Q&A: How Yard Guard Added Holiday Lights with RealGreen
Montana-based Yard Guard offers lawn and tree care services, holiday light installation, and sprinkler blowouts. It has locations in Belgrade, Bozeman, and Livingston. Yard Guard was founded in 1993 and became a RealGreen customer in 2020. We recently sat down with Office Manager Sidne Gardner to discuss how the company made the transition to offering holiday lighting and how RealGreen helped them do it.
RG: What made you decide to start offering holiday light installation services?
Sidne: We had been considering adding winter service since 2019 when (owner) Colin Engstrom bought the business. While taking winters off is nice, you end up having to lay people off — you work with all these great, awesome people, and then they have to go somewhere else. We would get about 70% of our employees back if not a little bit more, but during the winter, many of them end up working at ski resorts, and they can’t come back until the end of ski season in April or May when we really need them. So, employee retention was the main reason we started looking into holiday lights. We started seriously considering it in 2022, and our first season was 2023.
RG: How did you get started?
Sidne: We spent some time with a company in Boise called Zing Services using their training program Winter Profits. Holiday lights are their primary service, with lawn care as a secondary. We sent three of our leads over for a week of hands-on training, where they got to learn from the staff — tips and tricks, how to do things, and easier methods. We started with two light crews of three people each, all from our current staff.
RG: What were your start-up costs?
Sidne: Our initial costs ran around $25,000. We had to buy ladders, equip several of our vehicles to handle light installation with shelving, containers, and winter tires, purchase a shipping container for extra storage, get winter uniforms for our staff so they could stay warm, and, of course, buy the decor itself. Finally, we were very lucky in that we were able to rent a lift instead of having to buy something similar for up to $250,000.
RG: Did you do any marketing to promote your new holiday lights offering?
Sidne: Yes, we started promoting holiday lights in October, just before Halloween. We created a proposal to send to our lawn care customers in what we thought was our best target area. In addition, we sent an email blast to our entire customer list. I also sent an email to a list of local realtors who we thought might recommend us to their clients. We put lawn signs out in strategic areas in Bozeman and larger signs at homes where we did light installations. Those worked really well. Finally, we put door hangers on 10,000 homes in the area, which was also wildly successful.
RG: How do you handle the actual lights and decor? Do you buy on demand, keep an inventory, or use customers’ own lights and decor?
Sidne: We don’t buy on demand; instead, we try to keep a solid inventory to make sure we have everything we need on hand. Last year, we sold more than anticipated; fortunately for us, the supplier is right in town, which I don’t think is the case for most companies. We offer a spectrum of six or seven main colors, and our customers can choose any combination of those colors they would like. When it comes to installing others’ decor — we don’t do it. I need to ensure the safety of my staff and our customers’ homes; we don’t know how things were stored, if there are exposed wires, etc. We are very cautious about that.
RG: Walk us through what happens when a customer requests a holiday lighting quote.
Sidne: For simpler jobs and certain types of homes, we are able to create a quote online. For more complex jobs — for example, a house with longer roof lines — we will visit in person. When creating the bid, we send out a proposal with a photo of the house mocked up with the lights so the customer can see what it will look like. We can also recommend additional decor, suggesting a wreath here or some garland there.
Now that we have RealGreen forms, I am very excited about this coming year because I can quickly submit proposals right from there. I think that will work very well, whereas before, we were creating proposals on our own and melding different software together. This will be so much easier.
Once we get approval, the customer has to pay for the initial purchase of the lights and other decor, if any. So they own their lights. When they come back next year, we will use their same lights, and their cost will go down because they’ve already made that initial investment. If they decide not to come back to us, all they have to do is let us know, and we will give them their lights. After they have paid for the lights, we will complete the installation and charge them the rest. We will take the lights down at the end of the season and make sure they are stored properly and ready to go for the next time.
RG: Any advice for other lawn care business owners considering starting their own holiday lights service?
Sidne: Installing lights is a super fun service. It just brings people so much joy — we really loved it. However, we didn’t have any snow this year, so we didn’t have any challenges with installation or removal. It will be different when we get more snow; you can’t get on a roof when it’s snowing; it’s too dangerous. We’ll have to see how that goes.
Another thing I would suggest is to focus on one or two things that you can do very well; don’t try to do it all. For example, with lawn care, we focus on fertilization rather than a whole realm of services. When it comes to lights, we’re not trying to offer add-on services just to make more money. Just do what you are good at.
We had an install last year that we were really excited about — a very unique, very large home in the mountains with a 60-foot lookout tower. We wrapped the tower with lights, but during the week of Christmas, we got some snow, and those lights came down, and we couldn’t get back to it because it was snowed in and too dangerous. We learned from that experience: It’s OK to say no. We should have said we could do the home, not the tower.
Finally, I would suggest focusing on customers who truly value the service you’re providing and making sure you’re charging enough for your time. Holiday light installation has a longer sales cycle, and there is quite a bit of labor involved: from the office staff doing the proposal to the staff doing the site visit, meeting with customers, doing the installation and takedown, and handling maintenance if needed. This is a premium service. Don’t undercut your own costs.
RG: How did you use RealGreen and Service Assistant 5 to help run your holiday lighting service?
Sidne: It’s just as easy as setting up a lawn care program. We created two programs for holiday lighting. The first is the light or decor purchase, which doesn’t renew yearly unless the customer requests additional decor. The second is the recurring installation program that consists of three steps. This will renew every year unless the customer tells us otherwise and picks up their lights from our storage.
We’ve evolved the program since its inception. The three steps are:
- Takedown – this happens usually around the first of the year, so we start there
- Install, and
- Maintenance.
So, during January, when you’re taking down lights, and later in October, November, or December, when you’re putting them up, the maintenance step ensures that any issues, like a light going out or something falling off the roof, are addressed promptly. It’s straightforward.
We route all jobs based on density to maximize efficiency, especially if there are multiple homes in a neighborhood. In the office, we use detailed diagrams and notes for clarity. This includes specifying colors, locations (like the front roof line or all sides), and the length of light strands to ensure everything is clear and precise for our team.
Honestly? The software is the easiest part of this business. All we did was create whatever we needed in RealGreen, and then we just switched our mental gears to “holiday lights” and let the software do what we needed it to do. It’s just so simple.
Thanks to Sidne for sitting down with us and sharing her insights about adding holiday light installation to Yard Guard’s service portfolio. It’s exciting to see our customers evolving to grow their businesses in unique and inspiring ways. We look forward to seeing the bright, beautiful displays they’ll create for their customers!!
Looking to add holiday lights to your service offerings? Check out our eBook, “How to Make the Off-Season Your Growth Season,” for actionable, real-world strategies on how to keep your crew running year-round — and how RealGreen can help.
