We were lucky to catch up with Cody Simpson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Cody, appreciate you joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
I learned by diving head first into an industry I had interest in, and worked full time 6 days/week for 5 years to get as much experience and knowledge as possible. This fast-tracked my improvement and skills in design and sales, and helped me build confidence with myself and trust with my clients at a much more efficient rate. If I could have changed this process to get me rolling even quicker, I would have taken sales courses and seminars sooner than later. Experience diving into a field is great, but taking the time to get some ideas that can get you organized and improve your skills in a short period of time with some studying is always essential for growth. The main skill in any industry is always selling your product. Sales is a factor in every part of life. In your relationship, your job, or even when YOU are the buyer, skills in sales is absolutely necessary. Sales gets a bad wrap, mainly due to all the very sleazy “salespeople” out there. People are afraid to get into a sales-only type job or project because of this viewpoint from others, but when it comes down to it, a real pro salesperson is not saying those things that push people away: “Buy today! Big discount by 3pm!” etc… The most essential part in sales is that you believe in your product and you have experience with it and its attributes. Those are the required foundation to having a natural sales pitch and gaining the ability to build trust with someone. Real salespeople can get a person to sell the product to themselves, and their clients don’t feel uncomfortable through the whole process (I’m sure you’re imagining a car dealership). If you have confidence in your product, you’re honest with your clients, and you communicate in a straightforward manner about all the attributes your product offers and the reasons WHY it is significantly better than others, you can maintain a smooth, minimally stressful, and high paying sales position. In essence, don’t try shortcuts. They don’t work. Learn the craft, love your product, and have honest conversations with people. Being funny helps too.
Cody, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My name is Cody Simpson and I’ve been in the landscaping design/consulting business for about 7 years now, gaining a massive amount of experience in a short period of time. When I was about 20 (I’m 31 now), I was down at the bottom of a dwindling spiral, and figured it was time for a change. I started trying out new fields that interested me, and finally stumbled upon landscaping. I joined a friend of mine’s company and went around with him bidding jobs and checking in on them. I then joined a large company and maintained a large schedule for several years, gaining a lot of experience. I now am at a smaller company where I have massive amounts of schedule freedom, and I run all the marketing as well, which I’ve gotten proficient at. I essentially pull in leads primarily from Google and Yelp, and we have our clients fill out an in depth form on our website to request an on-site assessment. This helps to get rid of bots, and also ensures that only people who are serious about their project and are serious about working with a high-end team for a high-end product are the ones who end up with an assessment. This saves time for people who aren’t interested in paying more for a better product, and it saves loads of time for our team, of course. Our website also includes plenty of articles regarding landscaping, before and after photos and videos, our team, our process, etc. Once they fill out the form, all leads go directly to me to review their submitted information and schedule an assessment. I also send each client who fills out the form links to all our educational landscaping videos, which can be found on Youtube. We specialize in drought-resistant landscaping (implied), interlocking pavers, artificial turf, concrete, fencing, walls, etc. Our primary goal is to replace all unnecessary front yard grass lawns with beautiful, ecological xeriscapes, but we also love working with hardscape materials. Regarding back yards, we focus a lot on creating maximum USABLE space for our clients, with a healthy perimeter of beautiful plants and accents. What sets us apart from all other teams in Los Angeles is the over-and-above process and product we provide. We are building trust from the very beginning with our detailed form that asked many relevant questions, showing that we care about the details of all projects. Then, we educate people with our website and educational course to build more reality with them. From there, we are extremely detail-oriented at our initial consultation, and we are very prompt in providing the initial quote (usually same day). Once signed up, we can usually do a walk-through with our Production team to get everything scheduled and to turn over the project promptly and with a design, then the project is scheduled. The Production team works up to 6 days per week full time until it’s prompt completion, and we never leave a property until full satisfaction, thoroughly communicating any issues or Change Orders if and as they come up, so there are never any real, shocking surprises. Our process is so smooth, people are just delighted through their whole project pretty much every single time. It’s a bit mindblowing.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
At one point in my career, I realized I was a bit stuck. I had a massive backlog of nonstop, continual estimates to send, I wasn’t organized or trying to be, and I wasn’t really moving in any particular good direction. I saw this type of attitude in some of my coworkers as well, and noticed that this type of performance was very regular in many different fields. It’s a very generally “agreed upon” viewpoint: to hate your job, to struggle, to complain about people, and to not do anything about any of it. I felt I’d had enough of acting like “everyone else”, and decided to buckle down. I started by organizing. I organized, organized, organized. Everything from my estimates to my follow up to folders on my computer to my Emails. I organized it all and just made it all much easier to look at. Once I made this decision to really put in the WORK to organize everything I deal with, everything started to change. I started exploding in sales, and I just felt WAY better about my job. Having a nice, clean inbox every day is a VERY nice feeling. I’d say that’s the biggest thing that actually changed my entire life, when I decided to be the guy who obsessively organizes everything. That comes with some real responsibility, but it’s a promise to myself I will never let go of: to be the guy who organizes everything. What a breath of fresh air it is to be in charge of your job and your life. Things are suddenly no longer someone else’s fault, and they are suddenly something you can handle!
Any advice for managing a team?
Get those organizational systems fine-tuned and implemented EVERYWHERE. Every single person should have statistic graphs to maintain that shows their primary product on a weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis. This is a FUN thing to do for people who actually care, and a nightmare for people who don’t. So easy to weed out the careless simply by making them keep stats. It also shows what kind of resilience they have when they aren’t producing well and seeing how they handle it. This alone is huge, along with simple organization of clients in a CRM, keeping quotes and things like that sent out quickly, maintaining good reviews with excellent service, etc. Every industry needs their own kind of organizational systems, but if you don’t have any at all, you will never expand at the rate you want to. Just like for me, if you are a person who wants to succeed, staying organized and always productive, and playing games and creating targets and goals; these are the things that will keep a high morale team, and also the ways you can weed out the ones who don’t want the team to do well.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://droughtscapela.com
- Instagram: @droughtscape
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DroughtscapeLA/videos
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/droughtscape-la-canada-flintridge-2
Image Credits
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