Greenville, SOUTH CAROLINA

   Blue Dot Landscaping has run a promotion the last two years.  We have done it from February through April.  What we have done is gone to every mulch place in two counties and negotiate the best bulk deal we could on the price of mulch.  Then we advertise online a February Mulch Special.. then a March Mulch Special ... you get the idea.  This has been a successful promotion for us, bringing in many thousands of dollars in business.  More importantly, we have gotten great exposure and been able to introduce ourselves to literally hundreds of new potential customers.   Hopefully potential customers who want more than mulch.  Maybe a Koi pond or our lawn maintenance?   
   Well, as we are getting busy with other tasks and our mulch special is about to expire, we get one of our last mulch customers... Mr. Strayons.  We advertise heavily in our market - Greenville and Spartanburg, SC.  We focus our internet marketing on things like 'Spartanburg Landscaper'.  Mr. Strayons sends me an email and asks several questions about our mulch and wants to make sure we go to Greenville.  (Our home office is halfway between Greenville and Spartanburg - Lyman, SC).  He is not satisfied with all the emailing and he phones me.  We figure out he is going to need a lot of mulch and he decides we are the ones he wants to do the work.  We schedule an entire day to do his work... and of course it rains.  His rescheduling was for today.  And of course today doesn't start out too well.  We are missing one employee this week due to a death in his family.  Another calls me this morning and tells me he can't work because he hurt himself last night playing soccer.  The third worker... was the soccer players wife... and naturally she has to take him to the hospital.  So now we're down 3 vital workers.  I'm kinda of a 'go-getter'... and I 'go' and 'get' some extra workers.  You know those trailer parks you see with a lot of latino sorts that seem to work a lot in the construction industry?  Well, a truck and a little bit of spanish speaking and you can get you some good workers!
  All this and it's not even 7:30 am yet!  So we are hooking up the truck(s) and trailers, getting wheel barrows, pitch forks, etc. and I look up Mr. Strayons address in my trucks GPS... it's not there.  Sometimes happens.  No problem, I look it up on google maps... still not there.  So I do the obvious thing and call Mr. Strayons.  I ask him his exact address to make sure I was entering it correctly.  Then I ask what part of Greenville he lives.....
    Guess what?  He does live in Greenville..... Greenville, NORTH CAROLINA!  Only about a 6 hour drive.  Mr. Strayons does display a sense of humor - he says "I guess I won't see you at 10 then?"

LOL... what a Thursday!

Rich