Latest / Contractor Business Builder Podcast / How To Be Found, Trusted & Chosen Online With Wes Towers

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How To Be Found, Trusted & Chosen Online With Wes Towers · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to another episode of the Contractor Business Builder
• 0:03
  podcast. Today we've got the honor of
• 0:05
  hosting W Towers. So what if the reason most
• 0:07
  contractors struggle to win better jobs is not their
• 0:10
  reputation, but the fact that their website and messaging do
• 0:13
  not build trust fast enough? So West is the founder of Uplift
• 0:17
  360. How you doing today Wes?
• 0:19
  Really. Well, thanks, Derek.
• 0:20
  And it's good to connect from the other side of the planet
• 0:22
  here in Australia. So yeah, it's it's my morning,
• 0:25
  Your your afternoon. So great, great.
• 0:27
  Great to speak to you. Yeah, definitely looking forward
• 0:30
  to it, you know, being a day ahead.
• 0:32
  I feel like you, you always got something, something from the
• 0:34
  future to, to, to tell us about and get into the the websites
• 0:38
  and, and what's kind of new and exciting and then what's also
• 0:41
  stayed the same. I find there's so much
• 0:43
  technology and stuff moving so fast now, but there there is
• 0:46
  still a lot of fundamentals to get right.
• 0:48
  And it's not that you have to scrap everything old usually
• 0:51
  it's just you have to modify a little bit of what you're doing.
• 0:54
  So can you give us your back story of kind of how you got
• 0:58
  started in, in, you know, web design and marketing for for
• 1:02
  contractors? Yeah, yeah, that's right.
• 1:04
  So I started the business over 20 years ago now, having first
• 1:08
  start firstly studying graphic design multimedia.
• 1:10
  Back in the in the 90s that websites weren't really a thing
• 1:14
  when I was selecting my career path.
• 1:15
  But after uni fat landed myself in a marketing company and
• 1:19
  they'd never designed a website. So this is how far things have
• 1:22
  come. They were award-winning Sydney
• 1:24
  company, but we had one computer with a dial up modem and we used
• 1:27
  to share the e-mail address. Someone would go over to that
• 1:30
  computer and shout out, hey, you've got a message, that sort
• 1:33
  of thing. So things have changed rapidly.
• 1:35
  But they won a website design project and they said, right,
• 1:37
  you're the young guy, better figure out how to build that
• 1:39
  site. So I did, and I loved it.
• 1:42
  I loved the technical and the creative and the marketing and
• 1:45
  all these moving parts that felt like bringing it all together.
• 1:47
  And, and things have changed wildly since those early days.
• 1:50
  And that was the year 2000. But yeah, when I started my own
• 1:53
  business, I was keen to to build websites and really fell into
• 1:57
  the nature of trades and construction by accident.
• 2:00
  People sometimes assume I'm some sort of triad, some sort of
• 2:03
  trade background. I didn't at all.
• 2:04
  I'm useless at swinging a hammer and don't know what the end of
• 2:07
  the screwdriver to to use it all that kind of stuff.
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  I'm pretty useless. But for whatever reason, I
• 2:12
  related really well to these founder LED businesses.
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  So I understood my world, but I understood how to relate that to
• 2:20
  to them and, and to get the best outcomes.
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  And so we were achieving the best outcomes for trades,
• 2:24
  construction businesses. So thought Amen, the nations
• 2:27
  found me should double down on this.
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  And it's been a really exciting journey through through the
• 2:33
  years. As I said, over 20 years now,
• 2:35
  the business has been operating doing what we do.
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  Yeah, wonderful. It is a much needed service in
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  the in the building world, you know, technical background as
• 2:45
  far as how to build houses. But yeah, when it comes to
• 2:47
  technology, you know, most contractors would rather not,
• 2:50
  you know, get their hands dirty, if you will, on the the digital
• 2:53
  side. That's where you step in.
• 2:55
  Now the builders, I feel like they're their businesses are
• 2:59
  built throughout reputation and trust.
• 3:01
  If you ask a lot of them, they'll say referrals are, you
• 3:04
  know, marketing. But obviously, even with
• 3:06
  referrals, you still need to have a good looking brand and
• 3:10
  you still need to build trust online.
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  So how do you approach helping a company be highly trustworthy
• 3:17
  and and fit the part online to to coincide with their, you
• 3:20
  know, offline reputation? Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:22
  It's, it's so important and to to get the foundations in your
• 3:26
  business, right. In the first instance, I would
• 3:28
  always say we can amplify a message if it's if you've got a
• 3:32
  quality reputation, we can amplify that.
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  But it's incredibly difficult to market.
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  You can't mark it your way out of a bad business.
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  You know, So people are talking, there's word of mouth, whether
• 3:41
  you know it or not, people are talking about your business.
• 3:44
  And particularly when someone's making a significant investment,
• 3:47
  you know, we're talking about people building their dream
• 3:50
  homes or renovating their homes. It's highly personal and it's
• 3:54
  highly, you know, these are really big, big decisions for
• 3:57
  the end customers. So they will talk to everybody
• 4:00
  they know about who the the best providers are for the
• 4:02
  particular, you know, might be trade or, or the full build.
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  So yeah, that's what I would always say to that.
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  And but there's also certainly ways you can let yourself down.
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  So what, what will typically happen is people will go out and
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  talk to a bunch of their friends to know or go on social media
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  and ask, hey, who do you know who does XYZ in our region?
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  Because obviously it's geographically bound.
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  And so people will suggest companies, but then they'll
• 4:27
  Google them, they'll, they'll find out everything they can
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  before making a buying decision. As I said, it's a, it's a big
• 4:32
  decision. So you don't want to fall down
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  on the on the point where your website just looks horrible.
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  It doesn't give the right impression.
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  They'll assume to a large degree, large degree how you do
• 4:44
  anything. It's how you do everything.
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  So if your website is sloppy, there's going to be a perception
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  that potentially you'll be sloppy in the building process.
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  So you really need it sharp, polished to match exactly who
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  you want to be, be known for what you want to be known for in
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  the industry so it can support you and and have all the right
• 5:02
  signals in there. So building trust because it is
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  such a trust based industry and trust is getting eroded all the
• 5:09
  time because we we can't believe what we read, We can't believe
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  what we see. You know, you see videos that
• 5:14
  look really realistic. So we don't necessarily trust
• 5:18
  the marketing message, but if it goes and supports what other
• 5:22
  people are saying on the ground, you know, you've got a referral,
• 5:25
  someone's recommended you and then they're getting a message
• 5:28
  that supports that. That's building trust and it's,
• 5:30
  it's building layers of trust as you go.
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  So I think it's really important to think about the whole the
• 5:36
  whole blend of what's being said.
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  Got your brand? Yeah, for sure.
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  And the, the, the website really is like your hub online.
• 5:43
  It's, it's your storefront, kind of the one stop shop where
• 5:46
  people are going to find you. Yeah, maybe they see you on
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  social media or wherever else, but ultimately they're making a
• 5:54
  decision on you. And even if they've been
• 5:57
  referred or they've met you, they need to be in alignment.
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  Just because you have a super sharp website, if it's not
• 6:04
  really aligned with the client or your brand or the way your
• 6:06
  company messaging works through can be a disconnect.
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  And that even in the background of someone's mind can cause, you
• 6:12
  know, dissonance and, and decreased trust potentially.
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  So when you have a client that comes to you or contractor who
• 6:18
  knows their their websites, you know, was five years old or not
• 6:23
  as good as it could be. What are kind of the, some of
• 6:25
  the first things that you look at and pick out where it's like,
• 6:29
  yeah, this is something's off. It's probably costing you leads
• 6:33
  or you're not building the trust.
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  You should what? What specifically do you look
• 6:36
  look for? Yeah, yeah, there's, there's a
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  the key things that we say right away oftentimes that people
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  learn to expect things in a certain place in a website and
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  people are really rushed. So the structure in the in the
• 6:49
  site is really important to have things where people will expect
• 6:52
  them. So the brand and it creates a
• 6:55
  user experience that people are familiar with so they can easily
• 6:58
  navigate around your site and find what it is they're looking
• 7:00
  for. For example, the brand, the logo
• 7:03
  would probably be in the in the header on the left.
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  You'd have the menu along the top.
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  Even though the positioning of items within that menu, say the
• 7:11
  contact page for example, is a good example.
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  It, it should be the last item simply because people have
• 7:16
  learned that's where it sits most of the time and is.
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  So someone's jumping on your website and really they just
• 7:21
  want to get your address or contact details, they'll know
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  that's where it sits. So you don't want to create any
• 7:28
  resistance because people are so rushed and our attention spans
• 7:31
  are rapidly diminishing, it feels like.
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  So you know, you don't want to create any confusion.
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  A simple, clean, sophisticated website with everything in the
• 7:39
  right place is a call collection would be on the right side in
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  the head of there and then that hero section.
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  So that big section on your home page, that's what's viewed more
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  than anything else. So really strong compelling
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  message and a call to action of some descriptions.
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  So request a quote, you know, whatever it is book book.
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  Now depends on the nature of the business, but whatever you want
• 8:01
  that next step to be that's that's the prime real estate and
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  it needs to be really solid. But yeah, there's oftentimes
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  we'll we'll take on websites. There was a, the new project we
• 8:11
  just launched last week and we were working with the marketing
• 8:14
  manager within the organisation, but above him, the directors
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  were wanting lots of animation in the site.
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  And we can certainly do that. It, it looks impressive and it,
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  it has that wow factor. But from a marketing conversion
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  standpoint, it's, it's causes more harm than good.
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  Because now, as you can imagine, you're jumping on a website,
• 8:33
  you're trying to find out about the company and the information
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  and if they're going to build a quality house or in this
• 8:38
  instance they were commercial buildings.
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  And to have the logo moving around and all that.
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  I mean, it's good for us because it's exciting and fun to work
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  on, but it's terrible from a marketing standpoint.
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  So having those discussions with the marketing manager so he
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  could take that and convey that to the directors and so they can
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  make an informed decision in, in the outcome.
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  We, we created a balance. So there was a little bit of
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  animation, but not so much that it would cause any user
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  experience frustrations. So these sorts of things you
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  just don't know. You don't know what you don't
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  know. It's like anything, you know,
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  they need guidance from people who have have done, who have
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  understanding of what works. And because we're so niched, we
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  know what works in our in our industries.
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  So those little things really important, just the, the basics.
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  I think that's why I've done so well with the trades and
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  construction. I'm just have a really
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  practical, pragmatic discussion with these people and so they
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  get it. I'd really try to avoid
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  technical jargon and all that as much as I can.
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  That's just annoying and frustrating for the end
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  customers. Yeah, kind of attribute it to a
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  house where there is these, you know, fancy things that an
• 9:44
  architect might come up with that that look really cool.
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  But as a builder, you know, structurally it's it's gonna
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  cause issues down the road or may not have the effect.
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  They're not all the sides have been considered.
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  I know I've been on, I would say many, but there are those sites
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  you get on where you can tell it's very much produced for the
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  aesthetics and little buttons and things are moving around and
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  as you stroll, you know, stuff happening and it's kind of
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  interactive. But at the end of the day, it's
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  just a little bit confusing and overwhelming and you kind of
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  don't want to stay on the page very long because it's just,
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  it's, it's too much, right? So there's there's definitely a
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  balance that's that's needed there.
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  Yeah. And and with that, you know the,
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  you know, the volume built house, let's say they iron out
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  the little issues, you know, that you haven't considered
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  until you've built it and you realize, hey, it would have been
• 10:32
  better if something was adjusted slightly.
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  So they iron that out for the next one.
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  But when it's custom designed and they're creating something
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  brand new, you know, there's always the potential for things
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  just to be not foreseen. I had a I had some friends
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  building a really lovely house and it's in the architectural
• 10:49
  awards down in Tasmania. So stay in in Australia, But
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  there's just a couple of little things that they would have done
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  completely differently. And because there's so much, so
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  much, you know, they're custom designers would would appreciate
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  this. There's just so many things to
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  consider in a custom design that you don't really know exactly
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  until it's built out. And it's kind of the same with
• 11:09
  websites. So we follow a formula and a
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  structure that we know works and then within that those
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  brainworks we we, we know that works and then we apply the
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  brand so it's 100% theirs. For sure.
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  Awesome. So you mentioned cold actions
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  earlier and typically that's going to go to the contact page
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  or a form to fill out to, to get in touch.
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  I'm always curious about the form.
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  I know some builders they'll pretty much have a name and a
• 11:34
  message box and that's about it. And then others will have any
• 11:39
  number of of additional information like size of the
• 11:43
  project, budget, locations, you know on and on and on and so
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  forth. What do you have a preferred
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  amount of collection or would you dial that up or down
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  depending on the amount of leads that are coming through?
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  What do you like to see as far as like the contact?
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  So there's different ways to think about it.
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  So if you're not getting enough inquiries leads through the
• 12:02
  form, that's probably too many fields.
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  So we're humans are busy and so therefore we're a little bit
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  lazy with these things. So if you see a big overwhelming
• 12:10
  form, we we likely won't fill it in.
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  Now that's not necessarily bad if your intention is for they
• 12:15
  put a phone more so than fill in a form.
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  That's that's that's fine. But making an informed decision
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  when you go about that. So if you're getting if you're
• 12:25
  getting lots of leads and they're not qualified well
• 12:27
  enough, and that's frustrating as well.
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  So it's getting that balance right.
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  There's some little tricks you can do to get a a longer form
• 12:35
  filled in more often than not, and that's to create a multi
• 12:39
  step form. So you're asking for a chunk of
• 12:41
  information and then they go to the next set of questions.
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  It just helps the human mind feel like, you know, there's not
• 12:49
  too much here to deal with, you know, And the other thing too,
• 12:52
  sometimes a form might scare people away if they just don't
• 12:55
  understand what they need to fill in.
• 12:58
  So they might not know their lot size, for example, or they may,
• 13:02
  you know, if you're asking for things, technical information
• 13:06
  that they don't understand, people don't want to feel silly,
• 13:08
  so they, they won't feel it in the form at all if it makes them
• 13:11
  feel silly. So it depends on the nature of
• 13:13
  business. If it's a business to business
• 13:16
  scenario where you're a subcontractor working for
• 13:19
  builders will, then yes, you can ask for the really specific and
• 13:21
  technical information. But if you're going straight to
• 13:24
  the to the arm and dad home owner, then you don't want to
• 13:27
  scare them away with technical stuff.
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  So yeah, it's a bit of a balancing act sometimes.
• 13:32
  We had some great success actually with a window company
• 13:37
  who was getting no inquiries at all, not by phone, not by form.
• 13:43
  Yeah, yeah, we took them, took them on and I stripped their.
• 13:47
  Well, I just, they created a new form on their website with, with
• 13:50
  just name, phone number, e-mail and and a message box.
• 13:55
  And the, the leads immediately started flowing through.
• 13:58
  It was, it's, it was remarkable. Yeah, yeah.
• 14:00
  So it's about getting the balance right for the certain
• 14:02
  business. You know, it'll, it'll be
• 14:04
  different. So if you want to, if you want
• 14:06
  to get less leads but more qualified, add some fields if
• 14:09
  you want. If you're not getting enough
• 14:10
  leads at all, strip some form fields out.
• 14:13
  Yeah, great, Great advice. Thanks for breaking that down.
• 14:16
  Now having the websites, one thing having an operating,
• 14:19
  there's another thing, how do you actually get people to your
• 14:21
  website is, is you know the, the $1,000,000 question a lot of the
• 14:25
  time, and you hear it a lot as far as like SEO organic, that's
• 14:30
  obviously the ideal way that people find you is they search
• 14:34
  you and they find you without having to spend on ads and stuff
• 14:37
  like that. What are some of the maybe key
• 14:39
  components or how do you approach SEO effectively for for
• 14:44
  your clients? Yeah, it's, it's, it's changing
• 14:47
  a lot over the years. It's always changed a lot.
• 14:49
  Search engine optimization, we're calling it search
• 14:51
  everywhere optimization because it's not just Google and search
• 14:55
  engines anymore, but it's large language models.
• 14:57
  And the the key thing with all of these tools, it doesn't
• 14:59
  matter what it is, it's trying to give the very best
• 15:02
  information for the specific need that someone's searching
• 15:06
  for or asking their chat JBT about.
• 15:08
  So it's, it's about having that quality information and
• 15:11
  substantial information that these these platforms will glean
• 15:16
  information from and and recommend you as the authority
• 15:19
  and the space you play in. So thinking about the content
• 15:22
  and the site is really important.
• 15:23
  And so typically for your main pages, the the sales based pages
• 15:28
  or within your website, you want them clear, concise, compelling,
• 15:31
  so people know how to take the next step to take action and the
• 15:35
  call to action. That's the primary purpose for
• 15:37
  your main pages. But then you've got ways in
• 15:40
  which you can build in substantial content so Google
• 15:42
  can recognize it and and large language models can understand
• 15:45
  it. And so that oftentimes will
• 15:47
  apply a blog or news section to the site.
• 15:50
  And that gives us an opportunity to touch on lots of different
• 15:53
  places of content that can be flagged and gets get recognised
• 15:57
  in the SEO world. So that's the way we kind of do
• 16:00
  it. It's about getting that balance
• 16:01
  out of what, what is this page? What's the purpose of this page?
• 16:04
  Is it the sales page? Or is it the content driven to
• 16:08
  attract humans, but also to attract all the various tools?
• 16:11
  So yeah, that balance is, is is fun.
• 16:15
  It's, it's kind of, it's kind of funny.
• 16:17
  A lot of people talk about Google not being as effective as
• 16:20
  it once was and to agree Gray that's true.
• 16:24
  But we've found most of our clients, whilst their traffic
• 16:27
  might have diminished somewhat, they're the amount of leads they
• 16:31
  get through the website has not. So what that means to me is
• 16:34
  people are doing their research in in other ways.
• 16:37
  So they're having a chat to their charity or whatever AI
• 16:40
  they use for general research and information.
• 16:43
  So there's less need to visit a website for that information.
• 16:46
  But when they want to buy something, they're still
• 16:48
  visiting the website. And certainly for our clientele,
• 16:51
  because as I said before, it's not, it's not an impulse.
• 16:54
  Why, you know, they're not just buying something like they might
• 16:56
  on, you know, team or something like that.
• 16:59
  It's nothing like that at all. They're going to want to talk to
• 17:02
  a real human and they got going to visit your website and
• 17:05
  they're going to find out as much as they can before they
• 17:08
  part ways with the significant investment.
• 17:10
  Yeah, for sure. It's it's really becoming more
• 17:13
  and more, you know multi faceted and more of an ecosystem.
• 17:17
  I think for the the certain search everywhere, as as you
• 17:20
  mentioned, so you want to have similar information and content
• 17:24
  across multiple platforms and, and have it kind of linked with
• 17:28
  your website and different things like that.
• 17:30
  Now, this is kind of a personal question of my own of like how
• 17:34
  important is it to have location names in your like headers or
• 17:38
  content? Like if you're from a specific
• 17:40
  neighborhood or city versus search engine optimization is
• 17:44
  that's still relevant with Google just being as
• 17:47
  knowledgeable as it is typically about companies and locations or
• 17:51
  what kind of specific words are would you want to have on on a
• 17:55
  on a page our builder. Yeah, definitely you want to
• 17:57
  talk about the locations you're serving.
• 17:59
  So I mean, if you if you have the easy ways to introduce that
• 18:03
  is if you have a case studies page, let's say, you should
• 18:07
  definitely mention the location in the suburb or the town or
• 18:12
  whatever it is. So you just naturally saying the
• 18:15
  locations all the time. Now Google do understand where
• 18:18
  you are, you'll probably have a Google business profile that's
• 18:22
  important. Back in the day, you needed to
• 18:24
  have the all the keywords in the right places for, for almost
• 18:29
  theatrical way to the top in search engines.
• 18:31
  But it's far more sophisticated than that.
• 18:33
  So I think about the content, firstly, that it's useful for
• 18:36
  the end user, the humans. But secondary to that, think
• 18:40
  about, you know, using some phrases that you want to rank
• 18:43
  for. So the location you would use
• 18:45
  them in natural places. It doesn't need to be in the
• 18:47
  heading anymore. And there was all sorts of
• 18:49
  little tricks that people used to do to try and to do that.
• 18:51
  But just think about it is, is it useful for the, for the end
• 18:54
  user to say, you know, I mean just outside of Melbourne?
• 18:58
  So if I said project XYZ location Melbourne, that would
• 19:02
  be helpful. So that's the way of thinking
• 19:04
  about it. So yeah, definitely for, for
• 19:05
  trades and construction, obviously they're, they're for
• 19:08
  the most part geographically bound.
• 19:10
  We work with a lot, a lot of our building materials companies as
• 19:13
  well. So they might be national in, in
• 19:15
  their, in their, in their industries.
• 19:18
  So. But for the most part, location
• 19:20
  really does matter as well. Yeah.
• 19:22
  OK. Yeah.
• 19:22
  Thanks for clarifying that. As far as like mistakes that you
• 19:26
  see holders making with their website, is there anything that
• 19:29
  you kind of see over and over again or or that they're kind of
• 19:33
  glaringly obvious when you take a look that this needs to be
• 19:36
  changed or fixed? Yeah.
• 19:37
  Well, I think for the most part they're often sitting on a gold
• 19:41
  mine, but they just haven't leveraged the information that
• 19:44
  they have at their fingertips simply because it's not front of
• 19:46
  mind. So especially if you're a
• 19:48
  founder LED business or you're still out at the tool on the
• 19:50
  tools, you're not thinking about marketing all the time, But if
• 19:54
  you can set up ways in which every project you want, maybe
• 19:57
  not every project got all the significant projects somehow
• 20:00
  find their way into your website.
• 20:02
  That's the easiest way to build out content, but to showcase
• 20:05
  hopefully the quality work that you're providing.
• 20:08
  So I mean, I've got a a client who's who's applying it really
• 20:12
  well right now. So whilst he is driving from
• 20:15
  project to project, he, he will talk to his chat JB about what
• 20:19
  he's just done, what he's saying and some interesting highlights.
• 20:23
  And then at the end of the day, he'll just e-mail me these
• 20:26
  snapshots of what's been going on.
• 20:28
  We can rework that into blog posts.
• 20:30
  So I mean, he could do the blog posts himself, but he, you know,
• 20:33
  his time poor and he'd like us to cast our eye over it and and
• 20:36
  make sure it's all search engine friendly and all that kind of
• 20:39
  stuff. But to build out little systems
• 20:41
  where it becomes a habit, where you can make sure these quality
• 20:45
  projects you're working on seeing and visible and building
• 20:47
  the authority and trust in in the industry.
• 20:50
  So you know, oftentimes they'll bring on a client and they just
• 20:53
  have nothing much in their sight of significance.
• 20:56
  But once you, once you start talking just the other, probably
• 20:59
  a month ago now, we launched a site for a Sydney company and I
• 21:03
  didn't realise, I just thought they were small, small time
• 21:06
  player in the, in their field. But then they started talking
• 21:09
  about the buildings they work on and, and they recognised
• 21:12
  possibly global, globally recognized buildings that
• 21:15
  they've worked on. And they haven't told anybody.
• 21:17
  It's not on their website, it's not on their socials.
• 21:19
  And you are sitting on a gold mine and you, you just have to
• 21:22
  open that up. You know, I just need to get
• 21:24
  that information out of you and get it on the website.
• 21:27
  And it's as simple as that. Oftentimes just thinking about
• 21:29
  how you can make it easy for yourself to get that information
• 21:33
  published so people know what you're up to and and they can
• 21:36
  say, hey, that's a project we really love, we want to do
• 21:39
  something similar and away you go.
• 21:40
  Yeah, I love the way you articulated that.
• 21:42
  And so many builders do great work, proud of the projects they
• 21:45
  do, but humble and and typically don't like, you know,
• 21:48
  necessarily the limelight and but you have all these, you
• 21:51
  know, amazing projects. People are interested in knowing
• 21:53
  about them and having, as you mentioned, we're all about
• 21:56
  systems and processes. So it's not that you need to
• 22:00
  make the content, write the blog articles or touch up the photos
• 22:04
  or whatever. You typically you just need kind
• 22:06
  of the raw materials, if you will, of what's happening, you
• 22:09
  know, certain topics, sending photos from finished product
• 22:13
  projects or ongoing projects. And then having somebody who can
• 22:17
  can work with that and, and be, you know, putting out that
• 22:20
  content regularly, whether that's through social media or
• 22:23
  in this case more of a polished format for, for the website is,
• 22:27
  is fantastic. And it just ties into that whole
• 22:29
  ecosystem. As before, for builders who have
• 22:33
  maybe done their marketing internally, maybe they hired
• 22:35
  somebody to do some web design for them at some point to get
• 22:38
  their website up, But now they want to hire, you know, an
• 22:40
  actual marketing company or, or web developer to kind of get it
• 22:44
  to that next level. How do you suggest they approach
• 22:47
  that and what should they look for?
• 22:48
  They should hire me. Yeah.
• 22:52
  Well, it's, it's, it's so difficult these days to know who
• 22:56
  a quality provider is and, and who isn't.
• 22:58
  And, and so you see kind of companies pop up, you know, who
• 23:02
  provide this kind of stuff all the time.
• 23:04
  They come and go all the time. So I mean, in my view, and I
• 23:08
  suppose because that's the way we've built our businesses to,
• 23:11
  to hire somebody who understands your industry to some degree,
• 23:15
  because there'll always be nuance in in, in what works for
• 23:19
  a certain type of customer and client.
• 23:22
  If they already have sane a bunch of of companies similar to
• 23:26
  yours, then there's chances are they can shortcut to some
• 23:29
  success a little bit quicker. There might be some levers that
• 23:32
  they can pull pretty fast to, to get an outcome because they've
• 23:35
  seen it before. They've tried stuff and it
• 23:37
  didn't work and they've tried stuff that did work.
• 23:39
  So that's better, better not to have to go through that trial
• 23:41
  and error scenario. You know yourself if you don't
• 23:44
  have to. So that's probably the main
• 23:46
  thing. And you don't know what you
• 23:48
  don't know. It's like anything.
• 23:49
  You don't know what you don't know.
• 23:50
  So I mean, hiring someone just because you've seen a website
• 23:53
  that you kind of like the look and feel love you might see a
• 23:56
  site and go, OK, well, we want something similar to that.
• 23:59
  It realistically it shouldn't be just about the look and feel and
• 24:02
  what you like because you are not your customer.
• 24:05
  So you know, just like I said before that the directors of the
• 24:09
  company who wanted all that animation, they didn't realise
• 24:12
  the negative impact of doing what they were requesting.
• 24:15
  So you don't know what you don't know.
• 24:16
  Getting expert advice and guidance because otherwise it
• 24:19
  can be a really expensive exercise that yields my fruit.
• 24:23
  Yeah, 100% so yeah, what you touched on specifically having a
• 24:27
  track record like yourself, you know, 20 years, there's a lot of
• 24:31
  flash in the pan kind of, you know, people out there, I think,
• 24:34
  and maybe some will stick around, but if if they're kind
• 24:37
  of new to this, this game, you can there's a little bit of a
• 24:40
  red flag there. And then specific to the
• 24:42
  industry, 100% I, I've had clients with, you know, both
• 24:46
  sides of that where they've hired A marketer specifically
• 24:48
  with builders and, and then ones that are just more generic.
• 24:52
  And yeah, it's very rare that just a generalized marketing
• 24:56
  company is going to get great results for, for a builder.
• 24:59
  Yeah, you're, you're much better going with someone who
• 25:01
  specifically works with them because you've seen the ins and
• 25:05
  outs, you know, what works, what doesn't work, you know, the
• 25:07
  types of people and types of businesses that they are
• 25:09
  running. It's just the, the, the process
• 25:11
  and the results are just going to be so much better.
• 25:14
  And then what you mentioned with your marketing needs to be
• 25:18
  focused on your, your customer, your client.
• 25:20
  And it seems like such a like no-brainer kind of thing that we
• 25:23
  often forget that I know myself when I named my first company,
• 25:26
  you know, I was totally thinking about like, oh, I want my
• 25:28
  company to sound, you know, big and strong and like, you know,
• 25:31
  amazing and whatever, but not realizing that my client doesn't
• 25:34
  care about that. They, they want something that's
• 25:36
  like trustworthy and friendly and local, right?
• 25:38
  Like there's, there's, there's kind of two sides to it.
• 25:41
  So keeping in mind that just because you like something or
• 25:43
  like the way something looks doesn't mean it's going to be
• 25:46
  effective. And it may not be the way your
• 25:47
  customers, you know, feel about whatever.
• 25:50
  So. Yeah, we just get too close to
• 25:53
  our own things sometimes as well.
• 25:55
  So we don't know, you know, we can't see things from, you know,
• 25:59
  with a clear without, without a lens.
• 26:01
  We're always going to see things with a lens on.
• 26:04
  So that's why I think it's incredibly important no matter
• 26:06
  what field of expertise you're bringing in.
• 26:08
  But to get that external advice, even if you're an expert, as
• 26:12
  people always say, like the leading sports people in their
• 26:15
  field, they might be the very best at their given sport, but
• 26:19
  they still have a coach. So.
• 26:20
  So they still have external third parties speaking into what
• 26:24
  they need to do because you you just can't see your own flaws
• 26:28
  and opportunities for for potential improvements.
• 26:31
  Yeah, yeah, great analogy there. Like you would never imagine a
• 26:35
  professional athlete without a lot of guidance coaching, you
• 26:38
  know, medical help and staff and nutrition and and like there's
• 26:42
  so much that goes into making them an elite athlete.
• 26:44
  So if you want a really high performing business, you're
• 26:47
  gonna need these people around you that are specific and
• 26:50
  knowledgeable in their aspect to to guide and help you with your
• 26:54
  business as as you grow it. Well, it was for for those
• 26:56
  people that want to get a better website, get better marketing,
• 27:01
  make more money, get more clients.
• 27:03
  What's the best way for them to connect with you and and uplift
• 27:06
  the 360? Yeah, uplift360.com dot AU,
• 27:09
  being in Australian, EU is for the Australian website we serve.
• 27:14
  You'll see if you jump on the home page, there's a bunch of
• 27:16
  clients all around the globe as well.
• 27:18
  So some, some companies probably people will recognise in there.
• 27:22
  So yeah, happy to jump on a strategy called.
• 27:23
  There's a big button on their home page of the website.
• 27:26
  We can book a call with me. It's a free, free call.
• 27:28
  Have an initial conversation, maybe around some of the topics
• 27:31
  we talked about today and see how we might be able to help.
• 27:34
  Them wonderful see, I'll put links to the website and the
• 27:37
  description of this, you know, audio video wherever you're
• 27:40
  checking it out from and reach out to Wes connect with him on a
• 27:44
  call. No reason to have a a sloppier,
• 27:46
  ineffective website. So get a get something brand new
• 27:50
  and and working for you. Thanks so much for coming on
• 27:53
  your West and sharing all your your insights and wisdom.
• 27:55
  My pleasure. Thanks, Derek.