Thu, 1 February 2018
Forward Motion What Is It and What Happens When You Stop It we are going to be talking about about another law, one just like The Law of Gravity that is just as real, just as powerful. This other law of forward motion can get your attention just like gravity and in some cases, causes pain also. No one ever doesn’t think gravity isn’t real because we all have been affected by it in one way or another. We have dropped something or tripped over something and the result is always the same… we fall, get hurt or something breaks because of it, The Law of Gravity. So, The Law of Forward Motion has some of the same characteristics. It’s one of those things you probably don’t pay much attention to, but it’s real none the less. Forward Motion in the English language means:
Just to give you out the 3 kinds of law of motions so you guys would have an idea what we are discussing and how we can relate this to the business world: The First Law of Motion states, "A body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will remain in motion unless it is acted upon by an external force." This simply means that things cannot start, stop, or change direction all by themselves. It takes some force acting on them from the outside to cause such a change. The Second Law of Motion describes what happens to a massive body when it is acted upon by an external force. It states, "The force acting on an object is equal to the mass of that object times its acceleration." The Third Law of Motion states, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." So, if we are to relate the meaning of “forward motion” to our business or in general, as you can see it has a positive meaning towards business or to us. This is what actually happens in The Law of Forward Motion. You are moving in forward motion with your business and doing many things to promote your business hoping that you are doing the right campaigns and you are tracking your marketing and all of a sudden business comes out of the woodwork from places you never would think of. It is because you are moving forward that you are sort of creating a vacuum and pulling business along with you. It’s because of what you are doing to promote your business in one area that you are getting business in another area. That’s the best way I can explain it. I don’t know if The Law of Forward Motion will ever pass you, but I do know that when you stop so does the vacuum and the forward motion. This is where the pain starts. So never ever, ever stop the forward motion in your business and you will not self-inflict any pain on yourself. It’s true and it’s real and can have a really positive effect or negative affect on your business and your life. Let’s look at an old handle water pump for instance. You may have never seen one in real life, but surely you have seen one in an old western. You know the kind that you pump and pump to prime and then after a while you have a steady stream of water coming out. This is what it’s like to keep the forward motion going in your business. Again never, never stop the forward motion in your contracting business. When you do it does cause pain because it will be like starting all over again. So never, never stop the forward motion. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the website and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors
Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your underware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Wed, 31 January 2018
Culture what is it, does your business have one? Gerald J. Leonard understands the challenges that business owners face as they struggle with culture confusion, too many number one priorities, lacking consensus among key leaders and misalignment of their mission, vision, and values. He is an international expert on the topics of Developing a Culture That Works, Strategy Implementation, and Project Portfolio Management and is also a professional bassist. He is the author of Culture Is The Bass: 7 Principles for Developing A Culture That Works and has an upcoming book, Symphonic Culture: Unify, Strategize, and Execute Collectively for Optimum Results Culture is the intangible and almost emotional connection that people have with a company or family or organization. Gerald thinks culture is the foundation of the place where you get great music baselines. It creates a framework of the bass and it’s like the physical bond that all other women who have similar cultures. It has different cultures that propelled people away from each other. Each influences our perspective and it also causes the characters of the organization. VISSION: Every business, every organization, every family and every individual has created. Has some form a culture of how they are living. It really boils down to their overall vision for their life. VALUES: This is how they live now and they are made here which creates this culture. A culture that is pleasant, exciting, fun, and serving helpful art that can be one that’s very toxic but everyone has. And sometimes, people are not sure how they develop them. MISSION: If people have a business, they should want to have an organization that they want to grow. Having people that will be loyal to them consistently. Meaning having a positive attitude of employees which relates to the culture of the company. The key learning here is discipline. People need to have a clear vision or a clear track of where they want to go. They need to look those three things. People have to step back and visualize “What do we want our culture to be?”. One way to do that has the business owners ask their customers since they know their clients and what they want. These questions will be your core values which are going to help business owners implement into their system, whether it’s integrity whether it’s customer service first, whether it’s excellence in each branch certifications, these are the things that customers admire and what business owners will have to live for. At times it does call for some challenging times where business owners have people on their team that doesn’t realize they don’t live according to these, sadly they would need part ways with these set of people in order to maintain the vision, values, and mission that they have for their company. Critical decisions are made because everything needs to be aligned to really make a difference. A good company culture takes work to build an anchor for a long-term sustainable business. In terms of hiring, a company needs to be able to hire people that fit into their culture. Meaning they could already see that the person is able to transform after developing the skills they have and understanding the story behind the company. They understand the vision, the values that the owner has for the company. It doesn’t have to be complicated, each of them should be able to share their best practices. The proper mindset to be able to do the job. Because companies want to be set by people who can tough it out but at the same time will always have the same mentality in understanding the main vision and values of the company. And that is their accountability. It’s very important for each person to be able to hold the core values and criteria of the company because then they truly understand the culture of whom they are working for and what the company can do for them in return. And that’s what a good business is. You may visit this website for more details about Gerald J. Leonard: AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Gerald-J.-Leonard/e/B01IQW616A
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the website and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors
Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Tue, 30 January 2018
How to Present Value Over Price In Your Contracting Business and what is really the perceived value as opposed to your pricing structure and how that affects your profitability. I’m going through a checklist that will help you raise the perceived value of your business so that you can charge more. Making more profit at the time of sales and how to do that effectively, because if your customers don’t know the additional things that you have for sale, you’re both missing the boat. What are your other services how do you present them to your customers? Selling value is a way of positioning your company in all of your marketing. Make sure you provide a value proposition on the services you provide and why you’re different than any other contractor in your trade or niche. Using a funnel of great marketing to attract clients like this is the way to go. Basically, you are preparing them with information in the form of a recorded message or report. It really doesn’t matter what your competition is charging because if you set yourself apart from them as a value base business as opposed to price, your way ahead of the game and you’re going to leave your competition in the dust. With the value building system from this checklist, I’m going to give you a few secrets then you will attract clients that are used to paying a premium for real value. So in reality, raising the bar on perceived value teaches you that value is everything. Here are a few ways that you can go after your customer by raising the perceived value your customer has of your company. Some of these are pretty simple and you may be doing some these right now. If you are great! But some of these you may have never even considered doing so pay attention, I will go to this list fairly quickly.
2.Make sure that you, your technicians and your helpers are well groomed and well dressed.
These are just some things that will help you increase profits during your busy season. If you can get all this in place now, you just might now might just have your most profitable slow season ever.
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the website and pick up the free download.
4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers
If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors
Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before
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Mon, 29 January 2018
Its all about Dominating your market Today’s Contractors Secret Weapon’s podcast is all about Gary Geiman of Salvo and we are going to be talking about Dominating Your Market. Gary has been involved in generating sales and developing marketing systems for almost 25 years, B2B B2C along with his brother. He started a pressure washing business into the fourth quarter of 2012 and how they are riding vertical fall in 2014 as a way to generate revenue around. Utilizing, planning, and understanding how to dominate local search and implementing e-mail marketing automation has allowed them to reach a million-dollar annual gross sales revenue in 2017. They've begun to turn this knowledge into a passion helping other business owners and entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Their Facebook group which where I found Gary the Marketing Mafia has over 20-100 members learning to dominate ways to dominate their market and explode their revenue and gear. When 2018 came, Gary and his brother tried Chat Bot conversation for their customers so they can get through the process of getting them into an automated communication funnel so that when their customers are ready for their service, the information is there. He resigned and learned e-mail marketing, utilize it to be able to attract all types of customer and this lead to learning about Google AdWords which helped them get to a million dollars in gross revenues in 2017. In term so dealing with their customers, Gary and his brother has a cleaning scenario or contracting scenario which is very transactional. Greg started the Marketing Mafia in the Facebook group in February of 2017 because they see that there's a lot of different things out there available for new contractors as well as even seasoned who are trying to get to that next level. They have experienced and had a lot of bad decision so now they had decided to put together a couple of different things for contractors to be able to look at and say “I don't have to make those bad choices and here's a roadmap for us to become successful”
Dominating the Market means Gary wanted to help his business and other contractors to be able to dominate their markets and achieving the goal that they want for their business as all started out with a DREAM. But at first, it wasn’t easy as there were roadblocks but at the end of 2015 Gary had to make a decision and he reenergized himself. Reenergizing came from deciding this is going to be a legacy and we’re going to build something that everybody in his family can be proud of and leave something for future generations. Thinking with a purpose. We all continue in life learning something. Learn things to the best of your ability, to get proficient and you will be able to earn more. Because it goes back to what was said, singleness of purpose. They know a lot of times contractors get lost in that and always looking for the next best thing when they might have the next best thing right in front of them. They just have to figure out how to make it the best thing. As what Gary had said, to bring home the fact of figuring out what it is that you want for your business and then going after it. And that's really why they are determined for 2018. They want to dominate the market together with other contractors. Making sure that they provide excellent service back to those customers. You may visit these websites to know more details about Gary Geiman: https://www.facebook.com/themarketingmafia/ There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the website and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Fri, 26 January 2018
It’s all about getting into the conversation early, direct response marketing. Contractors have been using run of the mill flyers for years and they are fine, but Direct Response marketing requires that any marketing materials do more than provide a list of services, they HAVE to have some kind of call to action. The call to action means that someone is prompted to do something after they see the website, magazine ad or postcard. Today’s contractor marketing podcast is with Tara Jacobsen of Marketing Artfully. Tara has been in marketing since 1999, starting at a web hosting company, which at the time she barely knew what the internet was, let alone the technical backend of how websites work. Over the last 15 years she has spent way more than the 10,000 hours required to get really good at marketing, currently providing speaking and consulting services for small businesses, real estate and manufacturing industries. What Is Direct Response Marketing Contractors have been using run of the mill flyers for years and they are fine, but Direct Response marketing requires that any marketing materials do more than provide a list of services, they HAVE to have some kind of call to action. The call to action means that someone is prompted to do something after they see the website, magazine ad or postcard. Direct response is not a kind of marketing but a style of marketing where your focus is to have something happen after the advertising piece is seen. It can be as “normal” as a coupon in a magazine ad, although this is not optimal as discount ads bring in customers who are shopping, looking for a bargain. These types of customers are “right now” buyers. As long as there is a rock-solid plan to turn these price shoppers into repeat or ongoing customers, everything is great. Tara mentioned that she has had numerous contractors and trade people come into her home and has only ever had one send anything after the visit. Some suggestions she had for example were a chimney cleaner could send a follow up with:
Getting repeat business from current customers who are used to paying you truly is picking the low-hanging fruit! Even though Tara came in on a discount coupon, they could have easily turned her into a repeat shopper for an annual fireplace checkup (but they
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.
4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers
If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors
Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Thu, 25 January 2018
The Customer Experience, is it Great, is it Good, is it Bad, Indifferent, How Does Your Customer See You? This one of my pet peeves, how do you treat your customer better yet how does your customer perceive your interaction, Do they believe they are being treated well? That is really the defining factor. They won’t tell you they just won’t do business with you again
The customer experience has been so on my mind for the past few days, week, or so that I really want to take a look into the customer experience. It’s just been one of those things over the past couple of weeks, sort of like a creeping thing at the back of your neck and I will tell you why. So, here’s part of what’s going on.
I’m looking to remodel bathrooms, or my wife is looking to remodel our bathrooms. So, I go to the granite store that’s suggested to me by my contractor. Yes, I hire a contractor; I don’t work on my own house because I love my wife and want to stay happily married. Because the only things she’ll get out of me is a start date.
So, we get to the granite store, we pick up the granite, and I forget to take a picture of the granite. So, my wife calls the store, but nobody answers. We just left there maybe fifteen minutes ago, and nobody answers, it goes to voice mail. We leave a message explaining our dilemma and ask if they could please send a text or picture of the granite that we just picked out so that we go pick out the tile for the rest of the bathroom because my wife is on a mission. She wants to get everything picked out and she wants you to get it done today.
So, now it’s been a week, a whole seven days waiting for someone to call back from the granite store. You know how you get busy to make the phone call, well, they never got called. I never got the chance to call them back. So, it’s seven days later, I’m driving my dad to the airport so that he can fly back to Connecticut and my wife calls me. She goes, “I really want to pick up the rest of that stuff. Can you run by the granite place since they’ve never called us and take a picture? I’m pressed for time but I say, “Okay,” because happy wife, happy life.
So, I run out of my way to the granite store thinking less and less of why I really want to do business with them. Because I have to go all the way back to the granite store since no one bothered to call me back or text me a picture or anything like that of the granite that we picked out. But just a little bit, the granite that we picked up was sold; they told us they could order another one when we are ready to order. So, that’s fine.
So, I get there and the granite’s gone. So, the girl says, “It went to production I can send you a copy of the picture we have to you by email.” I say, “Okay, do it right now here’s my email address because I know I’ll probably never get it if I leave.” And she says, “I will call the production guy and see if there is a piece hanging around that I can get to you so that you can go pick out your tile.” I said, “That would be awesome.” It is five days later and no one has called me. So, neither here nor there I guess they don’t want to do business with me. So, I went back to the yard to take pictures of the first piece of granite that we liked, and then I saw another one that I liked even better than the one that we picked.
So, I took pictures of that, I took pictures of the UPC code of the name of the granite. I sent the picture to my contractor with the UPC code and I said, “Find another granite company.” I bet you can tell by now that I’m so fed up with them because their customer service is really bad.
So, the person who takes care of all that stuff lost a granite customer, and I wonder how many this year. Anyone who knows how much granite costs, it’s a nice little chunk of change. So, that one customer experience really sucks to anyone.
So, this is Saturday and I get to my mastermind I’m running a little late because I had to go out of my way to keep my wife happy and take pictures of the granite. When I get to my mastermind they say, “Hey, we are talking about the customer experience.” And I’m going, “The good one, or the bad one,” because you can tell right where my head was going. ‘I belong to a mastermind
So, I arrive at the mastermind a little late, they are talking about customer experience and I’m saying, of course, “Good or bad?” because you know what’s going on in my mind right now from what we’ve talked about.
So, I’m in a mastermind with Pete Mitchel, he’s been on the podcast before and he says, “No, no, we are talking about “Good customer experiences,” he says, “I have a new client and when I call her office I’m impressed by the way that I’m treated as a person calling in. It’s just a very neat and refreshing experience,” and the person, his new customer is a real estate agent who has up to this year sold over 200 properties, but she also has another business that trains real estate assistants, so she has it down pat.
She knows, “How do you answer the phone? How do you talk to the people? How do you make them feel,” so you’re going from bad customer experience to a great customer experience and how to really make that happen?
So, here’s the real question, that defining moment, “What is your company known for?” Good customer experience, great customer experience, or bad customer experience? If it’s the latter, it’s bad customer experience. I’m going to tell you what you’re not getting. You’re not getting a whole lot of business, you’re not getting any referrals, and you’re not getting good reviews on Google or anything like that. You’re not getting lifetime value out of good people that spend good money. But if your company has great customer experience, you know you’ve had to work on it and worked on it to make it better all the time. Something you might want to make on a script for your people to follow, when and how the phone is answered, the person answering the phone to know how to answer it, answer with a smile, with questions to ask, it makes all the difference in the world.
My wife, one of her pet peeves is customer service and overall customer experience. My wife is one of the most sweet, congenial people that I know; however, one of her pet peeves is customer service and overall customer experience. If it’s not happening, if she’s out doing business and she’s not treated right sometimes I just have to turn around and walk away because I feel so bad for the person or waiter that is waiting on us.
My wife owns a service business with my daughter and their whole business is customer experience and customer service. And their tag line is, “World class service can be yours,” so they live up to that. That’s why their business is growing at a rate of 61% over last year. Won’t it be great to have growth like that? She demands that the people who she’s going to spend money with treat her like they really want to do business with her. Sure, you know and like to be treated as customer, you go back to the business that treats you like they want to do business with you, you continue to do business with them all the time.
What about the ones that really don’t care? Don’t be like the ones that really don’t care. If it’s not that way in your organization, there are only two reasons to that, poor customer experience. One is the trickle-down effect, it’s your fault, or both ways it’s your fault. And two, no one has been trained and held to a standard that needs to experience your services and only can do that if they are trained.
So, I don’t know if I can beat that one up anymore today. But it’s all about the customer experience, and the customer experience starts off with the way the phone is answered all the way to how the proposal is presented and written, all the way to the end, how the job is done, how then people are treated and during that process the way their questions are answered. Yes, you have to answer their questions and all the way to the end when you say thank you, when you collect the money. Then you send them a thank you card and you learn how to wow them by building relationships.
So, until next week think on these things and go make a profit.
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download . 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers
If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors
Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Wed, 24 January 2018
3 simple steps to double your website conversions today I have Joe Burnich with us and you're going to love him. He is a contractor or was a contractor and grew his business. Became a web designer and now he does web designing and SEO and pay for click for contractors only. So, this is one of the cool things and this is the reason that I brought Joe on today is that he knows how you think, he knows what you're going through and he's been through pretty much everything that you've been through the different stages of growing your business. And I thought he would be fun to talk with. And today we're going to talk about three-key maybe four-key elements that will help you get more conversions right now today or tomorrow or the next day. But I just want it. Let's welcome Joe. Hey, Joe I just want thank you for being with us today and giving us great tips on web design and how to get better conversions. So, I'm going to let this go with you. I'm just I love to hear about the cool stuff that you're doing. And so, thanks for being with us today. Well, thank you, Dave. So that's my first time on your show. I just want to say thank you for contacting me and asking me to come on that I feel very honored. And yes, today I mean I don't know where we want to start. I've got three simple tips that people can implement today that can easily double the conversions on a Web site. So, if you're getting traffic to your Web site and you're getting let's say three calls a day implementing these simple tips that are going explain right now could get you double that. That's kind of what I want to talk to you about. You say and most time they can probably do a lot of that themselves. Some of you getting yourself some of it you'll probably have to have your web designer do it depends on what you know what your abilities are. Some people do their own Web site so they have full access it can do stuff like that. So yeah. And I'm going to say, guys, if you don't have a Web site, then we’re going to give you Joe’s contact information at the end. Nice. So, what's number one what's the number one first simple step? Real quick before we get into that could I share a quick story. Absolutely. OK. So, I just want to let everybody know where I come from and went into this whole Internet Marketing Google game because I know that guys like me get a bad rap kind of that used car salesman type vibe. Cause there's a lot of just scamming stuff out there. But my story is I moved from Kansas City to my original hometown of Missoula Montana where I live right now in 2009 and I didn't have a job but I had a 10-month-old baby and a new wife and I had to feed them out of desperation. I a family friend talked me into starting a cleaning business because easy startup you know don't need a lot of training don't need a lot of capital to start up. And so, I never thought I'd be in that. But I just ran with it. Took a couple thousand dollars that I had left and run with it. And basically, what I did was I taught myself how to get a website ranked up on Google not knowing if it would be you know profitable or whatever. But I mean I spent hours a day for months on end. I’ll bet. And yeah, I mean up at 4:00 in the morning if I wasn't working I was on the computer trying to figure this out because I had a friend that was doing it and he was selling like cell phones or something on the on the Internet and everything was done by Google rankings. By SEO. Oh wow. And so, he showed me some tips and then I studied. And it was tough because I was you know I had a Web site. And the calls were not coming in I didn't know really anything about marketing. I was out there handing out flyers and business cards and doing all that just struggling not knowing if I was going to ever make it. And so, but the cool part was that once it took about four months but once I did pop up into like the top three on google, my phone started ringing. And that's when I kind of decided OK this is something I can do. And this is something is really going to feed my family. It was all about taking care of my family and a lot of guys can probably relate to that especially the guys that are getting just getting started or if they're going through a slow season or whatever. There's just that fear of this business going to make it. And for me it was Google. And I know other people have other things that they use to get business and get calls coming in. Maybe it's Facebook maybe it's just having an awesome network that they've built up over the years whatever it is. And so, I'm not here to say that Google is the only way an Internet marketing is the only way to do this. I'm just saying to me it saved my family so I got a soft spot for Google. It makes sense to me. But it's just another tool. Really. It really is. And so, and that was in 2009. And so, I got into just helping a few other people doing it here and there. And now you know in 2018 in three days at least we know I've got four employees. We've got we've done over 850 Websites in the service contractor niche and industry. And so in over the years talking to people and just testing over and over I've figured out some simple things that most people are not doing with their websites. That really can blow the phone up that can really get the phone calls coming in which is what we really all want. It's nice to have a pretty web site that makes impresses people. But if it's not bringing in the phone calls then who cares right? Absolutely. So, I believe in having beautiful professional websites but to me, that has to go hand in hand with the conversion. So that's what I want to talk about is conversion. How to get people to pick up the phone and call you once they do hit your Web site. Tip number one that I like to give people is something that is very simple but I still see more than half of the people out there in the especially in the service industry construction industry. They're still not doing this. And what that is having a big bold phone number at the top of every single page of your website. I still go out there and look at websites that have the phone number like down in the text, down in the middle somewhere or it's down in the footer or even you have to click on the Contact Us page to even find the phone number. Right.
And so, it's so huge so, so important and so easy such an easy tweak to just put it nice and big at the top of every page and then in addition to that put a simple called action something like Call now for a free estimate or you know 24-hour service if it's an emergency type service you can do 24-hour service call. Now something very simple. There have been multiple studies that say if you have the words Call now next to your phone number it'll actually double the double the people that actually pick up the phone call.
Well, people like to be told Do they really. Yeah, I've talked to people they're like No I got my phone number on their people know what to do. And if they don't it's a subconscious thing it's not it's not like they're you know it's not like they're thinking this through. But having that and then another little another little tidbit to go along with this tip is if you can if you stand 10 feet back from your computer if that phone number isn't something that jumps out then it's not big enough it's not bold enough.
So, you can do things like kind of change the color to contrast with the rest of the Websites if you've got a lot of blues and greens and your Web site. Make the phone number Orange. Stuff like that. It really, really works. I mean after working with 850 plus clients I can tell you that people that have those big phone numbers like that are the ones that are getting more calls.
It's just it's amazing you got down to a science now. Yeah. Yes. Exactly, exactly. And a lot of web designers out there that are amazing award-winning web designers will make that mistake over and over and over because they're looking to impress people with the visuals and not the conversions. So that's two different aspects you're looking at it from the contractor point of view because you were one and they're looking at a designer’s. That this has got to be pretty.
Yes. Yes. And if you can nail pretty and convert then yeah, I mean you're going to be way ahead of the competition because nine out of ten guys out there don't have both of those nailed. So that's tip number one.
So, anybody who's listening to this if you can get a hold of your web designer or if you built your Web site on Wix or whatever you did, however, you got your Web site set up do everything you can to get a big bold phone number at the top of every page with a call to action that would be my number one tip that I can give today.
And then number two. OK. And this is something you and I were talking about before the podcast started here Dave is so, we all know that smartphones are here to stay you know they're not going anywhere. Everybody uses them all the time especially in this type of business.
So, it and what we're all accustomed to is you know hitting little buttons on our phone. So, my suggestion is that when you're somebody looking at your website on a smartphone, is you don't just have the phone number but you have the phone number on a button. So that and then you can even add a call to action to that as well like on all the websites that we do. We have a phone number in a button that says tap to call. OK. And they have that at the very top. Don't make people look for the phone number don't make them scroll down to find the phone number. Don't put the phone number in tiny little text somewhere make it into a button because they're already addicted to hitting buttons all day long or on their phone. That's all they do.
And your two icons are really good. Exactly. They need to tap this and the video and how it goes straight to a phone call. OK. Because like we said the beginning, we want to get phone calls. We don't want to just impress people we want to get that phone ringing. So, we can close the deal. So, the number two now Dave you brought up an amazing point. That you know most of the clients out there most of it most of the decision maker, comes to server benefactor's whatever it may be in this type of industry. It's the woman that makes the decision.
She is the decision maker in these types of transactions. She's going to give the go ahead. She's going to pick who they who they are going to work with. Who's going to do the work for them? And so that's going to go right into my next step. But you brought up a really interesting point is why not have in addition to a call now button, have a like a tap to text button.
So, you got my wheels turn and now I'm going to go out there and grab my web developer here. Leah and I are going to get we're going to figure this out. We're going to we're going to make a text button and start implementing it and web designs and start doing some major testing. Because as you brought up Dave. Females tend to text more than more than call. They would rather text a potential vendor or potential company than pick up the phone and have a drawn-out conversation. Right. I mean wouldn't you agree.
I would yeah, I would agree. And as we talked earlier and you know my daughter and your wife they've got kids. The phone rings. They're not coming they're not going to pick it up. If its text and they see it then they'll take the time or you know to text back. But it's just it's not part of the world.
And you know there's a lot of times where women are at work and they're on their phone and they can't call because of what they may be in an area where they can't call but they can text. You know there are so many variables that you know you're getting too loud. Let's say you're looking at an ad on an on your phone in a waiting room or something like that.
You're not going you're not going to wait forever to travel. You're just going Oh if I can text the phone let me do this. I can. Can I get an appointment or like what we were talking about somebody with this other night? Well like 7 o'clock at night you know nobody's going to answer the phone. But what if they got a text. You know that they would answer first thing in the morning.
Yeah. And I always I always tell people it's good to have like a little forum that people can fill out for that exact reason because they don't want to call it you know 8:00 o'clock at night or whatever. But you got me thinking why not add a text button that could place the form pretty easily so we're going to be doing some major testing here in 2018. Based on your that little that little seed that you planted in my mind so I appreciate that.
I want you to track in about six months after you run your test. Give us the stats on that. I'd love to do that. That’d be great.
So that kind of that kind of goes right but it is a good segue right into the third tip that I want to talk about which it goes right along with we are marketing to females primarily. OK. And so, what I see a lot of people do on their Web sites is they'll have a lot of pictures of you know their equipment, their trucks a lot of a lot of the wording on the Websites is very technical. And that doesn't speak to the average the average female out there that's going to make the decision the one that's going to basically fork over the money. Right.
She wants to know what her house is going to look like when it's finished. She wants to see smiling kids. She wants to see you know whatever the service is she wants to see the end result so that the even other women on your web page. Exactly. And testimonials other women that are in that are like them are ages and some more family situations whatever it may be.
So, I would highly recommend that if you've got you or if your website is dominated by stuff that appeals to you or to other competitors or men that you know friends whatever then you really need to rethink that and start adding some more. Make it a little bit softer. It's kind of what you need to do to make it happier and the end result as opposed to technical logical. You know just the man the male mind and the female mind respond differently to different things.
We all know that. Here is an interesting thing for you guys that are thinking well that's really not going to make a difference. I'm going to tell you that if you're in a cell situation and you're there with the woman and the guy and you sell to the guy, that guy likes you and a woman don't you've lost. You are not going to get the job no matter how it goes. Yes, yes, yes. She's going to say no, no, no. And you know me I've been married for 40, 41 years. My father has been a happy wife happy life.
That goes for your marriage and it goes for the clients as well. So, it does. I'm just laughing because I just I'm thinking back to when I had my business. And there are several times when I just thought I nailed it. I nailed that job. The guy loved me this and that. And I guarantee I lost it because the wife was like no for whatever reason.
You talk to them because you know the guy you didn't need to get the attention. I had this one year ago it was hilarious. I had a client. We were we did a lot of painting and he won. He called me, he called me over and look at the house to do stuff and the old school. I mean really old school. This was like this was a guy with his wife. It was one-word answers with me. That whole conversation. He was very Lithuanian very old school. OK, I go. So, Tony so his wife goes Tony I want to get next time we paint the house. Can we paint the outside just a little tinge of green?
No. So I go, Tony. Don't you understand how long have you been married it, Tony? How long. Many, many, many years. That's OK. Do you not know this? Does he go know what Dave? OK. Happy wife a happy life. Her eyes got as big as saucers I mean it got huge. I mean and Tony goes wow ok. So, we go inside and we're just talking. You know and she goes Tony I would like this house has painted in 15 years. I want to paint this house the inside for your birthday his response.
No. I said, Tony, I need to learn anything outside of that we talked about. And he goes, OK. She got the house painted the house with the exact tinge of green that she wanted to add one. Yeah. Everything you wanted.
But you know it's so important to come to that realization. Who are we selling to? And you know it's kind of funny. It really is. Yeah. And what's crazy is I'm not noticed too. Like if you take that Web site and show your wife a lot of times she won't be thinking in terms of a client she'll be thinking in terms of you know I'm one of the business owners. So, it's kind of dangerous actually to ask the wife I've found in many cases of them in many cases. The wife having somebody close to you give you feedback on the website is not always the best way. You need to have a third party that doesn't really have much connection to you or you what they think of the website. That's another thing.
Yeah because I mean just the other day we have a roofer who was like well I don't want to put the phone number at the top of the website when I only have it in like tiny little text down in the footer of the website because my wife thinks it looks tacky at the top.
And she wasn't thinking from the point of view of like what if I was actually you know a female out here looking to hire a roofer. I want to get a hold of this guy. You know if they don't find the phone number on your Web site. The seconds are gone. Yeah exactly. So, it's a big deal. OK.
And so that's it. That's my top three tips. I mean I've got other things too as far as like you know getting online reviews how important that is and how that can boost your conversions. And there are lots of lots of little things beyond that but that's at the top three. It's definitely three things that you or you a web designer can implement like now. Especially for the New Year wrap. Get going for 2018. That new Web site gets the Web site revamped, freshened up and to convert not just be pretty and rank but also to convert.
And so, and so that's what I got. And I don't know if we going to talk about this right now but I wanted to make sure that you're just audience gets a special prize. If they ever wanted to do anything with us let's do that now do it again later on.
You know I always like promote or guess what they have to offer and how they can help our community. You know this is all about helping other guys become more profitable. Be better or what they do so that they can spend more time with their families.
Yeah. And so, I want to make sure. So, for the next couple of weeks, I would love to give all of your only listeners only the listeners, $300 off any web design packages that we have. And but they just need a dimension that they need to mention that this podcast and then we'll make sure that that $300 is taken off. So, this is not an issue for a couple of weeks I want to make this isn't forever.
And so, we can either we can get a link set up or people just want to go to generalcontractorwebsites.net they can find us there or just give me a call at 4 0 6 4 9 3 1 8 8 1. Okay great, and we'll put on a show notice when we get on we get everything up and at that point and what we'll do is we'll put off end of show notes will put off cut-off date let's say two weeks or three weeks however you want to do it. It will just put on the cutoff date. And from that point, so everyone knows that.
I'd like to talk about Google reviews a lot because I think that's important. I mean I know you do too. From a standpoint that's probably would be number for one or one of the numbers high numbers. Absolutely. And it may even bump in their effort in some cases anyway bump into the top three.
Just because of the fact and the way that I look at Google reviews and other reviews you know Angie's List and everything but Google still the big one unless you're on the west coast and I know you can overtake Google a lot of times when it comes to the review game. But the way that I look at online reviews is they literally are the new world of the mouth of mouth advertising. Yeah
I mean the whole the whole idea of you know tell all your friends and then haven't called me all that stuff that still exists. But there's a whole another online version of that and that's basically, it's just reviewed. I mean how many people bought into this have read an Amazon review before actually clicking the buy now button. Right.
You know what I mean. Oh yeah and a lot of times you don't think that it applies to your business the same way but I'm going to tell you right now I've got a guy up in Portland. He's got a five-truck operation does a lot of like water damage restoration stuff like that. And he so he used to have like eight or nine reviews on his competitors all had they all were right around there like five to 10 reviews something like that.
Well, he got busy. Did you know I'm going to make reviews big in 2017 and so now he's got like 89 reviews and you're still acting like 9 or 10? And he says he literally doesn't have to do any more staying over the phone. It's not about right. You know my prices deserve prices any more. It's about you had the most reviews online. And these are all genuine reviews. Doesn't do any. These guys above board he doesn't know. No fake reviews of again. It's really easy to get reviews.
It's kind of funny. I just did a podcast not too long ago about a contractor in South Carolina and he grew his business basically by google reviews. It's kind of an interesting way for business. It was mostly referrals. He'd get like 75% referrals and 25% would be you know from reviews and stuff like that. He went out of his way to do the different ways and he started with the google reviews and now he's got. Last, I checked he had 55 reviews and he said that the numbers have turned. He said 75% of my business comes from the google reviews and 25% comes from referrals it's amazing.
You got to do. You got to really do is ask. Now I have an I have another tip based on that because a lot of times people say well I don't feel like one out of 10 people will actually you know say they're going to actually follow through and do it. But you got to do more than ask. Yeah. And so, I like that call but you know to push the call. Yes yeah.
Make it easy to make it Brain-Dead easy for them and so the best way that I've found to do that is to once again we go back to text thing is to basically give them a heads up say Hey you mind if I send you a text to get some feedback on how we did it and most times I say yes like 95% of you say oh yeah, no problem.
So, what you can do is get on your phone. This won't work on your computer. You got to get on your phone and search your business and find your Google page. OK. once you're on the Google page you click on reviews and then it'll take and then and then they'll let you choose the number of stars. Right. OK. So, you click on Star number five and that's it. You don't. All you do on your own business. on your smartphone has to be on a smartphone. And so all five stars are gold at that point. All right.
Now you do is you tap up into we're like the Web site addresses and you do and you click copy highlighted and then you click copy. All right. Now you go and send a text and you paste in that exact address. It's a big long obnoxious website address but that will take them directly when they click on that when they get the text and they click on that. It'll take them directly to the Google page with the five stars filled out. Now they can change it and put fewer stars if they want but it's one less step that they have to take.
And so, then they're just at the point where they're just typing in you know the actual experience they had. But that little chip right there texting over the actual google link that takes them already just right to the place where they can start typing is going to increase the amount of you know reviews you get so if you get one out of ten by asking right now. Now you to get like nine out of 10 because you're doing it for them in a sense. Yes exactly
And that's the that's the key thing is you know. We all want more business but we think that it's going to be easy. Sometimes it's easy but we have to work at it. Yes. Yes. I was reading some stats not too long ago. And the funny part was that 90% of the people who go to the internet to check reviews but only like 40-50% will actually write a review. Yeah. So, you know so you've got to work a lot harder to get what you want. That's all that's really what it boils down to. Which is nice. And yet the reviews are just awesome and I just you know it's kind of cool on how easy it is to just you know send it and they will do it. And if they don't do it right away then you do it one more time.
Yeah. Yeah but maybe you just do. You know I know you've been busy and we've talked about this. I just wanted to send this to you again. If you have time please do it. If you don't that's ok.
Yeah and the key time to do it is right when you have that conversation with them at the very end of the job. And they've got that those good warm feelings about you. Those are feeling quick like a week later. You know they're still happy with us that they dislike you but you don't have that. I want to help this person. Because people do want to help especially if you do an amazing job form they want. They want to but they don't want to have to go find your Web site or go find your Google pager your pager. They don't want to have to do all that. Most people anyway. So, the easier you can make it for them, then the better chance you're going to get. And it's all about just getting into a routine getting it in and out. Oh, the guy in Portland said what he does is it makes sure that all of his technicians are the ones that actually initiate that text. And then he gives them like a $25 bonus for every five-star review that comes in the day the day that they requested.
So yeah that makes it a lot nicer for him. Yes, I mean yeah, I mean one review is 20 it was worth you know is gold. One five-star is gold so $25 dollars. He looks at it. I'm paying $25 to get a review and that review is easily going to make me ten times that over the next year. Oh, easy. So, this is the place to place some golds in the pot is what he's doing. Yeah. Yeah. That is so cool.
Yeah, I know of a carpet cleaner that was doing Facebook reviews. He would actually give them if they would do while they were still there and he would give them a Starbucks coffee. Yeah, be careful with bribes like Yelp will shut down your account if they find out about that. But yeah Google and Facebook they, you know Google says not to do it but I've never heard of them cracking down on it yet. Well, how Facebook's pretty open now. Yeah, I mean people on Yelp people are suffering. I've heard of people getting shut down in Yelp. So, they Yelp figures it out somehow.
I mean they get so many and stuff like that depending on the trade. Yeah. And they've even gotten to the point Yelp's even gotten to the point where they've said you're not even allowed to ask for a review. So, Yelp is a different animal. It's not cool. Yeah, there's a lot a lot of angry people out there on YELP right now. So yeah, I think yes, I was listening to somebody tell me that you know it's tied pretty much to being three views from me you know. Is that true? Oh, I've never heard that I heard though. Yeah, that's why they post your reviews and stuff like that.
Now, something I did hear this morning that was kind of interesting. I don’t know if you knew this was home adviser bought Angie’s List. I did not know that. Wow. That just went through like two weeks ago. I wonder how that's going to play out. Interesting. It’s alright if they don’t change their name. An interesting change the name but nobody like Angie’s List and nobody likes Home Advisers so I don't think they've got some enemies that's for sure. You know. Yeah, they do because they just don't do things right. Neither here or there and we're not going to go there. All right. Hey you know this is really been awesome. Is there anything that you've been burning there in the back of your mind that you say you need to get this out. You want anything you want, additionally, you want to share before we close out this thing?
You know the only other thing is I do have a book that has 150 pages of all of this kind of stuff. It's basically where I just did a mine dump and put everything I know into book format. So, if people want to get that they can get it on Amazon it's like 17 something. If you want to get it for free and just pay the shipping and handling giving it away right now. Just go to a servicebusinessmoneymachine.com that's the name of the book service business money machine. How to turn your Web site into a virtual money machine. Cool.
Yeah, I've got, the matter of fact I've got my book on the way. So, guys, I ordered his books so we're in good shape. Nice. And so, we will put them on and show notes like he said. And then one more time let's run your special again since we're at the end. So, we'll have that at the very end again.
Yeah so, we've been talking about Website stuff today. So, what I want to do is if you're looking to get a new Web site or revamp your current website, we're going to take $300 off for the next couple of weeks we'll set the exact date on the show. Now it's like you were saying yeah but this is only for people that are listening to this.
You have to mention that you listened to the podcast and that's the only way you're going to get that $300 special. So, if you're looking to get a new Web site for the new year then we'd love to talk to you about it. And if we if we decide that we're not a good fit for each other then that's fine. I'll still give you a free consultation with you know lots of tips and little things you can do to improve your website anyway. So, that would be awesome. So, give us your contact information again. OK so you can go to a generalcontractorwebsites.net OK or you can just call 4 0 6 4 9 3 1 8 8 1.
Awesome. Joe thanks so much. This has really been great having you on the show. Little tips and tricks on how to get everyone more business. And I thank you for making that offer to our listeners. And guys listen, I really, take advantage of it if you if you need to know or call Joe and see what you need to do. But you know one of the things that I was impressed with overall is that Joe was a contractor and he thinks like contractors, he knows you know how you guys think, he knows what you're going through and he's been in your shoes.
And he only deals with contractors. He's not trying to make one everything fit. So, we're in good shape. Joe again thanks so much for being with us today. I love it Dave, and I hope to come back in six months and we'll talk about that text button. Yeah, that'll be a blast. Yeah. Yeah. OK. All right. Dave, you have a good one. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Thanks.
You may go to this website to know more details about Joe Burnich: www.generalcontractorwebsites.net Contact: 406-493-1881 To get your $300.00 discount from Joe you can go to his website offer is good only until midnight February 7th 2018 Website Special: https://generalcontractorwebsites.net/secret-weapon/ www.generalcontractorwebsites.net let Joe know you herd about him at Contractor’s Secret Weapon podcast
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.
4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors
Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
Comments[0]
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Tue, 23 January 2018
Do you have the customer you deserve, or do you have the customer you want? I ask this question to many contractors and the response that I usually get is, “yes, I want all the customers I can get! customers are the lifeblood of my business, the more customers the more money.” REALLY? That’s what we are going to discuss today.
The next thing I say is that was not the question I asked! The question I asked was, “do you have the customer you deserve, or do you have a customer you want.” Then I get this weird look and I have to continue on.
You see most contractors going into business think about getting business and not about that business as a whole. As they enter the marketplace, they sit down and figure out what everyone else is charging and start competing on price. They figure they have a good product and they are great at what they do so they should succeed. I ask why do they take their excellent work and just start competing on price just to get into the market place.
How do I know about this? I’m guilty, I started there too!
But I learned really fast that I would need to change directions fast or go out of business! That’s why I found a mentor and hired a coach. More on that some other day… So how do I have the customer that I deserve? As painful as it may sound, if you are competing on price alone then the customer you are attracting is the price shopper.
The price shopper will eat up your time, they will eat up your profits, and they will eat up your sanity. They will complain the most about everything and when they refer you it will be to likeminded people. Unfortunately, when you only sell by price you get these types of customers.
I say this is a customer you deserve because you are either lazy or don’t know any better. I’m going to go on the premise that you don’t know and today we are going to try to change that. Right now, you are on hamster wheel going around and round feeding the hamster (your business) with bad food (prices shoppers) and there is no nutrition (profit) to keep him going so he is running as fast as he can to keep the pace and he is dying from malnutrition and over-work.
Get off the hamster wheel.
Here is what you need to do. Take the time to go after your ideal customer; stop going after the easy money, your ideal customer has the money to pay for good work.
Think about business as business owner not as a trade’s person, sales person or installer. How do I run my business and strategically get the customer I want?
First of all, you have to define who the customer that you want is. Everyone’s definition of an ideal customer is different, so you have to figure out who your ideal customer is and how do you start going after that type of customer.
Here is an example of defining your ideal customer.
Get the point? The better you can define your ideal customer, the healthier your business will be. So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, selling by price only as a commodity is easy mentally but hard on the pocketbook.
Going after a specific customer type as a target is harder in the beginning because you have to learn about your ideal customer, but so much more rewarding monetarily for years after you make the choice.
Survive maybe or thrive. Now you know how to move in the right direction. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers
If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors
Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
Comments[0]
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Mon, 22 January 2018
We can’t find any skilled labor, does this problem resonate with your trade? Shawn Van Dyke has come up with a solution to this ongoing problem. As we talk about the solutions and the change of mindset you will come to the conclusion that for this will actually work. . I have a real and fun and exciting guest with Sean Van Dyke and Sean is a construction industry consultant business coach and mentor. He's the author of the paperwork punch list 28 days to streamline your construction business and find the home building brand administrator. Shawn is the keynote speaker and travels the US working with and training construction business owners on how to streamline their businesses. That's a fun thing. No one likes to work hard.
Yeah. Before becoming a business coach Shawn owned a Construction Management Consulting Firm and General Contracting Company. He also served as an Executive at the Specialty Contracting Company and enjoys living life in East Tennessee where it's nice and warm this time of year and happily married with five kids.
So, Shawn, I'm just excited that you are with us today. And, you want to share some valuable information farm with Dave. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. I'm looking forward to chatting with you. Yes. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got from here to there to where you are today.
Yeah, it's got an issue with it. When I hear my own bio read off I kind of hear my wife you know in the back of my head just saying you know to some people all that stuff sounds impressive to her and be married to an entrepreneur. It sounds like, man, you can't keep you can't keep down a job dude, you know.
Well, I as I say as I started out my career I guess by getting a couple of degrees in engineering and I got a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and a master's degree in structural engineering. Spent a few years doing that and then realized I don't think I want to be an engineer. And so, I transition to commercial construction doing some project management for some commercial contractors and then kind of bounced around as we do in construction sometimes from company to company and ended up doing some real estate development working and as a construction manager for a real estate developer. Traveling all around the Midwest and the Southeast building large commercial developments.
And by then we had number two on the way and I was on I was on the road three days a week and my wife were kind of like yeah this isn't going to work out so well for being a dad. So, I started my own construction management company and real estate company that transitioned during the downturn into the general contracting company.
And let's see what happened after that. Yeah, I went to work as a Chief Operating Officer for a trim and millwork company and spent several years there. And I guess that was the last job that real job that I had and left there about a little over a year and a half ago and went into what I'm doing now doing construction consulting and coaching and mentoring.
So, I travel all over the place and teach construction business owners you know how to streamline their business how to run a better business. And I'm just I'm really enjoying you know what I'm doing now before I was working for one company doing these things and now I get to work with literally dozens of companies all over the U.S. and Canada. Even have one client in Sweden.
So yeah if you're listening to this and you've got issues and problems it doesn't matter where you are in the world. Contractors we all have the same you know the same issues when it comes to the business side and the paperwork and the people. So, don't feel like you're alone out there. You're not you're not alone.
Everybody's struggling with the same thing and it's kind of funny everyone and you know you thought some might say well my business is different. Yeah right. Yeah. So saying we've got people you've got the paperwork you know the regular business and I'm dealing with people and it's all people. And so, I'll bet your wife’s a lot happier too now.
Well yeah, it depends on where you are. You know when I started this I didn't think I was going to be traveling so much and now I'm doing different training. I travel to my client’s locations and do executive training or employee training. But then also doing keynote speaking at trade events and that kind of stuff so I sold my wife on the whole deal.
Hey, you know as you know as I travel around then you know we find somebody to watch the kids and then you come out we can have a long weekend and some of these nice places. But you know when you when you have a speaking gig in I don't know. In Detroit in February or something like that. It's not exactly. You know what I sold her on Detroit in February is not exactly you know the long weekend. You know that I kind of promised her or whatever so are booking some.
Some stuff like Hawaii and Miami and LA in the summer when it's when it's nice and yeah what I've got I've got an I've got one client in Hawaii I have another one in Key West Florida. So those aren't the those are the worst places in the world that have to travel any time of the year so we'll see if that happens. Now you said you had five kids out with your oldest and you're young. You can't ask me those questions that they keep changing ages. I can’t remember them. I got grandkids. I've got them from 15 to 1 Yeah. So that's all I know. Yeah.
So, at one time at one time we have four boys and then the baby is a girl. So, four boys and then we had a girl. I think my oldest is he's in sixth grade so I think he's about to turn 11. I think he's going on 12 or maybe he's 10 going on 11. See this is very embarrassing. And you know I don't care about that sound to sound the same way. I know that the oldest is 15 and I said the baby just turned 1 a couple months ago. And there's a, let’s see, that's there four others in between.
Yeah. So, I think I've got an almost 12-year-old a 10-year-old probably and 9-year-old a 6-year-old that gets the four boys and then the baby girl is easy because she was born on my birthday. So as if she wasn't spoiled enough already She'll be sorry she'll be 3 on March 5th.
So, my oldest and one of my older ones were born both on November 6th. So, Abby goes when her brother was born. Oh, that is awesome and she had a birthday party with him. Yeah. Yeah well, my wife told me I don't have any more birthdays. They're all hers which is fine with me because I'm just you know I'm just getting older so they can all be hers anyway so yeah. So.
So, as you travel with here you're your clients. What are some of the biggest challenges that they're having to overcome in the marketplace right now? Yeah, right now it really you know it really comes down to and I hear this with every client especially with me. Construction is back. Things are booming. If 2018 doesn't isn't your best year in construction than you, you're doing something wrong because there's just so much work out there and from the downturn and this is kind of gets into the issue we're going to talk about you know we lost two million plus jobs 10 years ago.
And, it's not like those people were waiting around till it picked back up because like they left they're gone. They left the industry they left the country. They're just not there. So, demand is huge for construction and there are not enough people to fill those the available spots for Labor, skilled labor and then so I hear that all the time from my clients
Shawn, I just can't find the skilled labor that I need for you know for my business. If we had more people than we could do more work or are we just you know we're delaying projects because we just can't get to you know everything.
And so, I hear that a lot we can't find the skilled lay. You know we can't find it. And I say you're exactly right. You can't find it because it doesn't exist. Right. So that kind of hits I'm like will get hired you to help me solve the problem. Right. And the thing is the problem is they're just not making plumbers, electricians, carpenters, welders you know like they used two generations ago where that was a viable option now. And there's nothing. Well, give me all my soapbox here.
No there's nothing wrong with a college education. But I might get in trouble by saying this but the value of that college education with technology and all that is just not as high as it used to be. And so, there is this you know there's this there's this labor gap and it's huge right now. And so, to solve it the problem the problem is that you know that these people don't exist.
I say what you're doing is you're hunting for unicorns you're looking for this mythical creature that's supposed to you know mythology the unicorn I guess if you capture it you know the horn of the Unicorn had special healing properties and all of these other things. Right. That's what you're looking for you're looking for this-this guy or gal with five or 10 years’ experience that can just jump in on the crew lead the crew to you know a successful project. You're just looking for a unicorn. It's a mythical creature that doesn't exist.
Not too long ago I was in an education class and the teacher was going through said Okay so I went there was like 50 people in a classroom and I watch it and it was all for construction because I want everyone to look around the room and he goes How many people. And he goes how far under 40. Nobody resigned. He said how many people are under 50.
And there was a couple but most of them are 50. But they said here's the problem. He said there are no new contractors taking getting their licenses to fill the gap of what you guys are moving out of and he says that's creating a big problem in the marketplace. And I go Yeah and I said Here's a stupid thing guys if you don't realize that or not you are competing on price when you have you are no longer a commodity. But I need you and you're fighting against each other on price. Stop it yeah.
Yeah and that and that the solution to the problem is to say OK you know if we if we can't find it because it doesn't exist then what are we supposed to do. Well, you have to create it. And they're both hard problems to solve. I think that finding something that doesn't exist is a lot harder than creating something that you that doesn't exist. Meaning we stop hiring for skill, we stop hiring for technical expertise. Those are things you can teach somebody.
But what you need to hire like most other successful businesses and we need to take a note from you know the big Fortune 500 companies. And the other things like that. They hire a lot of cases. They will be hiring for competency and culture and fit. And you say you know things like culture to a construction other like What are you talking about. We just get the work done. And you know you know we're just the nose of the grindstone knock it outright. But every company has a culture and the culture of your company is what your employees think about working there. Right.
So, you know you may not have spent any time developing your culture but I guarantee you if I go in and start asking your employees you know what. What are some struggles they have working here or what you do have a culture you may just not be aware of exactly what it is? So, if you can if you can improve or you can enhance or you can just talk about what your culture is or what you want it to be then that's going to attract people that are competent and that have the right chemistry for your culture and are a good fit and you just have to say listen you know we can't find these people because they don't exist.
We're going to have to create them. So, what does that mean? Well, we better have a training program that we can take somebody that does. We're going to hire for a good work ethic and passion. Maybe it's not passion towards carpentry or painting or electrical work or you know whatever the trade is but you can probably help somebody to develop a passion because everybody in the trades that are working right now at some point you know no one was born with it. I don't even care if you've been wearing the tools since you were you know since you were a little kid on your grandfather's side and helping to build stuff in the shop.
You developed a passion for the time because you saw what that passion you know what it lived out what it what it created. Well just because somebody is 22 years old and they got a college degree in history, no offense to the history majors out there. But that doesn't mean that that that guy or gal can't develop a passion very quickly in six months and eight months and heck four months with the right company that shows this is what we do we create and build this stuff with our hands at the end of a day.
At the end of the day at the end of a week at the end of a project. We can walk away and point at something and say we built that. It wasn't here before and now it is. And the right people for your company they can develop a passion for whatever the craft is whatever the trade is but you got to train them to do it.
And I think that you could you can easily spend 18 months looking for this unicorn right and you'll probably go through a couple of people. The other thing that I say is if you hire somebody or somebody has the skills that you're looking for on paper anyway or they say they do. You got to ask why are they available. It's probably because no one wants to work with them right so oh this guy got 10 years of experience. He’s been a lead carpenter now you know he's looking for a job. Right. You need to make sure that you're interviewing process kind of weeds out the psychopaths right. Because you know you bring somebody in like that. Yeah, they're technically very competent.
They can do a lot of work but nobody wants to work around them. They won't listen. They won't get on board with the way your company does stuff so that can be dangerous too as when you do find somebody with the technical skills you've got to make sure that you're you know back to the culture thing. You've got to hire for that first and you get the right training program in place in six months, 12 months 18 months.
You can probably get somebody to where they need to be where they're very productive and very profitable for your business. And there are people out there that are the look they are realizing that they were lied to about college. Now if we go 100 grand in debt and get an education then somebody is just going to pay me 50 or 60 thousand dollars just because I went to college and they're working at Starbucks or at the movie theater or in and I've met them I've talked to them they're driven Uber right.
Trying to figure out what the next best thing is. And you find these people that are looking to put their passion towards something maybe it does haven't been carpentry or something like that in the past and you just say hey, come work for us. We've got a training program and we have a path in two years you could move up from this level to that level. You could you can do whatever you want within our company. But you got to have that structure you've got to have something you know you've got to have something in place and it's a lot easier if you focus and do that.
Put those systems and that training in place. You'll be able to take somebody that's pretty green and get them being very productive in a small amount of time because you'll go through the next 12, 18 months trying to hire the skilled guy and having to fire them every time you hire somebody and they come in and work for a little while and you got to let them go then. You know I think there are statistics that say you know when you fire somebody you have to let them go. It costs you 30-40% of whatever their yearly salary would have been.
So, I mean I work for a company like years ago it was co you can't train and fire, and I was like you don’t understand. No, we do understand. I said, “No, you don’t understand the cost involved in training them. Would it take a toll on me? Would it take a toll on you in dollars and cents?” “Well, we don’t care about that. We just want somebody to do the job. Well, we got to train them. No, if they can't do the job just fire them.” “Well, that doesn't make sense”. You know and again you know it's like going back to like you said it goes back to leadership and culture.
And the nice part about what you're talking about from what I'm saying is that now you're a construction company. You should strategically grow your company along with a path because you're bringing people on board. That you can train. I think that's awesome because, now you're, instead of planning for tomorrow because I need help tomorrow you're planning for the future which if any anybody in the construction industry would hope that their business would last for the future instead of short-term.
So yeah everyone has to look differently at it but I think it's you know what you're talking about is so awesome because it is. It’s long-term. And it's scheduled for long-term growth, but not only that but you've got long-term profits. And then if you've got you know the culture that you've got a good culture or you don't have a good culture but you know that you need to be the leader you need to change then that makes all the difference in the world and you can become you know a force to reckon with in your marketplace.
Yeah. There are companies out there that when they get this. So, here's what I see. I think that the trend is shifting. I think that there are more people getting into the trades. They're dabbling in it a little bit, but society still looks down on construction. Meaning they say oh you couldn't you know you're doing construction because you couldn't have done anything else. And I think that's starting to change a little bit. You know just because of just exposure to it you know things like Instagram and Facebook and YouTube.
They're saying you know that this is this is a viable career to work in the trades. So, it is starting to shift. But I think that the companies that are going to when demand is when the supply does change. And I think it will change. I think eventually the gap will get so big that the government will step in and start throwing a lot of money at trade back at trade schools and putting vote tech back into education
When that happens, the supply is going to jump up. It's the companies that have spent the last ten years previous to that time whenever that is building a training program building a recruiting process. They're going to be able to pick the cream of the crop and then those business owners are finally going to be able to ride off into retirement because now the supply they're going to get the best people and their companies are going to be are going to be set right.
Everybody else is going to be scrambling for the supply and now they're going to say yeah, they've got some technical training. Right. So, there are some more welders, there are some more plumbers there. Great. Now you got a people problem. You know they still don't you know your company isn't set up to work in a team atmosphere and how do we communicate and how do we you know how do we grow because sometimes growing, just for the sake of growing, can put you out of business quicker than anything else.
So, it's those companies that right now when this gap is huge and the work is really hard and they change their mindset from hiring as their first step to recruiting as their first step. They're going to win when the supply does change. When you when there are more skilled technically skilled people. But again, the technical skills part that just gets your foot in the door.
What gets you the job, what makes you the money, and what gives you-you know a huge opportunity with construction companies is your character and in the end, combine that with the culture of the company so that's why I think that's the long game is put do the hard work. Now get your culture and get your training procedures in place so that you can get people good people and train them and then that's a system that you know for success right there.
And if you have a company that's doing this progressively and growing and training and recruiting, then people are going to come to you for. You're going to be able to. I mean you're going to be running the profit margins you should be running to run a very successful business anyways. So, you can you'll be able to afford people who have the right mindset, who have the right culture into your culture and grow within the company. You'll be able to pay them more than the average contracting company.
Yeah, and that's part of the recruiting mindset. Like, listen supply is down demand is high. Guess what you're going to pay more. From the very beginning. But just get over it. That's part of recruit. Like when you know when the Yankees go out and recruit somebody like they just pay the bill whatever the guy needs for his contract right because he's an all-star player and we need him to win the World Series or whatever. Like the money just you know like let's get that out. Let's get that out of the way so yeah you know you are going to pay a little bit more but you know we're playing a long game. What's the payoff in the end right? That that that A player is really going to produce you know produce for me and I hear that a lot to say you know maybe list and they said ok Shawn, I get it.
Dave, I get it you know but I don't know. This is another issue I hear a lot from my clients. I don't know if I can afford to hire somebody. Right. Or when is the right time to hire somebody? And it's this mindset of like oh you know OK let's just look at the numbers and say OK if this is, what I hear a lot is OK we're going to pay somebody 25 bucks an hour. That's $50,000 a year. I don't you know I don't have that kind of cash out, or I don't have that much money or what I don't like.
Whoa. Listen if you're if you're hiring right and you're hired the right person may be there and you've got and what I call an onboarding process right. Maybe it takes somebody a couple of weeks to get into your system, to get in your company. Kind of learn the ropes or whatever. After that, they should be making you money right. It's not a cost any more. Right.
They should be making you mine. So yeah maybe you got to. You should have a cash reserve for a couple of weeks a payroll for that person. But after that, they should be making you money if they're not you hired the wrong person or you're not you're not training them right so it's not really. Shawn, I don't think I can afford to hire somebody. Most of the time it's you can't afford to hire somebody.
You as the business owner have got to concentrate on business development and sales and marketing and now training. You can't worry about wearing the tools every day. You got to hire somebody to do that. And in fact, that's why you're not making the profits you need to make right now is because of your high-value work. The sales, the marketing, the business development stuff that generates hundreds if not thousands of dollars an hour when you can put the time in there. You're trapped doing 30 40 50 dollars an hour of work. Right. I know I run into this with so many people. It's mind-boggling that they can't get past the 12 hours an hour 20 hour an hour even 30 hours an hour mindset. And it's because they are so used to doing it. Stop it.
You know and this is not I don't say it's not easy it's not easy but you've got you've got to start. You know you got to start somewhere. Yeah. And it's and it's I've had conversations with guys while I can't do this because I've got something to do and I'm going you know it's very. It's very challenging in the beginning to do stuff that you just need to make an appointment with yourself.
I mean it takes two hours to this day to do this. And it could be you know like going out and I need to go market. I need to go you know to call at this time. He was looking at a property manager say you need the schedule for two hours. Two hours on Wednesday, and that two hours I said you make your phone calls, make your appointments a week before. And I said if somebody calls in sick, you don't jump out and drop because if you put that off, you call the customer and say listen we're running a little behind.
We aren’t going to make it this afternoon. We're going to reschedule you tomorrow. Because you're talking about making a thousand dollars on a job to maybe get a contract for five ten fifteen twenty thousand dollars. You have to really get to the point of what's the most important. It's not dollars today it's for the owner. It's dollars tomorrow.
Yeah. Yeah absolutely. It's like it's you know. Stephen Covey writes about in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People it's urgent versus the important right. Right we got to and it's hard. The urgent stuff is urgent. Right. But the important stuff doesn't take as much time as the urgent stuff but the urgent always bleeds into the important time so if we can get that focus time, focus on the important stuff you know and what we were talking about before that you know.
OK, what's the first step in our recruiting process like let's just spend some time this 15 minutes 30 minutes this week thinking about recruiting instead of hiring. Right. That that will generate some ideas. Now go do that. Now to deal with the urgent stuff fight the fires and all that kind of stuff.
But then like you said to meet with yourself again that next week. Another 30 minutes what's the next step. And then if you do that for any period of time that creates a habit and gets into discipline then you're at least you know you've got this focused time where you're working on important stuff and then that's what creates momentum and movement towards you know towards having a better year than you did you know then when you had the year before
And I've even had a conversation with people so, well you don’t understand. I said, “Dude, I do understand. I understand everything you're going and I've been through it and I still go through at certain times. But here's the thing if you're going to make an appointment to do something. If you're going to schedule time with yourself to do this or that task you know to create something new.
I said to schedule it and I want you to write it down over there. What’s the worst-case scenario? What would it cost you? A time worth is it worth a thousand dollars? Is it worth ten thousand dollars? or is it worth $12? You have to value yet put the value of your time in there otherwise you're not going to you're not going to force yourself to go through the steps you need.
Like you said this to start to recruit process or even write down what you're even thinking about hiring and I knew I was listening until one guy and he was saying you know he says all of my all the people that worked for me are assets. I think of them as assets. We work altogether. So, once they are no longer an asset then we part company.
But that was a beautiful way to look at it because what's an asset? An asset is something that works for you in conjunction with your goals and everything. It brings you in money. So as an asset can be an expenditure. Right. Yeah, it adds value it adds value to the company. Yeah
So, it's you know it's like you know that rental property is an asset as long as it's paying you. And you ain't going to get rid of it until it stops. You know. That's right. You need to think about your employees like that.
So, you say you've got the recruitment process and I your client they are finding it, course, I know it's hard to work through but I know a lot of them seen a long-term plan. A long-term thing yeah I mean they're starting they're starting to you know they're starting to see that recruitment mentality you know. The other thing too is just like look everywhere for your next employee.
Talk to the guys at the. You know there's a there's a kid that's working at the loading docks of the building supply company. Right now. He's not necessarily “in construction or has school” but he's there. He's close to it. Right. He's you know he's doing work. He's yeah, he's working with people but he's around it a little bit. Right. So that's a great place to start in a company that I used to use to work with.
The owner was excellent recruiter and he would go in and if he found somebody at Lowe's or Home Depot working the cash register and they were smiling and he was treated with respect, he gave that guy a business card and said if you're thinking about being a trim carpenter you ought to give us a call even if you've never thought about it for come by our office see what we're doing.
You're already working at Lowe's your home depot. You're on the outskirts of this thing. We want to show you what we, what somebody like you can do at a company like ours. And we've got, we've hired guys and gals from that you know. So, it starts with just you've got to look everywhere. Everybody's a potential employee.
My roofer friend, his last three salesmen that he picked up they know nothing about sales, nothing about the roofing industry, nothing about nothing. They were all his waiters at his favorite restaurant. Yeah. Waiters are really good. Yeah because they knew how to interact with people, you know they know how to think on their feet. They've got to solve a lot of problems very quickly for very impatient and its people that with five kids waiting on the chicken fingers. Yeah, you know. You know.
Yes. I like you. And so that's so cool for you know a lot of guys that are to listen and you know you've got to think outside the box you've got to be constantly looking for friendly people that you know that are friendly, that is interactive. And the funny thing is that you know we were talking about earlier, you know you look so long for the technical side of it. And I learned a long time ago you know you hire for attitude. You can always teach technical. Because you have 98% of the time you're going to fire for attitude.
That's right to start with the good stuff first man. Yeah. I mean we're all gonna make mistakes technically right. But that's usually not a fireable offense that you know if you if you keep making the same technical mistakes it's probably because you have an attitude problem that you're not learning or you're not listening or whatever but it's really not because of the technical mistakes like you said it's an attitude mistake.
I was a guy I know he was. He put a Facebook post on he goes you know it's I get tired of all you guys in a particular industry complaining that you can't keep good health. He goes I want you to understand what the problem is. It is not your help, it is you. Yeah. Yeah.
And part of that you know part of that recruiting mentality means that the hiring process is longer. It means you need to have three or four interviews. You need probably have other people within your organization interview them. So, what does that mean? Well, we need to train some of our lead technicians or some of our project managers to how to interview. Right. They need to know that skill. That's another business skill that they need to learn because that's going to help you run the business.
You as the owner doing all of the interviews is not going to be as helpful as if you get these other guys. I've seen that before too, where we pulled lead carpenters and said hey we've got this potential guy he's going to be working with you on your team. I want you to have a chance to vote on this because he's not going to be working. Yes, working for me but he's going to be working with you and the insights that the guys on that you know boots on the ground kind of guys that are in the trenches they'll pick up on stuff and not necessarily bad stuff. They'll pick up on other things where they'll say yeah, this person is really good. I can tell their character because we had a conversation totally unrelated to something else but they're a good fit for us. Their attitude and because everybody looks good on a resume and everybody's going to say try and say the right things in front of the owner or the manager or whatever but get them get them with some of their peers and let them just have a conversation. And so, but that takes more time.
That costs a little bit more money. You mean Sean I'm going to pay my lead carpenter to come into the office for 45 minutes in the middle of the day and interview somebody. Yeah, it's going to cost you a couple of hundred bucks but if you make the wrong hire it's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. So yes, spend a couple hundred bucks and train your leaders. Carpenter how to do some job interviews.
So, it boils down to you're not hiring for today because you need employees today; you're hiring for tomorrow because you want to grow your company and you want your people to grow with you. It basically what it is. Yes, it is. Because it's going to cost you a fortune or the wrong. Like you said hiring the wrong people in a few. You're hiring because I'm busy and I need to hire people. Then it would be you. I know you guys are going to hate me for saying this but it would be smarter to turn the work away and lose the money.
Yeah, you can. You can always tell this to my clients when they say oh you know we're really busy. OK. You're making the money. No. All right. Well, you can just sit at home and go out of business. You don't need to go and work your butt off for it. Right.
Right. I know. So, the other thing the other thing about what we're talking about you know in recruiting and playing the long game here too as I hear this a lot is. Well, I want to give this person an opportunity. And again, it's just a slight little mind shift change or language change saying don't give anybody an opportunity. What you want, what your what your people actually want is they want a path. Give them a path. Show them where they can go. But they earn the opportunity.
We don't give opportunities to this company. What we give is a path. What we give is training. What we give is you know a path to go from here to here to eventually to a project manager to estimator to a general manager heck you can become the CEO of some companies the owners are they can't wait to not have to run the company of somebody you know.
So, don't give them an opportunity. Let them earn the opportunity but you got to show them a path because people see the path that they're on then they'll earn their way along that path and that path may take a couple of different rabbit trails that you otherwise were trying to force them in. But given someone's strengths and their abilities then your company will be better off.
But what does that look like? Well, that means you have an employee handbook that has job description and job titles and responsibilities and there's an organizational chart and have a communication system and you have a meeting schedule. All of that takes time and planning and thinking just like we were talking about before. That's important stuff the stuff that we got to stop doing the urgent stuff to get those things in place.
Yeah, I talked to so many so many business owners and when I go in to train their employees one thing that we work on I say What's your job title? Well, I'm a lead Carpenter would mean well yeah okay. Are you sure because it sounds like you said I'm a lead Carpenter? Well, sometimes I'm a Lead Carpenter. I think you know it's just like I talked to enough employees and I asked them what their job title is and what that means what are their responsibilities. They don't know.
So, no wonder you're having people problems. No wonder you know the business is kind of even though you're super, super busy and people are really frustrated you don't understand because your people don't know what they're supposed to be doing. They don't know what you want them to be doing because a lot of times people will, business owners will hire to fill a gap you know and they'll hire for a person instead of hiring for a job.
Because when Joe leaves this position we're going to hire for that position. We can't possibly hire another Joe because Joe is Joe. Yeah. Timing me crazy just I know it's good for you. I know it's true. Wow, this is really awesome. Well, we’re getting close to end this time. Is there anything in the back of your mind that you just wanted to have a thought about that you wanted to bring up to the front. Before we close out in the next few minutes or so.
Oh yeah. I always try to end on this just because somebody once asked me if you could only teach one thing to construction business owners or contractors. What would it be? And it's very simplistic but you got to understand the difference between margin and markup.
Like I'd be happy to teach it because when contractors get that and they understand and we don't have enough time to go into all that but when they realize how the math works on that and what the difference between those two terms are and what it means for their business then it totally changes the way they operate.
At least you know as far as knowing what you know when your costs are, what your markup needs to be to produce a certain margin so I'll leave it with that. Just saying if you don't know the difference between margin or markup or you think you do, you probably don't and that's okay. Again, like we said the beginning you're not alone. No one no one gets this until they really you know studied or whatever. Learn the difference between margin and markup.
Yeah maybe with in the future will do a full podcast about that will drive anybody nuts. Yeah. Doing Numbers doing numbers and math on a podcast is really uncommon. Yeah. You got to picture this that would do well do it. Yeah, ducks and birds you know. Yeah, that's right.
Shawn, it's really been awesome. How do our listeners get in touch with you if they want to find out more about you? What you do and your whole organization.
Yep. The easiest way is just Google me and I should pop up all over the place it's ShawnVanDyke.com is the Web site and that's S-H-A-W-N. But if your if your listeners want to you know get some you know to start making some taking some actions and getting some results. I've got a book called the Paperwork Punch List: 28 Days to Streamline your Construction Business.
FREE e-book on my Web site just goes to ShawnVanDyke.com /the paperwork punch list. Give me your email address and you'll get the book download for FREE. It's about 70 some pages and it just kind of walks us through step by step. Some stuff that you can do over the next 28 days over the next four weeks to start getting some of the paperwork stuff out of the way some of the systems in place.
Well, make sure all that goes on our show. Yeah. When we do that so everyone will be able to do that. Awesome. This is really cool and I really appreciate you talking about this. Really. Something an industry that's driving everybody nuts. Well, man, thanks for Dave thanks for having me on this has been this has been a blast. I think we could probably talk for two hours on different stuff. So, anytime and anytime. Thanks.
You can visit this websites for more details about Shawn Van Dyke: www.ShawnVanDyke.com/thepaperworkpunchlist
EMAIL: connect@shawnvandyke.com
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.
4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
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Fri, 19 January 2018
We wanted to talk about how you could get NO cost Construction leads and we will go into that kind of heavily, today. The best way to go about getting them and how to have others help you get those leads. At absolutely no cost. So listen up and take notes. Jonah Canter from Canter construction and Charelston, South Carolina. Really fun time. Last time we had him on the show and if you don't know who he is, he's a contractor in Charelston, South Carolina. He's been in the construction business and he's actually started at an early age and running other companies and moved up and actually ended up starting his own construction business and took all the stuff he learned in running other companies at such a young age and put him into his construction company. But, mostly, honestly, it's in the service area of it. I mean, he does a great job in what he does but he gets called back and back and back because of his relationships that he built with his clients and his customers. So, I want to bring him back because we wanted to talk about how you could get new cost Construction leads and we will go into that kind of heavily, today. And, you know, we just had such a great response that I want to bring Jonah. So here's Jonah.
Jonah, I'm glad that you could come back today. Because the last time, we get such a great response to what you talk about and I know you've got some really awesome stuff about marketing that you want to talk to today.
Yeah, Dave I appreciate you having me back. It was, it was fun doing the last one. I got a lot of responses from some of the viewers which was really helpful and made me feel good that people are actually taking some of what we're talking about and actually putting it to good use. And that was great.
So, yeah, I appreciate you have me back. One of the things I thought that would be helpful for the listeners today is if we can talk a little bit about how contractors can get leads or without spending money. I consider them "The no cost construction lead process".
And I'll dive right in. So, when I was first getting my business going, I didn't have a clue. Like, how I was going to get literally the first phone call. And, I had got friends and family to have us do some small stuff but that's not sustainable. So, I was sitting on my couch one night and I ended up e-mailing a real estate friend of mine and I said "Hey do you have a contractor you use for, you know, fence's decks or whatever?" and he responded back hey actually I need somebody to take care of a bunch of like loose end kind of stuff.
But yeah, we will. And I thought about it I was like wow. If he needs that kind of stuff, I bet you there's other realtors. So, I went on this journey and the Charleston area and finding how many realtor groups and you know people there were out there and I found out, which I know now and everybody knows, that there's a lot of realtors and whatever geography that you are and thousands of them. They're like fan staying on the beach kind of thing. So, what I realized there is I sad "man, this is kind of a potentially untapped market of people" who, on a regular basis, are dealing in real estate transactions--buying and selling-- that may mean some type of construction service. So, I went and I bought a six pack of beer and I got on my laptop and I started to go feverishly buy each reality and started copying pasting into a spreadsheet by the realty the person's name, their email. And this is a bunch, again sweat equity and viscid Alge it's mindless stuff. I've probably paid somebody to do it.
Sure. But to me it's like I don't want to spend money for stuff like that. So, I ended up doing it myself. And, at the end of it I ended up getting about 300 e-mails. And each company is a little different. For the most part, most really companies have their e-mails publicly available. You can click on the person space there because they want to have their e-mail. In other cases, if you're smart and you want to get crafty, sometimes the realty company will hide or have like, almost like a contact wall and front before you can get to the reeler. It's a dumb idea. In my opinion, it's a terrible way of aggravating people but they do it sometimes. Well, me being the never satisfied Jonah, I didn't like that. I thought there was a whole reality of people that I couldn't get their e-mail address for. So, what I ended up doing was I tried to find out like how exactly do you get a particular, you know, email and what I found was I ended up finding a press release that ended up coming from somebody within the company. And I realized that it said jane dot go at such and such realty. And I went "Oh, well that's the naming convention for their e-mails”.
I already have all the names of the people, I bet you are pretty close to figuring out John Maybank is John Bébé at name realty. So, for those that were a little tricky and I didn't get the e-mails, just using common sense I kind of put that together and I harvested those as well. Now I've got you know some middle names that, you know, that I didn't put in writing or whatever they got kickback but in general I was able to harvest a lot of those e-mails that that you know for the average person would be hidden behind that and were valid e-mails. But to get to the core numbers, I ended up about I think it was around 300 e-mails. And what I ended up doing was I did not do this kind of mail chimp or whatever process. There's a thousand different reasons but one of the biggest and most important ones is that a lot of these Web sites are red flags from e-mail accounts already.
They know where they're coming from and they say that's junk so we'll put it there. And those companies are always paying a lot of money to try to get that red flag lifted. So, I said I don't want that to happen. So, what I did was I focused on the individual realtors’ realty companies and what I did was I literally opened 15 different Gmail email windows and I would copy and paste.
And so, what I would do is I would have the same subject line and then the message would be the same I would say hey buddy with Jonah Canter. I'm currently working with Ryan X over here at Carolina One. Doing some projects. I'd love to be the person that can help you with your inspection reports. Your seal 100 sign offs or any kind of general construction that you need. Feel free to contact us whatever. And I would copy and paste that message into every single one of those messages. Go back to my spreadsheet. Pop in all the e-mails for a lot of listeners. They're like "Holy cow! that's a lot of work for it". Well, the whole reason I was spending a lot of that work is: I wanted that to get to that person. I've wanted to go around the junk mail thing.
So, that's the best way at the time that I knew how to do it. So, after a lot of time and sending those e-mails, I mean a lot of time as in like, I think it took me about three solid hours to do it properly and methodically and make sure it was nice. And I curtailed it to each reality, right? So, I made sure it's like "I work with your friend. So, and so at Carolina one" or "I've done business dealings with your colleagues in your office". It's such a familiar tone. E-mail? --more likely to open. So, out of the 300, I had about 32 people actually reply.
It was. Just having people reply, at 32 people was amazing and then when you get into the fact that out of those 32 people I ended up picking up 15 realtors who wanted me to start looking at jobs for. And right away.
So, for four years.
Jeez! That's Sweet!
So, yes the are people out there. If you don't know marketing and everything it seems like an immensely small number. But as far as industry standards go for marketing and marketing campaigns that's a seriously successful situation to find yourself and with your leads, right?
And so, break it down. I mean think about that. I know you probably will but when you break it down per hour the time you spent generating that lead and the dollar. It's a high percentage rate. Not only is it just a high percentage rate, but man, that's a high dollar amount rate for the amount of work you got.
Absolutely.
You know one of the things is that the immediate impact of this was really apparent to me to me until I realized how my network had expanded. So, agents who were on the buying side and had no knowledge of my company. We're now hearing that my company was doing the repairs right. So, I not only gained the selling agent but also the work from the buying agent. Right. And in the middle of all that were the customers both buying or selling who potentially would provide me with more work.
And it was a wonderful situation to find myself in because in a lot of cases, the clients buying the house, had ideas for what they wanted to add or update after the closing. And, I was the first person they came to their mind because I did the repairs on the-- on the real estate repair side.
So, yeah. Okay, let me stop because I just don't think that everyone is comprehending and if you are, I just want to make this another aha! moment by sending out those e-mails that actually put you in front of four potential customers. It does. Well, it's actually six potential customers. Well, it is a bigger deal with real estate teams. You're correct.
Two-- two bookends of your agents and (then the buyer and seller) buyer and the seller. And then, if you have couples, I mean the numbers, you get the point-- it's a lot of people-- it's a lot! Yeah. It's-- it's not one. (It's multiples.)
Yeah. And so, with the example of the the 15 realtors. Let's just say give me one job each. That's forty-five new jobs, right? I can tell you that if you impress a realtor, they will always use you for their own clients. And, they will absolutely refer you to future clients. Or, thirdly, they'll refer you internally to the network of agents because they're always having this problem.
So, the benefits of Hardisty real estate leads are honestly exponential. Now, I will say to people this process does lend itself specifically to general contractors. And, the reason behind this is because general contractors are capable of doing a wide range of trade work for customers-- especially contractors. They may find results that vary from what I've mentioned, so mostly because they are limited in the amount of work they can do. So, a contractor can pull permits and this and that. So, just know that when you're going into this, if you're a specialty guy who just does dry wall, well I'm sure you can get drywall work. But a general contractor, who comes to that same realtor and says I can do it all, is going to trump you every time because realtors do not like having 15 different subs on an inspection report. They want one time, get it done, get it out.
Well, at least that they have to have that license-- that license contractor just to show for the receipts and stuff.
That's correct. In fact, it says on inspection reports at least it's here in South Carolina and other places. I'm sure there's reciprocity in the thought process. But idea as it says-- MUST BE INSPECTED. Or not say it's a must. It says "have a license contractor review the work" or whatever And that's another kind of side business if you will-- with potential with real estate agents is. In South Carolina-- in Charleston specifically, we have a report. It's called SEAL 100. And this report is independent of a regular inspection report. So a regular inspection report tells you about door latches, sinkers are not working in light bulb, and all that kind of stuff.
The seal 100 is specific to structural and relates to termite damage, water damage, mold build, do that kind of stuff. Well, everybody, in fact that the mortgage companies require SEAL 100 to close on houses and Charleston. So, this report, and we're in the low country, right? It's called the Low Country for a reason, it's like that. So, a lot of times, we see stuff like surface mold or we'll find serious issues like the seals under the house or Roded or there's other things.
Well, you cannot close on a house without that seal 100 being cleared by a licensed contractor. That means that Joe Schmooze out there, who doesn't have a contractor's license, cannot clear that. It will not go through. You have to have your license. There's a separate one sheet you have. But, what's beautiful about it, is outside of the inspection reports, you have another potential avenue of doing work and-- a lot of cases, I'm extremely fair to my customers.
I never want to screw somebody over because I think karma will come back and bite you. So, a lot of contractors will be like "ha ha they got popped for mold mildew". They're already scared. I'm going to tell them it's a thousand dollars and try to squeeze--NO! Because a lot of times you can remediate it very simply, quickly. Or the things that are noted on the SEAL 100 they'll say things like past bore holes in the silt. Well, we look at it, it's structurally sound. Well, guess what? We're not going to charge you five thousand dollars to do that. But we will-- we charge every time for a SEAL 100 sign off letter, we charge 150 dollars to the customer.
So whether we do the work or we just go out there look at it and sign off, we have another potential money out of there.
That's just another way to get some money to pay for investment.
Yeah. It really is. It is a sweet way of getting us to-- with our time, effort to go out there and then put our contractor license on it.
It's worth the time. We don't really make money. But again, back to the point, and I think the other podcast that I mentioned is, you know, you're going to wow people if they get doom and gloom from a report and you go look it's not as bad. We're not-- you don't have to do all this. It's just a simple sign if you can see the stress come off that was sold again. Building trust this got to be straight. Yeah, you charge three hundred and fifty dollars, but I get it. Source less time effort and all that. So you know, it is a nice way of getting that.
So, one thing I want to caution people, the contractors and people that are listening right now, is to you know do not be duped by real estate agents and are real estate agents nefarious?-- No they're not. Are there a lot of bad ones? -- Absolutely. And there's a lot of lazy ones and there's a lot of young ones. There's a lot of part time ones there's a lot of people that aren't good.
So, when you're going through this, you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff and you've got to find the real estate agents that have, you have their best interest in mind and their client's best interests in mind. But they reciprocate that back to you.
If a real estate agent is always throwing you under the bus or last minute or whatever, I don't want to work with you-- you're a problem. And that's what a successful company gets to pick and choose who they work for. So, maybe not initially but that was a growing pain with some of these I jokingly told people: you're fired. Like the Trump I'm like "no I'm done". I can't deal with you. You're too hard to work with and I don't like the way you do business so I don't have to work with you. So I now have, to this current day, I have about out of that number of 15.
Like an accordion way out. And then I brought it until about 10 that I work with on a regular basis. And four that I do work with every month. You know that you're just weird.
I mean, well I know I know that it can be and its but it's like any, you know, you've got-- you've got a niche and you got to find the ones that are-- that are worth it to you. That you can build a relationship with, that you trust them, they trust you and it's you. Because good real estate agents are looking for team members. To help make their life easier, to make their business successful. And then you've got other real estate agents are just looking for people to get for thirty-five dollars an hour to get in and get it down. It doesn't matter what it looks like or to just say that it's fixed and knows enough people you want to do business with.
Yeah, it's absolutely true. And one thing that another-- I don't call it a cautionary tale, but something that you should know and this specific-- specific vein of leads that you get is, I do not charge when somebody comes to me and they're a homeowner they call and say "Hey Jonah I want you to give me a price on redoing my kitchen when I come out". I do not charge them any fee for estimates. I think it's a joke for a homeowner to get a fee for an estimate.
That's what we're here to do it's a cost of doing business right. However, there is a very deep caveat when it comes to buying and selling property. And I learned this the hard way and I'm a pretty quick learner and I cut it off really fast. But I was going out for a couple of these bad realtors and they said "Oh can you tell us how this is the inspection report. We'd like to have X Y and Z X can you give us a price?" And I'd have to go out, look at it, take my time, give it to them, crickets, crickets, and then I'd say "Hey just tell him what happened", "Oh we just we negotiated that off of the sales price". "Oh, OK I'm sorry I spent my day took my time out of my job to come help you negotiate". So, in real estate transactions, for those listening, do not be afraid to charge a estimating fee.
I say: hey look if you want me to come out here you don't own the house. You're looking to buy it. I'm going to charge you and I can-- this price at where I sit now, I can charge. You may want to charge less and I'm totally fine but I charge people 200 dollars. Because I know if you're serious or not. Right? Right. So, I say: hey I charge 200 dollars. I will come out. I will give you a static binding estimate on whatever you want. I'll shake hands with you know, whatever. But you'll get it for me a binding estimate. But you're going to give me 200 dollars when you meet with me and I'm going to turn that estimate over to you. Now, at the end of the day you can use that however you want. You can choose to negotiate the price, you can say oh I spent 200 dollars to learn something I don't care. Or, if you say Jonah we want you to fix this work.
I'll knock the 200 dollars off of the price and I'll do the work for you. Right. And that's a way of keeping honest people honest. And say: hey look this is my time effort. I'm in Charleston right now. As I stand here now, we are slammed, right? So, I don't have time for this. This kind of stuff in my business and I've grown up to the point where I don't need to go to things that aren't going to have results from them and it sounds kind of pompous but I don't know where I'm at now.
You move from one-- one spectrum to another spectrum and along the way you've learned the lessons. Like many of us have. That you would do what you can do, what you want to and what you should do and you don't mind doing stuff like that as long as you're going to get paid for your time. And you know what, it does. You always have to learn like what you say has reactions, right? You've got to look at-- empathy is the thing that's lost in today's youth because you can sit on a phone and call somebody fat and then you're like them I feel good about myself . I'm going to go make a sandwich and you don't know what the other person is like--you know, feeling. But when you have to look at somebody or interact with them and see when you say something like I'm going to charge you two hundred dollars. And the reason I'm doing this is because I wanted to be fair to you and to me.
But I'm going to I'm going to pay it back to you. If you react in a good way you know you'd say yes to the estimate or what I noticed in watching people is they said: OK not a problem or some people would go $200-- That's a joke. There's other people doing it for free and I'd go. You're right. And you should use them and I'd walk because I don't want to-- if that's how you're going to be about this, and not be thinking clearly-- you're not the client for me. You're going to be a pain in my butt from all from start to finish (because there's no value in your time). Exactly, exactly. You already treat me a certain way.
So, it's a great way to just, you know, kill a conversation quickly or to gauge if a person is interested. And I will tell you, I'm not kidding. Eight out of ten times that I charge 200 dollars for an estimate. They got some skin in the game, right? So, they want to they end up coming back. So, it's kind of like you know, it's a little bit of a sticky wicket but it keeps them coming back and saying "well you know we can use our 200 dollars off ". When you're doing this guys and ladies contractors out there who are listening, just keep in mind to build an extra 200 dollars somewhere in your in your estimate. If you really want to be honest. You can do that. There's nothing wrong with that. Which can be-- because you did spend your time. Let's be honest.
You spent your time, your effort to do it. So, I would never tell anybody not to do that. Or you can say, "you know what Jonah, the way I look at this, I'm just going to take it off because my best estimate. I don't think anybody would think bad of you on either side of that because this is the business that we're in. That's something that's totally acceptable in my opinion.
Well, yeah and I think that like the other day I’ve, you know, the other day I got a call and everyone said I'll get a call. And you know, can you come give me an estimate? Sure. Do I have to be there? Yes. Why?
You know I would really like to know what you need done. "Well, I want my house painted" And I can go "Is there any repairs?" Well I don't know. So, they just really-- they want a price they don't want you, your value or what you can bring to the table. So, I said you know most people, I'm going to I'm going to start saying, you know, mine was going to be 150. We're going to do, you know, it's going to cost you 150 dollars for us to come out and do an estimate. We'll give you a 10 or 15-page report line item everything. But if you're going to be there, we would be happy to do it for nothing. Yeah, you're exactly right. People who do not want to be at a job, now, if they're in Boston and they're buying a house down here in Charles, I get it.
Yeah that's a different time, I do that a lot of times, too.
Yeah, but if they're like: No no no just go. Just go figure it out. It's like no no no that's not how this works. I want to-- I want to look at you, I want to talk to you or Schumann’s. I want to hear what you want. Because guess what? I can give you that estimate and you weren't here. And then all of a sudden, you'll come back and go "Oh that's not what I wanted". Well, that's funny because you weren't here. Yeah.
So. So and you know, one thing I've come across when it comes to estimates, and this is getting outside of the no cost construction process, but I think when you do give these estimates, contractors please be aware of this. The devil is in the details. You cannot be over descriptive in your estimate and a lot of times, it's going to cover your butt big time. Some contractors think, well some contractors think if they're vague, they can hide numbers. No no no. You should never do that. You shouldn't be line item by line item. Like an inspection report. I've written up an estimate that is a 102-line item estimate before. And it killed me to do it. But guess what? The client was able to chew every bit of that off and it said replace fan, customer supplies the fan. There was never a question if they said oh I didn't know I had to supply the fan that estimate you accepted and said it it's on paper. It's cost. Sorry. So yeah. And then and that's in reality. I know we're you know off the subject, but it goes to the value, is that you're creating your value by making those line items. Because, you know, just like last time I was in a post the other day so I'm going to do a thing and you know how come. How do you charge-- I can't charge fifty dollars an hour to paint? And I'm like why are you charging by the hour? First of all. I said it's not in the painting-- it's in the details.
Tell them what you're going to do? What are you going to print? What are you going to do? Are you going to move? What are you going to clean? What are you going to cover? You know what are you going to-- How many coats of paint? What are you going to put back? Are you going to vacuum up after? See, because it's not about to paint, anybody can paint.
Yeah. It's about getting through the process from the beginning-- of moving the furniture and you make it as labor intensive as possible in your wording. So, they are going to say "Damn! I don't want to do that. I had a guy come in and do it. "
Yeah it's funny, it's like you never. One of the best examples of my own business that I had happened one time, and it never happened again was back to the painting thing. You know, I always tell clients look if you're going to say money anywhere sure you can pay. Are you going to be good at it? Probably not, but if you're if you painted it you're going to be satisfied with your paint job, right? Because you pay somebody.
But the thing that I did, I remember one time the customer came to me and said we were building a affricate. It was like doing some moldings or something and they said "we'll paint we'll paint the molding will do the walls everything."
I said No problem. Took that paint line item off, got done. Get done with the job I'm coming to get a final payment. And they're like "Uhh, yes so it says--or not it says-- they said there's nail holes and it needs to get caught in all this other stuff and I got out. That's the painter’s problem. That was my line item said paint included. Call me a hole feel everything. You're on that. They're like "No, my dad told me Bubba". And I don't care what your dad said. You're being lazy and trying to save money. I'm not coming back to do that if I'm not going to be painting, right? So that was an example of when, and I still to this day have clients who want to paint them alone, And I'm very specific. I have a thing that says client understands they will call Phil Nail hole bla bla.
So, well I ended up-- usually nobody likes to do that. So, I ended up usually I paint. You know, quote was just for simplicity you know six hundred dollars. I'm like "oh yeah". Three hundred of profit. You get that work back and its good money maker. You don't lose all of them just doing all that. But that's we're getting back to the estimates. That saves me a lot of the times. It saves me in being able to go back and reference and say I don't remember that. Well, that's fair or you might not have remembered that, but do you remember reading the estimate into my contract? Because that's gospel. And that's what we're going by. And it says. You're filling the nail holes. And so, you may get somebody wants to debate to the Kalkbrenner tone about that, but they can't debate what's on paper what they sign. So, it's like whatever at the end of the day. So that's where estimate. It can be helpful in that and in the sense of having it line item down like that. Cooley. So, let's go back to let's go back to the Realtors for a moment.
Now, when you picked out your realtor, because you were just starting out in business you just went and you just picked out the realtors in your area. And the ones that you-- that got the just the ones in your area that you felt that it would be out. Because you're just looking for business. But now, how would you do it?
Yeah I think when I was first doing it, I didn't really care. To be honest. I think I looked up realtors and Charleston and I didn't-- I wasn't looking like reviews, right? Because reviews on a realty agency doesn't tell about the individuals that you just said somebody to a good experience. So, you can't use that.
But, for one thing-- I mean different realty companies are predominant in certain areas. Carolina, one is big here. As an example--excuse me-- but you may have Century 21 or provincial or somewhere in your area. So just be cognizant when you're driving around. Who do you see a lot of the signs for? That means they probably have a lot of agents that's a good place. But, even more simple than that. I just zoned in through a Google search and started plugging away. I just went to the Web sites and started going into it. If I was doing it nowadays, I would still probably take the same approach because you will find the gems inside of the gems being the real estate agents inside of different agencies.
So, I've had bad experiences with agents at one Realty and also great ones at the same ones. Your kind of, you know, weave your path and there's a lot of good agents at bad Realty. So, don't forget also to don't overlook the more boutique firms that aren't with these national brands. They may be more centralized to local-- the local area. Those sometimes are good because they are Neish or a specialty boutique agency that deals sometimes in a lot more high-quality contracts for you. So, you know you may be going from five hundred thousand-dollar houses to the one point five million dollar range or what not.
So, they're all valid.
Yeah, I'm looking up for upscale realtors. So, you know, five hundred-- I don't know, what's your average house is sold for up there. I know you are premises historic places it is kind of pricey. Well, it's funny because it does. That's such a loaded question. Like everybody else. In what area of town, you live in?
Well, it is. But I mean, Charleston is an expensive town as a whole. We have Kiawah Island but Oprah and a bunch of people live 30 minutes from here. So, there's 22 million-dollar houses there, right? That's kind of skewed that a little bit. But, we also have downtown where the houses are in anywhere between 11 to 15-million-dollar range. But to answer your question, on average, you're probably looking at 450 to five hundred thousand dollars. About the average sale price for a home here and then as you get to barrier islands or isn't on the water. And that could skew greatly. But yeah in general that's about the price.
So really, so let's talk to you guys out there you can niche it to any anywhere you want. You want five hundred thousand, you come from working with five hundred thousand homeowners, come from working with million-dollar homeowners. And those are realtors you want to target. Yeah. And keep in mind that if you're looking for inspection reports and little knickknacky stuff to do to start with. But you-- that is a different-- when you deal with a client who owns the one point five-million-dollar house, there is a whole different kind of line of thinking and business that you just can't, you can't do it half butt. How about that?
Yeah, if you're sorted out, don't go there.
Yeah, don't go there built into that. And then you know, and then you'll be successful.
Right. So that's been cool. It's really been awesome. Yeah, I know some of the things that we used to do, because there's a painting company we would do a lot. We would do a little bit of repairs that didn't need permits stuff like that. And what we would do is, when we went back, you know, when the homeowner comes back to do other things like other painting jobs after they bought the house, what we would do is we would just write a note to the realtor. Say "Hey just so you can put it in your file. You know, Bob and Susie just had their house painted and such and such a date so they can put in their files". So there.
So, because I'm becoming a team member for that realtor. Let them know what's going on so that when they-- if they're playing their cards right, realtor, and keeping in touch with their clients. They're going to sell their house again but they'll have a portfolio. We know you get this done in this town and this done. So, we're in good shape. We know you don't have to do that.
Exactly. Exactly.
This has been awesome!
Yeah appreciate it. Thanks for letting me do round.
No, it's really cool because it's nice to talk to somebody who's in the trenches, has done the things, made the mistakes and bounced back from to actually turn those mistakes into successes. So that's really what makes us successful. It's just bouncing back from our mistakes or things-- tweaking things as we go along because there's-- I mean it's come on, to say that you can become successful by doing the one thing is a phenomenon. Let's put it that way. Yeah it's the one thing that I'm most proud about is that when I got into this, I didn't act like I knew everything. And you know, just like the listeners, you can you can read, you can listen, get advice from other people, ask questions, learn along the way, learn from your mistakes, but continue to evolve. And I promise you, if you keep your head down and your nose clean and you do it the right way, you will find success in the end. So, to everybody listening, keep your heads up and keep a positive attitude about it you'll be successful.
Absolutely. So, Jonah how does--give us your e-mail so if anyone want to e-mail, ask some questions or connect with you. So, we can do that. Yeah fee free for anybody listening. If you want to reach out to me with questions or comments about the show today or anything you can always reach me directly at jonahcanter@gmail.com. That's J O N A H CANTER at gmail.com. Or for more fun side of me, I'm a big instagrammer. So, you can check me out on my personal account which is @chucktown or you can find me on the Canter construction Instagram. Give me a follow. Give me a like some of the pictures. Feel free to reach out to me any way you want to. Awesome thanks so much for being with us. It has been a blast. Thanks Dave. Until next time.
For inquiries about the CANTER CONSTRUCTION, you can reach them at: To connect with Jonah Canter Gmail: jonahcanter@gmail.com http://www.canterconstructionsc.com Instagram: @canterconstruction @chucktown (personal account…me being goofy)
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