Advertising, sales and strategy for owner-run companies
I'm Garrison, out of Roseville, California. I work with owner-run service companies that are great at the work and stuck on everything around it: where the next job comes from, who answers the phone at 4pm, what gets quoted and what actually closes.
An illustrated Tuesday.
Small businesses are 99.9% of the businesses in this country. They're the fence company that picks up on a Saturday and the painter who shows up when he said he would. When one of them grows, the whole town feels it.
Source: U.S. Small Business Administration, Office of Advocacy, 2026
Most of them are run by an owner who's great at the work and stretched thin on everything around it. That's who I build for, in Roseville and anywhere else.
Tap the ones that sound like your week.
Most people in my line of work want you on a call before they've looked at your business. I do it the other way around.
Last photo added 2021
Closed Saturday and Sunday
Rocklin, (916) 555-0100
Put your company in it. The sample switches to the search your customers type.
What do you do?
Your Google listing, your website and the search a customer would actually type, walked through the way they see it. I'll point at the one thing I'd fix first. It's yours whether or not we ever talk.
Sometimes it's ads. Just as often it's the follow-up, the pricing, or who's answering the phone at 4pm. I'll tell you which, what it costs to fix, and what I'd expect it to be worth. If I'm the wrong fit, I'll say that too.
You pay ad spend directly and see every dollar. Then we sit down with your numbers.
You've watched these systems work for the company down the road. When they haven't worked for you, it's almost always one broken step, and usually one nobody ever showed you.
One client, an online nutrition coaching company running its own ads. Names stay private, and I'll walk you through the rest on a call.
Clicks on the ads kept coming and applications stopped cold. The landing page had quit loading. Once it was fixed, applications came back at 10 to 12 a day.
In your business: the ads look fine and the quote form won't load on a phone. An impressions report never shows that.
0 to 12 a day
April through June: $12,149 in ad spend brought in 170 applications and 14 new clients worth $49,616 in revenue.
In your business: once every step is tracked, you can see which ad dollar turned into which booked job.
$4.08 back per $1
Applications kept arriving at the same cost, $71 each in spring and $67 in summer. The drop was happening between the application and the sales call, so that's where the work went.
In your business: that's the quote you sent nine days ago and never chased.
Found in the follow-up
Her system started paying again the week the broken step got fixed. Your video shows you which step is yours.
Find my broken stepEvery decision I make for a client comes back to one of these. Find yours.
Most owners pay to fix layer two or three while layer one is cracked.
Diagnose which layer is broken before touching anything.
Read the whole thing
I've worked with thousands of businesses, most of them service-based, from coaches and consultants to owner-operators whose companies live and die by their reputation. Great work is everywhere. The owners who break through have an engine underneath them that keeps growing without leaning on them for every move.
Across those companies I've helped generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Some owners started from scratch. Others were doing seven and eight figures a year and needed a way through the next ceiling. I keep names private out of respect for my clients, and I'm glad to walk you through the real numbers on a call.
I live in Roseville with my wife and our son. I played college baseball as a top-ranked prospect, and I still play every Sunday in a men's league. Competing never really left me. I point it at building businesses now.
P.S. Yes, I'm every bit as competitive as I used to be. Just with a lot more injuries to show for it.
Not sure which side you're on? Send the form anyway. I'll tell you straight in the video.
Tell me your company name. I'll send a two-minute walkthrough within a day or two, with the one thing I'd change this week.