Podcast: This Atlanta Landscaper Quit Corporate at 24. Twenty-One Years Later, He Knows Exactly Where His Best Leads Come From.
Eric Soles told his wife he was thinking about starting a landscaping business. She said that was great. The next morning he went to work and quit his job. When he got home and told her, she was not expecting that.
That impulsive, freedom-chasing decision in his mid-twenties led to 21 years of building ITM Landscape in the North Atlanta market. Two decades of backyard transformations, a full design and maintenance operation, and a hard-earned understanding of exactly what drives quality leads in the home service space.
In a recent episode of the Everyday Excellence podcast, Todd Baldwin of Everyday Media Group sat down with Eric for a wide-ranging conversation that covered the Google versus Facebook debate, AI search, agency red flags, financial discipline, and the unglamorous truth about building something that lasts.
Who Is Eric Soles and What Does ITM Landscape Do?
ITM Landscape operates across the North Atlanta market, serving roughly a 20 to 25 mile radius. The company handles design, installation, and ongoing maintenance. But the part of the business Eric is most passionate about is the backyard makeover.
That means full outdoor transformations: patios, porches, outdoor kitchens, water features, putting greens, and extended roof lines. Eric is not interested in small one-off jobs. He wants to get into a project, and his marketing is built around attracting clients who are ready to invest in something significant.
He started the company at 24 with a marketing degree, a newly purchased home, a wife with an MBA, and an overwhelming desire to stop having someone else control his future. Nobody thought it was a good idea. That turned out to be useful motivation.
Answer the Phone. Every Time.
One of the first things Eric established in year one of the business was a dedicated person on the phone. His wife handled it in the early days, booking his evening sales appointments while he was out mowing during the day. It was not optional, and it was not something he stumbled into later.
When Todd raised the point that plenty of clients in 2026 still do not answer incoming calls, Eric’s response was immediate: you do not want to miss an eighty dollar click. Every paid lead that goes unanswered is money already spent with nothing to show for it.
The lead comes in hot. Whether it is from Google Ads or a Facebook campaign, the person searching for a backyard renovation is likely looking at multiple options at the same moment. The business that answers first has a significant advantage over every other competitor in that zip code. ITM Landscape has had someone dedicated to the phone from the very beginning, and that habit has compounded over two decades.
Google Leads vs. Facebook Leads: What Twenty-One Years Actually Teaches
Todd asked Eric directly: do you see a quality difference between leads from Google and leads from Facebook? Eric confirmed what Everyday Media Group consistently sees with home service clients across the country.
Google is direct intent marketing. A homeowner searching for backyard patio installation in Atlanta is telling you exactly what they want and that they want it now. They have a problem. They are looking for a solution. The lead that comes out of that search tends to be more committed, more ready to schedule a consultation, and more likely to convert.
Facebook is interruption marketing. Nobody wakes up scrolling their feed and decides they urgently need a new outdoor kitchen. The leads are cheaper to generate, but they take more work to qualify. Eric gets leads from Facebook. He has to sift through more of them to find the ones that are real.
The Facebook Autofill Problem Most Advertisers Do Not Know About
Todd flagged a specific technical issue that generates a significant amount of wasted spend and false lead volume on Facebook: autofill on lead forms. When a Facebook ad uses an in-platform lead form, the form can be set to auto-populate from the user’s saved profile data. This sounds convenient until you realize that Facebook profile data is often outdated, inaccurate, or just wrong.
People submit leads they never intended to submit. Emails bounce. Phone numbers are old. The advertiser gets charged for a lead that was never a real inquiry. Turning autofill off is a simple setting change that immediately improves lead form quality on Facebook campaigns.
Todd’s broader advice: Facebook can absolutely work for home service businesses, but it requires testing, targeting by income and zip code, and a willingness to sift through lower-quality volume to find the real buyers. Eric targets by income bracket, which tightens the pool considerably.
The AI Lead That Came From ChatGPT
Eric confirmed it during the episode: ITM Landscape received a lead from ChatGPT. A prospective client found the company through an AI assistant, not through Google or a paid ad.
Todd broke down why this is happening and what contractors need to know about it. AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude pull trust signals from across the web when they decide who to recommend. Review volume and quality matter. Website content that answers real questions matters. A consistent, credible online presence matters. When those signals are strong, AI includes a business in its recommendations.
Two things drive AI visibility above everything else right now: Google reviews and FAQ content. Homeowners are learning to type detailed, conversational questions into AI tools instead of short keyword strings. Businesses that have pages and content genuinely answering those questions are the ones that show up. Todd and his team at Everyday Media Group call it answer-first content, and it is one of the most important shifts happening in contractor marketing right now.
What Todd Calls Red Flags in AI Marketing Promises
Todd was direct on this point during the episode. If a marketing agency is telling you they have AI all figured out and can guarantee your business will show up in AI search results, that is a red flag.
Nobody has AI completely figured out. The landscape is changing every month. What is true is that businesses with strong organic presence, quality reviews, and well-structured content are more likely to appear in AI recommendations. An honest agency will tell you that. An agency promising guaranteed AI placement is overpromising, and that pattern tends to extend to every other promise they make.
How to Spot a Bad Marketing Agency Before They Waste Your Budget
Eric has been through the agency experience. Todd has watched clients go through it for over 20 years. Together they covered the clearest warning signs that a marketing relationship is going to end badly.
Guaranteed page one rankings in 30 to 60 days. This is a lie. Organic search rankings are at the mercy of Google’s algorithm. No agency controls the algorithm. What they can do is follow best practices and show you results over time. Anyone guaranteeing a timeline for organic is not being honest with you.
No transparency into what they are actually doing. You should be able to see exactly where your money is going, what campaigns are running, what the spend is, and what leads came in. If your agency is sending vague blanket reports full of vanity metrics without showing you lead volume and conversion, that is a transparency problem.
The big shiny agency trap. Eric and Todd both raised this one. A large agency that specializes in contractors sounds impressive. In practice, many home service business owners report feeling overcharged and underserved. Find an agency that knows your trade, not one with the most impressive deck.
No seasonal strategy. A good agency adjusts your spend based on what you are selling and when people are actually buying it. Fire pit campaigns should not run in July. Outdoor kitchen ads should align with homeowner buying seasons. If your agency is running the same campaigns year-round without adjustment, they are not paying attention to your business.
Google Ads Mechanics Most Contractors Do Not Know
Todd spent a significant portion of the episode on the operational details of running Google Ads campaigns, including several points that most business owners and even some agencies miss.
- Google can spend double your daily budget. This is in their terms and conditions. If your daily budget is set at $200, Google has the ability to spend $400 on a given day. They say the monthly total will not exceed what your budget projects, but single-day spikes can be jarring if you are not watching your account.
- Do not cold-pause campaigns. If you are turning off a campaign seasonally and plan to restart it in 30 days or more, a full pause may force a ramp-up period when you turn it back on. Letting the campaign run at a very low budget keeps it active in Google’s system. When you scale it back up, the ramp-up period is shorter or nonexistent.
- Start seasonal campaigns early. If you want fire pit ads running in October, start the campaign in mid-September with a minimal budget. Let it warm up so it is fully active and optimized when the peak season hits.
- Build and maintain a negative keyword list. Google will show your ads for searches that have nothing to do with your service if you are not actively filtering them out. A strong negative keyword list prevents wasted spend and keeps your budget focused on the searches that actually convert.
- Never accept Google’s automatic recommendations without reviewing them. Google’s suggested optimizations are designed to increase your spend. Some are useful. Many are not. Review each one individually before applying anything.
The Financial Discipline Behind Twenty-One Years in Business
Eric’s wife brought her MBA to the business from year one. She ran the books, tracked the numbers, and gave Eric a clear financial picture of what was actually happening versus what it felt like was happening.
That distinction matters enormously in the trades. It is entirely possible to be doing a high volume of work and still be losing money. Overhead is the variable most struggling landscape companies do not have a clear enough picture of. Labor, equipment, insurance, materials, fuel, and administrative costs have to be tracked precisely or the profit margin disappears.
Eric also charges a 3 percent credit card surcharge on every transaction. He was candid that he expected more pushback when he implemented it. The reality was that almost nobody complained. When you look at total annual revenue run through credit cards, the math on that 3 percent adds up to a number that is worth having the brief conversation.
His stance on minimums mirrors what Todd has seen across the industry. Smaller jobs take roughly the same amount of operational effort as larger ones. Managing the scheduling, the crew, the client communication, and the follow-up on a small project consumes nearly as much overhead as a large backyard transformation. Holding the minimum on project size protects margin and keeps the crew focused on the work that actually moves the business forward.
The Culture Eric Is Building Inside ITM Landscape
Eric talked about team culture with the conviction of someone who has learned its importance the hard way. One bad employee can disrupt the dynamic of an entire crew, affect the quality of work on a client’s property, and create friction that takes weeks to resolve. Eric does not tolerate it.
When it comes to having hard conversations with employees about performance or conduct, he uses what Todd’s team at Everyday Media Group would recognize as the sandwich approach: open with something genuine and positive, address the problem directly and honestly, then close with something that reinforces the person’s value and what you want to see from them going forward. It is not a soft approach. It is a structured one that makes difficult conversations more productive.
The other piece Eric referenced throughout the conversation was trusting his gut in the hiring process. When instinct says something is off during an interview, it is usually right. The times he has overridden that instinct because he needed someone quickly have consistently produced the outcomes he was trying to avoid.
What Eric Would Tell a Twenty-Four-Year-Old Starting Over
When Todd closed with the advice question, Eric’s answers were practical and specific. Stay out of the checkbook. Young business owners who start generating revenue often spend it before the business is stable enough to support that spending. Understanding the difference between gross revenue and what the business actually has available is a discipline that takes time to develop and costs a lot to learn the hard way.
The second piece of advice Eric endorsed strongly was finding a mentor. A business owner who has been where you are, survived the same mistakes, and built something sustainable on the other side is worth more than any course, book, or podcast. The conversation after a hard month with someone who has been through worse and kept going is genuinely useful in a way that other resources are not.
Todd added his own observation from two decades of running Everyday Media Group: no entrepreneur is fighting a unique fight. The circumstances are different. The industry is different. But the sleepless nights, the hiring mistakes, the pricing debates, the slow months, and the pressure of carrying a team are the same across every business owner conversation he has ever had.
Key Takeaways for Home Service Business Owners
- Answer every incoming call immediately. A lead that goes to voicemail during peak search hours is a lead that goes to your competitor. Dedicate a real person to incoming calls from the moment you start spending on marketing.
- Google leads and Facebook leads are not the same thing. Google captures active intent. Facebook interrupts passive scrolling. Know what you are buying before you set a budget, and adjust your expectations and qualification process accordingly.
- AI search is already producing leads. Reviews, FAQs, and answer-first content are the inputs that AI platforms pull from. Businesses that have built those assets are showing up in AI recommendations. It is not a future consideration. It is happening now.
- Red flags in agency relationships are consistent. Guaranteed organic rankings, vague reporting, no seasonal strategy, and promises about AI placement are all signs that an agency is selling and not delivering. Ask for transparency and case studies before signing anything.
- Know your overhead down to the dollar. High revenue does not mean healthy margins. Overhead management is what separates profitable contractors from struggling ones at every revenue level.
- Gut instinct in hiring is almost always right. The times you override it because you need someone now are the times that cost the most to recover from. Slow down on hiring decisions, even when the pressure to fill a position feels urgent.
Listen to the Full Episode
This episode of Everyday Excellence is available on the Everyday Media Group podcast channel. Eric Soles and ITM Landscape can be found at itmlandscape.com. If you are a home service business owner or contractor trying to get better results from your digital marketing, connect with Everyday Media Group at everydaymediagroup.com to find out where your campaigns stand.
