Steve: Okay, well thank you for joining us, everybody. My name is Steve Grubbs. I am the founder of victorystore.com. And welcome to our victorystore.com yard decor university. Today, we have a very, very smart yard decor expert with us. We have Chris Ann Dale. Chris Ann, thank you for joining us. And you have flamingos to go. Is that right? 

Chris Ann: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I sure do. Thank you so much for having me on here. You know, I love to help in any way I can to share my experiences with our industry.

Steve: Wonderful. And now of all the people I've interviewed, I believe that you are our veteran in this... in this business long before others got into it. So, first...

Chris Ann: Maybe so.

Steve: Tell us first how long you've been doing this and...

Chris Ann: 21 years.

Steve: Okay. First, how long you've been doing it, and second, tell us how you got started that long ago?

Chris Ann: Okay, absolutely. 21 years, it'll be my 22^nd year come June. So, I can almost say 22 years. I got started because of a need in my community. And we did not have stork yard signs. We had one that was like an hour away from town, and we had a need in our community. So, what do you do when you're scrappy? And I wanted to stay home with my newborn baby instead of going out and putting him in daycare and getting a new job. We were new into our community. So, what do you do? You get scrappy. And this is what a lot of people have had to do in the... in the past year. So, I feel like it's a come full circle.

Steve: That's wonderful. And, you know what? What you hit on there is the first rule in being a business owner, find a need and fill it. And that's what you did. So, clearly, you started with flamingo flocking, which has its own sort of beast. And you have evolved into something much more sophisticated. So, tell us what your business looks like today.

Chris Ann: Absolutely. So, for anybody who doesn't know me, first of all, I want to thank everybody for tuning in. And thank you, Steve, for this opportunity. And like I said, I've been doing this for 21 years. And I'm in Houston, Texas, y'all. And let me just tell you, anybody, I bet you there's some Houstonians here. And I was the one and only yard card, yard greeting, lawn letter, flamingo stork business in the Houston area for about a decade. Things have changed and things have evolved. And it is phenomenal what's happened to our industry and how we've been put into the spotlight.

What I have done as well is I've become a mentor kind of by accident over the course of 21 years. And so, I've now also founded the yard card business network. And what we do there is we guide and help and mentor and serve any serious entrepreneur who wants to build a stronger and more successful business.

Steve: And how do they find the yard card business network?

Chris Ann: Sure. It's on our website. Our website (and I'll put this in the link if I can), it's yardcardbusinessnetwork.com. And somewhere in here, I'll also link to our Facebook page.

Steve: Well, and you know what we'll do is, when this is uploaded to YouTube, we will put that in the message. And so, Dustin will make sure that that happens. So, anybody who's listening to this right now, post the event on their podcast or on YouTube. They can just go directly to the YouTube page and see it right there. So, and what are the resources that you provide in your business network?

Chris Ann: Sure. Well, you know, one of the first things that we've done is we do a lot of different master classes, which is the trendy term now for trainings and workshops. And we have different resources where we do different printables. We are having guest experts that come in who this is their specialty and what they do. In fact, what we have coming up soon is a Facebook ads expert. And he specializes in local businesses, not just the general online businesses. And so, this guy, he really knows what he's doing. And he's helped a number of us before. So, we do virtual meetups.

And you know what's happened is, really, we have a lot of camaraderie. We have a lot of community with us. And we help each other. We have accountability buddies, that's kind of just happened naturally. And so, we just did a road map, business class, and that was great, where we're mapping out quarter 2, because we all know just how busy things are getting ready to get. So, we'd like to look at what's coming up in the industry and you know, see what we need. And then we pivot as we need to.

Steve: So, let's talk about the spring, because you know the way we view it, spring has several big occasions that if you’re a yard decor business, you need to prepare for. You have graduations. You have realtor home sales. You have Easter in spring. And then you have Mother's Day and Father's Day. Am I missing anything?

Chris Ann: I think you've hit it on the head. We also have Teacher Appreciation in there.

Steve: Yeah.

Chris Ann: And that's more of a week. And you know, this year, who knows how things are going to go? We didn't know what was going to happen last year either. But we're going to go with everything is phenomenal right now. And I like people. If I may, I just want to mention, you're doing a great job. And you just mentioned everything that should be on everybody's calendars right now. 

Steve: Yeah, you're right. And you have to think ahead, because the way I view it, you want to start marketing about 4 weeks in advance in whatever the marketing looks like, we're going to come to that in a little bit. But you want to start marketing for weeks in advance. You probably want to have a little bit of inventory ready to go, but then take a look at your mark. And, you know, what we are doing now for our customers something we couldn't do a year ago. But now if you need something, we ship it out next day, or within 2 days, and so it's going to show up at your door pretty quickly. So, talk to me a little bit. Have you ever done any realtor sales? Because it looks like realtor is one that started growing quite a bit last year. 

Chris Ann: Yes, I have. And I've done that for years. And, you know, what's funny is a lot of the things that are now coming up as looking new, we've done. And it's a really good testament to what happens with trying something over and over. Because just because you do something 10 years ago, doesn't... and if it wasn't, you know, a huge success, then doesn't mean it won't be a huge success now. Back in the day, realtors were like, “Why would you really want to put something in the yard?” And I had a few key realtors, that they are my clients. And when they had a new home closing, I was the one that would come out. And I would make sure that we had that done. And it's just like baby, those things can move. And so, you've really got to be, you know, flexible and be able to move your schedule anytime you want.

What has transitioned is sales, so that you're the one that helps provide the custom signs, such as something from victory, or your realtor. And so, it's real tricky these days between them wanting to go do it on their own, because everybody has the internet now, versus wanting to work with their local rental company. And it's building that relationship with them that I think is really key now more than ever.

Chris Ann: Yes. Yeah, that's good advice. And so, thinking about realtors, what is the best time for them to use yard decor services? Is it when they're having an open house? Is it to do something that, “Oh, this house is for sale,”? Or is it when they've closed on it? And they want to celebrate?

Steve: Yes, yes, and yes. Any and all of the above. I think it's a great housewarming gift, but it's also great for open houses. And, you know, the great thing is, when you look at the inventory that's needed for if you're doing letters and long letters, are the huge trend right now, so I'm picking on those. When you spell out open house and welcome home, a lot of those letters are interchangeable. And so, what would be a great set is something that had the additional letters with it, so that you could have welcome home or open house and make it interchangeable. And you've got a lot of the same pieces that you can use for everything.

And I think building that relationship with a realtor and letting them know, “Hey, you've got 4 open houses this month. Let's go ahead and get you on the books for let's say May,” you know, you've got to look at that schedule and fill up your schedule ahead of time, instead of just keeping your fingers crossed and hoping that the phone rings.

Steve: So, let me ask about selling to realtors. Do you know, one thing that seems easy to do is the realtors are generally on busier streets. So, can you just drive your car down the street and walk in and leave them a little flier? Or you call them or email them? How does that work?

Chris Ann: Simply this day and age, I would email them, because most of them are not working in an office. And that's not just because of COVID, it's also because they are generally out and about and they are not normally just sitting in their office, accepting people to come in. They’re normally just working with clients. And you might get to their assistant at a realtor’s office, but this day and age, I would create a relationship with them. Start with your community, literally your neighborhood, any of your friends of friends who would recommend a realtor. When you've got those connections, that's what's powerful.

Steve: And, you know, the great thing I love about real estate sales for yard decor companies is that it's recurring business. You know, ideally, a good realtor is going to sell 5 to 20 homes a year. And, so they might use you 5 to 20 times a year. And so, you know, suddenly, instead of bringing in a customer that might use you 1 to 2 times a year, well, that's 5x, 10x, whatever the case might be. So, that's your cost per acquisition, you can invest a little bit more time and money having a realtor as a customer than say somebody who's just going to do a birthday 1 time.

Chris Ann: Absolutely. And that's what's so vital about doing this and building up that relationship, and getting them in on what I'll call a package deal, where you go in and say, “Okay, so we're going to do,” you know, I'm going to pick a number here, but I'm going to say, “We're going to do 5 in the next 6 months.” And give them options, say, “Hey, you know what? We can have a plan that's for 5 or for 10. You can use it for open houses, or you can use it for new home buyers.” Because for you, the open houses are way better, because those are planned, versus, you know, like I said, when you have so many times, home closing will flip. And so, that one can be a little bit more of a challenge. But for the open houses, you do those all day long. If you can get a realtor and you want to offer package for 5 or an offer a package for 10, tell you what, they're going to go for the 10. Nowadays, if they know what you're doing, if they know you're going to take care of them, they are going to be your best friend.

Steve: Well, and on top of that, you look at how realtors are advertising these days. They’ll by a billboard, you know, some of them on... at least in my area, are on television, on cable. And so, they might be spending on that billboard $1,000 a month. Well, if they can spend $1,000 with you over 6 months and have 110 setups, and those setups...

Chris Ann: Absolutely.

Steve: And I keep coming back to this because I want people to think in these terms. You can go to your State Department of Transportation, you can download how much traffic goes by a particular road. So, if you have a road that has, let's say 10,000 drive-bys a day, that's 300,000 a month, 3 million in 10 months. So, let's say that you put up something for just 1 month, you can get 300,000 eyeballs on that. Even if it's some repeat eyeballs, that's fine. But your realtor, or you as a business are going to get a lot of exposure from that.

Chris Ann: 100%.

Steve: Let's move on to Mother's Day.

Chris Ann: Mm-hmm, Mother's Day.

Steve: (unclear) [12:45] Mother’s Day?

Chris Ann: Oh my gosh, Mother's Day has been busy when I want it to be busy. I learned about Mother's Day is, when I'm working, working, working, so my kids are now older where they are out of high school. And one’s in college and one’s in the Navy. And so, now I am a lot more gung-ho about giving up some of that time. I used to work nonstop for all of these holidays. And this is the thing that's not going to be popular for anybody to hear from me. Sometimes you just got to stop and pause and say, “What do you want to work? And what are you giving up from your family time?”

So, assuming you've got a plan, and you want to work Mother's Day and Father's Day, you know, any of these what I call 1-day special occasions, there's so much you can do for Mother's Day, and you can make it into a weekend. And that's what's great. You’ve got mothers, grandmothers, aunts, there's so many neighbors. I have a 75-year-old neighbor, I do something for Mother's Day for her, every year. And there's so much you can do in your current inventory for it. You don't have to go buy a ton. And you've got some great, very good priced inventory for Mother's Day.

Steve: Wonderful. Like to hear that. So, let me ask you about that whole thing about when you can work and when you don't work. Because that's an interesting topic. And I work a lot, but I enjoy working. What do you do? I know I think when you had kids, you would sometimes offload some of this on your children and pay them. It's a great way to learn a good work ethic. But tell me, what do you do now, do you do it all yourself or do you have some people who might help you out?

Chris Ann: I have a team, and I've had a team off and on for 15 years. All depends on the state of the economy. And my kids have always helped me. Once one of them was able to drive, that helped a lot. However, there is something to be said for finding some help, some sort of team members. And you might not be in a place where you think, “I can hire somebody to help me.” This can be something really small. And, you know, having a staff, it doesn't have to be this fancy staff, you can do a couple of independent contractors, one extra person to help you, even if it's something like sorting signs and putting things away is so helpful.

There are so many different facets of having a team member. And that's something we just went over for our business members with the roadmap and getting ready for busy season. There's a bunch of different things that team members can do to help. It's not all just about going and setting signs up. So, look at where you're spending your time. And where is something that you could maybe give up and somebody else could do it instead of that? Because if you can save yourself this much time, your life, your mental health is going to be much better.

Steve: Sure, absolutely. Well, and do you find it's better to hire retirees or is it better to hire high school students and college students?

Chris Ann: Well, okay, so I have done it from yes, yes, and yes. The challenge with high school students is they are under 18 years old. And so, you've got some legal situations there. So, that is not something I personally officially would recommend if you know, you've got somebody that's a neighbor and all that, that's a different situation. But from a stranger-to-stranger standpoint, I'm not a fan of the high school students, unless you have some very good legal parameters because of the legalities of them not being an 18 yet.

From there, college students are awesome. My favorites are stay-at-home moms. And I've also had retirees or ladies that have their kids out of the house. And the stay-at-home moms have just been phenomenal all around, I think it's anywhere these days, really. You know, I work with their kids’ schedules, because that's where I've been. I never missed a class party, a band concert, a football game, nothing. I didn't miss a field trip in all those years. It was hard, but it was doable. So, when I bring on stay-at-home moms, it’s a phenomenal team. Because it's like, okay, you know, when we get the school calendar out, and we block it off, and I know it's my intention for them to not miss their kid’s activities, and then we work the schedule around that.

Steve: Awesome. Okay. I’ve got about 12 minutes left. So, I want to make sure we cover all the questions. And so, I've got some rapid-fire questions.

Chris Ann: Go for it. I’m ready.

Steve: Let's say that you are in your second year of business and you hustle, what should one expect that they can... what's the range of income that they can reasonably expect to bring in in a year?

Chris Ann: Okay, minus COVID, because everything with the pandemic has been crazy. You know, just we cannot look at those numbers properly for a regular business year. Look at what you've done in the first year. If it was pandemic year, maybe cut it in half. Because who knows, at this point? Don't buy a lot of extra inventory, look at what you have an existing inventory and then add on to that. But really, it's hard to look at what an actual number is. If you did a non-pandemic here, and you did $50,000 in income, not gross sales, then you should at least be getting that and add 10%. You should at least be, what I call, going up into the right on your income stream.

Steve: So, growing 10% iis a reasonable goal?

Chris Ann: I think it's a conservative goal. But I don't want to sit here and say 50% and then somebody, you know, thinks, “Well, I didn't make that. I only make 15%.” 

Steve: I know that business is hard, obviously. I've got 4 companies. I know business is always hard. A lot of times, from the outside, it looks like parties and yachts and all of that, but the reality is business is hard. So, some people that try this will wash out and not succeed. But let's think on the other end of that spectrum, what are the most successful people able tto make? What is there to aspire to in this business?

Chris Ann: From a financial standpoint or from being a successful business owner?

Steve: Well, I think we know that, you know, being your own boss is awesome, or it can be. But financially, what can a successful business expect to gross and then net?

Chris Ann: Sure, well, you know, you've got your gross, because nowadays, people are buying so much inventory that they can eat up all of their income and put it right back into inventory. Before COVID, I knew several... this is before it was so busy with so many new companies now that we're making 6 figures. However, they were the anomalies, not the norm. It's a matter...

Steve: But the point is that that is what we want to... so, for example, I always think, I never think when I start a business, I never say, “I want to be in the middle.” I want to be at the top 10%. So, if we as a yard decor business reached the top 10%, 6 figures is not out of the question.

Chris Ann: It's not out of the question, if that's what they choose.

Steve: Yeah.

Chris Ann: For some people, $500 a month is the goal.

Steve: Right.

Chris Ann: And then they get lost in all of this craziness of, “Oh, my gosh, somebody is making 6 figures.” I'm like, “If you want to work 5 hours a week and make $1,000 a month, that is the best goal possible.”

Steve: And then that transitions to my next question, because this can be a gig economy job, sort of, like you can drive Uber, you can, you know, maybe take a job online, transcribing things, or you can deliver happiness to yards. And so, as a side job, somebody can make $1,000 a month net income and pay some bills and keep their kids in great clothes. 

Chris Ann: Absolutely. They can send them to college.

Steve: Exactly. So, that's the range for people to think about. You know, it depends on what you want to do. I've talked to some people who this is their full-time job. They had another job and they've quit and they're just going full-time.

Chris Ann: Exactly. Absolutely. And you know, the fact that there's so many competitors for many people nowadays, the one thing I look at is how to create the camaraderie with that instead of everybody trying to, you know, undercut the other one. No, no, no, we need to stop undercutting prices. That's the one thing I would also like to mention. Please don't cut your prices.

Steve: Let's talk about that. And obviously, we don't want to be sued by the government for price fixing. So, we're not going to suggest everybody do the same price. But what we would talk about is, what do you charge? What is your pricing structure? And what do you think others can get?

Chris Ann: Sure. My average ticket price is $100. And I say $100 plus tax, because you never want a customer to think tax is included if it's not included. So, mine is $100. However, I am in a very strong economic community. We have NASA. We have a very strong economy here. However, in the industry, when I have pulled a bunch of different people, and I would love to do that again, if you would be willing to help me with this for some industry trends, the average has been about 70 to $75. And a lot of that really is going to depend on how far out somebody is willing to go. My concern is people are working for pennies. Because if you're driving 2 hours, and you're charging $70 and it's 2 hours, you know, for 2 round trips, it probably isn't the best way to structure your pricing.

Steve: You know, and that is a lesson I had to learn early in business. You know, there's a book called ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’.

Chris Ann: Yes.

Steve: And... and it's... and, really, the point is, it doesn't matter whether you grew up wealthy or poor. What really matters is, when you're in business, can you get out of thinking like you're... like poor, and think like those people who are wealthy and that will pay you what they can pay you? And, you know, tthe part of town I grew up in, very blue collar. My dad was a school teacher. You know, we never had any extras. You know, it was always sort of stressful when I’d go, “Dad, I want to go to this camp, and it's going to cost this much,” and...

Chris Ann: Oh, yeah.

Steve: That was stressful. And so, when I first started in business, you know, I thought to myself, you know, I was young, I was in my early 30s, I said, “Well, I couldn't afford to pay that.” So, I would charge what I thought I could afford to pay instead of charging what upper middle income would pay and more successful people. And, you know, if you go to our site, you know that we keep our prices, very, very reasonable. But we also have products that are, you know, when we first set the price for a starter kit at $1,700, there's a lot to it. But I thought to myself, “Oh my goodness, Will anybody ever pay $1,700 for a starter kit?” But people do all the time, because they want enough inventory to make money. So, to your point, think like somebody that's going to pay you what you're worth. And people worth more than they think frequently.

Chris Ann: Exactly. And something that's important to do on that is to decide who your ideal customer avatar is your target audience. Do not just cast a wide net, because not everybody is going to appreciate your service, nor are they going to be a customer. So, look at the people who are a magnet, that they love what you do. Look at the people who have disposable income. And that all depends on your community. So, for what's $100, for me, might be $70 for somebody else, but they're not driving 15 minutes just to go 3 miles. So, a lot of that does depend on the time. And that's something that we go into with the business network, is we do go into you know how to structure some of this. Because we are always pivoting and changing. And your business is going to be stagnant if you're not doing that.

Steve: Absolutely. Great advice. So, last topic I want to touch on, what are your 2 top suggestions, tactics, recommendations for marketing, growing the business, gaining new customers?

Chris Ann: Okay, absolutely. So, for marketing, there is not a just one thing. That is probably my biggest thing is don't just decide you're only going to do one thing in marketing. But start with freebies. If you don't have business right now, if you don't have as much business as you want, go out and do freebies, but do them strategically. Find those realtors, find the people that are on the desired neighborhoods. You want to be at the higher-end neighborhoods that you can charge your premium pricing at. Find somebody with a connection. You can even leave a flyer at the door, and start getting your freebies out.

Nowadays, we have social media. I'm dating myself, because we didn't used to have social media to do any of this. And it was all old school traditional marketing. But now we have social media. So, get in your neighborhood Facebook groups. Work with your local community.

Now, if you have an existing business, you have existing customers, love on them. Give them more TLC than you can give anybody else. Because they invested in your business, and you need to turn around and invest in love on them. If you want to do a freebie, you talk to them and say, “Hey, you know, I appreciate you so much. Who can I go help surprise for you?” Do a contest with them. Give them discounts. Set up a loyalty program. Just communicate with them. And it's all about you know, trust. And the more you build up that trust, you are going to get loyal and raving customers that will come to you time and time again. And that is where your bread and butter is.

Steve: Okay. Final question. If you could go back in time, hop in your DeLorean time machine, and head back to visit with Chris Ann, was it 21 years ago?

Chris Ann: Yes.

Steve: Okay. You're visiting with Chris Ann 21 years ago, you know, “Hey, I'm from the future,” what advice would you give to your younger self?

Chris Ann: Well, first of all, I was 9 months pregnant, so I would tell myself to nap while I could. But I digress on that. I would tell myself to make a budget. And I know that sounds crazy, and it's not sexy. But when we don't have a clear path as to where we're going, we're never going to get there. And it's so easy, I would think I was making a lot of money, well, then I was buying stuff. And then at the end of the day, what was my take-home income? And I'm like, “Wait a minute, if I just made $10,000, why don't I have $10,000 in my checking account?” It doesn't work like that. So, I would have told myself to become more financially educated and wiser with my money, and to create a budget and to not get drawn into, “Hey, what if I just tried this and that and the other?” I would keep focused and keep my eye on the price.

Steve: Alright. So, now you've led to one more question on that exact issue. Is there a percentage? So, for example, in our company, like in Victory Store, I have a target that 5% of total revenue will go back into marketing and advertising. So, you know, if we bring in $10,000, I put $500 into marketing. And then you know, obviously, we have our cost of goods. And we know that's going to run around 40%. And I got labor. And we have a target that we try to stick to for each of those. For your business, do you have a target for how much you would put into marketing, or how much you would put into purchasing additional assets?

Chris Ann: Well, I flip it and I start with, “What do I want my take-home income to be?” and then I go from there. So, I'm doing it opposite, because ultimately, my goal is, what can I have? Because I'm going to spend my time doing this, I don't want to work for pennies, and I don't want to work for free anymore. And I've been there and done that, and I could write a couple of books on it. So, I'm looking for at least a 50% profit margin for myself. And then I divvied up from there.

Inventory is lowest on my list in a general month. Now, now that we're coming into graduation season, it's going to go higher up into new inventory, however... and also, in marketing. So, really, for me, it's more seasonal. With marketing, I think everybody needs to be putting a budget into marketing. And I would say about 25% in the marketing. And the smallestin a 12-month period, I would really say the smallest amount should be inventory once you have it built up. Because you don't need to be buying $10,000 of inventory every year.

Steve: Right, right, exactly. Good. So, I like that. So, roughly, if you sell a setup for $100, you put 50 bucks in your pocket, and you put the other money towards, you know, labor or assets or marketing or whatever the case might be. So, good.

Chris Ann: And, really, truth be told, I really think that our numbers are more about 66%. Because we really can run our businesses lean once we're established, and once we're doing marketing where we don't have to just throw money out there. And that's... that's about being strategic.

Steve: That's awesome. So, if you can do 100,000 a year in sales, walk away with $67,000, and that's not too bad for being your own boss.

Chris Ann: That's not too bad. And I do take off for vacations nowadays. So, we can have a whole other subject on that. But yeah, it's there's times, y'all, you just need to close the doors for a couple of days and take a breather.

Steve: I love that. Chris Ann, thank you for joining us today on the Victory Store Yard Decor University. You are wonderful. Tell us one more time the website address for the business group.

Chris Ann: Yes, sir. It's yardcardbusinessnetwork.com. And we're actually about to have our Facebook ads workshop for our new members. So, if y'all want to go over and subscribe to our email list, we will get that information out to you. And let us know that you are coming directly from Victory Store, and we might have a surprise goodie for you.

Steve: We love that. Thank you, Chris Ann.

Chris Ann: Absolutely. My pleasure.

Steve: We will see you in the ether.

Chris Ann: Yes, sir. I will see y'all soon. Thank you very much again, Steven. Thanks for all you do for our industry.

Steve: I appreciate it. And we appreciate all of our customers, and especially customers like you.

Chris Ann: Absolutely. Thanks again. Take care. Bye-bye.

Learn from the Professionals on how to start and run your own, successful Yard Card Rental Business. From inventory to customer service to being your own boss, Chet D. Arnold of Etc Yard Art offers up his advice and tells us how he created his own, flourishing yard card business.

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Thank you all for joining us. My name is Steve Grubbs, and Patti Glover, our sales director, is with us today. I am the founder of VictoryStore.com. And we’re so thankful that all of you joined us here today. We had a couple of technical glitches as we got started here. But we’re going to talk today about how to build your own yard card rental business. And there’s a lot of talk now about the gig economy; driving for Uber, driving for Lyft, Airbnb, that type of thing. But one of the great things is how to become your own boss. And this is one of the ways that we have a lot of customers who started yard card rental businesses. And we’re going to talk to you about a business model for it, how you can make money, how you can market it and build a steady clientele. So, let’s go ahead and start with the first slide.

So, this is how it works. The yard card business is pretty simple. Yard card greeting rentals are a great fit for working with your own time schedule and you can rent to businesses and families and schools and churches. And so essentially, what we’re talking about here are congratulatory messages that might be for birthdays, new birth, retirement, or it could be some other more significant message about an event. So, continuing on, on how it works, the second piece is, you need a starter kit. If you haven’t done this before, you get a starter kit. And we have themes that accommodate most major events, you can buy custom-themed packages, you can have us create something, or you can buy packages that we have online and just put a combination of letters, numbers, or characters together. Each kit and package come with pretty much everything you need. It’ll include stakes, and if you have other designs that you want, we can include those as well.

 There are a lot of advantages of starting a lawn greeting business. And we’re going to just talk about a few of those now. So, one of those is you can work out of your house, be your own boss and create a flexible schedule. So, I know there’s a period of time when I had kids and a lot of activities. And because of that, we were looking to have a flexible schedule. And this is one of those things that allows you to do so. Second of all, unlike a lot of businesses, this has a low startup cost. If you’re going to open a McDonald’s franchise, it’s a million dollars, but a yard card greeting business can, you know, our starter kit $999. There are packages that are less than that, but it has fairly low startup costs to get started. And the nice thing is that it doesn’t really matter what size your vehicle is, you don’t have to have a truck to deliver a lawn greeting, you can use pretty much any car. And for most people, they find that it’s fairly easy income. And I don’t want to say it’s easy, because anytime you’re starting a new business, it’s not easy. There’s a lot to it.

 But, having said that, most people find that through their natural social connections, and by promoting these through various social media accounts, they’re able to pick up clients pretty quickly. People who are having events, graduations, weddings, birthdays, that type of thing. And most people don’t want to buy one permanently, because they’re just going to use it one time. So, this is a great way that they can rent it, they can pay you to set it up and take it away. The other great thing about this is it really has unlimited potential. So, you might work for someone, or you might have some jobs where your potential is somewhat limited. And in this, you can grow it as big as you want it to be, and you can hire people to put them out for you. And to the extent that your social media reach keeps growing and you get more recommendations from friends, that potential just keeps moving forward. And so that’s pretty exciting for people.

 The other thing is most people will make back their initial investment in the first few weeks of operation. You know, for some it’s within the first month and others it might take two to three months. But if you are very active with this, and you are renting two to five times a week, you’re going to make that investment back within the first month. So, sometimes it might take a little while to get off the ground, but a lot of people find it takes off pretty quickly. And finally, it’s great that you can deliver smiles daily and love what you do. It’s a great way to bring happiness to the world. And, you know, you’re not Mother Teresa, but you’re still bringing happiness to your neighborhood. So, that’s a pretty great thing.

 

 Let’s talk about a sample business model. So, in thinking about how you put this together, let’s say that you just dip your toe in the water, and you’re able to get one yard greeting rental a week, just one a week for a month, and you charge $75 for a 24-hour rental. Well, over a span of the year, you’re going to gross $3,900, you’re certainly not going to put your kids through college on that, but it can be decent spending money.

Let’s say that you go to the next step, and you’re hitting your stride, getting some momentum, and you have 10-yard greeting rentals a week, and you’re charging $75 for that 24-hour rental. Well, now, over the span of a year, you’ve grossed $39,000 in revenue, and your cost for your products is significantly less than that.

Let’s go one step further and let’s say that this is really humming now. And you’ve got 25-yard greeting rentals a week. And you’re going to take orders and you’re spending about 20 to 25 hours a week putting these up. Well, over the span of a year, you can gross, almost $100,000. And so suddenly, it starts to look like more than just a hobby business. It starts to look like a business where you can really begin to make some significant revenue.

 So, we guesstimate -- this is different for everybody. You know, if you’re doing this in a town where traffic is not a big challenge, then it probably takes 20 to 30 minutes to drive and set this up in a yard and then go back and pick it up, it can be pretty quick. But if you’re in a larger area, maybe driving a little further, it might take an hour. And I’m sure there are some people it might take a little bit more than an hour. But we guesstimate that it takes about an hour to drive and install a yard greeting and get it picked up. And so, you’ve got that time investment in it.

 

So, let’s talk about a potential initial investment. So, with the starter kit, and the starter kit has over 150 individual lawn decoration pieces. You can go on the website, VictoryStore.com, we’ll show you a link a little bit later. But you’ll find that the starter kit for $999 has everything you need to have a robust lawn greeting business. And the cool thing is that there are so many different themes. We have over 100 different lawn greeting designs, so pretty much everything you can imagine. They’re fun birthday greetings and fun retirement greetings and so much more. So, for $1,000, it gets you a pretty good distance along.

 

 So, now we’re moving on to marketing and advertising. So, let’s think in terms of social media, for marketing, and advertising, we use this a lot. If you’ve run across VictoryStore.com, you’ve probably run across us through Facebook or Instagram. And it’s a great model. So, we’re going to move on to slide number 11. And this talks about how to create a business Facebook page, because that’s the first thing you need. So, we have seven steps here. And you can find this, if you go to Google and you just type in setting up a business page on Facebook, you’ll find the same information. So, you don’t have to memorize or write down what we have here.

 But essentially, it’s pretty easy. You go to Facebook, you register for a business page, you enter your business information, upload your initial photos, your profile pic, cover photo, that kind of thing. And we would recommend using potentially one of our photos. We’ll give you -- if you’re our customer, you certainly have permission to use our lawn decoration photo. So, that gets you a long way there. And then you start inviting your friends to like your page, it’s pretty easy. Once they see what you’re doing, suddenly, they’re pretty excited about calling you and saying, “Hey, would you bring over a birthday greeting for my daughter’s sweet 16?” Or retirement greeting and that type of thing. So, you want to, ideally, invite as many friends as possible to like your page because that’s a really fast way to grow your business.

 And they’re going to ask you for some additional business details, hours of operation, that type of thing. You know, they’ll ask you to add a button to your page and you can figure all this out pretty quickly or use some of the resources they have. But make sure you get your business page set up on Facebook. Now, we’re going to moving on to the next slide, and we’ll talk about the optional marketing investment. And if you look at the weekly advertising budget that you can use on Facebook, it can be any amount of money. But let’s say that you’re boosting $50 on a post. So, you put up a post that says, “This is our birthday lawn greeting.” And you can see an example of it down at the bottom of the slide where it says happy birthday.

 And let’s say you spend $50 a week; you are probably going to reach 2,500 to 5,000 people for $50 a week. And the more people that like your page, the greater reach you’re going to have. So, suddenly, a lot of people are seeing what you’re doing. And even though they may not pick up the phone and order, the very first day they see it. Remember, in marketing, you want to touch people, six to 10 times with your message before they’ll finally take action. But let’s say that you do that week in, week out, $50 a week, you just stick to a budget on that. At the end of the year, you’re going to have spent $2,600. But you should get dozens or hundreds of inquiries and orders by spending that amount of money.

 So, let’s look at the next slide and understand the business model here. So, your total investment, potentially, for the first year, might be more than this, might be less than that. But this is an example, could be $999 for the starter package that includes the more than 150 items. And then $5,200 in marketing or excuse me $2,600 in marketing. And you add that together, and it’s 3,599 -- basically $3,600. Now, the other option is just to go for a full $100 a week, but start it at 60 at the $2,600 level, and then test larger amounts and see if that brings you in even more business. You know, if you think about it, if you spend $50 and you get two clients, well, you paid for your marketing budget. If you spend $100 and get four clients, not only have you paid for your marketing budget, but you’ve also made a decent amount of money that week. So, that’s what you want to constantly be testing.

 So, let’s go on to the next slide and look at how the business model plays out. So, your revenue if you’re renting 10 times a week and you’re bringing in $39,000 a year, you subtract out your startup cost and your budget of $3,600, and you have a net of $35,401. Which, for a side gig, isn’t too bad. That’ll pay for something out there, almost pay for college, a year of college these days. So, that’s a good way to think of how you might get a business like this off the ground.

 Let’s look at some of the really just great designs that we have. Moving on to the next slide. So, you can use the photos from our site. And that’s why we have them on here if you’re our customers. So, we have a lot of different Happy Birthday greetings. We have more than 25 different Happy Birthday Greetings. Not all of them are up on our site at the same time, but you can check in with our sales team and they’ll make sure that whatever you’re looking for, we probably have it, and they can guide you in the right direction. People really love it when you don’t just put up like a generic Happy Birthday sign but when it’s personalized. And that’s why in our starter packet, you’ll find some individualized letters and you can add additional letters, that type of thing.

 Some people will say okay, for $75 we will put up a lawn greeting, but for $100 we’ll personalize it with the year and the name. So, there’s some add-ons that you can charge to make a little bit extra money. But when somebody comes home and they see something like this Happy Birthday yard greeting, ‘Happy Birthday Jack’. That’s a pretty cool thing, something that they never forget. We also have birthday party yard greetings. So, in this next slide, you see Hannah and Emma had a joint birthday party. So, this is one that they recognize that their friends showed up and it looked pretty cool, ‘Happy 13th birthday’. This just gives you a sense on the level of customization that you can do with names and that’s a big deal.

 Moving on to the next slide, the Fall Festival yard greetings. So, this is just an example of a festival. Now, there’s two ways to do this some of our stock items will be for a particular event. So, you can have stock items that are in your inventory, or what a lot of people do is they just buy two or three different sets of letters. And then they can spell out whatever it is that their customer wants. And so, this one requires, other than the pumpkins, everything else would be standard, and maybe the doll in the middle. And it might be something that you’ve got a big client who’s willing to spend $300 to $500 on a customized greeting. And you know, you work with our team and have something made, and you can do something really, really cool and still make some decent money.

 Let’s move on to the special events yard greetings. You know this is one that we did for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and it was so cool. It is a place that if you’re starting the race or ending the race that tells people not only at the beginning or end of the race. But if it’s up for a week or two in advance, then it helps to advertise that the race is occurring. And that helps to drive more participation. And if you think of it, a road like the one you see in front of you is probably getting around 5,000 to 10,000 drive-byes a day. So, let’s say, for easy math 10,000, well over 10 days, that’s 100,000 eyeballs, over a month, it’s 300,000 eyeballs. So, that’s a lot of visibility for a fairly inexpensive product that you’re able to provide for customers. So, there are a lot more examples of this if you can think about it. And if you go to our VictoryStore site, VictoryStore.com, and search for yard decorations, you’ll find a lot of different options out there.

You know, moving on to our last slide, a lot of people make this sort of a family adventure. So, if you’re like me, your kids needed money when they were growing up, they wanted to go out and have fun with friends or they had activities at school, this is a way that kids can be a part of and learn some valuable lessons about money and work and the values that will help build them into strong adults. And so this is one of those great things. 

 

Starting A Yard Sign Business with Steve Grubbs & Tricia Reese 

 

Steve Grubbs: Welcome everybody. I am Steve Grubbs, your host of the Victory Store Yard Decoration Rental Business Podcast Interview. Today, we have a very special guest, Tricia Reese from St. Louis, Missouri. If you're watching beyond the borders of the United States, Missouri is right in the middle of the country on the Mississippi river. So, Tricia tell us a little bit first of all, what is the name of your Yard Decoration Rental Business?

Tricia Reese: We are Happy House Cards.

Steve Grubbs: Happy House Cards. And let's talk a little bit of about your origin story. Every good superhero, every good super business has an origin story. How long have you been working in this business?

Tricia Reese: Our official first sign was Valentine's day of last year.

Steve Grubbs: So, you've got 12 months under your belt. Is it safe to say that you're still in business?

Tricia Reese: Yes yeah, it's safe to say good.

Steve Grubbs: That's good, because you know about half of all new businesses fold within the first 12 months. So, you have surpassed the first hurdle. Congratulations on that.

Tricia Reese: Okay, I didn't know that, but yeah, we're doing good.

Steve Grubbs: 80% in the first five years. So, you know we have obviously VictoryStore. We're in our 23rd year, I think. So, we're trying to keep it going as well. Tell me why in the world, would you want to get involved in this type of business?

Tricia Reese: Well, my husband was wanting to come up with, you know, kind of a side job that would bring in, maybe, I don't know, five to ten thousand dollars a year. Just something to do on the side. He would pitch something at me like a food truck or anything he would throw my way, it just seemed to just be too involved. He's a high school principal and was talking to a co-worker who has some friends that do this type of business. This is their fourth year, they're more in the city of St. Louis and they're also educators. They were making about ten thousand dollars a year and I thought you know that's pretty good. He was showing me the starter kits and about how much they run. And I thought, you know, I'm not a risk taker, he's more the risk taker. To me, that seemed like, you know, a very manageable risk if it didn't take off.

I also am a very creative person and it sounded like a nice creative outlet in a way to bring happiness to people, you know just something different. We were looking, I was needing something different.

Steve Grubbs: Sure, so you've led me to two questions then.

Tricia Reese: Okay.

Steve Grubbs: Number one, roughly, you don't have to give us the exact number, but roughly, how much money did you spend in your initial launch of the business then?

Tricia Reese: Initially, it was right around $2,000 for the starter kit. We added a couple of other yard card sets, Mike got the website going and that kind of thing. It was roughly $2,000.

Steve Grubbs: Great. In understanding that year two should be more profitable than year one, did you reach your goal of five to ten thousand dollars in year one?

Tricia Reese: Yeah, the first two months were tough, I remember my husband saying this was a mistake. Because we started February and March of last year. I think we had five paying orders and then COVID hit. In April, we did 128 signs and May hit and we did 186 signs. So, we went from two months of five signs to the third month and then the fourth month. April and May were complete insanity. That's when we just had basically the starter kit. So, it was quite a challenge. I mean talk about being thrown into the fire!

Steve Grubbs: Just thinking about that real quick. If you average, what do you average per sale? $75, $100.

Tricia Reese: That's what we charge. $75 and we will travel up to 20 miles. For an additional day I just charged $25. So, most of our orders are one day orders.

Steve Grubbs: So, you must have broken even on your initial investment by the end of March. To break even you'd be somewhere around 27 setups.

Tricia Reese: Yeah, something like that. Well April for sure yeah, March we weren't.

Steve Grubbs: Okay, so April. Yeah, I can tell you when the when COVID happened, as you may recall, if you did business with us, it broke our business model. We quickly invested a million dollars in new machines and cutting machines and printing machines to just to be able to dig ourselves out of the hole. We had a lot of unhappy customers and we had apologized for months. But you know, it was a once in a lifetime deal and we all went through it together. So, all right. Let's get down to some really important questions. First of all, lesson number one I think that I’ve picked up already is that, with or without COVID you're probably going to start slow and build up.

Tricia Reese: Exactly.

Steve Grubbs: Fair enough, okay. Next question. What have been the best two or three marketing tools that you have used to get the word out on your business?

Tricia Reese: Okay, well before my phone started blowing up, I think it was the last day of March. We did a free sign for one of my husband's co-workers and she lives in a very large subdivision that's just down the street. A lot of the subdivisions around here are probably the same where you live. They have Facebook pages just for their subdivision. And another family saw their sign and Facebook post and hired us, and when they posted that little girl's sign, we got over ten thousand hits.

Steve Grubbs: Wow.

Tricia Reese: It was crazy, and I honestly believe that that sign right there, I mean that was a paying customer but it was stemming off of a free one that we did in this huge subdivision. From that moment on, I could not keep up with my phone.

Steve Grubbs: Sounds like a great feeling!

Tricia Reese: Yeah.

Steve Grubbs: So, I often have thought and I want to get back to your other marketing ideas in a moment. But I have often thought that it could be a good idea to, I know some gated communities allow this type of thing and some have regulations and you can't have these types of signs up, but most seem to allow it.

Tricia Reese: Yeah.

Steve Grubbs: I’ve often thought that it would almost be of value to knock on the door of one of the first three or four homes in a gated community and just offer them one for free for three days. And just say, you know whatever you want just  give me a call and then put it up. You know that everybody has to go in that gate. So, if there's a thousand people that live back there, you're gonna have literally a thousand people who see your free advertising. So, the other thing that I encourage people to do is, you can go to most State Department of Transportations. I bet you every single one. We'll give you a list of how much traffic goes on each road, so you can actually look and say okay there are, like for example, one of the roads that I’ve used for this type of thing in the past. There are 15,000 cars that drive on that road a day. In 10 days, that's 150,000 eyeballs in a month 450,000 eyeballs. So, if you put up a sign just for a week, you know you're gonna get close to a hundred thousand eyeballs on your setup. So, those are the some of the things to think about you just need to make sure that people can see, a lot of people will stop and slow down to see what company it is. But I think, hey that's a great idea, is your placement.

Tricia Reese: Yeah.

Steve Grubbs: What else have you done that has worked well?

Tricia Reese: Right off the bat other than our website, I set up a business page on Facebook. I also set up a VIP page on Facebook. So, it was a lot of word of mouth that way. Customer service is so key like just making sure that, okay here's our pros, here's my process. I think I should be contacting; I get the order on my calendar so that contact is made. And then the day that I'm going to set it up that night, I text them and say I’ll be out tonight. When I can, I try and give them a time frame. Sometimes I text them 15 minutes before I get there. As soon as I'm done, I stand back and I take a picture and I text it to them. So, that they can sleep well that night knowing that it's there.

They're not worrying all night; did she show up. So, that's kind of my process. I let them know I'll be back after dark the next day to pick it up. But I have said this so many times, the renter this is as much about the renter as it is the recipient. They get so excited, the mom the grandma the friend, whoever it is that is purchasing this card is so excited. They can't wait for me to text them that picture. So, I think for them this is as much fun as it is for the person that gets up the next morning and has the surprise.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah.

Tricia Reese: So, I mean really and I always say, you know you can get a good picture you'll have this keepsake memory. So, it's fun as for me, because I love getting those texts back. And not everyone texts back all excited but I would say 95% do. It's usually "It's better than I expected" or "OMG, this is perfect". And it makes you feel good. They're excited, they can't wait for their person to see it in the morning. So, it's a real, especially in the days that we're living in, it's just a really satisfying, gratifying job.

Steve Grubbs: I always say we are in the business of happiness and I love that.

Tricia Reese: Yeah, I’ve been called sign Fairy, the sign Lady. People have equivalent like I'm Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny type, you know showing up at night and then they've got this surprise in the morning. So, that's fun.

Steve Grubbs: What about Mike, your husband is principal at a school? Have you done anything at the school so far?

Tricia Reese: Yes, we have several schools in our district and I’ve been hired multiple times for, ‘We love our teachers’, ‘Welcome back’ signs. ‘Our principal over here at the elementary just turned 50, so his wife ordered a sign to be put up. I’ve done several signs for our school district. I’ve done some free ones. Before we got real busy, I was doing some free ones over here at our local elementary. It's just a half mile down the street. But most of them since have been paying signs.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah, you know that's the whole deal. One of your best marketing budget items is to do a few free ones now and that kind of exposure makes a difference.

Tricia Reese: Yeah.

Steve Grubbs: Do you have a marketing budget; do you spend any money on marketing through Facebook or something else?

Tricia Reese: I don't know, you know you can boost posts on Facebook I think I’ve done that once.

Steve Grubbs: So, all word of mouth so far.

Tricia Reese: Yeah, we've hardly spent any money on that.

Steve Grubbs: Talk to me about the categories of setups, everybody does birthdays. What percentage of setups would you say are birthday related?

Tricia Reese: 95%.

Steve Grubbs: Really interesting. So, it's all about the birthdays. What are the other 5%?

Tricia Reese: Well, we have a ton of letter inventory. So, I can do about any message you want but I would say the next biggest, well there was a season where it was graduations. I did order some sets from VictoryStore that were specific to graduation and then I added to those. Like added their name and that kind of thing. But I’ve done Happy Retirements, we've got a It's A Girl set, a baby girl set up a baby boy set up. We've got a Mr. and Mrs. that married, just married set up. But honestly, I’ve only used that two or three times. I don't know maybe my second business is It's a Boy or It's a Girl and Happy Retirement. But it is mostly birthdays.

Steve Grubbs: In an average week now, I mean I know its winter and we're all cold and so my guess is you probably do. Our experience with most customers is they do fewer in the winter, more in the spring and summer. But during these cold months, how many setups would you be doing per week roughly?

Tricia Reese: Well, we're averaging 50 to 60 per month right now.

Steve Grubbs: Okay, all right.

Tricia Reese: I'm thanking God, this is the slowest week we've had since we started at 5. I’m just so thankful, because we're having to use yard card stands. I mean the ground is just frozen solid and it's just miserable to be out. So, we have two tonight, we have one for the next few nights in a row. So, it slowed way down. Last week I had 17, the week before that I had 20. So, this weather has caused us to almost come to a screeching halt, but I needed a break.

Steve Grubbs: Let's talk about that, because you know when I teach entrepreneurs, sometimes I’ll do some talks and such. I always talk about the philosophy of buildup, build under. So, as you may or may not know, I’ve got four different companies. And if I were doing it all myself I couldn't do it. So, many of you might work with Patty or Spencer or Trevor or any of our VictoryStore sales people. And I can only do it because they are the build under. It seems like most of the Yard Decoration businesses that I talk to have some sort of way that they, you know, hire others to do part of those setups. Are you doing any of that yet? Do you have children or friends or retired friends?

Tricia Reese: We needed a break after last April and May, so we went to the Smokies for a week. I hired a good friend of mine and her teenage daughter to take that week that we were off. We have a 21-year-old daughter who we have, she doesn't like doing it. So, he's helped us a little bit but we're getting ready to be gone here for a couple nights. I’m getting ready to turn 50. Yay, so we're getting away for a couple nights and then we're going to be gone over spring break. I honestly don't think I'm gonna take orders for that time. Because even when I’m away and someone else is doing it, I can't relax.

Steve Grubbs: You're a bit of a perfectionist, aren't you?

Tricia Reese: Very much and that's my problem, but that's just how it is that's how I am. So, for me to actually be able to take a true break from the business, I think I’m not going to hire someone to cover for us.

Steve Grubbs: Well, that's the beauty, you can do. You can just block out time on your calendar where you're not doing them. I assume there are others in the area that can do this.

Tricia Reese: Yeah, and I don't. There's the risk you run, oh well then, they'll like, we have so many repeat customers, oh my goodness so many. I mean once they've done a sign for one kid, they've got to do it for the other kids. So, you run the risk of losing that customer but I don't know that doesn't concern me too much.

Steve Grubbs: Well, I want to develop a mobile app, a phone based app where all of this can be managed through the app. Where you've got the location and you take a photo of it and it automatically sends it to your customers and then it's all sort of right there. We got the first piece of that done by getting the website option and we can now build websites for Yard Card Decoration companies. I assume you have a website or not?

Tricia Reese: Yes, my husband, well it was over a year ago when he went through Wix.

Steve Grubbs: And built his own then.

Tricia Reese: Yes, and it's not perfect by any means. There’re some things about it that I wish were different, but anyway that's what we've got for now. But I do so much personally just through texting.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah, so let's talk about that. How do you receive payment?

Tricia Reese: Our website only accepts PayPal at $75. So, if they don't have PayPal or they're paying for an additional night or there's extra mileage, then I have to explain how they need to still submit for offline payment. Then I contact them for either Venmo or I get a lot of personal checks mailed to me, which I’ve not had any issues yet with that. So, you know that's one of the downfalls we're facing with Wix, it's limiting. But most people have PayPal I’ve found.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah, and the fact that you can let people Venmo you or use the cash app, that's a big deal. So, let's talk about stakes. Let's say the grounds, obviously while the ground's frozen you're using the yard card stands. Are those the VictoryStore stands or did you build your own?

Tricia Reese: Mike built some way back in the summer when we have a lot of clay around here. We had two seasons of drought last summer. We're in Jefferson County, where we live is basically just on a rock, a big rock. And some of these subdivisions are literally just a thin layer of sod over rock. So, he needed to build a few stands on his own that we could use in case of emergency when we just simply couldn't get stakes in the ground. And thankfully, we've not had to do that very often because I hate them. I hate using stands.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah.

Tricia Reese: Since you've come out with stands, but this was before then.

Steve Grubbs: Let's say the ground's not hard. What types of stakes do you generally use? You know everybody sells different types. We sell the easy stake, the H-Stake and then the slim H-Stake. What's your preferred method?

Tricia Reese: Our preferred method, oh shoot hold on, phone call sorry. We get H-Stakes. The 6x30 H-stakes and I should have brought one up here with me. My husband cuts them, so that where the horizontal is you've got about this much above and maybe this much below. So, our back row is what we call on a medium height and then our front row is real low. You know where we stick it in the ground. The way I install and a lot of our yards around here are on incline. So, we don't need that second row to be real high.

Steve Grubbs: Okay.

Tricia Reese: Now if we come across a flat yard, I don't do two rows I just go all the way across. So, I put the age on the tall ones, so on your tall EZ stake on the tall.

Steve Grubbs: The slim, yeah, the easy stake, okay.

Tricia Reese: So, we do all what we consider medium and then we do short. And then we have some 6x30s and then some even wider ones 12x30s whatever they are. You know I’ve got those huge balloon clusters that you sell. Those are of course we don't cut those; those are even higher behind the happy birthday.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah. What about business insurance? Do you carry business insurance? Use your homeowner's insurance?

Tricia Reese: Yeah, we've not had any issues. We're real careful, we're usually right in the center of the yard. So, if someone has a sprinkler system or whatever, I mean we're probably taking a risk not having that insurance but we've not had any issues yet. And people, if there is something in their yard that they want us to be cautious about, they'll usually give us a heads up.

Steve Grubbs: And different types of flair that you have in your collection. What are your favorite pieces of the accessories and flairs, different people call it different things to you beyond your letters?

Tricia Reese: Beyond our letters.

Steve Grubbs: I guess, let me clear from my question. For those listening, what would be the best bang for their buck to have in their collection at least from your experience?

Tricia Reese: You've got a pretty large package of stars and then you have another one of balloons. Those are essential, stars and balloons are essential and hearts. The more specific, I don't do themes I haven't gotten into. I do have a gaming set, but I don't do themes. If they want a frozen theme or something like that, I'll send them to our competitors. Because I just don't want to get into all that. So, my stuff is more, now I have several presents and usually I have several cakes most of this is your inventory. Like I said, the hearts, the balloon clusters, the stars, oh I love those candles that you sell.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah.

Tricia Reese: I love because I like on that front row where it's their name. I love using four candles, two tall at an angle and then two shorts beside at an angle and then I usually have something on either side of that. So, you know I keep things more general.

Steve Grubbs: Okay yeah, that's a really great answer. A lot of people listening to you, to us, are just getting started. Is there a piece of advice that, maybe more than one piece of advice that you would give them other than run as far away as you can fast?

Tricia Reese: Well, I don't know what, this is a people-centered business. So, you've got to really make personal contacts. Even though I’m just texting with people all the time and my husband thinks I’m too wordy, but I think there's something to making personal contacts with people. And sharing in that excitement with them, you know that we're not a franchise, and I don't want to feel like one. I don't want them to feel like they're just dealing with an automated service or a robot or whatever. I want them to feel like, I mean they're dealing with a mom here with three children and two other jobs.

So, I think people need that, they need that connection and they need you to share that fun and happiness with them. They want that excitement, we're in such just frustrating days. So, I would recommend not going hog wild on inventory until you can see if it's going to take off or not. Here's another piece of advice that I’ve said, don't copy someone else. Come up with your own scheme. Like I love the 24 inches Bebas Yard Letters. However, you say that?

Steve Grubbs: I think I say Bey-bas, I don't actually know how it's pronounced either.

Tricia Reese: What's that word mean? But I love that, I'm a very type a structured person and I love, like I don't like overlapping things, I don't like clutter that's just me. So, I have a certain style and that's what I go with. And if a customer doesn't prefer that style, they have other options with other companies. But I am staying true to what I do. So, when I make decisions on ordering more inventory, I look at my collection and think, is this me or am I trying too hard? Like I don't know how I feel about all the sparkly stuff, I'm not a sparkly person. Does that make sense?

Steve Grubbs: You know it sounds like you have a very clean look you know.

Tricia Reese: Yeah.

Steve Grubbs: If you think about it, first of all it's great that people have different artistic styles. You know you don't want Degas to be Monet, you want everybody to be a little different and that's because people appreciate that. So, I appreciate your point here and the great thing is you know between us and I'm sure others, there are so many different types of alphabets and flair that everybody can create their own look and their own feel. I don't think it's bad when you're first getting started to look at what others are doing and how they're doing it. But over time, you have to develop your own look especially as the landscape becomes more competitive.

Tricia Reese: I totally agree, and you also have to know your demographic. There is a definite area of St. Louis that has accepted us as their company. Our competitors have a whole another area that has accepted them in as their, you know, as their company. So, you need to be aware of that as well. So, anyway.

Steve Grubbs: All right, final question, sort of final next to last question. Do you use any car marketing, car door magnets or car toppers or any? What do you do the market with your cover?

Tricia Reese: We've got the magnets.

Steve Grubbs: You got that as part of your starter kit I assume.

Tricia Reese: Yes, and I’ve since ordered more. So, we've got three vehicles that I tell you what, my main vehicle is my Pacifica. That is my work van and I hit it, you know it was bound to happen, I see deer all the time and I hit a deer about a month ago. So, I just got my Pacifica back, because I’ve been having to use a pickup truck and that is it.

Steve Grubbs: Yeah. Any final thoughts that you would like to visit about or advice you'd like to give?

Tricia Reese: Oh, my goodness.

Steve Grubbs: Let me rephrase, if you were to go back 13 to 14 months ago, pop in your little time machine, your Pacifica time machine and go back and give yourself some advice. What would you tell yourself?

Tricia Reese: Oh, that's a good question. I honestly don't know. I'm sorry that phone's ringing.

Steve Grubbs: That's a good sign, phone's ringing making money.

Tricia Reese: You know as far as doing anything differently, things just hit us so crazy. The timing of our business, I mean I just tell people, it was God's timing because we couldn't have come up with that. I mean we were ready to roll when COVID hit. Not knowing that that was going to hit in the first place.

Steve Grubbs: Right.

Tricia Reese: And we just did our thing. I mean we didn't know what we were doing and we just did it. And we were just trying to fill orders however we possibly could, I was doing orders that said like, "Liam is Nine" because that's all I could do and then putting a few things in. I don’t know, I mean our circumstance is so unusual because the timing couldn't have been any better. And we've just learned as we go and I don't know what else I would add. I really enjoy doing this and I’m hoping that it's not just a fad. But if it is, it's been a great, good ride.

Steve Grubbs: So, we have a few new directions that we're going to offer to business companies like yourselves. And that will add some additional sources of sales and revenue for those that choose to try them. So, we'll be rolling those out over the next few weeks and months and we're very excited about that. Tricia, thank you for being a VictoryStore customer and I know you do business elsewhere also, but we very much appreciate what you do with us.

Tricia Reese: I’ll tell my husband, because he's the one that did all the research and he chose your company and he ordered the starter kit. Then I just kind of took over, that's how I do.

Steve Grubbs: Well, tell him Thank you very much and congratulations on your success in your first year. That's, you know, most start a new business, you don't expect to make money in your first year and just surviving. It is a mark of success, so congratulations on that and thank you.

Tricia Reese: All right, you're welcome. Nice to meet you, by the way.

Steve Grubbs: Nice meeting you.

Tricia Reese: All right, bye-bye.

Yard Greetings. Yard Cards. Yard Decorations. Whatever you call them, they are popping up in front yards, schools, and parks all around the United States. With the growing popularity of these yard greetings, lies a unique and rewarding business opportunity: Your very own Yard Greeting Rental Business!

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