything seen on it, that see now up in the link, all that’s my work.

Tim

You’re very proud of that. You’ve said that with your chest exposed, I think.

Glenn

Exposed.

Tim

Tell me. Well, here we go. You could be proud of this one, your SEO strategy and it’s bloody good by the way. I’ve had a look at your page titles and your metadata and you have gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that Google know what every single page on your website is all about. Now, from what a little birdie tells me, your SEO strategy has, and I get a laugh out of this because listeners of my show who’ve been around for a long time will know my views on directory advertising, so your SEO strategy led to a reduction in your Yellow Pages ad from a full page to a one-eighth for the page, resulting in 30 grands per annum saving.

Glenn

I think your chest was out there.

Tim

Yeah, not quite. Well, I have nothing to do with that but I had a grin on the face as I read it because oh, mate, you know like it breaks my heart still when I come across businesses that are throwing good money after bad into marketing and not just directory advertising, although I think directories have got a lot to answer for, it’s just not working. Tell me more. How did the SEO thing come about and what did you do?

Glenn

Well, funny enough, I kept my full-page ad in the first year of trading because when Dad got sick, I panicked. I didn’t think I could do it all on my own and I thought, “Oh, I’ve got to hold on to the Yellow Pages,” silly, silly. At the very beginning, we had that full page for probably 3 or 4 years and we were generating 75% of our work from Yellow Pages so it was quite substantial.

Tim

This is early 2000s, I’m guessing?

Glenn

Yeah. We started to get the full-page ads around about 2006 or 7 and then we have them 4 or 5 years. I didn’t look into how long we had the full-page ad but it was responsible for 75% of our gross, so it was like, “Whoa!” It was a no-brainer for me to keep it. Then I started meeting some wonderful people from flying solo and other places that was suggesting to me to do a little bit more with my website, look at SEO strategies and AdWords campaigning, all that sort of things. Then when we started, after the first 12 months, we dropped the ads’ size to half a page. That was a 30-30-30 split. We had like 30% Yellow Pages, 30% online and then 30% of everything else; to today, we’re at 10% Yellow Pages, 70% online and 20% other.

Tim

Interesting. What are you spending on SEO? I suppose, because you’ve saved 30 grands on Yellow Pages.

Glenn

Yeah.

Tim

Did you paid someone to optimize your site?

Glenn

Originally, I did, yes. I think one of the most important things about your website is get a copywriter. Don’t mock around with it. Don’t even try and think that you can write. My copywriter, she is fantastic and I would spend probably the same amount of time I’m spending with you discussing what I want to come across and she just writes it in the most spectacular way.

Tim

Mate, you’ve read my mind. I think too many business owners try to write copy or they go and yell at the office “we need to add a new page on the website, who’s got time to write it?” It’s too important. It’s too important. People get carried away with, “Yeah, let’s get a website or let’s get on Facebook or let’s runs some ads,” but they aren’t spending time thinking about what they’re going to say and how they’re going to say it. Copywriter is that what they do, that’s their trade.

Glenn

She was responsible for the, Lion Writing is the woman that does my… listening to Lion, she’s fantastic. She’s a flying soloist. She, again wrote the whole website front to back, the eBook and a couple of my blogs, she’s helped me through those, to the point now where I’m starting to write good content for our blogs, you know.

Tim

I couldn’t actually find your blog. Ah, there it is. It’s under About Us, you’re hiding it.

Glenn

Yeah. Well, we’ve only just really started blogging in the last 6 months properly and we highlight the blogs through social media mainly and on the bottom of the emails.

Tim

I’ll give you a little, this one’s for free, Glenn, with your blogging and with a business like yours, it’s a no brainer, go and identify the 10 or 20 questions, the top questions that people have for you when they call you and answer every single one of those. Make the question the headline for the blog and answer that question within the blog post even if you think it’s only a really short, it’s only a one sentence answer, try make it a 200 or 300 word answer because Google like it a bit rich, big content but I would imagine, call me in 6 months once you’ve done it, I reckon you on some of those blog posts will start to generate thousands of dollars in…

Glenn

Are you online now?

Tim

I am.

Glenn

Then go to FAQ page.

Tim

This is an audio show by the way.

Glenn

Facts in questions. Yeah, Brisbanetradesman.com 36:00

Tim

Yeah, yeah, so you’ve got your FAQ, I saw your FAQs and listeners, I know you can’t see what we’re talking about but let me explain. So Glenn has just sent me to the FAQ part of his site where some of those key questions, those frequently asked questions are asked but Glenn, what you’ve done is just run them down the page. I would dedicate a page on your website to each of those frequently asked questions because then Google can index them individually and you’d probably see a lot more traction and them ranking better.

Glenn

Okay.

Tim

Anyway, this is not a consulting session, this is an interview!

Glenn

Thanks Tim, I like that.

Tim

Yeah, that’s right. Just come down, I live on an acre, you’ve got plenty gum trees everywhere so you can come down to start chopping. Tell me, mate, just to wrap up, finish up on your marketing. So, you’ve done some great branding. Love the website. Love the SEO strategy. Love the fact that you dropped your directory advertising because the opportunity cost there is huge. I think the other thing that you seem to be really kind of doing well is your AdWords, your Google AdWords.

Glenn

Yeah.

Tim

Is that really important to the business?

Glenn

It has been, yeah. We have an active AdWords campaigner. She’s my original virtual PA and she kept doing that once she left and so, I can ring her anytime so that when we want to explore this area, let’s go here, let’s go there. It’s pretty much on the spot. I can do it now.

Tim

Is she local or she’s like overseas?

Glenn

No, no, she’s local. All my PAs have been local but they don’t work anywhere near me. They’re always about 60K away.

Tim

Mate, you’re a forward thinker. You don’t have to have people on site, eyeballing them. You can get a whole more done. You kind of follow this philosophy I talked about at the virtual marketing team which is surrounding yourself with specialists which I love.

Glenn

There’s one other thing I fail to mention earlier, part of our marketing strategy was to get everything that we had, not physical, everything right in the cloud and some of the most important marketing strategies we’ve got would be our order-responding software. We use a product called Sign Up To and it does everything from social media, right through to SMS market and a whole lot and we have found out that’s been a really huge benefit to us in the last 6 months. We’ve only just scratched the surface of the potential of it so we’re reminding our clients every 7 or 8 months by when I respond from their last invoice that they need us to come back again have a look at their trees.

Tim

Love it. Buy any email and texts?

Glenn

Buy email now. I haven’t looked into text side of it at this stage because emails have been so working well but we do old school marketing as well Tim which is…

Tim

Heaven forbid.

Glenn

Yeah. We do 2 home shows a year.

Tim

You’re doing one now. Absolutely, mate. I jokingly say heaven forbid because getting that mix right amount; I’m not one to say online is everything. I think they work alongside each other absolutely beautifully. It’s incredible what you can do between the 2 of them and you’re clearly nailing that. At the home show, what’s your aim at the home show? I interviewed a lady Carmen from a gym in New York a few weeks ago and she does a lot of events. She does school events, information booths at local community events and her one aim is not to get a sign-up, it’s to get an email address or a mobile phone number.

Glenn

Exactly. We worked out really quickly that we cannot convince people that  their trees are important, standing with another $100 paperwork so we find a way to get them in whether it be balloons, a stump grinder there, or a picture of a helicopter pulling a tree out video, whatever it might be, and then discussing those points and we’ve set  up a capture software so that it is ready to see us as they follow so we’ve set it up in such a way  we get first name, last name, email or phone number then send it straight to the office and it populates straight into our system and then we go from there.

Tim

Love it, love it. Hey Glenn, out of interest mate, marketing is clearly important to you and so it bloody should be but how many hours a week would you speed on your marketing?

Glenn

I think about it every day, I guess. It’s full front for me, everything I do including uniforms, cars – the cars work phenomenal, the trucks, everything. To me, it’s about giving our clients the experience so I would suggest to you that I think about it non-stop.

Tim

And is it for you, is it a hobby?

Glenn

No, I just want to be that professional.

Tim

Yeah, but you love it. What I meant by hobby I mean you love it. It’s not a chore, it’s just something that you just can’t wait to get the Brisbane Tree Experts message out in some way, shape or form every day.

Glenn

I happen to be as well as the president of the Queensland Arboricultural Association and they can’t stand it when I say Brisbane Tree Experts. They just get sick of it because a lot of the stuff that we’re implementing in Brisbane Tree Experts, I’m trying to implement in the association

Tim

Right.

Glenn

It sounds better as well, so yeah, it is a hobby. I love it and I think that this style of marketing, this style of interaction and be proud of your brand and your brand is just everything.

Tim

It is. Mate, that’s music to my ear. What do you reckon you spend per annum on marketing?

Glenn

It’s probably still around that sort of 35 grand all, I think. It might even be a little bit more depending on if we do any of the old school stuff like pamphlet deliveries which we find people don’t really, really take them up anymore and especially with our business, people don’t respond to them as well as they used to because we’re not really backyard anymore. Yeah, I’d say between $35,000, maybe $40,000 at the worst year.

Tim

Love it, mate. Alright, listen Glenn, it’s a great story to be told on this show, the family saga that’s led to just the business going on to do greater things. The fact that you’ve embraced marketing in such a way that it is a hobby, you’re loving what you do, you’re measuring everything you’re doing, it’s all accountable, you’re seeing the results of what you’re doing. It’s such a good story, mate and there should be more of it. So, thanks so much for taking us behind the scenes. I was looking for a bit of a tree analogy there but, ‘taking us up the tree,’ but it wouldn’t really be that–

Glenn

I could go out on a limb for you.

Tim

Oh, there it is.

Glenn

or for someone else if you wanted.

Tim

Enough, enough. It’s starting to write itself. Glenn Walton of Brisbane Tree Experts, thanks for appearing on Small Business Big Marketing.

Glenn

Thank you, Timbo. I loved it. It was great.