Hi there,
Let me tell you a quick story about a landscape gardening business I worked with recently.
They were in a tough spot - just like a lot of small businesses right now.
- A great team of full-time gardeners on the payroll
- Rising overheads
- Not enough new work coming in
- And the constant pressure of making payroll when the phone wasn’t ringing
Now, here’s the important part:
The team they had were brilliant at what they did.
Passionate, skilled, hard-working… but they weren’t marketers.
They weren’t going to jump on the phone and drum up leads.
So the business owner had a choice:
Keep them sitting around, underused and costing money…
Or get creative.
Here’s what he did.
Every Wednesday, he had his team go out to affluent areas nearby - places with the kinds of high-value clients they wanted to work with.
And instead of selling, pitching, or leafleting…
They offered to help.
One hour, totally free.
Weed a front border. Trim a hedge. Tidy up a driveway.
No pressure.
No sales pitch.
Just, “We’re local. We had the time. Thought we’d offer a hand.”
And guess what happened?
It worked.
Not overnight, but consistently.
People were impressed. Conversations started.
Trust was built.
And those free hours?
They led to paid work. Big work.
Garden redesigns. Monthly maintenance retainers.
One client even brought them on to manage three properties year-round.
Now that business is back in growth mode. Scaling with confidence.
Why?
Because the owner used what he already had.
- He didn’t throw money at ads.
- He didn’t panic-hire a salesperson.
- He just looked at his biggest underused asset - his team, and asked:
“How do I put them in front of the right people, in the right way?”
So here’s the question for you:
➡️ What do you already have in your business that isn’t being fully used?
➡️ Where are you sitting on assets? People, time, resources - that could be repurposed into lead generation?
➡️ If you had to get more customers this month without spending more money, what would you do differently today?
Because sometimes the smartest move isn’t spending more…
…it’s making more of what you’ve already got.
To finding the hidden levers in your business,
James
P.S. That gardening business didn’t wait for perfect marketing funnels or Facebook ads to kick in. They just moved. Sometimes momentum is more valuable than strategy. What’s your version of their Wednesday giveaway?