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How Smart Contractors Build a Marketing Machine That Never Stops with Thaddeus Tondu · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to another great episode of the Contractor Business
• 0:02
  Builder Podcast. Imagine generating more leads
• 0:05
  than ever before only to realize your business isn't set up to
• 0:07
  convert them into profit. That's a lesson Thaddeus has
• 0:10
  seen first hand. What helping more than 150 home
• 0:13
  service business is grow across North America.
• 0:16
  How you doing today videos? I'm doing great, Derek.
• 0:18
  How are? You perfect doing wonderful
• 0:20
  definitely. So you're the CEO of On Purpose
• 0:23
  Media. Can you tell us a little bit
• 0:25
  about your background and and what the inspiration was behind
• 0:27
  your company? Yeah, 100%.
• 0:29
  And 1st off, thanks for having me on on your show and hopefully
• 0:33
  we get some golden Nuggets here for your audience to to take out
• 0:36
  of. So, so on purpose media, we
• 0:38
  started the business on like November 2019, bought the
• 0:41
  domain, built the business plan, did the website and then in
• 0:44
  February 2020, I quit my job and went all in into starting this
• 0:49
  business. I was actually in print media
• 0:51
  beforehand for six years and I've done a lot of other things.
• 0:54
  I've been in passenger elevator industry, always have to KV at
• 0:58
  the passenger elevator industry because I'm in the prairies and
• 1:02
  when you're in the prairies, people think grain elevators
• 1:04
  whenever you say elevator industry.
• 1:05
  So that's just built in for me for that.
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  But when we started February 2020, I quit my job, went all in
• 1:12
  first, first week in and had, you know, 5 clients.
• 1:15
  And then four weeks later, well, we know what happened in March
• 1:18
  2020 and everything stopped for us.
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  And so it was it, we lost four of our five clients.
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  It was an interesting time to have started a business.
• 1:25
  But Fast forward over 6 1/2 years later and we've got, you
• 1:29
  know, 12 full Time Team members, 150 plus clients that we served
• 1:33
  over the time we've been around for.
• 1:34
  And really the inspiration was sitting down with a lot of small
• 1:38
  businesses local to my area. One of our report building
• 1:41
  questions in that presentation was while I took a look at your
• 1:44
  website, is there anything that's not on your website that
• 1:46
  you want me to know about your business?
• 1:47
  That was it. That was our report question for
• 1:50
  for that role. Because have you ever tried to
• 1:51
  hug a non hugger? Well, it's like trying to build
• 1:53
  rapport with the non report builder is tough.
• 1:55
  And a lot of people would be like, well, what do you think of
• 1:58
  my website? Yeah, you know, what do you
• 1:59
  think of it? And saw a lot of websites and I
• 2:01
  found people fell into one of three camps when I, when I
• 2:05
  talked about digital with them. Most people have a bad taste in
• 2:09
  their mouth with digital marketing providers because they
• 2:11
  paid them some money and they took off.
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  They never saw the person again or they paid them some money and
• 2:15
  they got something, but they weren't quite sure what they
• 2:17
  were getting. And the results were average at
• 2:20
  best. And then another camp of people
• 2:21
  paid money to a digital marketing company, had a great
• 2:24
  result, had a good track record and enjoyed their relationship.
• 2:27
  By and large, people fed and fit into camps one or two.
• 2:30
  And so we're like, you know what it's gotta be a better way to be
• 2:32
  able to do this. And so when we started business,
• 2:34
  we built it on this foundational principle of over communication.
• 2:37
  When you over communicate what it is that you do, you're going
• 2:40
  to win people long term. Because at the end of the day,
• 2:42
  all we want to do is be heard as humans.
• 2:44
  And that's one of our foundational pillars is do
• 2:47
  what's right now, what's easy. It's our first core values
• 2:49
  because we want to make sure that we have this over
• 2:51
  communication to be able to help our clients.
• 2:53
  Out yeah, over communicating is something that I've made
• 2:56
  reference to with, with contractors because in, in the
• 2:59
  industry, the prevailing kind of idea is that contractors, you
• 3:04
  know, don't answer the phone and communicate this type of thing.
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  Plus in the marketing sense, a lot of them haven't been
• 3:09
  introduced to, you know, how do you actually communicate through
• 3:12
  a website through your clients about your business and things
• 3:16
  like that. And then you're doing that as a
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  business for, for contractors is, is definitely a big help.
• 3:20
  The other thing is I, I don't think I've ever heard a client
• 3:24
  in the construction industry say you're over communicating.
• 3:27
  Don't don't, don't contact me as much or or don't tell me as much
• 3:30
  information. You know, sometimes it can be a
• 3:32
  little bit much, but generally speaking, better to over
• 3:35
  communicate, trying to communicate for sure.
• 3:36
  I would agree. Now you've mentioned that
• 3:39
  marketing is often not truly the problem.
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  It's it's often systems and I'm all about, you know, systems and
• 3:44
  processes and things like that. Can you speak to that in, in the
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  contractor marketing sense of of, you know, where there's a
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  difference between maybe the marketing and then the actual
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  system behind it? Yeah, 100%.
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  I think this this applies to broader strokes, almost every
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  business, not just contracting businesses by the way.
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  And So what happens is that marketing gets to blame for
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  operational deficiencies because what you see, and sometimes
• 4:08
  marketing does is the ability to to blame here.
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  I'm not saying that marketing, you know, is, is, is the end all
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  be all, right? But what happens is that
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  oftentimes businesses will break, get leads, but they don't
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  call the leads quick enough or somebody calls in, they don't
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  answer their phone because it goes to voicemail because
• 4:24
  they're on a job site depending on obviously the size or, or
• 4:27
  whatever, right? Or, you know, you get the lead
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  in and the operations that fell between the cracks or the
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  salesperson couldn't close it. Well, is that a marketing
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  problem? No, that's actually an
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  operations problem because when you look at it, marketing's job
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  is to bring in a qualified hand raiser.
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  They raise their hand and they reach out to you.
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  They submit a form, they call you, they're looking at your
• 4:47
  stuff. That's marketing's job.
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  My job essentially is done when a lead calls a business.
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  I can't control what happens after that.
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  In fact, I can't even make a lead pick up the phone and call
• 4:57
  a business. I can just get eyes on it.
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  And that's the job of the market.
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  And I think a lot of businesses missed that part, like, well,
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  the leads aren't very good. OK, well, how many times did you
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  call the person? Well, I only call them once.
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  OK, well, that's that, that's not that, that's not my thing.
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  You know that the average, what is it 9 to 12 touches is what,
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  how often you need to to like talk to, to reach out to
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  somebody where most people quit after like two or three.
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  And so there's a LinkedIn graphic somewhere out there
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  about like the numbers. I used to have it on my, on my
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  pegboard and my, my old office. There's never put it back up.
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  But that's the reality, right? And so, so one of the things
• 5:29
  that we like looking at is if you can create a dashboard and
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  depending on the the type of contracting business, it is like
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  we work with a lot of HVAC and plumbing, electrical, garage
• 5:39
  doors, roofing businesses, you can actually tie a lot of your
• 5:42
  marketing back into return on ad spend.
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  But what I like to look at is, OK, what's my return on ads, but
• 5:46
  potential and what's my return on and spend closed.
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  So now you can actually see, OK, marketing companies potential is
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  a 50X. I'm going to use make up some
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  numbers. OK, you know, let's do 100 X.
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  Let's make my maths super easy here, right?
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  I'm just, you know, these are just random numbers.
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  I can go 10X if we want, but hundred X is the potential.
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  OK. But if you only closed 20X to
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  that, that means there's an 80 per 80X return on ad spend that
• 6:12
  is available somewhere in the operations aspect.
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  Now, if you can continue to close that gap, if you can get
• 6:16
  to A50X, if you can close half of the leads, half of the
• 6:20
  business that the marketing brings in, wow, that's a way
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  different scenario than 20X. Just increased your output by
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  30X, right? You've got 30X return on
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  investment. And understanding some of those
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  numbers, I think is where a lot of businesses fail because they
• 6:34
  just think that while marketing should close everything, well,
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  no, you should work on trying to close it.
• 6:39
  Yeah, for sure. There's I think business in like
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  it's a holistic entity, if you will.
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  And one process feeds into into the next, you know, marketing
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  into sales, sales into production and and there's a lot
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  of nuance in between and as far as your process and you know
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  what you do for sales and how many, you know, touch points you
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  have all all this type of stuff for sure.
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  So if you were say you're stepping into a business is
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  doing a couple million a year contracting business, what's the
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  first thing you do their marketing if you were to step in
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  and take over, you know the marketing side of of a
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  contracting business? Yeah, percent in there.
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  A little bit of a tough questioning answer because every
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  business is nuanced on what they're gonna be at.
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  And so I'm gonna talk generalities of what I would
• 7:25
  look at from from every stage. And some people might be like,
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  well, I already have that. OK, cool.
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  Well then move on to the next stage.
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  And so if you're 2 to 5 million, the first thing I look at is,
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  OK, what's my actual brand look like?
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  You know, what does my vehicles, what are my view?
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  And, and I don't care what industry you're in, having your
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  vehicles. Baptist like #1 right.
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  That's a moving billboard. It's an opportunity at any point
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  in time to be able to have your branding out there.
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  No matter if you're on a commercial construction site,
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  you're in a residential job, you're there for an hour, you're
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  there for two weeks, right? It doesn't matter because this
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  is an opportunity of a moving billboard and making sure that
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  it's not just letters on a white van or a white truck.
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  And don't do the white vans into actually have something that is
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  wrapped designed nicely and like everybody's seen it, right.
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  You're going to see a vehicle driving down the road and you're
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  like, man, that's that caught my attention.
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  That was a good brand. That's what you want to do for
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  for every single vehicle that a person owns and in two to 5
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  million, you've got a few. And so making sure that that's
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  an investment into that person foremost.
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  From there, I would look at the website to make sure that that
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  vehicle wrap on the website is matching the vehicle wrap from a
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  branding design continuity perspective and branding image.
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  And then I would make sure the website is optimized for
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  conversions from that. I would look to maximize my
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  Google business profile. If you're a residential type
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  contractor going after BTC markets of business to consumer
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  business, the business, your Google business profile isn't
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  necessarily as important. It's good to have, but we know
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  that business to business is generally built on the
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  relationships in the construction industry or
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  business to consumers more. They're going to search you and
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  there's referrals and things that you can do from that.
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  But after your Google business profile is dialed in and you've
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  got an optimized website that is built for conversions and you've
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  got a good ran in vehicles that are done, I would look to to
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  maximize some of the referral opportunities.
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  So if you're in an area where there's a BNI or Chamber of
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  Commerce, those sorts of local groups, I would 100% get into.
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  I would also look at community events and being especially in
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  your community, if you're specially if you're beat C,
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  these are massive opportunities that I don't think a lot of
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  people utilize. And the reason that they don't
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  is because it takes time, right? There's not this direct ROI from
• 9:41
  going and sponsoring a community breakfast love like God, you
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  know, Stampede in Calgary where we're at.
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  And so people are having stamping breakfasts all over the
• 9:49
  town. But you have you don't
• 9:51
  necessarily have to do stand breakfast.
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  There's things that all happen all year in your community
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  sponsor that go there, show up, be part of the community.
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  It's a longer term game. I think a lot of people miss on
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  that. Once you have those foundational
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  pillars in place now it's saying, OK, well maybe we should
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  spend on, on, on or search engine optimization.
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  Maybe I need to do paid ads, depending on whether that's
• 10:11
  Google or Meta ads or, you know, depending on where you're at in
• 10:16
  Canada or the US yell pads and depending on your industry,
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  there's a bunch of different varieties of lead aggregators
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  that I would then look at once you're at that point of of kind
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  of on the upper end of that five to six to seven million and
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  you've maximized all of those other opportunities.
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  Now I would start to look at, OK, what are some external ones?
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  Maybe I'll look at radio, maybe I'll look at billboards, maybe
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  I'll look at TV and kind of maybe in that order.
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  The thing with with radio, TV and billboards is you need to
• 10:43
  give it a year and they're, they're expensive, thousands of
• 10:46
  dollars per month in order to be able to have it effective.
• 10:48
  That's why it's at that the last thing that a person slides into
• 10:51
  a marketing plan. Other things that that I would
• 10:53
  also look at would be, OK, what's my referral program,
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  whatever my referrals like, what is my repeat business?
• 10:58
  What sort of e-mail marketing do I have in place?
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  You know, what is my review generation strategy for my
• 11:03
  current clients? Those sorts of things are going
• 11:06
  to be able to help that business to be able to maximize their
• 11:08
  current clients as well. Yeah, very important.
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  You're spending money on all these different avenues and then
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  then back to the systems you get that lead, you know, it's not a
• 11:19
  one and done. There's this small segment of
• 11:22
  the market that actually is actively know, maybe looking for
• 11:24
  your service right now that's that's ready to purchase.
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  And then there's a whole bunch that will probably could be
• 11:30
  clients or customers in the future, but you know, maybe sit
• 11:33
  on your e-mail list or just see your your van drive by every
• 11:37
  every couple of weeks or whatever.
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  And I like the sponsorship angle.
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  It's it takes some time, but it's like you're giving back to
• 11:43
  the community. I think it's a much more warm
• 11:46
  advertising feeling because people like you see a Google ad
• 11:51
  and and yes, it may say local to the city or or whatever, but you
• 11:55
  don't really get a feel for it. But when that specifically at
• 11:58
  your kids ball game or you know, you're getting a free breakfast
• 12:02
  somewhere, you're going to notice a little more.
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  And it's, it's sort of the reciprocity thing comes into
• 12:07
  play and, and you know that you're, you're giving back to
• 12:11
  the community essentially, which which is fantastic.
• 12:14
  Yeah. Now you, you touched on it at
• 12:17
  the end there, like there's all these different marketing areas
• 12:20
  and I think maybe not a lot, but most contractors are on some of
• 12:24
  those at least are making an effort.
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  The once you have a lead that's come in, there's, you know,
• 12:31
  referrals, reviews, e-mail marketing.
• 12:33
  Can you speak to maybe that like nurture warm up?
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  How does that play into the whole marketing system, if you
• 12:41
  will? Yeah, it's in, in.
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  And look, different industries are going to have different
• 12:45
  cadences flows. I'm going to try to keep this
• 12:47
  broad because I know that your audience is very broad.
• 12:50
  And so thinking through, OK, well, how often do does a client
• 12:54
  do business? I mean, that's kind of like
• 12:56
  your, your big one, right? If you're a roofing company, for
• 12:58
  example, while OK, they're roofs need to be replaced, depending
• 13:01
  on what type of roof gets put in there, 20 to 40 years, right?
• 13:05
  Anywhere in that stretch, unless there's hail damage or wind
• 13:08
  events or repairs or what have you that go in there.
• 13:10
  But by and large, you're chasing the big repairs.
• 13:13
  And so you've got to maintain top of mind awareness some
• 13:18
  somehow for for 20 years. Actually, I was thinking about
• 13:21
  something the other day for roofing specifically.
• 13:23
  And it's funny, I just jogged my memory because in in heating and
• 13:26
  cooling companies, they have memberships where you go when
• 13:29
  they do tune ups and they inspect the units and they clean
• 13:31
  out the furnaces and all these things like you need to clean
• 13:34
  your air conditioner once a year, especially if you're going
• 13:37
  to get the pollen out right after pollen season.
• 13:39
  Here, my air conditioner has a layer of pollen stuck inside the
• 13:42
  coils. And so you got to take it apart
• 13:44
  and you gotta clean the fans and all those things.
• 13:45
  But I think how can roofers leverage a repair like a
• 13:49
  maintenance membership, sort of a thing like people don't think
• 13:51
  about this for roofing that maybe somebody's already figured
• 13:53
  this out and but, but for a roofing, well, why don't you do
• 13:57
  a yearly, yearly spring inspection and that's it.
• 14:00
  You just do a yearly spring inspection.
• 14:02
  They pay a monthly fee. You go out, you take out your,
• 14:04
  you take a a caulking gun with with roofing tar.
• 14:07
  And if you see any exposed nails or any of the things that are
• 14:09
  feeling, just put some tar on and away you go.
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  Spend 10 minutes out of house on the report out.
• 14:13
  Roof is good. Cool.
• 14:14
  Well, now you've got this top of mind awareness.
• 14:16
  Every single year, somebody coming and doing an inspection,
• 14:18
  doing look, a little tiny repairs, they spend 10 to 15
• 14:21
  minutes on the roof and away they go though when they the
• 14:23
  roof, it does need to get replaced again.
• 14:25
  I think that you first and foremost.
• 14:27
  So like that was one thing that I was like, that's an easy one,
• 14:29
  right? You don't have to charge a ton
• 14:31
  for it. It's a break even or lost
• 14:32
  leader. But you can also maybe note some
• 14:34
  repairs that you might need to have on there, especially if you
• 14:36
  do siding or, you know, ease through or gutter work with your
• 14:40
  roofing company right now. You've got those extra things
• 14:42
  that you can tack on there. But when you think about e-mail
• 14:44
  marketing, right, this is this idea where people think all I
• 14:47
  need to sell on emails all the time.
• 14:49
  No, no, no, no. Emails aren't designed to be
• 14:51
  selling all the time. If you only sell on emails or
• 14:54
  text messages to your database, they're going to tune you out
• 14:58
  and they're going to forget you and they're gonna get annoyed.
• 15:00
  You need to provide value so you can educate them on different
• 15:03
  things. You know it.
• 15:05
  If you're a renovation company, for example, while somebody you
• 15:09
  we know, like I went through it, I've rented an entire house
• 15:12
  before, did a, you know, did a lot of it myself, hired a
• 15:15
  company for the kitchen because that was a little bit more above
• 15:17
  my skill level. And the best removal, they hired
• 15:20
  them for the asbestos, but in hiring hardware for the kitchen,
• 15:23
  But it wasn't something that we just woke up.
• 15:25
  I was like, I'm gonna do my kitchen today.
• 15:26
  No, what do we do? We researched, hmm.
• 15:28
  We researched, we researched, we researched a few companies.
• 15:31
  We found some blogs, probably opted in, got a, you know, if
• 15:33
  you can do a lead magnet and then you have a four top ten
• 15:37
  mistakes to avoid or top seven mistakes to avoid in a kitchen
• 15:41
  renovation, man, people are gonna click on that.
• 15:43
  They're gonna get it. They're going to capture.
• 15:44
  Now you're going to capture their lead data.
• 15:45
  Now you put them into an e-mail sequence where you educate them
• 15:49
  over this entire nurture sequence.
• 15:50
  And so now you're front and centre, your top of mind.
• 15:52
  Those are just a couple ideas, but yeah.
• 15:55
  But I think the biggest thing is once you've paid to acquire a
• 15:57
  customer, you need to put in some form of a program to
• 16:00
  continually reach out to those people to keep you top of mind.
• 16:03
  Because you don't need to pay to reacquire them.
• 16:05
  You've already got them ready, paid them, You've already paid
• 16:07
  down. Yeah, I just got to keep top of
• 16:09
  mind awareness. Yeah, definitely.
• 16:11
  One thing I like to think about is if someone sends you mail and
• 16:15
  there's $100 check in it, how often are you going to open that
• 16:18
  mail from them? Pretty much every time.
• 16:20
  Same thing with e-mail. If there's always value there,
• 16:23
  it's worth something they're interested in, you know, it's,
• 16:27
  it's a specific to, to an interest that they have, then
• 16:30
  they're going to open the e-mail because it's, it's valuable to
• 16:33
  them. And they're, it's pretty easy to
• 16:35
  set up like a nurture sequence, a couple automated emails when
• 16:38
  they get on your e-mail list or they reach out to you for, you
• 16:41
  know, a quote or whatever, an inquiry.
• 16:44
  And those first couple of emails have to be like spent some time,
• 16:47
  like you mentioned, put some thought into it, make it very
• 16:50
  valuable specific to where they're at.
• 16:52
  Like if they've reached out to your or started on your e-mail
• 16:55
  list, they're probably interested, highly interested in
• 16:57
  your service and looking to get information and maybe seeing
• 17:01
  what's out there as far as you know, people to work with and
• 17:03
  stuff like that. So make sure that yours is, is
• 17:06
  super high value. We had talked earlier and I
• 17:09
  believe on your website you mentioned something about AI
• 17:11
  reviews or incorporating AI. How, how is AI kind of changed
• 17:15
  the game from marketing and how are you using that to make
• 17:19
  things easier for for contractors?
• 17:20
  Oh man, that's a long, that's a long answer.
• 17:22
  I'll try to do my best to keep that short.
• 17:24
  In terms of the reviews component of things, getting
• 17:28
  reviews first and foremost and automating that process.
• 17:31
  I mean, look, this was around before AI was there of
• 17:34
  automating the process. And so if you're on House Call
• 17:36
  Pro, for example, you House Call Pro has a built in system where
• 17:41
  when you close the job out, it sends a review request to
• 17:44
  somebody. Now there's other programs out
• 17:46
  there. I'm a fan of texting, not just
• 17:48
  one e-mail, then 7 text messages as a follow up until they leave
• 17:52
  a review because you wanna get Google reviews and then you can
• 17:55
  use AI to respond back to those Google reviews and you can
• 17:58
  automate this whole process. And so we have something as a as
• 18:02
  a service that we can do that for people.
• 18:04
  We build it off of a custom voice to be able to respond
• 18:06
  back. Google has also added this in as
• 18:09
  a feature where they can instantly generate the response
• 18:12
  for you on your Google business profile and then just use AI to
• 18:16
  respond back to it, which is, which is fascinating that Google
• 18:18
  has that on there. You still have to manually go in
• 18:21
  and click on it. Where our system is, it's
• 18:23
  automated. You don't have to think about
• 18:24
  it. It just automatically gets
• 18:25
  reviewed. It automatically responds to the
• 18:27
  reviews, four and five stars, three stars and below.
• 18:30
  We create a crafted response, e-mail it to the owner to make
• 18:33
  sure that they or the the business owner or manager,
• 18:35
  whoever's taking care of that, see if they want to change
• 18:38
  anything. Oftentimes they do because it's
• 18:40
  the personal touch of what actually happened on that, that
• 18:43
  that three star below, review from there.
• 18:45
  I personally think that a 4.8 star rating is one of the best
• 18:48
  ratings that you can have on a Google business profile.
• 18:51
  It converts the best 4.74.84 I I actually prefer a 4.8 or 4.9
• 18:57
  versus A5 star rating on a Google business profile because
• 19:00
  it humanizes it. If you've got 2000 reviews and
• 19:02
  your five stars, people like, well, why?
• 19:04
  Why? You've done enough business to
• 19:07
  know that there's always something that somebody has as
• 19:10
  an issue. Don't wipe those one star
• 19:12
  reviews away. Keep it on there.
• 19:14
  Write a response for the person who's reading these.
• 19:17
  That's right. It's not it.
• 19:19
  People will go in and they will read reviews.
• 19:21
  In fact, one of my most liked Google reviews is a I think it's
• 19:25
  a two or three star review at our grocery store.
• 19:27
  There's this lady that works there and she's not a nice lady.
• 19:31
  And it look, my other people that have went to the grocery
• 19:34
  store that have interacted with their confirm it.
• 19:37
  It's not just me. She's the B word.
• 19:39
  I don't know if I can swear in new show, so I won't, but she's
• 19:42
  the B word. And so but it's one of my most
• 19:45
  liked reviews. That company actually, the
• 19:47
  grocery stores never responded back to it.
• 19:48
  So that's one thing in terms of like AI as a whole.
• 19:51
  I mean, man, where do I even begin?
• 19:54
  Claude coworkers are saving thing.
• 19:56
  I might have it running today with my with my sales guy.
• 19:58
  We found the post in a Facebook group as an example being that's
• 20:03
  actually one thing in marketing I forgot to mention is being
• 20:05
  local in community Facebook groups.
• 20:08
  Being active in local community Facebook groups is going to be
• 20:11
  huge. I do this for my business.
• 20:13
  No, there was a post in there where people were commenting on
• 20:16
  somebody else's. Do you need more installed leads
• 20:18
  or whatever it was? And like there's like 20 people
• 20:20
  that have raised their hand for us to be able to go find and and
• 20:23
  reach out and have a conversation with.
• 20:25
  So I called cowork, go in and pull the list of the people,
• 20:28
  their names and their websites. If they had it, why not, right?
• 20:31
  That's AI saving me time. And then I went and had carried
• 20:34
  on with my meeting. The list is now done.
• 20:36
  In terms of marketing, I think where people get into trouble is
• 20:39
  that they think that AI can do their marketing for them.
• 20:42
  AI still makes mistakes just like a human does, and there are
• 20:46
  sometimes their mistakes are just as big as a human mistake.
• 20:49
  The problem is people think, well I'm just going to automate
• 20:51
  my blog posts and I'm just going to put them out there on my
• 20:54
  website and I can do my SEO 1/2 a software, do everything for
• 20:57
  me. Well, sometimes it makes
• 20:59
  mistakes and if you don't know the mistake that it made, it
• 21:02
  would be detrimental to your business.
• 21:04
  Not always, but it could be. Yeah, you always want to be
• 21:07
  reviewing and making sure it's on point with your brand and all
• 21:10
  that stuff. But it is getting better at
• 21:12
  saving a lot of time for sure. I think that's the biggest thing
• 21:15
  is just a lot of time savings quality generally going up a
• 21:18
  little bit. As long as you're not just doing
• 21:22
  the work for like where you're just an like your voice is just
• 21:27
  muddled with everybody else because it every everything
• 21:30
  sounds the same. You know, AI type generated
• 21:33
  content. You gotta you gotta stick with
• 21:35
  it a little bit and challenge the AI to to really hit your
• 21:38
  brand voice or, or make it more human or a certain tone that
• 21:44
  they want and things like that. As far as the copyright and goes
• 21:47
  and as far as the administration stuff, yeah, I mean, it's just
• 21:51
  making things a lot easier from that standpoint for sure.
• 21:55
  Can you walk us through one of your clients that you've had
• 21:59
  that you worked with and sort of where they started some of the
• 22:02
  things that you implemented and and what the results?
• 22:05
  Were yeah, percent. And so I mean, I've got lots to
• 22:08
  share. I think of one in particular.
• 22:10
  They came to us. It was a husband and wife team.
• 22:11
  I remember they had their little kid on the call and just because
• 22:15
  they had a baby and it's like two or three months old, but he
• 22:18
  started his it was a heating and cooling business down in San
• 22:22
  Antonio, somewhere around there somewhere Texas.
• 22:25
  And so he they came on. They were, you know, it was him
• 22:27
  and his wife. They, they were maybe 4 or
• 22:30
  $500,000 after year one, they're like, OK, we're ready to
• 22:33
  actually start to, to, to put invest into some marketing and
• 22:37
  some SEO. Their website that they had
• 22:39
  before was atrocious. Their van wraps still are left
• 22:42
  something to be desired. I've got a chuckle because their
• 22:46
  logo is like, I see like the same logo like 5 different other
• 22:49
  companies in different parts of the US Camp clip art, I guess.
• 22:53
  But we took their website, we built it, created a very well
• 22:57
  oiled converting machine, built up his SEO program.
• 23:01
  He started now doing paid ads in terms of running some PPC or
• 23:04
  Google Pay per click 2. I don't know what his budget
• 23:09
  currently is at the moment, but he's been with us a little over
• 23:11
  2 years. And I believe his goal for 2026
• 23:15
  is to come around that 3 to 4 million range already.
• 23:19
  And so again, some people want to grow a lot, some people just
• 23:22
  want to grow a little bit and run your own race with SEO, it's
• 23:26
  more of a long steady growth where the paid ads can really
• 23:29
  hockey stick growth you with a lot of those other things.
• 23:31
  So there's also that in mind with it.
• 23:33
  And they've hired obviously a few people, had a few more
• 23:35
  trucks on the road. And his wife is now mainly just
• 23:38
  doing some of the office stuff. And they've got an office min
• 23:40
  some been able to build this up to this point where they,
• 23:43
  they've taken something that was a dream for them.
• 23:46
  And then with the proper marketing in there, I mean,
• 23:48
  they've got, they're part of a best practice group too for the
• 23:50
  operation. So they understand the
• 23:51
  operational issues, making sure that they're closing everything
• 23:54
  that they get as much as they possibly can.
• 23:56
  And so that's what we've been able to give them enough at bats
• 24:00
  that they can work through some of those operational things.
• 24:02
  Yeah, wonderful. That's a great trajectory and it
• 24:05
  sounds like a company, you know, lots of opportunity there and to
• 24:09
  to really get some, some proper, you know, marketing assets and
• 24:12
  and avenues in place and, and working both the long term and
• 24:16
  shorter term strategy to some extent with, you know, SEO is
• 24:20
  gonna take longer. It adds a little more bang for
• 24:23
  your buck, but it's, you know, both have to be effective.
• 24:26
  There's, there's a right way and a wrong way to kind of do
• 24:29
  everything right. And, and having someone in your
• 24:31
  corner who's who's got that experience and has done this
• 24:33
  before can make things, you know, pay off big time there.
• 24:36
  So with lost my, my may have thought there was obviously
• 24:40
  something about that. Yeah, something something you
• 24:43
  mentioned there sparked an idea for me, but lost it at the Oh
• 24:48
  yes. One thing not mentioned in
• 24:49
  marketing is, is often what happens sort of in the business
• 24:53
  behind the scenes. And it has to do with your
• 24:56
  branding as well. And that is, you know, your
• 24:58
  culture, how your people communicate, how the internal,
• 25:01
  you know, culture and just the the ethos of of the company.
• 25:06
  And we talked about this a little bit and I know it's
• 25:08
  something that you're passionate about as well as creating proper
• 25:11
  culture inside a company. Can you speak of how that comes
• 25:14
  about and how it affects the the branding and marketing of a
• 25:17
  company? Yeah, look, I think culture is
• 25:19
  the most important thing that people fail to get right.
• 25:23
  Your people are your greatest asset.
• 25:24
  And people think, well, no, my product is or what I charge is.
• 25:27
  No, it's literally your people. And there's this, this, you
• 25:31
  know, people product price, kind of in that order.
• 25:34
  The three P's is, is something that I like to talk about.
• 25:37
  And oftentimes people go price product people.
• 25:39
  But if you do that, your people are always last.
• 25:42
  But here's The thing is, if you actually treat people right and
• 25:44
  they care about you, that you have a good brand, they care
• 25:47
  about the the the organization, they care about what they're
• 25:49
  doing. This allows you, I mean, let's
• 25:52
  use a plumbing company example. Everybody has, I mean, top water
• 25:56
  tanks, right? Let's just hot water tanks,
• 25:58
  right? Let's use that as an example.
• 25:59
  There's many other things that a person can do when a plumbing,
• 26:01
  but let's use hot water tanks. The hot water tanks.
• 26:03
  The hot water tank is the hot water tank and installation is
• 26:05
  an installation is installation. And some of the plums are like,
• 26:08
  whoa, hold on, Tad. That's not true.
• 26:09
  By and large generalities, Broads broad stroke brush.
• 26:13
  It is everybody. Every plumbing company has
• 26:15
  access to more or less the same hot water tanks.
• 26:18
  OK, so why do some people charge double what others do?
• 26:21
  Same product? Because the people.
• 26:23
  So you have your people that are that are important.
• 26:25
  You treat them the right way. They've got a culture.
• 26:27
  You can then have a your product is the same as everybody else's,
• 26:30
  but it gets done better because you people care, which allows
• 26:33
  you to charge a higher price. If you can charge a higher
• 26:35
  price, guess what that means for your bottom line?
• 26:37
  Well, it increases. Plus you can also pay your
• 26:40
  people more money because you can charge a higher price that
• 26:43
  consumers are willing to pay more.
• 26:45
  Like you've probably experienced this and I bet you every single
• 26:48
  listener on your podcast has experienced this before.
• 26:50
  They have lost a job spec to spec, apples to apples.
• 26:54
  The other job is more money and they lost it.
• 26:56
  You're like, but I'm cheaper. Hmm, OK, well why did they go
• 27:00
  with that person then if you're cheaper?
• 27:02
  Price wasn't their determining factor as the customer, I think
• 27:05
  was the company. It was the values of the person
• 27:07
  sitting across the table doing the presentation with them and
• 27:10
  the values that they instilled, the only reason that they were
• 27:13
  able to charge more money. And so if you look at your
• 27:15
  culture, I bet you most people's core values have honesty and
• 27:19
  transparency and integrity as three of their core values.
• 27:22
  I'm not knocking those, by the way.
• 27:24
  When we first started, those were our core values too.
• 27:26
  We had honesty and transparency and separate core values.
• 27:28
  But we challenged this narrative to say, OK, well, if honesty and
• 27:31
  transparency and integrity are just easy fluff, throwaway words
• 27:35
  that everybody has in their core values, what can we do with ours
• 27:37
  differently? And so we changed them.
• 27:38
  And now our first core values, do what's right now, what's
• 27:41
  easy. We'll guess what that
• 27:42
  encapsulates honesty, transparency, integrity, all
• 27:46
  wrapped up into this one, this one core value, do what's right
• 27:49
  now. It's easy.
• 27:50
  And so when you look at this, looking at those core values,
• 27:53
  creating something that people can live both personally and
• 27:56
  professionally, they can take them home with them.
• 27:58
  It's a guiding principle for them, for the organization.
• 28:03
  And then talking about those core values, if you were to ask
• 28:07
  anybody on your that's listening were to go, it is good, good
• 28:10
  homework, exercise. And for that matter is to say,
• 28:13
  OK, I'm going to ask my team what our core values are
• 28:15
  randomly, anonymously ask it be surprised at how many people
• 28:18
  come back with weird answers or they just don't know.
• 28:22
  Even if you got them on the wall, they tune it out right?
• 28:24
  Do you talk about them right. Do you mention them?
• 28:26
  Are they something that people refer to all the time?
• 28:30
  Chances are no. Well then now your people aren't
• 28:32
  necessarily bought into your, your the the vision of the
• 28:35
  organization, which then doesn't allow you to charge what you
• 28:38
  actually need to be able to charge to be able to pay them
• 28:40
  better money in order to be able to make a better margin.
• 28:43
  The yeah, the the reference to it's more than just, you know, a
• 28:47
  nice sounding word it you know what, what's the actual meaning?
• 28:50
  Put a little bit more, you know, meat on the bone there as far as
• 28:53
  what does that mean on a daily, you know, decision making or
• 28:57
  communication standpoint from your people and and talking
• 29:01
  about it. It's very again, easy for the
• 29:04
  owner. They've written something down.
• 29:05
  Sounds nice. They may be livid and it is, you
• 29:08
  know, tune with them, but are you actually communicating that
• 29:12
  to your team? Is it brought up regularly?
• 29:15
  Is it, you know, part of the inner, inner workings of of the
• 29:19
  company and the the people makes such a big difference?
• 29:24
  Like, you know, the systems, the outward look, the brand, it's
• 29:27
  all extremely important. But those are just kind of
• 29:30
  vehicles and you need people to actually move those forward and
• 29:33
  then drive the business and and they're the ones that are are
• 29:35
  going to make the difference. So for our listeners out there,
• 29:39
  what's the best way for them did it again touch with you and
• 29:41
  learn more about on purpose? Yeah.
• 29:43
  So On Purpose media.com is our website.
• 29:46
  The feel free to check it out if you want.
• 29:49
  I actually have a, a free SEO optimization checklist.
• 29:52
  People want to go ahead and grab that.
• 29:54
  You can head on to On Purpose media.com/SEO Dash checklist and
• 29:59
  that will get you the the the checklist.
• 30:03
  You fill out a form and we'll send it your way, no strings.
• 30:06
  It's an opportunity for you to go through and see if your SEO
• 30:09
  is on point or off point from that.
• 30:10
  Have you want to follow me? I'm pretty active on Facebook,
• 30:13
  facebook.com/daddies dot Tandy, who I think is the link or
• 30:17
  Thaddeus Tandy without the period in there.
• 30:18
  I don't remember if it has the dot in there at all or not.
• 30:21
  And if you want to reach out and have a conversation,
• 30:24
  719-824-1377 is the number before the.
• 30:31
  Wonderful. So we'll put those links in the
• 30:33
  description of this video audio, wherever, wherever you're
• 30:36
  checking in from, go through, click through the links, get the
• 30:39
  the free checklist, see if your SEO was on point or could be
• 30:42
  improved. And reached out to Sadies here
• 30:45
  and his team. Thanks so much for coming on
• 30:46
  today and sharing your insights. Laura, thanks for having me on,
• 30:49
  Derek.