House / Fire House Makeover

[Steve]

Our first Gopher Business Challenge is a yard make over. Please take some pictures of the yard before, during and after the make over. The makeover can be simple or large. The concept is this, building good will within the community by making over a yard. Along with building good will you will be advertising your company. A great suggestion was made to us that we include fire houses in this challenge, so we added that.

Here are some tips that you could include in your make over.

- Find a local garden supplier to potentially sponsor the makeover with products to use on the yard.
- Determine what your 'yard make over' will consist of.
- Contact your local newspaper with a press release about this makeover and that you are looking for contestant entries. Promote you and your store sponsor. Let them know what, where, time and day you will be working on the lawn for a photo op.
- Update your website to advertise this make over.
- Have the store announce and advertise the makeover competition. Possibly taking entries at the store.
- Advertising within your service area possibly with flyers or door hangers about the makeover along with a way for the reader to contact you with an entry
- Use a lawn sign to advertise your services as you makeover the yard. Keep the sign up for two weeks after?
- Finish the job with possibly before and after pictures sent to the newspaper.
- Hand out flyers or door hangers again showing the before and after. Update your website with the pictures. This will promote your company.

This challenge should last between 4 and 6 weeks. It will be judged based on the quality of the make over, the amount of publicity generated and over all energy put into building your company.

Gopher Challenge Rules (http://www.gophergraphics.com/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=1;t=838)

[Steve]

Contact us if you need help with press releases. We will also submit the winners within an article to Green Industry Trade Magazines.

[Steve]

We were talking with Jim From http://www.********.com/banners/wechappsbutton.gif (http://www.wechapps.com/) and he had a bunch of great ideas as far as this challenge goes.

One of the ideas was that work could be done with habitat for humanity, HUD, or even for a home where a member of the family is in the military and has gone off on a tour of duty. You could perform this challenge for profit, for cost, or for free.

Maybe some of these ideas will be helpful and inspiring.

Also we will be announcing some challenge prizes coming up so stay tuned.

[Steve]

From BVLawncare
Quote[/b] ]Great idea with the make over thing!!! Quick question, the yard im suppose to make over am i suppose to charge them for the work that im doing? OR will the sponsors pay for it? What do you think I should say to the folks @ the local garden store??? One more thing? Should I go to big garden stores like Home Depot or smaller ones like Pechies or something???

Hi BVLawncare, you can charge for the lawn make over service or you can do it for free and try your best to get your money's worth out of it by promoting this to newspapers and your community. What should you say to a local garden store? Well, it's up to you as to what you want to do. Say for instance you went along with the idea provided to us by W.E.Chapps (http://www.wechapps.com/) about providing this service free to someone who has a family member in the military. You could let the garden center know what you want to do and it is quite possible they might see this as a great idea and want to take part. You never know what's possible until you ask or try.
Should you go to a big store or a small one? Why not try both? You never know they just might join up with you.

[Steve]

Over $500 in Prizes !!!!!!! have been added to the challenge.

Click here (http://www.gophergraphics.com/forum/cgi-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST;f=1;t=852;r=1) to see.