Latest / The ROI Online Podcast / Stephen Eoff On How StoryBrand Helped Grow His Family Business — The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 8

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Stephen Eoff On How StoryBrand Helped Grow His Family Business — The ROI Online Podcast Ep. 8 · The ROI Online Podcast

• 0:02
  Stephen Eoff: So we woke up, I guess it was two years ago, and a year ago where you and I met, just realizing, "Gosh, our story and our messaging really isn't clear to someone that doesn't know who we are." And there are a lot of consultant engineers that were contacting one of our main vendors saying, "Hey, who's the...Who's your distributor in Arkansas?" And we were just floored and and honestly, just scared to death. It was one of those kind of "holy crap moments." How does this 28-year-old engineer at one of the largest consulting engineering firms in the state not know who we are?
• 0:47
  Steve Brown: Right?
• 0:48
  Stephen Eoff: And I know that sounds really arrogant, but it also sounds really kind of like a... It was an eye opening reality to us.
• 0:57
  Steve Brown: Hi, everybody. Welcome to the ROI Online Podcasts where we believe you, the courageous entrepreneurs of our day are the invisible heroes of our economy. You not only improve our world with your ideas, your grit and your passion, but you make our world better. I'm Steve Brown, and this is the place where we have great conversations with winners just like you while we laugh and learn together.
• 1:58
  Stephen Eoff: Hey, thank you Steve. I wanted to be here. Appreciate your time. Thanks for inviting me.
• 2:02
  Steve Brown: Yeah, well, I appreciate you carving out some time to just chat and for people learn about what you guys do and some of the things that you wrestle with as a business owner. So one of the funny stories I like about Steven is, it's on their website, but Stephen's first job was with the company. He was a janitor at the age of 7. But after high school, his his dad, Sherman, told him, "Go get your degree, and call me when you're 30." And so... And the thing about Sherman is, he meant it.
• 2:40
  Stephen Eoff: He did.
• 2:41
  Steve Brown: So talk about Sherman, and did you really leave and think, "Alright, I'm gonna call at 30."
• 2:50
  Stephen Eoff: So it's kind of a, I don't know ever... As my father also says, "We put the fun in dysfunction, family dysfunction." So two things on that: One is he started in... So he's the second generation. My grandfather started the company in 1963. And so my father Sherman graduated college in May of 1975. And the day after he graduated, he started working. And so he had always just told me, you know, kind of as a dad that, "I want you to, before you come into the business, if you ever come into the business, I think it would be wise for you to have a different perspective." He also said, "Let someone else train you. Get familiar with the world a little bit more. Because all I've known, all I've ever known is this and I love it. I'm so glad I found it and kind of stumbled into it. But I also think that you can be shaped a little bit more about the outside world, if you if you start from 22 to 30 somewhere else."
• 5:20
  Steve Brown: Do you think that your dad wanted you to avoid some of the struggles that he had to stepping right in right away with your grandfather?
• 5:28
  Stephen Eoff: I think so. I think it... You know, he has always said, "There's the right way, the wrong way, and the Jack Tyler Way." So that's kind of his mindset as well. And I don't know what that means, except for what he says. And I think... Yeah, I just think it was just an opportunity to see the world, experience, work for someone else, kind of grow. Like I said, I needed to grow up, Steve, and he knew that so that was his way of leading me well in that moment.
• 5:58
  Steve Brown: So in those 10 years, where you were out earning your chops, getting some experience, where did you kind of land as far as figuring out what you are really good at doing?
• 6:10
  Stephen Eoff: So my first job was just an entry level engineer in a telecommunications company in Little Rock. Alltel was the name of the company, and it's since been sold to Verizon while back. So I hated that job. I mean, I worked on the sixth floor and I took the stairs because the elevator just got me there too fast. Stuck behind a computer doing entry level engineering and just thought I was gonna die. And so I knew I wanted to get into sales and I knew I wanted to get into... but I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to get away from the computer and go interact with people.
• 7:39
  Steve Brown: So when you made that made that transition into the family business, I would imagine that going into this new culture, new environment that you were familiar with it and you had some expectations, but I imagine there were some things that you didn't expect. What were those?
• 8:12
  Stephen Eoff: Well the funny thing and, it's kind of an inside joke now is, I called dad and said, "I really would like to come in. I should talk to you about it." I said, "But you know me. You know I'm not super technical. And as as I say, 'I got my degree through grit, not giftedness.'" And I was like, "So is what you do very technical? I mean, really kind of break it down, or am I going to be more of the people side and sales and sales management?" But, "No, it's really not that technical. What we do isn't very technical." When I got here, and started getting into I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is... I am an idiot. I'm a fool. Why did I think that an engineering company was not going to be technical?" And so that's been the hardest part for me is just the the technical side of what we do. And as my dad said, he's like, "It's not technical to me." And I was like, "You've been doing it for 45 years and it's right in your wheelhouse. And it's just way you're wired." And so kind of seeing where he and I are really different. And he just geeks out on it. And I'm just kind of thinking, "How can I get through this?" So it's different mindset there where he just wants to go down deep and stay down long and actually solve the problems and I'm looking for someone to tell me the answer and the solution so I can go sell it to somebody. So that's been a real, real different thing.
• 11:05
  Steve Brown: No, I think it's important that... So let's back up and tell everyone why this particular problem you're referring to is so important. This is not just... You're not installing a light bulb. You're not putting a new door knob on. You guys aren't doing some serious stuff. Talk to us about that.
• 11:26
  Stephen Eoff: So yeah, we provide engineer solutions for our customers in the municipal, industrial, and commercial markets, mainly around pumps or rotating equipment, air compressors. So literally, when someone flushes their toilet and that water leaves their home, where does it go and then get back to where it is clean and it comes out of your tap? So we handle it. Once someone flushes it, we collect it, we treat it, and then we distribute it. Our equipment that we do handles water and we make sure that we provide the equipment that can provide clean water to cities. And then industrially, you know like a paper mill or Tyson's chicken is a huge plant in Arkansas that people are familiar with nationally, to make chicken, the bird is alive and it comes into the plant and it leaves in a nice packaged wrapper for us to feed our families with. Well, a lot has to happen in between those two cycles whether you're flushing the toilet and then turn on the tab or whether you bring a live chicken in and then you're serving your family dinner. So our equipment allows municipalities to run their water systems and wastewater systems, and our equipment industrially allows Tyson's to actually process their chickens. So our equipment has to work because people really care about water and Tyson's cares about processing chickens. So if I go in there and I'm just full of fluff and hot air and don't know what I'm talking about and don't solve the problem and I appear incompetent, what value am I?
• 13:04
  Steve Brown: Right? That's, you know, I think about where civilization really started changing and reducing disease and stuff as figuring out how to handle all the waste, the water. That was a big change in civilization as for... It impacted so many lives, so what you're dealing with is not not any less important.
• 13:29
  Stephen Eoff: Right, right. And you can imagine, you know, if we're supposed to move water from point A to point B, and I put a pump in the ground that won't do that, and then it overflows and you got sewer running on on the street. Well, that's just not okay.
• 13:43
  Steve Brown: Right.
• 13:45
  Stephen Eoff: It sounds dramatic. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but...
• 13:47
  Steve Brown: But it's the truth.
• 13:48
  Stephen Eoff: But it is the truth. Yeah.
• 13:50
  Steve Brown: Yeah. And if a municipality chooses you guys to come in and usually you're not taking over this nice new thing you get to plan out all the time. You're probably being called in a situation that has gone bad, and which makes the situation even harder to solve. And so your dad Sherman's conversation to you that day was probably from a lot of experiences where he learned the gravity o that trust that the municipality was giving you.
• 14:25
  Stephen Eoff: Right and he helped me to understand the weight of responsibility and the seriousness of it. So I think that's kind of where I said earlier, had I come in at 22 and just given me 10 years more experience on the technical side, then I wouldn't have had the 10 years of experience of learning how to sell and learning how to lead. So that was... That's just as valuable, especially when you're wanting to run a run a whole company.
• 14:59
  Steve Brown: Yeah, you're talking about about the multiple hats that a business owner or a business leader has to wear every day. And the problem is, we have signed up to wear all of those hats, whether those hats look good on us or not. Or whether we're good at it or not, right?
• 15:18
  Stephen Eoff: Right, right. And if you're not good at it, you better find somebody that is.
• 15:23
  Steve Brown: So in the... Here's your technical. Here's your sales. Here's your leadership. And I want to ask, which one do you think is the most valuable?
• 15:32
  Stephen Eoff: You know, I don't know. I think it depends on the life stage of the business and the size of the business. Because as a sole practitioner that is only wanting to manage what he touches and what he does, and not really worry about all this stuff on the peripheral, then if that person is a great engineer and a great technical person that can also connect and relate, then then they can just kind of go forward and be very profitable and sell. But the problem with that is: you can't grow past that individual. If you just are a sole practitioner and you're not really wanting to grow, then the sales and leadership would become secondary to the technical side. But if you want to really grow and then you've got a lot more people to manage and lead and and personalities to deal with, within the leadership side becomes critical.
• 17:16
  Steve Brown: Right? I think that's excellent. So when you talk about the stages of a business, I'd love to... So your grandfather drove it at a certain time and brought it to a certain stage Your dad has done the same. So talk to us about those. And then where's your stage going to lead?
• 17:35
  Stephen Eoff: Sure. So I really kind of want to acknowledge my grandfather and father. We talked a lot about my dad already, but really, it was my grandfather. The business in general, it's really a, a brilliant business to be in. Because for several reasons, so I just kind of want to first say great job to my grandfather for having the foresight to start a company that could last half a century, but also even now, in this moment that we're in with COVID-19 and the social distancing and the quarantining, working from home, we're still... Thankfully, we haven't laid anybody off. We haven't furloughed anybody. We're maintaining the full staff and the full payroll, and we're working well in this environment, because people still want clean water. So while our industrial customers have closed their plans and said, "No visitors are allowed," and we really can't get in there and work with them on on that as we did before, we are able to still stay strong in the municipal side.
• 19:18
  Steve Brown: Yeah.
• 19:19
  Stephen Eoff: My grandfather really started the company in the '60s, where he was a consultant, engineer, contractor and an equipment provider. And this was really before you had to be one of the three, where the industry has evolved to now, and you could be all three. So he was incredibly successful at laying a solid foundation for the family, because he could design the work, have the crews to go install it, and also he could sell the equipment that he designed around. That's kind of a monopoly and things have been broken up. So now there's a consulting engineer profession, a contracting profession, and an equipment provider profession. So as we have evolved, when the rubber hit the road, and we kind of did have to choose, "What are we going to do?" Our family... At some point in time, my grandfather really chose to be to stay with the equipment and go away from the consulting and the contracting. That being the case, we're still a licensed contractor, but we don't market our contracting company. We just kind of market our engineered sales equipment. And then the contracting stuff helps us with retrofits or specific projects.
• 24:08
  Steve Brown: We're going to take a moment here so I can tell you about a book I believe you need to read. Most every day for the last 10 years. I've worked with business leaders such as you. And there's this common conversation that I've had over and over again. It goes a little like this, "Steve, I see other brands excelling online, and I feel we need to do the same because my customers are expecting out of us. I'm not sure where to start, but I think we need to redo our website. What's the best way to approach this?" And this is why I wrote my book, "The Golden Toilet: Stop Flushing Your Marketing Budget into Your Website and Build a System That Grows Your Business." It's a book designed to empower my business leader so that they have the words and the proper expectations to communicate what it is they really need and get what they really need instead of something that's sold to them, it puts them in a position of confidence and clarity. And so to get this book, it's a great read, you can go to Amazon, get it there, or you can go to thegoldentoilet.com, and click on Get your copy. Now, back to our conversation.
• 25:57
  Stephen Eoff: Yeah, so in the '80s and '90s, the plant engineers at Georgia Pacific, Tyson's chicken, those those key American icon companies... Well, my father was in his 30s and 40s. Those plant engineers were in their 30s and 40s. So they literally grew up together. Now my dad, he's 67. And I turned 40 this year. So now I'm talking to a completely different market segment and demographic then he talked to because as he's on the tail end of his career, all of his customers are on the tail end of their career. Consulting engineers are the exact same. Guys that he's worked with are retiring, just like he's retiring. So we woke up, I guess it was two years ago, and a year ago when you and I met, just realizing, "Gosh, our story and our messaging really isn't clear to someone that doesn't know who we are." And there are a lot of consultant engineers that were contacting one of our main vendors saying, "Hey, who's the...Who's your distributor in Arkansas?" And we were just floored and and honestly, just scared to death. It was one of those kind of "holy crap moments." How does this 28-year-old engineer at one of the largest consulting engineering firms in the state not know who we are?
• 27:24
  Steve Brown: Right?
• 27:25
  Stephen Eoff: And that sounds really arrogant. But it sounds really kind of like a... It was an eye opening reality to us that there's a whole nother group of people in our industry. And they hear Jack Tyler Engineering, and they have no idea what we do. They have no idea what markets we're in. And so that became a real kind of blinding glimpse of the obvious of, "Oh my gosh, we got to have clear messaging." Because Sherman's whole philosophy was, "Jack Tyler Engineering Rotating Equipment: We're Serious About Service." Well, that's really vague unless you are a mill maintenance guy that is responsible for the pumps in that mill or you're a collections manager for a city. So we kind of thought, "How are we going to grow and get our messaging out?" And I read Don Miller's book, "StoryBrand."
• 28:24
  Steve Brown: "Building a StoryBrand."
• 28:25
  Stephen Eoff: Thank you, Don Miller "Building a StoryBrand." And I read that book. And I just thought, "This is just so clear." And it was just... His whole mantra was, "If you confuse you lose." And so that's where I read his book. And I wanted to implement his strategy. Or our website was literally something that I had made on some internet platform by myself and hadn't put a lot of thought into it except trying to get information out or as you put in your book, "The Golden Toilet," just a brochure. That's what my website was, and it wasn't fulfilling any specific function other than just having a landing page. And so I went to clarifyyourmessage.com. I think that's the website where they had affiliates of people that had been trained by dawn in the StoryBrand framework that could then help a company like ours tell their story and get the messaging out there. And so I picked picked out three companies that were listed on that website, yours being one of them. Called interviewed all three and I think you and I just number one, hit it off.
• 31:42
  Steve Brown: Yeah, so let's talk about that. Now that we've been working together for a year and a half now going on... Yeah?
• 31:50
  Stephen Eoff: Yeah.
• 31:51
  Steve Brown: So talk about how you feel, especially with this acquisition of this new business. You got the... You're bringing in some folks that had a different culture. So you've got them. You've got to matriculate them into your organization. How do you feel now as far as communicating with your team or communicating with your potential new prospects or your existing vendors? Talk to us about that.
• 32:17
  Stephen Eoff: I think that going back to where we were, if someone can believe this or not, we were a 50-yea-old company that didn't have a CRM. And if we wanted to send an email to every single one of our customers to announce something, promotion, product, idea, we couldn't. We literally did not have that. We didn't have a social media page. And this is 2019. so embarrassed to tell you., but this is where we were. And so... But again, kudos to my father and his team and my grandfather and his team. They didn't need it. And isn't that what every business wants is just a good word of mouth referral, where you don't need advertising and marketing? But we just... Again, you can't grow like that. So to answer your question, "How do I feel?" Well, I feel very educated, feel very confident. And I feel very secure knowing that our system is in place and then as now going forward now. It's not finished. It's not even close to being, you know, where we want it to be as a big picture as a whole.
• 33:37
  Steve Brown: Right.
• 33:38
  Stephen Eoff: The foundational pieces are in place to add what we need to add when and how we want to grow and migrate into that.
• 33:46
  Steve Brown: The cool thing about your dad or Sherman is that he, although that maybe wasn't his world, maybe it's something that he was hesitant about exploring, I think he's realized that it's this system that we put in place now, even though some of its virtual or digital, but it still impacts your physical world. He had the wisdom to know that's what you're going to need to continue to be successful whether he understood it all or not.
• 34:16
  Stephen Eoff: Right. He's always had a very good kind of foresight vision mindset of where to go next. He recognizes and also our vendors are almost demanding it. They say, "Hey, how are you promoting me? How are you telling my story? How are you... How am I getting good representation?" And if you can't answer that from a digital perspective, you can't keep their line.
• 34:46
  Steve Brown: Let's talk about that. How are you doing that for some of your vendors?
• 34:50
  Stephen Eoff: Well, I think one of the things that we always want to maintain in our integrity is we don't want to promote a product because it's the only one are on our line card. And we don't want that product to... We don't want to leave the conversation to where we're ultimately driving someone to buy a specific item. Kind of loses the integrity of the engineer, technical sales is that we kind of want to understand, "Hey, what problem are you having?" Or walking into a plant and understand, "I bet that's your problem, isn't it?" because of A, B, and C and being able to see their system as a whole and understand what they're trying to do, and then understand how our equipment is just a tool to solve their problems. So it's, you know, talking through that with you and you understanding, "Yeah, we have 50 different lines. And they all want to be no. 1. They all want to be promoted. They want to be talked about." We didn't want to lose our approach of, "Hey, we're going to come in here, understand your system, and solve your problem with the best tool we've got."
• 37:41
  Steve Brown: It is. It's totally... And I'm sorry, I'm interrupting you. But what you're... In my book, I talk about the problem was sales is the quota. And you were addressing that. If you just went and said "Hey, this is the best product you need it." You're totally disregarding whether they need it, no. 1, nor are you caring about their system and their process. And so what you illustrated is, that's the significant thing that you're referring to right now is that the way you approach it has a relationship as opposed to making my quota.
• 38:19
  Stephen Eoff: Sure, yeah. And the vendors, they recognize that. I mean, at the end of the day, they respect that, but as long as they're getting promoted, and so that's what they want, is they want they want to feel that we are doing an adequate job of telling their story. And not telling their story online. What tangible way do they have or what proof they have that their story is being told at all? And that was another tangible, factual way that you were able to help us say, "OK, this is what we're doing. This is how we're doing and we can track it." So I had some one of my vendors called me and said, "Hey, I know you did an email campaign. last week. What's the open rate? Well, I was able to tell right now it's only 19%. But it's only been sent out for six hours. So let's get this time." So he was like, "Keep me posted," but he was loving it, loving the fact that he could be a part of that process. So that's how we're doing it.
• 39:16
  Steve Brown: That's... think about 10 years ago. He wouldn't even had that conversation nor you.... But for them to now go, "Stephen's got the data. Stephen is sophisticated. Stephen is modern."
• 39:34
  Stephen Eoff: Right!
• 39:35
  Steve Brown: Yeah, their view of you or respect of you or their perception of your authority and expertise is way different than that call going, "Well, I don't know. The spam filter blocked me out because I sent a bunch out on a BCC."
• 39:52
  Stephen Eoff: Well, you're absolutely right, Steve. And what also is happening in our world and, I know it's unique, not every one of your listeners or customers is going to feel this, but our vendors are such a critical part of our company. But who is running their companies has changed drastically because it used to be that the pump company in Iowa was a family-owned company. And it went from a family owned company to maybe a ESOP or something else. Well, now it's been bought up by a conglomerate. It's a stock company. And they now have 16 pump companies that they own, and it's being run by CPAs and accountants not engineers. Before they cared so much about, "Yeah, I know Sherman down in Arkansas is doing a great job pushing my product." So you can have a good old boy network and they felt like they knew Sherman on a first-name basis, and Sherman would drive to Iowa and they would have a great conversation and everything was fine.
• 42:12
  Steve Brown: Wow.
• 42:13
  Stephen Eoff: That's significant. And you and I know that that's important because we've talked, but that's a huge component of it.
• 42:20
  Steve Brown: Well, I love that. I'm asked by people that are considering and they haven't made that conceptual shift like you have, they're wondering, "Well, how can I show my ROI? What can I expect?" And the gravity of having a legitimate... The conversation that you had and a I had went from a marketing conversation to a business process conversation. And because because of the stage that your company is in, because of your sales background, that clicked immediate with you and you were able to start to take action advantage of how this system was going to become an asset for you in the future.
• 43:07
  Stephen Eoff: Right? Well, you told me—and again, this is going back to February of 19—but there were four key cogs in your system. And it was clear messaging, and that was what I came to you on is, "Hey, help me have a clear message so people know what Jack Tyler Engineer is. What we do." To then kind of have the marketing automation piece, which to me means the email components that we send out and saying, "OK, yeah, we have a 19% open rate. We are promoting your product. This is what we're doing, etc. And this is how we're educating people." And then kind of going from Sales Automation, to then kind of strategic campaign campaigns and landing pages. So I think... You know, I didn't know that the last three of those key things even existed or were important. I just like, "Hey, Steve, I need to clear message and I need to be able to send some emails." That's why I came to you. And you were like, "Oh, man, this guy..." But the system that you had that you put me on it again and I discovered you. I educated myself. I thought I knew something. And then I come to you and you open my eyes tenfold. Well, that's what I want to be able to do online for our customers.
• 44:25
  Steve Brown: Exactly.
• 44:26
  Stephen Eoff: They discover us. They educate themselves. They think they know. But then they come, we bring even more value to them, and we get a customer for life where they're not having to Google, "Where do I go for this?" It's, "I know I need to call Steven."
• 44:41
  Steve Brown: We're getting close to the end here. But first of all, how can people reach you? If they've been listening and they're like, "I need to know this guy." How can he reach you?
• 44:53
  Stephen Eoff: So jteng.com. That's jteng.com. And that is our website. And you can just go to the "Put Us to Work" session and that email goes directly to me.
• 45:03
  Steve Brown: OK, awesome. So, so what does the future look like for you, Steven? Um, well, first of all, we're in the situation of social distancing. That's changed the way you guys might have to do sales. What are you doing right now?
• 45:19
  Stephen Eoff: Well, so our world municipally, it's not slowing down. Thank goodness. We're so grateful. And again, we recognize we're very humbled by this. We're not taking it for granted or acting arrogant at all. It's just thankful that my father and grandfather had the foresight to put us into a recession proof industry where people want clean water. But what we're doing specifically is we're still calling all of our customers, checking on them, letting them know that we're here and that we're open and if they need us. But even the COVID-19 updates that were even open, that you know, as silly as it sounds, a year ago, we wouldn't have been able to send that email. And so Sam, who is been phenomenal to work with in your team. I just kind of have our weekly conference call and I'm like, "Hey, we got to get this email out." She's like, "Great." So kind of put it together and it goes out and it's just effortless. It's just... It's completely set up. And that sounds so simple to someone that hasn't set up. But from where I was, it was significant. So that was a big deal.
• 47:29
  Steve Brown: And then regions that you service?
• 47:32
  Stephen Eoff: Arkansas, Western Tennessee, Northern Mississippi, Northeast Texas and Eastern Oklahoma.
• 47:37
  Steve Brown: Wow. That's a big footprint.
• 47:39
  Stephen Eoff: Yeah. It is.
• 47:41
  Steve Brown: Is that the same footprint when your grandfather started or...?
• 47:46
  Stephen Eoff: Yes, honestly. Yeah. And some of the same vendors that we've had. I think he picked up a pump line in 1965, and we still have them. So it's kind of neat to the legacy there. But some of them we just picked up last month. So yeah, everything's always changing.
• 48:04
  Steve Brown: Awesome. Hey, I love this conversation. This was fun.
• 48:08
  Stephen Eoff: Honored to be here. I enjoyed it very much. Thank you, Steve.
• 48:12
  Steve Brown: So that's another episode that or we call it a wrap on the ROI Online Podcast. Thank you so much for being here, Steven, and I appreciate you. And we'll see you guys on the next next episode. Take care. Thanks for listening to another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast. For more, be sure to check out the show notes of this episode. And feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, where we can chat and I can help direct you to the resources you're searching for. To learn more about how you can grow your business better, be sure to pick up your copy of my book, "The Golden toilet," at surprise, thegoldentoilet.com. I'm Steve Brown, and we'll see you next week on another fun episode of the ROI Online Podcast.