I was on the road this week and I used my airport time to catch up on my RSS feeds and even dive into an actual hard-bound book, which I share with you below.

“5 Reasons You Need to Give Away the Recipe for Your Secret Sauce”
Convince & Convert
Not long ago a lawn care professional told me about his company’s approach to marketing via blog posts and online videos. He knew it was smart to produce videos homeowners would consider helpful, answering their questions about turf types, fertilizer application techniques and pests, but his bosses didn’t buy it. They wanted all the marketing materials to be promotional vs. helpful, saying, “If we give away all this information, our customers won’t need us anymore.” This article fleshes out why that’s not true. If you read nothing else this week, read No. 4 here. And then re-read our cover story from last December about a lawn care company that’s knocking content marketing out of the park.

“Culture of Safety”
Austin Outdoor’s Cultivations blog

Safety is one thing many Green Industry companies give lip service to, but you never know how many of them are living a safety culture day in and day out. If you’re not staying true to your safety values, Austin Outdoor’s four steps to creating a safety culture may help you find your path.

“Purple Cow“
Perhaps the folks at Holganix‘s ears were ringing a few weeks ago when I wrote that I’m a Seth Godin follower, but I’d never actually read one of his books. Why is that, you ask? They showed up at the Landscape Management Lawn Care Forum in Orlando, Fla., three weeks ago with a few cases of Purple Cow and handed them out to our attendees and even to the LM staff. I dug into it this week en route to and from Project EverGreen meeting in Ft. Myers, Fla., and I nodded my head through the whole thing. Now, on to becoming remarkable…