Mission Control Podcast

Hate buying expensive things for your business!? Find out how cheaping out is COSTING your business MORE! In this solo episode, Mike breaks down how investing in quality services & products is a more of a benefit over short-term cost-cutting measures.

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5

Contact us : [email protected]

Let's Connect! ==== ==== ====

Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK

Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT

Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

==== ==== ====

#contractormarketing #bluecollar #bluecollarlife #bluecollarworkers #contractors #contractormarketing #commercialconstruction #commercialcontractor #ascenddigitalagency #missioncontrol #contractorpodcast #leadershipdevelopment #constructionlife #contractorpodcast #constructionindustry #bluecollarjobs #businessmarketing #roofingcontractor #roofing #roofsales #roofingcontractor #branding2023 #contractorbranding #contractor101 #contractors

On todays episode, Mike has on Dan Antonelli, an expert in home service contractor branding. As the author of Branded Not Blanded, book on brand marketing, he has equipped contractors with innovative insights, and guiding them on crafting impactful brand identities.

Dan emphasizes that branding encompasses not just what customers perceive, but also the company's internal culture and employee dynamics. He also explains the importance of consumer psychology, empowering contractors to optimize subconscious trust of their target audience.

In today's era of digital evolution, Dan has guided home service contractors in embracing the modernization of communication. Recognizing the shift from traditional phone calls, he has enabled contractors to adapt to modern approaches so they can optimize their branding.

Check out Dan's book Branded Not Blanded here!

https://www.amazon.com/Branded-Not-Blanded-KickChargeTM-Service-ebook/dp/B0BBL1CCJ9

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5

Contact us : [email protected]

Let's Connect! ==== ==== ====

Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK

Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT

Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

==== ==== ====

#contractormarketing #bluecollar #bluecollarlife #bluecollarworkers #contractors #contractormarketing #commercialconstruction #commercialcontractor #ascenddigitalagency #missioncontrol #contractorpodcast #leadershipdevelopment #constructionlife #contractorpodcast #constructionindustry #bluecollarjobs #businessmarketing #roofingcontractor #roofing #roofsales #roofingcontractor #branding2023 #contractorbranding #contractor101 #contractors

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So, alright Dan, I got a question for you. You got an answer?

Dan Antonelli: Okay. What do you got?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What do a tick and the Eiffel Tower have in common?

Dan Antonelli: Can't do it, man. Can't put it together.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: They're both parasites.

Dan Antonelli: Yeah

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: late.

Dan Antonelli: I'll have to remember that one for my daughter.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: You're welcome. Already added value. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast. I'm your host Mike Stearns with the Sun Digital Agency. Thank you to our sponsors over at Roofer. If you need clean and pristine proposals, instant roof measurements, or just talk to great people, hit them up. There's gonna be a link down in the description in the comment. It'll be somewhere just click it and go talk to them. So we've got Dan Antonelli today. Dan, tell people who you are.

Dan Antonelli: Sure, I run a branding agency here in New Jersey. We do home service branding and have done that for the last 28 years or so, which is a pretty

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That's

Dan Antonelli: long

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it.

Dan Antonelli: time. Yeah, so we've got a few thousand brands under our belt. We've learned a couple of things along the way, I would hope, and I've written a couple of books on branding and the last book I just wrote. is called Branded Not Blended, How to Kick Charge Your Home Service Brand. And that basically contains all the data that's been sitting in my brain for the last like 15 years. And I decided to finally put it out into a book to hopefully help as many home service contractors as I can with the information. Give them some tips on what to do, what not to do, and some common. errors to avoid and hopefully help them to build a better brand for them and their company and their customers and their clients and their employees.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's great. And by the way, for you guys watching this, go read the book. I read it before the podcast. It's a great fucking book. There's a lot of takeaways that even I got out of it. And, you know, they're not the same, you know, running a digital marketing agency and a branding agency, there are some parallels and overlap. And I certainly pulled out a tremendous amount of value. So go, Jen, put the link below to right below roofer, get it in there. All right, you guys click it, go buy it. It's fantastic. Thank me later. Yes, what is what is blended? What does that mean?

Dan Antonelli: So, you know, the biggest challenge that a lot of home service owners have is that their company brand basically just blends in. So we call that blending. And that's really when there isn't a lot that a consumer would look at your brand and recognize a distinction, recognize something that's unique about it, and even more importantly, something that they would remember later on when they actually need service. So the idea of what we do. behind our brands. We talk a lot about disruption and disruptive branding. It's just a notion of trying to create brands that are more memorable, that are sticky in the homeowner's mind, and that will help that consumer when they are ready for service to actually type in the name of that particular company rather than typing in, you know, roofing contractor near me. you know, and hoping you show up on that game and how much is that lead going to cost and things like that. Obviously, as you know, if everyone knew the name of the roofing company that was the best in their community, they wouldn't have much need for LSA and PPC and all those other things. Now, of course, they're still going to need those other avenues. But in the book, we talk about the reality that like 84% of every home, of every consumer, for a home consumer, I should say. doesn't know the name of a contractor before they go to Google. So that's making Google very wealthy and it's also emptying your pockets really quickly. But it would be much better if that consumer knew your name before they went to Google and you would spend a lot less. So we talk about trying to win on the streets. Obviously how critical it is to have a brand that's disruptive, have a truck wrap that's disruptive. have a name that people can remember. It's also, you know, that's probably one of the biggest chapters in the book is on naming or how to name your home service company. So that's certainly the idea behind a lot of what we do.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's a really good point. And just to piggyback off that, you know, I, when I look at it, You know, it could be right. So it's not binary. It's not like they, you know, they don't know anybody or they definitely know somebody necessarily. Right. It could be something. And this is where branding comes into play where they might be looking for best roof. And then they see seven roofers. Right. And then they remember based off your branding. So they might not be all the way brand committed to do a direct search, but there's a tremendous amount of value

Dan Antonelli: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: in putting out material. It's clear, concise, consistent, right. So the messaging,

Dan Antonelli: Right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the look, the feel. You guys do some dope fucking work, by the way. I

Dan Antonelli: Thank you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: go check out their portfolio. It's fantastic. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Let me ask you this. What, when is the right time to rebrand?

Dan Antonelli: Um, there's a lot. I mean, that's a, that's a question. That's a really important question is the reality is everyone starts or a lot of people start and they bootstrap the thing, you know, maybe they, they can invest the money to really get a great brand, maybe to start. And certainly we, we understand that not everyone has the budget to afford great branding from day one. I mean, some, a lot of people do, but sometimes you can't, right. But you have to look at your brand and say, does it actually represent what we've evolved into today? If I were to judge you on what you present to me, whether it's via your website, whether it's via your trucks, your business card, the uniforms for the guys, does it actually project the level of expertise and the quality of which your company is known for? So if I knew nothing at all about you and I simply looked at these things, what's my takeaway? are you cheap, maybe not gonna be in business next year, I'm not sure I can trust you, or these look like a really premium home service company, I can trust them, I know if my roof leaks next year, they're gonna be back to fix it and help me and make sure that everything is going well. So those are all the things, because remember branding is really, again, just trying to control what Mrs. Jones thinks about your company. before she even gets a chance to interact with you. So if I can control the perception of what she believes, then I'm winning already, right? So before you ring the doorbell, if she thinks you're a premium home service provider, your pricing, again, this is where you talk about how it helps with higher average tickets, right? Because it looks like a company that I can trust. It looks like a company that does great work. Looks like a company that I'm not worried about. working on my home, they're gonna be licensed, they're gonna be insured. So all those things factor into does the current brand actually speak to those things? Does it represent who we've evolved into? And the other part too is there's so much generic roofing branding. To me it's one of the most generic branding verticals out there in terms of what a lot of roofers do. You know, they get this clip art and they, you know, they put their name underneath it and it's a rooftop and it's just, this is the same, right? Everything's the same, right? So, so if you, if you go and you Google roofing company logos and you see a derivative of your own brand up there in Google or on a, you know, a clip art site, then, then why would Mrs. Jones ever remember that? Why would that stick out to her as being unique? Even the use of colors are so critical. when it comes to branding. For some reason, roofers like to use a lot of black. They use a lot of red sometimes. And just colors that are very common. Well, what if you were purple and apple green, and you were the only roofer in your community that was purple and apple green? You think you'd have better recognition than if you were black and red? So looking at colors is also a really, really critical component. So if you're blending into all the other trucks, and all the other roofing companies, or even if you're being confused with other home service companies in your space, think about how you can do something that's very distinct. Part of our process as we build brands, is we look at your top five to 10 competitors, and we look at the colors that those companies are using. So if I see a lot of saturation of one particular color palette, obviously I'm not gonna put another brand in the market with the same color palette, that would make no sense. So

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mm.

Dan Antonelli: those are some things that you can look at and just sort of see if, you know, hey, do we really, you know, blend in with what everyone else is doing? Or do we actually feel different? Do we look different? Are we communicating brand promise to that consumer? So again, like just controlling what she feels before she gets to interact with your company is, you know, so important and a big piece of that puzzle.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's some really, that's some really good information, Dan. Let me ask you, let's start here though. And I probably should ask this first, but just to I think that there's sometimes there's some confusion, right? So we're talking about like the manifestation of branding, right? And how that makes people feel. But what's encompassed when you say brand?

Dan Antonelli: Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What's encompassed in that?

Dan Antonelli: So, you know, in the book we talk about this branding wheel, the idea of that branding is essentially a wheel that's made up of different components, right? So in the center of that wheel, you know, we say is your logo, okay? So driving out from there are the spokes basically comprising the wheel. And the spokes might include your truck wraps, your uniforms, your website, your social media voice, your culture, things like that, right? So, So if you don't get that hub correct, you can still build a wheel, right? You can build a wheel. It's just not gonna be very round, right? So if it's not round, what does that actually translate into? And what it translates into is you needing more money to basically promote your own business, okay? So the weaker the brand or the weaker the hub, then that wheel is not round. It's never gonna turn properly. And you can, a lot of companies overcome that by simply spending more money. And we look at it as like, listen, I want my clients to spend the least amount of money possible on their marketing. And you hear a lot of companies, or a lot of guys say, hey, you know, you gotta spend 10% of revenue on advertising if you wanna grow. And you know, listen, that's bullshit. You know, a lot of the people that need to spend 10% or more on their marketing are companies that have really weak brands. So again, the weaker the brand, the more money you're gonna need to spend. Like it sounds, I hate to say it like this because to me it just sounds so painfully obvious, right? Like if you've got a shitty brand, yeah, I'm gonna have to spend a lot more money to market it. Wouldn't it be great, again, if I had a brand that was sticky, that people remembered, I would need to spend less money basically promoting my own company. So there's a direct relationship to how strong of a brand you have. with how much money you'll need to spend to market your business.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Hmm. Let's see here. It's a causal relationship between the stickiness of the brand and what you're going to spend. Yeah.

Dan Antonelli: Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Why do so many people neglect brand building then?

Dan Antonelli: I mean, it's a lot of reasons. Sometimes when they start, they're just not going to the right people that actually understand branding. So maybe they go to a sign company or a wrap company. And those guys, listen, I'm friends with hundreds of sign shops, wrap companies. They are generally amazing at printing and installing. They're just generally not amazing. on branding, right? Because that's a very, very unique skill set. So sometimes it's just, they haven't spoken to the right people in the beginning. And so they get something, they personally like it, which is another challenge, right? They think that they need to like their own brand as far as being the number one thing that proves that it's a good logo. Well, the reality is it almost doesn't really matter whether or not the owner likes or dislikes their own brand. because that's not who the audience is. So that's tough to hear sometimes because guys don't want to listen to that. They want to love their brand. And listen, I want my clients to love their brand too. But ultimately, my target demographic is generally in the home service sector, women. So I'm trying to figure out how to get inside her brain. I'm trying to figure out what will appeal to her, what will make her feel comfortable about who's showing up at her home. Because she's the one generally making the home service purchasing decisions. So looking at it from that perspective, and again too, most people aren't going to tell the owner that come to them, whether it's a marketing agency, whether it's a wrap shop, a printer, a screen printer, like, hey dude, your logo sucks, man. Who's gonna have that conversation? You wanna tell the guy that his logo sucks, or do you wanna cash his check and print the shit that he came to you for? So those are sometimes the two challenges. So I don't wanna say that everyone is doing that, but at the end of the day, A lot of people just don't want to have that conversation. They don't want to tell the owner, hey, you know what? This really isn't good. And they might not even know it. It's gotten to them to where they are at that point. So then to come in and say, hey, dude, you should change your logo. And they're like, oh, but look at how successful I've been with it. And I always say, well, that's great. It's amazing what you've done with what you have. Now let's look at what you could be. and where you could go. Because what's got you here is not gonna get you to where you wanna go at the end of the day. And we've rebranded companies that were, I mean, 40, $50 million in revenue. So why did they rebrand? Why did they say, hey, what we have isn't good enough and we need to make a change? Like Tommy Mell is a great example. We rebranded Tommy when he was 35, $40 million in revenue like three years ago. And I think whatever, he's at 200, 300 now, whatever. But... Why did Tommy say, hey, like we've gotten to 30 million by old benchmarks, like we're killing it, we're crushing it? No, he knew it wasn't gonna take him to where he wanted to go. He knew it also didn't represent the level that he was putting out, the service that he was putting out, the quality he was doing. So, you know, being introspective is hard because that logo that they've used for so long is their warm blanket. And I'm sensitive to that, like I understand that. Like I'm not, I'm not trying to like, like, you know, really trash what they've done previously. All I'm trying to say is, hey, man, like I think it's amazing that you've grown with what you have, right? But imagine where we could go. Because you hear the common complaints, like I can't find anyone to work for me, right? No one wants to work for me. The culture is not good. Like so many things are driven by branding. So when you look at a lot of the owners too, that complain that they can't find anyone that wants to work for them, look at what they present themselves as. and then ask yourself, does this look like a company I would wanna work for? Like Tommy Melwood does not have recruitment problems because it looks like a place that I wanna be a part of. So being introspective sometimes is hard. You gotta look and you gotta say, is this really who we are today? Most instances, it's really not, but I don't want anyone to also think that rebranding is easy, because it's not,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right.

Dan Antonelli: it's hard. It's freaking hard. Like there's a lot of work that goes into it and that scares a lot of people. But you know what, when you're writing that check to Google for 10 or 15 grand, that's when you gotta start asking yourself, hey, like I'm paying 10, 15 grand every freaking month, man. Like this sucks. Like I hate this check that I gotta write or the credit card that they whack me on. So what if I could do something again that would mean I could spend less overall on my marketing because I was so sticky. and people knew who I was in my community. And again, if you put your logo on the screen and you put your top five competitors next to yours, and they all look the same, I mean, your answer is right there. Like that's the answer.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: All right.

Dan Antonelli: You don't really need me to tell you that. Like you can visually look at it. And if that consumer is being bombarded with the same type of images, day in and day out, they all blend and she remembers none of them. So how do I get it again so that I'm doing something that feels different than what everyone else is doing?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and that's I mean, that's a surefire way to succumb to the objection of price, right and race to the bottom. right is that there's no

Dan Antonelli: Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: distinction or you can have a strong sales process, but the brand only perpetuate your ability to differentiate yourself and get higher ticket for what you're offering

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: better margin, right? I think that there's a lack of understanding just in general, I'll give it like from my side, like people assume that like we can fix it right, because we do digital marketing.

Dan Antonelli: Thank you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I'm like, no, it's not the same. It's very, very different. In fact,

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: but if you reset your computer, there's like a 97% chance it'll work. So with branding like I read in your book I think you said you had like 200 applicants to fill one or two spots right like That's

Dan Antonelli: Okay.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: and of those 200 people It's not like you're just spraying and praying and hoping that they're looking or they're gonna be qualified like those are likely gonna be people With some sort of experience right so it's not just random sampling there 200

Dan Antonelli: Right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: people that are in the field and of that one or two People I think you said were like actually viable fits right so it's super specialized

Dan Antonelli: Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: so you can't assume that just anyone can do it would be similar to let's say a roofing contractor, you know, that does residential asphalt only being lumped in with somebody who only does torch down, right? Or,

Dan Antonelli: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: you

Dan Antonelli: yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: know, and assuming that those things are the same when like the installation process and everything about it is going to be wholeheartedly different. And you could lay shingles have no fucking idea how to do torch down, right?

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Like that.

Dan Antonelli: And it's like, I can swing a hammer with a nail, but like, I ain't going to be doing my own roof either. You know? So like, when someone's like, Oh, well, I'm, I can do graphic design or I'm really good in Photoshop. Like, okay. But do you understand consumer psychology? Cause that's what you're doing. Like you're designing brands and you have to understand consumer psychology before you can endeavor to do that. Do you have any understanding of that? That's the questions to be asking. Like, so it is a very, very unique skill set. And traditional graphic designers, some of them are well-rounded enough that they could maybe do something like that. But honestly, you have to not only just understand the psychology, you have to understand naming, you have to understand how this vision and this brand is going to live and breathe, not just on a website or on a business card or on a uniform, but how does it actually work on the truck, which is another huge issue. You see so many of these truck wraps that are out there. And sadly, like 90% of them have such a diminished ROI because they're illegible. There's too much crap going on them. I can't read it, I'll never remember it. So like there's so much more involved in the branding that has to be taken into consideration. Again, that just not a lot of people really understand it fully. They may have one piece of it, or maybe they understand one piece of it, but not usually the whole package.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's a really good point. Um, I think that, and we had talked about this briefly before the show, but For anyone that's out there listening, you obviously want to be concerned with cost and return, right? And what your numbers are and your margin. But like, I think that a lot of people overlook understanding opportunity costs. Right. So if you choose to do this, right, you choose to go to Fiverr to do your SEO or branding versus hiring like a qualified agency that has, you know, years and years of experience and success stories like, yes, you may get your logo, you may get some semblance of SEO, but what are you not getting? What are you losing? from the opportunity of going the other direction by going with that

Dan Antonelli: Right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: right in a lot of the times like with us we're usually a third or fourth agency right they've had their heartbroken dream shattered

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: misrepresented their position and deliverables and you know it was a dumpster fire all in the name of cost right like it well we couldn't afford it It's sometimes it can be a tough pill to swallow when you're

Dan Antonelli: 100%.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: buying a higher end service. But at the end

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: of the day, there's a reason right why those services are oftentimes going to be more. So opportunity cost, I think that if people focused on that, it like not everything fits into a spreadsheet. And this is something that has been typical contractors for the last almost decade that I've been doing it. And maybe this has been your experience, or maybe not. But if I can't directly attribute where leads coming from how something comes in, it won't fit into a spreadsheet, and there's not a straight line of attribution. Contractors are not very likely to do it or buy into it, right? It's

Dan Antonelli: and

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: a really fucking uphill battle. That's not a knock. It's just it just seems to be a tendency.

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: And that makes it challenging like to buy into branding if that if you're of that mindset, right? Because it's not like an LSA ad where it's like, Okay, I paid 48 bucks for this lead, and I sold it for $13,000 at 40% gross profit.

Dan Antonelli: Right, right, yeah. And you know, the interesting thing I think about the roofing space is it feels like it's probably five to eight years behind the other home service trades, in terms of understanding brand, right? So you look at HVAC and you look at plumbing and electrical, those companies have been heavily investing in branding, especially over the last five years, I would say, because they understand the relationship. between the vehicle especially, the truck route that's out on the street and how that is affecting ROI, how that is affecting again the branded searches, the number of phone calls and the leads that are coming through that particular source. So what I love about, even Garage Door Services, another company, very similar to Roofing that I think is still about five or six years behind sort of what mainstream HVAC and plumbing are doing. So I look at that as even a greater opportunity then, because you know. there aren't a lot of people in the roofing side that are investing in branding. And we've been doing more and more of them, I'd say over the last year or so, and we've done several. And it's really funny, like I was just driving on Route 95 going through Philly, going down to Delaware, and there's a brand that we created, and we did actually the billboards for them. And I actually, you know, it's not often I get to see my billboards live because they're all over the country, but I actually was driving and, you know, I'm getting hit with all these kind of, you know, billboards for different companies and then mine popped up and it was just it was purple and apple green it was for a company called mung roofing that we did the branding for and Yeah, I mean it really stood out, but you know I'm probably a little biased about it But after a sea of things that all felt the same

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mm-hmm.

Dan Antonelli: Then I saw that and I was like that felt really different. It felt very memorable And again, colors played such a big role in that too. But I think if you're one of the early adapters of this and really start pushing it in your community, to me you'll have a leg up on a lot of people that are still very complacent, right? And that's the other thing we talk about in the book is the idea of that complacency syndrome, right? Because again, it's very easy to sit back and maybe doing well, you know? You got the money coming in, everything seems like it's working great, I'm not gonna change anything. Why would I ever change anything, right? It's working. But again, it's that same mindset that's very complacent. And there's a lot of big companies that are very complacent, right? And they just, especially PE-owned companies, to me, are historically very complacent, right? So I kinda, on one hand, I like it because it just leaves opportunity for those that aren't. Let them keep doing their same crap, they're spending their eight to 10% on marketing, they think they're making a killing, great. while they're sitting there sort of resting on their laurels, we're gonna come in there, we're gonna start taking pieces of their world basically by just branding better than they are. And I don't care how big they are. Like some of the biggest HVAC companies in the space have some of the worst brands, which sounds like, well, how can that, why did that happen? Well, they spent a lot of money to do that, right? So again, you know, we have so many examples of clients spending less than 5% that are growing double digits, triple digits every year. Well, how are they doing that? Like that's crazy. That runs contrary to what everyone else says you need to be doing. And again, the brand just plays such an important role in that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, I in the book you had mentioned that you stated an example of a billboard. It was like you take their past customers and put the, you know, happy birthday Lucas. Right. And as a

Dan Antonelli: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: picture

Dan Antonelli: yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: of the of the customer, I was like, that's fucking brilliant. Right. Like

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: people will remember that it'll make them feel warm and fuzzy. And it's definitely different. Right. I've never

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: seen anything like that. I've seen a lot of fucking billboards. So.

Dan Antonelli: Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Kudos to you, man. That was that was super dope. I don't brand

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: for me It's like how people are gonna perceive you right and like you said it could be prior to the initial like conversation that you're having with them the door knock and usually should be should be proactive, but I don't know to be funny to like a funny way to say like if you're a single guy and you go to a bar and there's a girl you want to talk to and every fucking guy there's been 40 guys that talk to her in a white t shirt and a pair of jeans and a pair of tennis shoes then you come in with a custom fit suit you got fucking hair like Mike like you're different right and there might be a better opportunity for you to move the conversation forward maybe you start the norm of reciprocity and you buy your drink I don't know

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That's not my wheelhouse, but it would be markedly different from every other person And that's kind of what you're explaining with what the companies can do just simply by putting some concerted energy into focusing on brand, right?

Dan Antonelli: Yeah. And from the sales process to your point again, how much easier would it be to sell at a higher average ticket if when you rolled up in a beautiful wrap truck and your uniforms dialed in and you got a nice piece of collateral that you hand out to them and your business card is dialed in. You know, what does she think already about you? Like what have you already established? So like you can have the best sales training in the world. And there's some really amazing. people in the space that do sales training. But you could look at the results of people with really poor brands and how hard their jobs are versus guys with really great brands and how easy their jobs are. It's a lot easier to walk into that sale when they already expect something, they already feel something, and they can connect with you. We talk about empathy and creating empathy within the brands and connecting to that customer. I mean, that's another piece of it. So sometimes I feel badly for some of these guys that work in sales and some of these really awful brands I'm like, oh man, your job must be so freaking hard man. It's like, you know, so

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: It's tough, but

Dan Antonelli: Yeah

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it be like that sometimes. Good news, there's an opportunity to fix it, okay? So click that link below. No,

Dan Antonelli: Yeah

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: so if some, let me ask you this, because we see this all the time, right? We, like I said, we're the third or fourth agency typically because we're very much so at the higher end as far as cost is concerned, investment. So if there's anyone watching this, and hopefully there'll be a couple people watching this, and thank you for those of you that do. What

Dan Antonelli: and

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: would be your advice if they're considering, okay, we've got them where we want them, they're considering investing in brand, right? And maybe they call KickCharge, maybe they call somebody else. What are some things, how should they guide that conversation to know whether or not that they're gonna be working with a quality agency on their branding?

Dan Antonelli: Sure, yeah, I mean, obviously experience plays a really large role, right? So what have they done in this space? What are some of their success stories? Can I speak to some of the people that they've branded and then speak to them about results, right? Because at the end of the day, listen, this is the other thing too, it's like I love to make pretty things, right? I love to make really cool brands that are really dope, as you said, but at the end of the day, like I don't... care how dope it is if it doesn't deliver results, right? So that's the most important aspect of it. So what are the results that you've been able to get? How can you quantify some of those results? And you know, listen, we try to quantify results by sort of just looking at where the company was before the rebrand and where they were maybe six months after or a year after, okay? So how much did the business grow? And again, is it 100% because we rebranded them? No, okay, but. You know, you need great leadership, you need a great sales team, you need great marketing, right? So those are all the things. But like, you almost wanna say too, what is the price to change the culture of your business? What is the price to re-energize your team about the investment you're making in the brand, right? And that's the hidden thing. Like no one comes to kick-start and say, Dan, you know, we want you to create a new brand for us because we really wanna improve our culture. Like no one says that, right? But that's what happens afterwards. So asking those questions and saying, hey, what are some of the results that you've seen after doing this? Look at their portfolio, okay? And I know that you may not be the best qualified to look at the portfolio and to judge whether or not things are done correctly or not correctly, but you get a general sense. Is it legible? Is it disruptive? Or is it the same old recycled clip art that everyone else is using, right? And that's the other piece of it. Will you own the artwork? Is the artwork original? Like, we talked about using Fiverr. Why we don't recommend people ever go to Fiverr because a lot of times the artwork that is sold to you actually belongs to someone else. Ask me how I know.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: in the comments.

Dan Antonelli: So, yeah, so, you know, asking those types of questions, certainly look at their reviews, speak to people that they've worked with. And you know, you have to be willing also to... trust the process. And in as much as we value our clients' opinions on things, at the end of the day, this is what we do. You know, if you came to my house and you said, Dan, like the flashing on your roof is bad and you need to replace it with this, you know, I'm not really qualified to say otherwise, right? So trust the people, provided they have, obviously, the right credentials, and let them do their thing. You know, and I think that that's the challenge sometimes, Owners want to get a lot of people involved in the brand process. They want to ask their buddies. They want to ask everyone on their team. And again, at the end of the day, like who is the target audience? And what did they think is really the most critical question? It's not what you, your buddies, like they're irrelevant, okay? Because they're not the ones making those purchasing decisions. It's generally Mrs. Smith who's making those purchase decisions. And she's already scared shitless about who's showing up at her house. Right. So, so think about how your brand communicates to her. Right. So even like the aggressive brands with a muscled guy and he's holding the hammer. Right. OK. Like, do I really want to introduce that concept to her and make her already feel more apprehensive than she already is? You know, so again, mindset about who we're selling to is so important. So ask those questions. You know, you know, I think it's really important to have. some good case studies that illustrate you understand as a branding agency not only just how to design a logo, but how to integrate it across different channels and make it so that no matter where Mrs. Jones hits your marketing channels, it looks like it's coming from the same company, not like a random thing from one and a random thing from another. Like they all need to synchronize up.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, I mean, I think that's super important. And a lot of times there's an expectation, I think, on the marketing side that like, you know, we like we create the fonts for you. It's like, no, bro, that's part of your branding. They give us give us what you have. Like we're not a branding agency. We're not creating,

Dan Antonelli: Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: you know, like get like a brand kit right from

Dan Antonelli: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: whoever.

Dan Antonelli: and I'm sure you see it on your side too. Like when you have someone that comes to you that has a kick ass brand, and you're going to be designing that website, like you know, you already have great foundation, you already know you can extrapolate that brand into something meaningful on that online presence. So when she comes to that website, like it's recognizable for that particular company. And then I'm sure you get a lot of people that it's generic. Like your designers probably hate working on generic roofing

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Ha ha ha.

Dan Antonelli: company brands and generic roofing websites because it's so hard to brand them, right? It's so hard to make the site look different when there aren't any assets to build off of in their branding. So that's, I mean, listen, that's really challenging for anyone working with a brand. that is somewhat generic is like, how do I make this site look different? Like, how do I extrapolate it so that it literally, you know, would look the same as my two other competitors if I just swapped out the logos and put their logos on it and changed some button colors. Like that's, again, that whole concept of blending and fitting it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, it's a good point. And I mean, I tell I've told a lot of people like I can I can run Google ads and make you money with I don't care how bad your brand is, it can be AAA roofing and we'll make you money, but it's gonna be super expensive. And what happens is like the higher your cost per acquired lead your cost per acquisition, the less margin you're making, right? So

Dan Antonelli: Right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: ultimately, the less profitable you are. So at the end of the day, I kind of compare the two like if you have like really shitty branding, it's like running a marathon, but doing on like a 15 degree incline. Right?

Dan Antonelli: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Like running a marathon

Dan Antonelli: you'll get there,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: kind of fucking

Dan Antonelli: baby. Yeah, yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: sucks as it is, right? But have to do it uphill really

Dan Antonelli: yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: sucks. Right. So like if you if you have strong branding, it's like maybe you're running on a flat surface, maybe running even just a little bit downhill,

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: which makes it a bit easier. Right.

Dan Antonelli: And we had an example of another company that had worked with the brands with 25 of our clients and done their websites in the HVAC space. And the conversion rate on a site that had one of our brands was double of a non kick charge brand. Right. So so we were already converting twice as many leads on a site that had better branding. than the sites that didn't have it. And it wasn't a random sample, like he compared 25 to 25, right? So I think that's a pretty good comparison. And then you look at even the number of branded inbound keyword searches, and the kick-charge brands were generating almost 10x. I think the average was 450 branded keyword searches per month in comparison to about 44. So we're delivering almost 10 times the organic traffic for branded keywords with a better branded company than with a poorly branded one. So even on conversion rates, I think the conversion rates and you know conversion rates, I think the kick-charge brands were converting at about 12%, which I think is pretty high. I think most average, I mean, I think they say if 10 is really good, right? I mean, you would probably know better than me, but, you

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I know nothing.

Dan Antonelli: know. So it was just really interesting when you talk about quantifying, right? So basically what we're saying is... You want to extrapolate the 450 inbound leads with a 12% conversion rate versus 44 inbound leads with a 6% conversion rate. Well, that's essentially 50 more leads a month for your one-time investment in branding, essentially. So, sometimes it just feels crazy why more people don't do it because the numbers obviously really show and demonstrate that it actually works really well when it's done correctly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, I mean, it makes a lot of sense, right? If you have something that grabs people's attention has a call to action like a truck wrap, right or billboard, right and, and people it piques their interest, they're gonna look it up, right? Now there's your direct keyword search for your company or branded search.

Dan Antonelli: Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, it's, it's smart and don't let all the SEO agencies tell you that you know, all the work Dan's doing as a result of their SEO either, right? Oh, shit.

Dan Antonelli: I'm gonna go to the bathroom.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So let me ask you this. So you've got a company in there, let's say four million in revenue and They acquiesce to the fact that there's a lot of benefit in branding. So we're gonna rebrand But Dan I got all these fucking trucks and polo shirts and I've got door hangers and I've got these yard signs like And I just don't know what to do How do I what's the easiest way for a company to transition into a new brand seamlessly?

Dan Antonelli: Yeah, well, first off, the idea that you're going to roll all these things out, like at once, you should probably just get that idea right out of your head because it'll make you crazy trying to do that. Very rarely does that ever happen. So typically the things that we would love to see coordinated, if possible, is your truck wraps hitting the streets. at about the same time as a rebranded website hitting the streets. So that obviously if they see the visual out on the street and then they go to the website, I don't want them seeing the old branding and getting confused and saying is this the same company. So if you can coordinate that, obviously then the uniforms would be nice to roll out at about the same time. Then you start doing some of the other ancillary things like if you're on HVAC, you know, the equipment stickers and things that you leave behind. The brochures. Certainly your social media, graphics, right? You wanna change those, and those are simple things to change like right on day one, right? So those aren't really that complicated. And even at a minimum, like let's say you, you know, you have their website, but you can't redesign it for another six weeks or something. At a minimum, let's get the new logo in the upper left-hand corner, and make sure that at least is represented there. And then you could do a full refresh later on. And then as far as like letting the customers know, why there was a change, how do we communicate that, what's the best mechanism to let them know, hey, this is the same great company, we just rebranded, right? So messaging to those customers, typically we recommend doing those via, at a minimum you're gonna do it email and social, right? Because those are the easiest things to communicate those changes to. And then we also do like to do direct mail. And direct mail would be a letter to all the existing customers, letting them know about the change. Hey, you may start seeing our new vans out and. You know, we want to thank you for your support over the years. Nothing's changed at the team here. And like you sort of go into a little bit about why the change has taken place. Sometimes we make them have or include an offer you made as well, right? You're already getting a piece of mail to them. Sometimes make an offer to celebrate, Hey, we're offering a hundred dollars off a free gutter cleaning or whatever the case may be, you know, so, you know, only like one example I can think of, of literally where a shop and this is a renaming. that they closed up on a Friday and they rolled out like 10 new vans on a Monday and announced everything and the direct mail hit like over the weekend. But it was super stressful for a lot of people.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, I can imagine.

Dan Antonelli: So I almost want to say, you know, it's almost better, you know, get the most important things done first and then recognize that there's going to be a time where your old exists with the new and that's just the way it is. You know, it's not a catastrophe. You know, you can't eradicate, if you're a four million dollar company, you can't eradicate five years worth of your brand like that, so it's just gonna take some time. If you're renaming, it's a little bit more complex, but even on renaming, that is something, again, rolled out properly. It works very well. We'll rename probably 25 to 30 home service companies this year. You know, like I said, in the book, that's probably one of the biggest chapters is on naming because a lot of names aren't really good and very difficult to brand.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: How do you know if you have a good name? Should it just be like, you know, like budget roofing? Like we wanna, you know, it's cheap. People wanna buy it.

Dan Antonelli: Budget roofing would be great if you want to be a low cost operator and probably not making much money. But the key or sort of tips on naming, last name brands, generally very challenging to brand how people remember and assign brand promise to. So if it's Sterns roofing, what does that mean to me? Why would I remember it? I can't associate a visual with it other than the generic roof. So like why would I, why would that ever? you know, be memorable to me. Or if it was worse, it would be MS Roofing. Why would I ever remember MS Roofing? So initial based brands are also really the worst. Last name brands, second worst. And then brands that, again, don't speak to a specific promise are challenging as well. So think about if I knew nothing at all about your company and I only spoke your name, what do I think about? So sometimes some names like, you know, let's imagine your company name was Red Robin Roofing or Robins Roofing. Right, so if you close your eyes and you say Robins Roofing, what do you think about immediately? Like a bird, right? I mean, it's, so if I can associate a visual with a name and then integrate that visual with your name, now I connect the dots for that consumer because they'll remember the picture quicker than they'll remember the words, right? But if I can connect the dots with the visual, it's much easier for that to become sticky. So you see sometimes brands that you know, you know, red Robin or, you know, red, red roofing, you know, anything that like I can put a color in a visual and connect those dots, they're going to be a lot stickier.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Hmm. I like that. That's a really good point. What are your thoughts on? I guess the efficacy of like vanity numbers one eight four new roof How how well or not? Well do those work when it comes to a branding

Dan Antonelli: Um,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: strategy?

Dan Antonelli: you know, it's ironic because probably 50% of all the truck wraps we're doing today don't even have a phone number. So we don't really place a lot of relevance on vanity numbers in that particular instance because the medium itself is generally not considered to be a call to action. It's primarily a brand building exercise. So it's not like. Oh my God, I just saw this roofing company. Oh, I think I'm gonna get a new roof next week, so let me call them right now while I'm driving. Like it doesn't really work that way. It can work sometimes like that. Maybe I see it on my neighbor's driveway. But the idea is if it's branded well, most people are actually gonna Google the name and get the phone number that way. Because it's a lot easier to type in the name and hit enter and Google, and then the phone number pops up. And then I just click call now, right? So, You know, vanity numbers, if they're really easy to remember, if they're branded vanity numbers that reflect back to your name, those can work and it will help people. But you think about the last time you were driving in your car and you saw something and you decided I'm going to call them right now and literally sit there and type in digits on your cell phone. Like, when was the last time you did that? When was the last time you dialed a phone number?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: minute.

Dan Antonelli: Right?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Dan Antonelli: You know, so it doesn't really work that way. It's more easy to say, hey, Siri, call Robin's Roofing, right? And it's going to show up and- Calling Robin's Roofing. Yeah, see, Siri's calling Robin Roofing. She's already calling it. So that's generally the mechanism for most of the inbound phone calls coming from well-branded companies. So, you know, is it a bad thing? No, it's never a bad thing. It just tends to be something that isn't as- relevant today as it was 10 years ago.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, what I'm going to do, I just want to see what Robin's roofing looks like and see how their brand is given.

Dan Antonelli: I didn't do it. I didn't do Robin's Roof and it just popped in my head though, something. I better look and see what it looks like also.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I love, here we go. All right, Robin's Roofing, there you have it, folks. Robin's

Dan Antonelli: Do they

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Roofing.

Dan Antonelli: have a bird? If not, they should.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: No, it just says Robin's Roofing. Can you see my screen?

Dan Antonelli: Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Damn it. Let's see. How about now?

Dan Antonelli: Yeah, there it is.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah,

Dan Antonelli: Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: so this is rate this brand on a scale zero to 10.

Dan Antonelli: Um, yeah, I don't think it is a brand. I think it's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

Dan Antonelli: just a bunch of words that are typed in. So it doesn't even qualify for the actual question.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: let's see if we get a better robin's roofing and if this is you i'm very sorry but this is this is fun this is fun get some engagement um where are they located five star reviews all right the exercise is over um i can't find their website

Dan Antonelli: Do rocks roofing if you want to look at a cool one that we just finished.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What is it?

Dan Antonelli: R-O-X.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Rop. R-O-X. Where are they?

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: San

Dan Antonelli: They

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Antonio?

Dan Antonelli: are in San Antonio. Yeah. Yeah, now look at some of the pictures. Yeah, I mean, does that look like every other roofing company, or does that look like something completely different?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: No, it looks different. Definitely looks different. Hmm. Rocks Roofing. Who built this website? Don't say it.

Dan Antonelli: I don't know the answer to that, honestly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I don't know. Yeah, it's a, all right, so there's people, people gotta hit you up to do some branding, that's all. Rebuild a brand. It'll be fun, it'll be hard, but it'll be fun.

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So, rate my brand.

Dan Antonelli: I really like your brand. I

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Aw,

Dan Antonelli: like

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: shucks.

Dan Antonelli: it. Yeah. No, I thought it was cool when I saw it. Yeah. I don't know that you need the A to have the arrow

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Well,

Dan Antonelli: because you have the rock

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: as

Dan Antonelli: ready.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I was reading your book with the red arrows and the blue arrows, I was fucking cackling on the couch. I was like, I fuck. Here's the thing.

Dan Antonelli: I-I-I-

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I'm not a branding expert, right? Self admittedly, it's not my strong suit. So I drew this brand of this logo up rather when I had covid and I was like, it was just it was an idea. And then I

Dan Antonelli: Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: sent it to a graphic designer. I was like, that's good enough. I don't think I need the air on the air either, but it's going to stay. I'm not

Dan Antonelli: I'm

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: rebranding,

Dan Antonelli: gonna do

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: god

Dan Antonelli: it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: damn it. This is who I become. Yeah, it's, yeah, fun stuff. Ha ha.

Dan Antonelli: Well, I'll tell you something, you know, when you talk about your own stuff, which is sometimes hard to get past, but we, I renamed this agency in 2017 and we used to be called Graphic Designs and it was Graphic D-Signs and that was the name I gave the company in 1995 and it was 2017 and we were building this new office that we were at and I was like, this name doesn't even make any sense. It's not even who we are. We don't do graphic design. We don't do signs. Why we call this? And so I had to be introspective myself and sort of say all the things I say to clients about comfort and the warm blanket.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: that

Dan Antonelli: And I

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: warm

Dan Antonelli: was like,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: playing.

Dan Antonelli: dude, we have to change the name of our agency. And oh my God, I am so glad that we did. It's been so much better. And it's really funny too because I went through the process myself and then once we knew the name we got the logoton, we got all this swag but we still had to rebuild our website which was a monstrous effort

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Dan Antonelli: and I was wearing the swag and like six months before we went live like I was so excited to get this new brand out there. So yeah like don't ever think it can't happen for you man. It may happen at a certain point.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: At some point we'll chop the fuck in top of the arrow off. We'll see. Oh man. So do you have any questions for me?

Dan Antonelli: Um, I don't think I have any questions for you. Um, I mean, I hear amazing stuff about what you do for your clients. Um, I think it's really awesome what you've been able to build. Um, and I think to your point too, like the idea of working with these brands and, you know, the better the brand, the easier your job is, honestly. I mean, that's really the reality of it. So when you have clients that are lamenting about how much money they're spending. on their LSA and all these other avenues, like that's something that, you know, maybe they'll understand the relationship between what they're doing out on the street and how it affects what's happening online in the digital world. You know, there's a direct relationship between those two things.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Fuck yeah. I love it. This was fun. It's a lot of fun.

Dan Antonelli: Yeah, so

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So, um.

Dan Antonelli: I'm really sorry. I'm sorry to all the people that I insulted about their rooftop logos and their hammers and the clip art and stuff like that. I'm sorry, like I truly am, but.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Don't apologize for honesty. They'll understand. It's coming from a place of love. Okay?

Dan Antonelli: Yes, it is. It

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah,

Dan Antonelli: is.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I know

Dan Antonelli: That

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: that.

Dan Antonelli: is the coolest thing about what we get to do is, you know, we get to change the lives of a lot of people and that's ultimately what I love about what we do. And even the people that work here, I think that's the part that we're most passionate about is, you know, we get to change the lives of a lot of people. And that's really cool. Like when you see it happen, when you see these owners grow and build and explode, like it's just really, really cool. to be a part of that and know we played a role in that. So, you know, 27 years later or 28 years later, like I'm still jazzed to be able to do that every day and it's fun, so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: It truly is remarkable. I have one client I started working with. He was at a couple hundred thousand in revenue. This was a few years ago, three years

Dan Antonelli: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: ago.

Dan Antonelli: yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: And he's going to do ten million this year. And just

Dan Antonelli: That's awesome.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: watching

Dan Antonelli: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the growth every step of the way is just like the most rewarding thing ever just to be a

Dan Antonelli: And

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: part

Dan Antonelli: that's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: of

Dan Antonelli: what

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it.

Dan Antonelli: you do for. That's why, that's your why. You know what I mean? That's what I say all the time. Our why is every day we get these messages and we hear from these owners and I go to trade shows and speak and see these people in person and it's just a constant reminder of why we're doing what we're doing. And to me, it's just the coolest thing in the world. I'm doing this for so long. I lettered... my first home service van hand lettered with paint when I was 15 years old and I have a picture of it. And

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I

Dan Antonelli: it's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: saw

Dan Antonelli: just,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it on Facebook.

Dan Antonelli: yeah. And it's just like bizarre that, you know, whatever, 35 years later, I'm still in that world. So it's pretty cool.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's awesome. I appreciate you being so, uh, so willing to come on and add value to the show and to the audience. And thank you to all you listening. You guys are the real MVPs. Can I get you to commit to a part two sometime in the future? Can I do that now?

Dan Antonelli: Oh, absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Oh, look

Dan Antonelli: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: at that. See? See, I put my sales hat on and I asked for the sale. Okay. And then look what happened. He said, yes, sale made. No, but seriously, Dan, thank you very much. It was very great. And I had a lot of fun.

Dan Antonelli: Thanks brother.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: No problem. All right. And then we cut.

In this solo episode, Mike shares a lesson on not skipping leg day! A well-rounded and prosperous business relies on the cultivation of all its facets, not just a singular focus. A strong foundation is crucial. By nurturing various components of your business, you ensure an evergreen and adaptable business that can weather challenges and take opportunities.

Interested in learning more about Roofr?

Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5

Contact us : [email protected]

Let's Connect! ==== ==== ====

Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK

Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT

Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

On todays episode, Mike is SOLO! He dives into how you can rank against your competitors! Achieving a prominent position on Google's search results against competitors requires a strategic approach and diligent effort. To rank higher and gain a competitive edge, marketers must focus on several key aspects.

In this comprehensive episode, Mike explores key strategies to reclaim your position and even surpass your rivals in search engine rankings. From thorough keyword research and content optimization to building high-quality backlinks and enhancing user experience, this summary covers actionable steps to improve your website's visibility and authority. Mike also dives into the importance of tracking performance metrics and making data-driven adjustments to maintain a competitive edge.

Interested in learning more about Roofr?

Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5

Contact us : [email protected]

Let's Connect! ==== ==== ====

Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK

Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT

Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

In this engaging episode, Host Mike is joined by the insightful guest, Eric Richardson of Roofing Specialists. The guys have an enlightening conversation on various aspects of website optimization, SEO strategies, and leveraging blog posts for business growth. As they dive deep into the world of digital marketing and branding, they also discuss the importance of outsourcing work, effective tricks for successful rebranding, and the power of AB testing to maximize results. They also touch upon the unique challenges of sales in the roofing industry and offer valuable insights into achieving a harmonious work-life balance. Tune in to this information-packed episode and unleash the potential of your online business!

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5 Contact us : [email protected] Let's Connect! ==== ==== ==== Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

In this inspiring podcast episode, host Mike sits down with Eric Reno, the founder of Paramount Roofing, to hear his incredible journey from humble beginnings in a trailer park to becoming a successful entrepreneur in the roofing industry. Eric's story is one of resilience, determination, and the power of seizing opportunities. Tune in as Eric shares his experiences, challenges, and the driving force behind his mission to give back and inspire others to see the abundance of opportunities available to them.

Mike & Eric talk everything from giving back, learning to evolve, investing your time in the right places and building long game relationships.

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5 Contact us : [email protected] Let's Connect! ==== ==== ==== Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

On today's episode, Mike has a solo episode about situational awareness. Mikes goal Is to become better everyday whether that' s a little or a lot; but t the end if the day its about solving a hurtle and becoming better!

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5 Contact us : [email protected] Let's Connect! ==== ==== ==== Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

On today's episode, Mike has on Bob Neubert, faculty expert on entrepreneurship at the University of Buffalo. Working in corporate for years Bob wanted to make a move so he started a few businesses of his own! 25 years of experience in launching and growing startups, he now teaches students his model for entrepreneurship. One of those students was Mike, himself!

Bob and Mike talk all things entrepreneurship, innovation; business model development, startup methods, and top tips if you're staring out on your own or you're looking to take your business to the next level!

Mike also drops some exclusive Mission Control Podcast news with the launch of Conversion MAX!

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5 Contact us : [email protected] Let's Connect! ==== ==== ==== Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

On today's episode, Mike has on Kasey Luft of Clientric CRM Consulting. As a business owner, you need to know your business inside & out. Kasey saw businesses making the same mistakes over and over again. He realized businesses can thrive with the proper processes, and the best way to do this is by streamlining and automating the sales process. Today Mike & Kasey talk about optimizing CRM's, leveraging your CRM to reflect into your business, what do you want to know about your business, mastering your CRM, and getting your team on board with your CRM! Kasey also shares with us the top 3 things to look for when choosing a CRM platform!

Mike & Kasey talk on optimizing your business on 2023 and how a CRM might be the move for your business to level up!

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5 Contact us : [email protected] Let's Connect! ==== ==== ==== Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, so we've been here, what, 20 minutes late on the start time. Shout out

Kasey Luft: Dude, right,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to

Kasey Luft: you're on that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Riverside.fm, my camera, it's a cable, it's all these different things. But all that to say, here we are, episode 44 with Casey. What's up, Casey?

Kasey Luft: Hey Mike, how's it going?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: It's going well. Hey, question, did you know that pupils, they're the last part to stop working when you die as far as your body's concerned? You know that?

Kasey Luft: I did not know that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: They die late.

Kasey Luft: What is concerning is that you know that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: They die late. pupils dilate. Yeah.

Kasey Luft: Hahaha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Okay. Well, they don't all land folks, but you keep on moving. Shout out

Kasey Luft: Hey!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to Roofherb for bringing this podcast to life in conjunction with Ascend Digital Agency. If you need clean and pristine proposals, instant roof measurements, hit up the team at Roofherb. They're great. Tell them we sent you. There's a link in the comments. Click it. So, Casey. You've done some things in CRM once or twice, yeah?

Kasey Luft: I have done some things in CRM just a couple times, yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That sounds fucking awful.

Kasey Luft: It's hit and miss. You have good days, you have bad days. You know,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Sure.

Kasey Luft: just like we had technology issues today. Ha ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Well, hopefully the issues persist so that you can keep getting new projects and solving the world's issues, one CRM workflow at a time.

Kasey Luft: Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I've got a lot of questions.

Kasey Luft: I have answers.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Why do people need a CRM? Let's say roofers or contractors.

Kasey Luft: Yeah, people need a CRM because they need to increase their efficiency, increase the amount of deals or jobs they can handle at any given time. People without a clear idea of their systems, the pipeline are struggling, their systems are chaotic. And we've talked to a lot of people, a lot of people come up to us and say, Like my business is chaos. I feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off and I have no idea what's going on. I don't know how to direct the ship and I'm just struggling to keep my head above water. A properly set up CRM technology system does that for you. You don't have to think about it. It provides you a list of jobs that need to be dealt with today, a list of tasks that need to be dealt with today. It can essentially create your task list for you throughout that day. And so it's so important to get your head on right and to get your business running smoothly. And that's why I see your Amazon.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: If you had to say three things as far as trying to figure out what CRM is the right fit for you, what are the three things to consider?

Kasey Luft: One is budget. That's gonna be probably the biggest one that most people come to us with. What's it gonna cost? The second is the fact that you need to have internal resources. How much do you wanna know? How much do you want to have a hand in creating it? How much do you need to know as a leader or as a management? you know, higher up on the leadership team, how much do you actually need to understand of the system in order for it to function properly? And I would say the last thing is how complicated is your business? Do you have a good idea of what your business actually does? Have you mapped it out? So those are three components that you ultimately need to be able to answer, at least at a high level, in order to be able to choose a CRM. And in order for it to be not only a CRM that meets your needs now, but meets your needs five years from now. And that's what a lot of people forget.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and I've been through this. You know, we were working in a system that didn't meet our needs down the road from when we started. And, you know, it's I tell everybody to get started sooner than later. You know, I've talked to guys that they're doing. see it in the pants and like it's great until it's fucking not and what it's gonna take to get four people on CRM and system and processes associated with that is a lot more challenging than doing it now when it's just you. So become the master of it, understand it, and then... for those people because it won't be the...

Kasey Luft: Yeah. Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Can a CRM increase your closing percentage on sales?

Kasey Luft: If used right, if it's used as a tool, absolutely it can. So it can actually help you follow up, help you create tasks related to ensuring your team is doing the things they need to do. So it creates reminders, it can automate follow-up processes. So it can actually increase this because these jobs, these deals are not falling through the cracks. And that's the biggest thing. So that's what I tell people. is it's not so much going to do it for you, but it helps you do your job better. And if you're doing your job better, you're gonna be able to close more leads, you're gonna be able to sell more projects, and you're gonna drive revenue and profits because of that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What are some of the biggest challenges that you see people running into when they retain your services to work on their CRM?

Kasey Luft: Yeah, the biggest challenge is the fact that they don't know what they want their business to do. They don't have a clear vision of what they want their... they might know what they want to do now, but they don't have a clear roadmap or a clear vision of what they want their business to do one, three, five years from now. And without that vision, it's really, really difficult for us to help plan for their future. So just saying this is what we do right now, that's great. But if you don't know, you know, if your goals as a business owner are to scale and grow to 5 million, 10 million, well, that is actually really important as to how we can go about setting things up. If you don't know how you want your production to be scheduled, if you don't know how you want your materials to be ordered, if you're not sure what tools you wanna use, obviously there's a ton of tools out there for, you know, ordering materials or getting the measurement information for takeoffs, things like that. it's really imperative that you know that ahead of time to build those integrations, to build that streamline process. So if you don't have that kind of thought out ahead of time, if you're like, oh, we're gonna use this tool, this tool, you have five tools you're utilizing, it's gonna be very difficult for someone to plan how to use these tools more effectively in the overall architecture of the system.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That makes a lot of sense, and it's tough sometimes to say, you know, in five years I want to be doing this because things change. But, to have a tentative understanding of where you want to go and putting some thought and energy behind that is important. You know, and as you tell me that, I kind of think of, like, the first thing that came to mind, this is not financial advice, so don't take it as such. But, like, I think of, like, an investment strategy, right? Like, day trading and the way that you're gonna go execute and the methodology that you're gonna deploy when you're day trading is gonna be substantially different than your 401K and your long- right? And

Kasey Luft: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: depending on how old you are, it's also going to dictate how you invest your money, right? If I'm super young, which I'm not, so whatever, but if I'm super young I'm likely going to be more aggressive or whomever is handling you know my investments are going to be more aggressive because I have more time to rebound if there is a huge dip versus if I'm 61 we're probably gonna be more conservative because there's a lot more to lose. But that's all understanding context and kind of where... things inside when you're investing your money. And same thing with CRM.

Kasey Luft: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: And I'd say that's the same thing with honestly any business. Like we all as business owners, as my own business owner, I struggle to picture what my business will look like one year, three year, five year, 10 year. Like I absolutely get it. And so that's where we kind of come in and be like, well, what do you want? Do you want this? Do you want that? And so we can kind of guide people along the way if they're not sure and showcase like, these are the different options available to you. And this is how you could use these different tools more effectively. So even just having a conversation with someone to kind of pull that out. whether it's your internal team or you're looking and talking with a consultant like myself or yourself, what do you want your digital marketing strategy to be? That's a big question for a lot of businesses. And so if you can actually come back and have a conversation with your internal team or talk with someone about it, because a lot of business owners feel they need to do it themselves. Even the business coach, I know we've like all of these things out there that can help you pull out the information you need to be more successful, utilize it, utilize those resources as much as possible, utilize your team. to be more effective. And then you can pull that information out so that when you go to someone or when you start planning strategically, you actually are able to use information that you've gathered throughout this process. And that's really, really important.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Are there any CRMs, if you ever run into a circumstance where somebody's trying to divest from one CRM going to another one and there's been an issue securing their data and transferring it. Cause I know that's been

Kasey Luft: Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the trepidation with clients in the past. I don't do CRMs, but they're like, we want to do this, but this company is telling us that it's something they own today, kind of holding hostage.

Kasey Luft: Yeah, and I, I hate those companies. I think it's ridiculous. You as a business, it's your data, you should own it. If you're not owning your data, and I'll actually take this back to one of those first questions you asked, you should look up and see who actually owns the data and make sure that it fits with your potential long-term strategy. If you want access to this data, how easy is it to get out? How easy can you pull reports? Most places, most software will, you know, you kind of have to go under the radar a bit. And that's kind of how we typically do it with those companies. I can think of a few, I won't name names, but I know there's a few out there that struggle with that. And they make it really, really difficult. They can make it super easy for you to pull out their information. And we've had some clients in the roofing space, in the legal space. And in the legal space, it was like talking to a wall. You couldn't, like when you told them, hey, we're actually migrating. they just stopped communicating with you because they don't wanna lose your business and they're gonna make it as difficult for you as possible.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Sure.

Kasey Luft: And in order to get some information out, and there's two different types of information you need to get. You need to get the information that's in the record itself. So like the text fields, the name, the address, that stuff. What's almost trickier are the files. So the images that you're taking on a job site, how do you get those out? Those are stored in a different area. Those are very difficult to get out because... they are in, think of it like a drop box location, right? They're hosted on a server somewhere in some location and it's actually more difficult to get that out than some of the other records. So you have to be very careful when you're pulling that information out. And so we kind of go underneath the radar and we ask, oh, we need this information. We need that information. We're not telling them anymore that our clients are moving and migrating to another tool because that's when the prickly hairs pop up and they just stop helping. So if you can kind of go under the radar and, you know, ask nicely, like, hey, we need these images out. And then you just use that information to start pulling more and more out. They're not gonna help you get the information out. It's on you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and you know it's kind of the same thing when you're switching with an agency from one to another. You know, you kind of have the conversation like try to get access to Google Analytics, try to get access to Google Search Console. You know, because if you send them a breakup text, they're not going to be as obliged to accommodate you. You know, they're going to be spiteful, they might be petty. Maybe they won't be, who knows? But if we're playing the odds here, when you give people bad news, they're more likely to have negative emotions towards you, and if they feel negative emotions towards you, So, let's play the

Kasey Luft: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: odds. And let's just, you know, maybe not tell them. We'll be sneaky.

Kasey Luft: Hehehe

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So, well then that makes me think, right? So, because I know as owning a marketing agency, you know, there's two dozen questions you should ask a marketing company. as far as like, hey, do I own my website? Will I own my domain? Will I own my ad account? Am I gonna have access to reporting? What are expectations? Like there's certain things that you should ask to have a clear understanding of who you're getting in bed with, so to speak. What are the questions that a contractor considering a CRM should ask the representative of that CRM to make sure that they're not landing in a precarious situation and finding out?

Kasey Luft: Yeah, I think data control is absolutely one of them. Data security is another one. How secure is your system? Now, a lot of people take that for granted and the roofing industry definitely needs to take some notes from some other industries and make sure that, like your information is secure. There's been a lot of issues with data breaches recently. And... Working with our legal clients in the data breach space, it's really eye-opening how easy it is for some people to just take advantage of that and how easy it is for other people to push lawsuits on you because of that too. So it's something that you wanna be careful of. As well, just as a side note to better understand and ask those good questions. And then I'd say, what are your support? What is your support like? How quickly am I gonna get support if I send an email versus let's say a chat versus this other method? Is there a need for further support? Do they help with setting up the system? Do they help with training and getting you trained up as well? And I know most places do, which is great, but understanding what that actually means, just because they are actually gonna train you on how to use the tool doesn't mean they're gonna train you well or they're gonna train you in a way that you learn. So I think understanding that a little bit more effectively as to what goes into their training process. how what goes into their support process. Just getting more information and asking those deeper questions. People don't do enough of that. People just ask that surface level question and they think that's enough. But in order to get to that four years down the road, like you said, you really need to dive into those a little bit deeper.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: yes all what's your

Kasey Luft: Yeah, my answer is the tool we use that we really push for and try to build out for people is that, it's as secure as it can possibly be. It's a SaaS application. It has its own web portal. It has its own functionalities. It's as secure as you could possibly be right now in the current state. And if you want more information, I'd be happy to share with you their security protocols and things like that. But typically I won't dive into that unless they really ultimately ask. But I'm open and honest and say like, This is stuff that you're probably not gonna understand, but I can provide that for you and actually can get a rep from the security team to talk with you about it in case you're worried about that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's a good point. Because if I'm not up to speed on internet security and these protocols, it's going to be very hard

Kasey Luft: which

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: for

Kasey Luft: most

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: me

Kasey Luft: people

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: without

Kasey Luft: aren't.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: that.

Kasey Luft: Let's be

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right,

Kasey Luft: real.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: if we don't have that, it's going to be very hard to sort through without that level of sophistication and understanding. I'm assuming most sales reps would be like, it's very secure. And it's like, OK, is there a simple thing at that point that the contractor could say to be like, OK, send me the protocol. what level of encryption is it or whatever the case may be. Or like you said, talk to the security team.

Kasey Luft: Yep, yep, ask us to talk to someone from the security team or someone who actually knows that and can convince you that, you know what, like, it's not gonna be an issue. Yeah, absolutely. The more you ask, the better off you're gonna be and they're gonna, the company, the software company might go either way on this, depending on, you know, hey, this is more work, I don't. want to deal with this person anymore, this person's needy, that could happen, but that's also a red flag. If they're not willing to share with you and follow up on this, then that also is like an extra, you know when you're going through your hiring process and you're putting hoops for people to jump through, it's an extra hoop for that salesperson to say, hey, you convinced me, how are you gonna convince me? You want me to use your product? You convinced me that it's worth it. The salespeople, the software that's gonna go the extra mile to showcase this for you, whether it's. security, support, all these other things that you're asking about, you're gonna have a better relationship with. If they don't go the extra mile and they're just looking for a quick sale, that's a red flag for me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Are there CRMs that work for the guy that's doing a half million, work for the guy that's doing five million, work for the guy?

Kasey Luft: There absolutely are.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Or gal.

Kasey Luft: There are, yeah, I mean, you're actually gonna find two sides of the coin here. You're gonna find fully customizable solutions, which absolutely do work, but those fully customizable solutions are gonna require more input on your end. It's gonna require more effort for you to understand if you're only a $500,000 business. If you're a $5 million business, you likely have some funds available to hire someone to do it for you, so you don't have to be as in the weeds as you maybe would otherwise. Then you have the out of the box solutions and the Acculinks, Rufr, JobNimbus, those are the out of box solutions. Well, Rufr coming up here shortly with their CRM. So all of these tools are gonna have a process for you already in place. And that's why they're great because you don't have to think about it. And so when you're actually creating this and you have to be careful in the future, will this meet my needs in the future? And that's the question you need to ask. in three years from now, when we're doing, if you're a 500K company and you wanna be a $5 million company, how many clients do you need? How many customers need to be going through the door? How many crews do you need? Are you gonna have inventory? Are you not gonna have inventory? At a high level, have an understanding of whether that tool will be able to serve you at that point in the business lifecycle. Whereas some of these other more customizable ones, they will easily fit that role. from now until then, but it's just the amount of time and energy and effort you put into it upfront or the money that you're able to put upfront to ensure that it's set up the right way at the beginning. Ha ha ha!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I got a question. So if I'm doing seven and a half million, and I got, you know, let's say I've got a fully customized solution, and I wanna bring someone like yourself on, right? And I'm like, I'm just gonna bring on a console, and this is what they do, this is what they're good at, I'm really bad at this, let's hire someone. What are the questions I should ask you?

Kasey Luft: That's a great question. How are you gonna help me go from X to Y? That's gonna be the number one. What can you do or what is your service gonna be able to do to get me there? And then my rebuttal to that would be, where do you wanna go? How do you wanna get there? What do you need in order to get there? So it's a lot of information sharing at the end of the day. It's being open to talk with a potential consultant about what your goals are. what your ambitions are to really help them get to know you and your business to understand. So with that, I would also ask, what is the structure of your team? How many people do you have? Are you gonna be able to take on the complexity? If I feel it's really complex, if my roofing business is, we're gonna need bookkeeping, we're gonna need or accounting systems, we're gonna need invoicing, inventory, all this stuff. Do you have a team who can handle that? Who's gonna be able to handle that on your team? Do you have the ability to scale and grow? That is another thing. as well just to be asking these types of questions. Understand who's gonna be doing the work. Understand who's gonna be managing the project. Likely the person you're talking to, if someone's coming to me, I'm not gonna be on your project. I'm helping get you to a point that I can pass you on to other members of my team because they do that better than I do. I'm here to help and provide initial guidance for people. but my team is really good at what they do on the backend. And so I'm gonna push them, push you onto them because they're gonna get into the weeds with you. I can't do that. And I recognize that. So knowing the company that you're gonna work with, knowing their limitations as individuals, what they know and what they don't know is also gonna be really helpful so that you know who to go to. And then lastly, I'd say, what's your support like? What if I have a question? What's your response time gonna be? That's always a big one too, right? Like, you know, if my system is going down right now, How am I gonna be able to get it up and running? Like it's a high priority, like nothing's working. If I can't get leads in the door, like that's business 101. If you don't have that, you're fucked.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, or contracts, right? Like, hey, my contracts aren't selling. Like, what the fuck? I gotta, yeah. I can see that being very frustrating. Hmm. So, and those are really good points, and I think those will be helpful for anyone watching this. So I'm assuming, and this is an assumption, you can correct me if I'm wrong, just say shut up, Mike, when I'm wrong, but my assumption would be, like, if we're building out a customized solution, there's gonna be a lot of things that are going to... things fire, things like Zap your connection, things like that, to create these automations. So, as a consultant, I pay you X amount of dollars to build out this customized solution, let's call it Zoho, let's say we're using Zoho, and I'm gonna pay you and you're gonna fix up my Zoho real nice, and then I stop paying you. Do I have to be concerned that my Zaps and my automations are gonna be disconnected?

Kasey Luft: So I can't answer for every consultant that's out there. Some people are gonna have more control. I would say the biggest way to address that concern is you own everything. As a business, make sure you own everything. So if you are using the consultant's Zapier, that's a red flag because you are always gonna be slightly dependent on them to fix that when it goes wrong. Set up your own Zapier, give them access to it. You wanna make sure that you have full control of everything that you do and that you can remove their access. Let's be honest, like relationships deteriorate and at some point you may need to remove someone from these systems. We understand that fact. And so we make sure that our clients are set up with everything they need on their side. Their credit cards are paying for it. They're the ones that are managing it. They have the capability to manage it. And something we do quite... quite heavily and I'm not sure if you use this tool in your business or not, but we use Loom quite heavily to send video screen recordings between our internal team and to our clients to train them. So our goal is by the end of any engagement that you know what to do. And you're not depending on us for like the day-to-day maintenance of your system. It doesn't make sense for us. It's not worth our time. I'll be honest. It's not worth your time as well. So if you're not trained up on the system and ready to go, and that's where you need to take ownership too, you need someone on your team to champion this so that doesn't happen, and you're left flat-footed and dependent on someone else. So aim to never be dependent on anyone else, if you can help it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's a good point. I think where I take issue with these types of situations is where there's a lack of transparency. So there could be a solution where maybe this consulting company charges significantly less because they're playing more lifetime value to the customer. So they charge less and they have control. And that's just their business model. And if you agree to that and you understand that, then that's okay, right? It's the same thing, there's companies that, they'll charge you 200 bucks a month for a website. And it's gonna be kind of a cookie cutter. but it's better than nothing, but you're usually gonna lease that website. The problem is that most sales reps won't tell you that you leased it. So three years into your engagement, you're like, you know, we're gonna move on. And it's like, well, we own your domain and your website, so what the fuck are you gonna do? And it's like, well, I gotta start over, or I gotta stay with you. So it puts you in a precarious situation because of the lack of transparency. So I agree, if you can own your assets, you absolutely should, but I don't think it's always bad. I think that what really bothers me is when there's not transparency in people. until it's too late.

Kasey Luft: Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. And I'd say that's actually something that, this is why I err more on the other side, because many of our clients have already been taken advantage of and they come to us frustrated. And they come to us pissed off because they've had a deal with shitty consultants who have taken advantage of them because they don't know any better at the end of the

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: day. They don't know what they don't know and which is fair. And so they don't know what to ask those questions. And so they get taken advantage of and it's just not good for anyone. And so you're left in this shitty situation and then we're left to pick up, you know, the pieces and they're already frustrated, you know, and they may not be willing to spend much more money because they may have sunk, you know, $50,000 into this project already and they're pissed off and they're frustrated. And then they're just more frustrated that they could spend more money to redo the things that they already had. And it's just, it's not great for anyone to be in that situation. I'm sure you've,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: you've come across that before too.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Oh yeah, I mean we're like the second or third person that people come to because we're not cheap. But we're good. And hey, it's not me saying it, it's what our customers say. So, you know, if you got beef, talk to them.

Kasey Luft: I would agree with that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Quit hating. But honestly, like especially when you're investing in things like that back in two, like go talk to some current customers they have. Ask them to talk to three people that they've done, the most three recent builds that they've done. One that they've just launched, one they launched six months ago, a year ago. Because, you know, the other side of it is some people get really fucking hype. You could be halfway through a build and the experience could be really good. So if you call me and we're working together, I might be like, yeah, Casey's fantastic. It's fucking great. He knows everything and this isn't an attack at you, but like you can launch it and that thing could go to shit. And then

Kasey Luft: Totally.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it's like, well, I just endorsed you to seven different people because the experience was great. But the efficacy of the actual product. wasn't there. You can say the same thing about the Senate. If you're excited about us building your website and we show you the homepage, it's fantastic. Okay, great. We go to show you the recipe and you're like, this sucks. But you've already been screaming about how great we are. And that's why I say, you know, make sure that you talk to people at different stages of the relationship because then that can really speak to what to expect from that company, much more so than a

Kasey Luft: Totally.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: sales rep who's motivated financially to sell. His family gets fed from him selling you. So there's a bias there. There's an inherent bias that he's going to try to get you to purchase. So I've seen it in the past. I'm not blasting sales people. I've seen it in the past where maybe they withhold a little bit of information or maybe they tweak the way that they deliver the message and the framing of it to where, you know, people want to pick up on it if you're not intimately familiar with the subject. It's a long saying.

Kasey Luft: And within kind of our industry, especially in the technology space, it's very easy to use technology, technological mumbo jumbo, that sounds really fancy. And people have no clue what it means. It's easy, that's what salespeople's main tactic is. They just, oh, I'm just gonna start rambling off, you know, this security protocol that you've no idea, SHA256, you're not gonna know what that means, but they're gonna

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right.

Kasey Luft: say, oh yeah, because of that it's secure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, exactly. And you know, there was a recent double-blind independent study that suggested that 97% of the people that are saying proprietary are completely full of shit. I'm kidding. There wasn't a study, but in my

Kasey Luft: Hahaha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: experience, in my experience, that's somebody waving a huge fucking red flag, alright? They

Kasey Luft: A

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: started

Kasey Luft: double

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to...

Kasey Luft: blind study, that's pretty impressive on that. Ha ha ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What is one thing that somebody can do or have done relatively easily within the CRM that they're using, any CRM that would make a meaningful difference?

Kasey Luft: Honestly, map it out. Walk through your steps. Map out, there's plenty of different mapping process, workflow tools. I'm a very visual person, so that's what we use with our clients. Maybe you're not visual, but I still suggest that it's the best learning tool for your team to understand how everything works. Map it out and see. where the inefficiencies lie. Once you, like, it's amazing when we go through this process, when we talk with our clients, they said, tell me what you do right now. And they're like, oh, we do this. And I was like, oh, I think we do this. But sometimes we do that. And like, this is kind of like a circle that we put on the map saying, hey, this is an area that you need to focus on

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: We've

Kasey Luft: and get

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: got

Kasey Luft: clear

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: no fucking

Kasey Luft: on

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: clue,

Kasey Luft: and build

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it turns

Kasey Luft: SOPs

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: out.

Kasey Luft: around. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Kasey Luft: So even just by sitting down, talking with your team. production level team, sales members, like what is your process? Like a lot of people just don't have a clue what they do. So if you just sit down, map it out, you're gonna get more granularity. You're gonna see, okay, this is a bottleneck. How do we fix that? Does it need to go to this person? Can we set up automations here? It is actually really simple, but a lot of people just don't take the time to sit down and even map it out.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That's an incredible point. And even if you think about it, the assumption that, hey, I think, we're super busy, right? And we can, the process can change over time, and we can assume this is the process, and I'm sales, and the marketing team can assume this. So there's a disconnect while you think you both know the process, you really don't. And that would be an opportunity to very easily point that out and address it and make sure that everybody's on the same page. That's fucking great. Yeah.

Kasey Luft: Yeah. And then internally, you can use that as a training tool for new members when they get onboard. And that's something that's not done enough. Like, hey, this is what we build the SOPs off of. This is how you can understand what we do. Whether you're marketing, whether you're sales, whether you're production, whether you're a site supervisor, whether you're on the roof crew, if you're giving people more insight to how the business works, it allows them to connect with the business more effectively so that they can understand the mission, the vision, and values that you are creating within the business and the difference that you're making. Thank you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mmm, preach. That's good. Well, dude,

Kasey Luft: I'm gonna

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I

Kasey Luft: have

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: am

Kasey Luft: to take

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: so...

Kasey Luft: a few of these snippets as well.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, we're gonna, listen, we're gonna get you out there. This is awesome. And then

Kasey Luft: Ha ha!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: what we're gonna do is we're gonna cliff hang because there's gonna be a part two because in light of all the technical issues that we had leading up to this, my battery's at 6% and I don't want to get cut

Kasey Luft: Oh...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: off. I got a real problem with people dictating when things end, like, you know, Riverside.fm or my camera or... So I'm gonna end it initially here before it dies. And dude, I wanna say thank you for all this information. It was absolutely incredible. There's no doubt in my mind. I get asked these questions all the time. So we're gonna chop it up. People are gonna watch the whole episode. And if people wanna reach out to you directly and inquire, what's the best way for them to do?

Kasey Luft: Yeah, reach out directly is my email. So Casey KSEY at clientric.co. So we're clientrics here, I'm consulting Casey at clientric.co and that's just my email. You can also come to us on our website at www.clientric.co and reach out and fill out our contact us form and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Again, I appreciate you brother. Thank you to all you at home, in your truck, everywhere else listening. And thank you to Rufor, because you guys help make this happen. We really do appreciate you. And we gone. Yeah, man.

Kasey Luft: Thanks Mike.

On today's episode, Mike has on Mat Smith from the I Drink from Skulls podcast. Mat has taken his life by the horns as he has suffered from addiction, jail time, and has suffered a spinal injury. From there he turned his life around, and has become an expert marketer specializing in Facebook Ads. He shares the importance of optimizing leads, building ads, A B testing, How to speak to your audience, creating an irresistible offer, and building influence, trust and credibility. Mike & Mat talk all things marketing, personal journey, optimizing your business, and avoiding marketing mistakes! Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5 Contact us : [email protected] Let's Connect! ==== ==== ==== Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, man. So I got a question. You have answers. We'll see. What

Mat Smith: Oh,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: did

Mat Smith: we're

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the janitor

Mat Smith: on.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: hold on? Hold on. Wait your turn. What did the janitor say when you jumped out of the closet?

Mat Smith: Well that was a shitty situation.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Supplies. Welcome

Mat Smith: Ah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: back to another episode of the Mission Control Podcast with your boy Mike Stearns, proudly brought to you by Ascend Digital Agency and the team at Roofer. If you need roof measurements, clean and pristine proposals to compel your, your customers or prospective customers to buy, hit up the team at Roofer. We're here today with none other than Matt Smith. Oh, hold on. No, we don't wanna laugh. That's the one. I'm still learning, folks, all right? I'm not the greatest host. I'm not a producer, but we're working at it. And that's all you can ask from me, is that I try my hardest to give you guys the best content possible. And today, Matt's gonna help me actualize that. Thanks for coming on, Matt.

Mat Smith: Oh good, my man, appreciate it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So where should we start? Where are you from?

Mat Smith: I am from a country town called Toowoomba in sunny Australia. So it's actually 5 a.m. here. The future, I'm like a day in front of you. I already know this podcast went well and I feel obligated to say, g'day mate, to all your guests.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: uh... and they appreciate it i'll speak for all of them because i have a new five a m and i this is it's this is that like a sweet spot for us right as i did we

Mat Smith: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: did like five

Mat Smith: you

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: thirty

Mat Smith: did

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: four

Mat Smith: the same.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: uh... yeah when is that one drop

Mat Smith: Another couple of weeks.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: A couple

Mat Smith: Oh no,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: weeks.

Mat Smith: you're out, you're out.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Am I?

Mat Smith: You're out there. I'm gonna get you the link.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Did I get tagged? I promise

Mat Smith: Don't worry,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: you'll

Mat Smith: man.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: know

Mat Smith: We

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: when

Mat Smith: got

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: this

Mat Smith: a

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: one

Mat Smith: good

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: gets

Mat Smith: plan

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: dropped.

Mat Smith: for you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Okay.

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Where

Mat Smith: He he.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: can people check that out if they wanted to see that interview?

Mat Smith: It's called the I drink from skulls podcast. Insert the skull here.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Ooh.

Mat Smith: We can get them the

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Well.

Mat Smith: link and listen along. That was a great, it was a good time.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Where did all this skull drinking, where did this start?

Mat Smith: Yeah, good question. So back in 2018, I believe it was, I used to do, I used to have a commercial cleaning building and renovation business here where I roll and I was getting really good at advertising for that business. And, you know, I saw a lot of the online marketers and everyone was talking about how they could help roofers get 20 or 30 new leads or new roof replacements or could they handle possibly any more work. And She's got sick of the bullshit, so... One day, on Facebook, I saw this chalkboard meme that said, You know what's wrong with society today? No one drinks from the skulls of their enemies no more. And in an instant, I was absolutely hooked. And I just got obsessed with it. I started posting about skulls, drinking from skulls. And the deeper meaning to it was, like, Are you sitting on the sideline getting splinters on your arse? Or are you someone that's gonna go all in, play to win, and give it your absolute fucking best? And I was just addicted to it from then and there. Everything I did had a skull type flavor to it. And it started to catch on. I quickly learned that if you post the same thing, if you're consistent with the same message, people will start saying it back to you. I started getting skulls in the mail, ice cubes, skull plants, you name it. People were sending it to us from all around the world. And I'm like, this is fucking crazy. This is cool. I'm onto

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: mmm

Mat Smith: something here. So I just ran with it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: well i like it

Mat Smith: You're

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: trying

Mat Smith: a

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to

Mat Smith: scout,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: drink

Mat Smith: aren't

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: some

Mat Smith: you? Ha ha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: from some skulls did uh...

Mat Smith: ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: by the way this is a clean show so we don't swear some have them

Mat Smith: I

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: at

Mat Smith: swear

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it that out just

Mat Smith: I'm

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: fucking

Mat Smith: gonna be in

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: with

Mat Smith: trouble.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: you

Mat Smith: Ha ha ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: and i would suck and no and i mean no one listens now but really no one would listen if we didn't swear a little bit here and there so

Mat Smith: Gotcha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: thank you to the audience for tuning in we appreciate you So Facebook you do a lot of Facebook. Yeah

Mat Smith: I'm the Facebook Ads Guy.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: The Facebook ads guy. You got a fuckin' license plate to prove it. So vain. I love it.

Mat Smith: Yeah, ads

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Now,

Mat Smith: man. Actually

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: ads man.

Mat Smith: a montage or takeoff to Seinfeld, the ass man. I'm like, well, that was cool. I'll be the ads man. I like.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: go. I like your rendition of it, okay? What would you say to a contractor that, you know, I've tried Facebook ads and it doesn't work? And I, you know, we get tons of leads and none of them fucking answer the phone.

Mat Smith: Yeah, yeah, great question. It's probably the, it'd be the, you know, top three questions and things that I get asked or things that I see. And I would say, you won't be the first to say it, you won't be the last. But what you do need to understand is a little bit more about Facebook. And I just show people my exact process. So the thing about Facebook ads is, think about why people are on Facebook or why they're on social media. They didn't go on and search for how they can get a new roof through their insurance or how they could upgrade to a metal roof. They're on there looking at dog videos, reels, memes, things about family and friends. They're on there to be motivated, inspired. They're on there to connect with family or friends or avoid whatever stuff they got going on in their life. So the intent with social media is different. And one thing I learned after generating hundreds of thousands of these leads, is that if you don't have a great system for getting in contact with your leads, and by great system, if you're not calling, connecting, messaging, emailing your leads within five minutes of them coming in, you have an 80% chance of not being able to ever get in contact with them. It's just that simple. So you have to understand the intent of Facebook and social media. You have to have a great system in behind the leads, and you have to have a consistent system that does the work for you, because most people don't really follow up too much despite what they say. And then, you know, you can't do what everyone else is doing. You have to have a way of really standing out for me specifically, and we show people this, but we have, we come up with some of the greatest offers that have been out on Facebook. I know that sounds a little bit flexy, but if

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Is

Mat Smith: I need

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: this like

Mat Smith: to,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: a revid-illusionary

Mat Smith: if I'm...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: roofing system?

Mat Smith: Could be,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: And there's only

Mat Smith: that

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: 19

Mat Smith: could be

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: spots?

Mat Smith: one of the things.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: He said it completely.

Mat Smith: I can't, that was one of the, that's funny. I came up with that like five years ago and, you know, marketers in basements all around the country sort of copied it from then and there. But yeah, you do have to have a great offer. That one we keep on the sideline, that was kind of a 2019

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Mat Smith: play, I would say.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I,

Mat Smith: for

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: you know,

Mat Smith: all those

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it's

Mat Smith: Facebook

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: funny.

Mat Smith: advertisers.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Well, we've

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: got, we've got clients in common and we've had clients in common. And like, I, for me, I don't, like, I never liked that, that flavor, but it fucking works, right? Like, it gets people, it gets people to give you, give, for them to give you what you want, right? Which is their information, generate the interest, now open the door to have that conversation, it fucking works. So yeah, it's, and I do, I still see them to this day.

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: All the time. Yeah. Ha

Mat Smith: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: ha

Mat Smith: if you've ever

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: ha.

Mat Smith: been annoyed by one of my ads, it's been a, and these are copied like crazy now. I don't really use them anymore. But if you've seen an ad that's like 25 homeowners needed, 19 homeowners needed, 17 home, I came up with those five years ago. They went viral at the time. They were getting leads at like three and five bucks in pretty much every market of the US. 20 bucks in the toughest markets of the US. Now they're copied to death, so that's why. You know, I've moved on. Gotta grow

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Sure.

Mat Smith: up. Gotta do the next thing.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So

Mat Smith: And

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: what

Mat Smith: that's what it's all about.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: will, right, evolving, right? Optimizing, that makes a lot of sense. What's piqued your interest as far as taking that avenue, as far as create the urgency, right? It's exclusive, right? What was it that clicked

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: for you that was like, this is the ad set that we're gonna go with?

Mat Smith: Well,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Way back when.

Mat Smith: it came from a number of things. When I first got started, a dude by the name of Tim Nussbeck hooked me into it. I was, like I mentioned, doing commercial cleaning, building renovation, and he saw I was doing really well with my own ads. My wife and I also had a wedding business, and we'd booked it out for three years, all from Facebook ads. So anyway, Tim hit me up, said if I could run some ads for him. He was sick of marketers, wanted to try something different. And that was one of the ads I came up with. Hadn't really been done back then. It worked super, super well. And what happened next was a lot of Tim's family, friends, people all across America started hitting me up. And I was literally running hundreds of ads every day in every market. And I started to get an insane amount of data to really figure out what worked. I would test everything you could imagine, some things you can't. Like I would test using a different emoji. I would test one different word. I was running that many ads and I built this much data that I finally figured out a real system that worked. And that was one of them. So,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mm.

Mat Smith: yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: What's your best performing ad these days, Matt?

Mat Smith: Eh, got a few that are just absolute ball terrors.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Ha ha ha!

Mat Smith: They, and by ball terrors, like they, I'm running them in 45 states. They work in pretty much every market. They're new. Some of the best stuff I've got are videos that just, they can't be hacked or stolen.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right.

Mat Smith: I've had a singer slash rapper perform this really cool, really catchy song that you hear it so much, you can't stop the singing it. will annoy you after a while, it's great. I love it. And it just, it, what I do different to everyone else is that I figure out how to speak to them, how to give people what they want, not just a free inspection, which most people, when they run an ad, that's what they do. I talk about the value that the, that the roofer can provide. And that's just one thing. We, we have a system that's designed to get leads in quickly through an irresistible offer. That's simply too good to refuse. And then it's what I do next that makes us stand out. I essentially build a wall around a prospect on Facebook where I retarget them consistently over and over and over and over and over again in a way that screams trust us, we're credible, we have more happy homeowners than you could ever imagine. So much so that we just consistently build influence, trust and credibility.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and smart. What's better, Google, Facebook, or door knocking?

Mat Smith: That's a good question. Why not all three? Each have their strengths, each have their weaknesses and not each one is right for each person. So one of the first things I say when someone hits me up about Facebook ads, I do a consult, I figure out what they've been doing, what they've tried, where they're at right now and where they're looking to go. And then I show them our system and then I point out the things that I've seen not work for people for. And by not work, It's not that it's never profitable. They're just not closing enough as what I want and what I need to consider a win. And that's, so for Facebook, it's great for people who have a strong sales system. They understand that if they give a lead to a rep too soon, they're probably not gonna call them. Seen it happen so many times now. But Facebook

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: call

Mat Smith: is

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the

Mat Smith: great

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: damn

Mat Smith: for

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: leads

Mat Smith: getting attention quickly. Call the damn leads right there. Yeah. Facebook is the number one go-to platform to get attention quickly, to get leads quickly. A great Facebook advertiser will get you cheaper leads and you need cheaper leads because you're gonna need more of them in comparison to Google. So it really comes down to the person's situation. It's also great for dominating a local market to compliment strong SEO or strong Google ads. because people are spending on average in between five to six hours on Facebook and Instagram a day. TikTok's putting a little bit of a spanner in that works, but for the most part, people are on there. So if you're not on there, your competition probably is. The thing with door knocking, how can you go past looking some like hitting a door, looking someone in the eye and setting appointment then and there? There's nothing stronger once you actually get the contact, right? That's kind of how I've seen it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Sure.

Mat Smith: So we actually do, we've done a combination of both. I would run Facebook ads, I'll reference a roofer I'm working with in Northern Colorado, running Facebook ads, building influence consistently, staying in people's face. And then when a storm hit, he had a team of four guys go and hit the doors and they did, they set 76 appointments and they closed 68. on contingency 64 ended up getting across the line in one day. And the combination of building influence, trust and credibility coupled with the fact with a team that knew exactly what to do, how to do it and they executed perfectly, like 1.4 in a day, that's insane.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mm-hmm.

Mat Smith: But for a team that doesn't wanna hit the doors, isn't going to get essentially a little bit aggressive and get the job done, that's not the right strategy for them. Now. talking about Google Ads, one of the best lead sources you can have, providing you have the budget to do it. I think the biggest problem with Google Ads comes down to two things. Number one, the person running the ad. If they're not an expert and they're not great at what they do, and you're losing 50, 70, $100 a click for roofing keywords, can be that high. Correct me if I'm wrong. You're going to burn through your budget really quick. And then on the backside of that, if you don't have a good sales system, a good process for taking that lead in and setting the appointment, you're gonna burn so much money. It's just, it'll be an absolute disaster. Is that what, when you do consults, is that what you've seen with people that have tried Google Ads in the past?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, that's a it's a really good point and one that's you know often overlooked It's like you know Google ads are Google ads are good. That couldn't be further from the truth I mean the platform itself is just a convoluted clusterfuck And they make it very challenging to be successful on that platform And and there's oftentimes things subtle things that Google will change that could cost you thousands and thousands of dollars You know so for instance You know automatically applying recommendations like, hey, click here and apply these recommendations. You're going to assume intuitively that it's going to be in your best interest to apply them. And what they're going to do is they're going to show you a higher optimization score. If you apply those recommendations, guess what? Your optimization score just went from 80 to a 90.2. Congratulations. Well, now

Mat Smith: Hehehe

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: they release a bunch of display ads that eats up your budget. Doesn't get you really return in this situation. And now you've spent an extra thousand, two thousand dollars, whatever the case may be. But they've taken it a step further and they've also done things like, hey, by the way, if you don't opt out of this in 14 days, we're just going to apply these recommendations for you. So they do some sneaky shit. And like, if you don't know what you're doing, if you're not well versed in the platform, it could be problematic. I know somebody who lost like 15 grand over the course of 60 days, just by, you know, like those little subtle things that were changing and he just didn't know. that's all they should hire me he's actually a friend of mine uh... he's a good dude and uh...

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: i i'd felt bad for but it was it was a tough lesson learned and it just kind of sucks oh yeah you know having someone knows what they're doing and are intimately involved in that platform on a consistent basis can make a massive difference as far as what you get out of it

Mat Smith: Yeah. Then I guess, okay, that makes sense, right? I think in comparison, you would need, this is a guess, so we don't do much with Google, but I would say you would need 15 Google leads versus 40, 40-ish Facebook leads to get a similar result or same result. That'd be my

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Mat Smith: guess.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, I would love to test it out and see what that proportion is. There's it's undoubtedly

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: going to be more on Facebook. You're going to spend less time and it's going to be, you know, what is your setup? What is your expectation? If you're working with somebody on Facebook, I feel that sets the right expectation and you're OK with those expectations as far as, hey, like there's going to be you're going to have a much higher. You're going to have a much lower cost per acquired lead, but you're going to have a lower proportion of those people book appointments. So then there's going to be more output from your sales team with less reward, so to speak, with, you know, if you reach out to 20. maybe 14 of them book, maybe 10 of them book, I don't know, but it's not going to be as high as a percentage of Google. That's fine. Like if you if you set that expectation and you know what you're up against, because if you can end up netting up huge on Facebook, like do it. You know, a lot of the times just like things with Google, like there's poor expectations set, people get burnt in their mind by like, I fucking called 10 people and I got three of them on the phone. And it's like, okay, well, I mean, if you expected that, and you could sell two of those like you're, or even one of them, you're probably netting up based on what those 10 leads cost you on Facebook, right? Even if it's

Mat Smith: That's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: 40,

Mat Smith: right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: 50 bucks a lead, you paid

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: $500 for that. If you sold the job, you did very well. It could be a little bit of a nuisance, but you're probably going to pay twice as much for that on Google.

Mat Smith: Yeah, exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So there's always like direct costs and indirect costs associated with what we're doing. But I liked what you said as far as like, why does it have to be this or that? Like I look at, I look at lead sources as cookie jars, man. And it's like, Yeah. If you just off word of mouth, if you never want to grow past whatever you're at, you'd be doing, let's say, one point two million. You want to stay at one point two million and word of mouth get you there and you constantly have 40 jobs on the books. And it's like, whatever, like, don't fucking spend money in advertising. I'm not trying to coerce you into spending money. Don't right. And then like my first thing I would tell you to do is like, hey, like set up Google local services. You know, you don't pay us to do that. You do it. Go do it yourself. Whatever. We can help you with some stuff, but go do that. And then, you know, if you get enough leads to satiate your appetite for growth, and keep your crew busy, like stop there. If you want to go a step further, like let's take a look at your website. What are you doing on Google Ads, SEO, Facebook? Like now you start saying, but like I'm a fat kid at heart. Like a little known fact, like when I was a kid, I played a lot of football. I was always overweight for town, right? So I'm running around with a garbage bag three hours before the game to shoot. Shed those last three, four pounds because

Mat Smith: Hehehehe

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I couldn't eat until I did. Right. Here's Fat Mike in a garbage bag. All right. And Jen, my editor, she better queue up like a dope little gift for that when we clip it. You know, so but like I want my hand in every fucking cookie jar. Right. If I'm trying to grow like I want leads, I want a dynamic strategy that is diversified and is going to bring me opportunities from all across the board. And. And I'm going to make sure that the folks that I'm supplying with these opportunities are fucking working for them. I'm going to make sure that they're doing things other than just taking my leads and calling them once to earn their keep. It's going to be it's going to be a benefit of working for a good company. It's not going to be an entitlement because once it becomes an entitlement, it's very hard for those entitled folks not to be entitled.

Mat Smith: Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Do you see that at all?

Mat Smith: 100%, yeah. And that's the thing, like, you know, paid leads and, you know, provided leads should always be treated as a bonus, as the gold, right? It takes work in and around them. If all we did was generate leads and appointments using Facebook and then the reps in the company didn't knock the doors, like I'm the first person to say, you need to be hitting the neighbors, you need to leverage the opportunity online for what you should be naturally doing offline because otherwise we hate money and what are we doing here, right? So you need to, yeah, like the strategy should hit people from every angle. And then leads should be treated like gold. They need to be worked well and you need to make the most out of them because not everyone provides them and they can be taken away too. So.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah. And you know, what I see is oftentimes you get into a place as an owner where you okay, let's say you've got four sales reps and they're driving all your revenue. Okay, fantastic. And 90% of that's coming from leads that you're paying for. Okay. How many times do they call on each lead? How many times after when it goes from, you know, lead to appointment held? or appointment scheduled how many times is a is a conversation being initiated or at least attempted to be initiated after they meet with that homeowner and they don't get the yes and the answer is like fucking zero and if it's not showed it show it to me in your crm um... and it whether it's if it's not documented it didn't happen because you need to

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: have data right you need to be able to say like on average we follow up three times so then you could say okay well it turns out that mike fucking sucks at his job in his lead suck right that's why we're not closing leads it's not because you know john's not following up john's column seven times a piece it's right here in the crm But even for people that do fall they don't document it and most don't follow up and if they follow up they follow up once or twice. You know so you go into a situation where let's say you build like a rehash campaign right and you have some rehash going it's like we just closed you know three deals out of the last 30 days of business it's like yeah you probably would have closed fucking 10 if your sales reps are following up.

Mat Smith: Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So let's not celebrate the fact that we closed three with the rehash. Let's figure out how we can get fucking time next time from people just doing their job, but it requires accountability. It requires you managing your employees. Um, and whether it's you directly, it's a sales manager. I think that that's a often an oversight in folks, um, in the trades. And I think that it's a, it's a very costly oversight.

Mat Smith: Yeah, a hundred percent. One thing I've learned, like our most successful roofer, he closes 90% of his appointments from Facebook. So it's not like it can't be done, but his system for setting the lead, the lead management, the CRM management is insanely good. What I've learned after doing deep dives in CRMs is that A lot of the data in there is BS. You gotta think about it. A lot of employees and a lot of team members, you don't think that they'll fudge some figures and just put in what you wanna see. You need to have an integrity check on your data. You need to be measuring every step of the process to ensure that the data is correct so that you can actually rely on it. At the time and time again, I've seen... The data in CRM's been absolute shambles. It looks good on surface level, but then when I really started to dig, the number of opportunities that hadn't been followed up with the number of proposals and quotes that had gone out without an outcome, the number of appointments that would had been canceled for absolutely no reason.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Hmm.

Mat Smith: gone black.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, I mean, what's that?

Mat Smith: I can't see you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Oh, no. I'm still

Mat Smith: Mine

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: here.

Mat Smith: does that. Okay, cool.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: It happens a lot, right?

Mat Smith: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Mat Smith: More than most people would imagine or think.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and I think the only thing that would be worse than not having data in your CRM to make decisions based on data off of is having inaccurate information. So making information based on data that's fucking just wrong. Right. At that point, you might as well guess because you're pissing in the wind. Right.

Mat Smith: Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So it's dangerous. It's it's a threat to your business and you should be vigilant in your approach to fix it. So if you haven't started, now's the time. Today's the day.

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: keep telling yourself we'll start Monday. This fucking 139 Mondays have come and gone. It's not gonna start.

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Do it now.

Mat Smith: You have to, you have to take action at that. I'll give an easy to understand example. That's sort of relative. Like what, are you measuring what's actually being said on the phone? The very first interaction when a lead comes in. All right. So if you're not and you're taking the word for it of maybe it's an office team member that's answering the phone or maybe they're supposed to call the leads, who knows? It depends on your situation. And If you're not recording that transaction, if you're not providing training to educate them on what to say and how to sort of, not coerce, but how to shape the conversation. And then you're relying on the data that, oh yeah, that lead, they didn't answer. That was a shit lead. This, this, and that's what goes into the CRM. Think about that. Whereas it could be as simple as instead of saying hello, that like, instead of just saying like, not getting that first initial impression right. People might be hanging up like crazy just because the phone isn't being answered correctly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, being abrasive as fuck versus, thank you for calling Matt Smith Consulting, how can I make you smile today?

Mat Smith: Exactly. our system,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Ha ha

Mat Smith: we record

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: ha. No.

Mat Smith: that and it would shock most people what's actually happening in their business.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That's a really good point. That is a very, very good point. So how do you go about doing that? You just record the calls?

Mat Smith: That's the first thing, recording. The next thing is having appointment setting training, sales training and role playing what needs to be said. And then practicing for being weird and wonderful objections so that they're very well versed in promoting the company, the product and the owners.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So hold on, you expect us to hire someone to take the calls, you expect us to record the calls, you expect us to listen to the calls, right? You expect us to have training on the calls, you want us to role play, I mean that sounds like a lot, Matt.

Mat Smith: Well, if you don't do it, your competitors will. The thing is though, you can do, someone's doing it right now. So maybe you don't have to hire someone. But what I would say is that if, yeah, like if you don't do it, someone else is going to, they're gonna steal your lunch on you. But it needs to be done. You need to learn how to communicate. It's not just gonna be a skillset that serves you when answering the phone. It's gonna serve in all areas of the business. The recording stuff, that's really easy to get some help with. There's lots of softwares and systems that can do that. And you don't have to listen to every call, but maybe just pick out a couple. You dedicate some time, you put it in the calendar once or twice a week, and you invest in the result.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: yeah it i couldn't agree more and i think i like we said about putting in the calendar if you don't put in the calendar snag a fucking happen i'll do it on

Mat Smith: That's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: tuesdays

Mat Smith: right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: well tuesday comes uh... life gets away you're busy shit running a business right like it's fine but be intentional about it The difference in opportunities being converted in revenue that would be generated as a result of that is fucking real. Just by like, just these simple little nuances, these little tweaks that can be made, such as how, what's being said when it's being, the phone calls being answered, the tone of voice, the delivery, the cadence of speech. It makes a big deal. I mean, I did a real not too long ago, it actually did pretty well. It's like, you know, Don't answer the don't answer the phone like you got off a fucking bender. Right? Because you know, the cold hard truth is like people don't trust contractors, right? So we're trying to create a situation to disarm them and make them trust you right as a marketing company. And when you pick up the phone, oh, I'm fucking hanging up on you. I don't trust you. That's not welcoming. Like, I don't want to I don't want to give you my money, especially not now. Bye. So yeah, there's a big difference, big difference in the potential outcome. and i think there's different there's opportunities along the way from the time that you pick up the phone always a time the contract sign for you guys to close more deals what would you say maybe another opportunity is aside from you know the inception of the call now it's answered

Mat Smith: not believing the sales rep, you know, and so I guess not believing is not the right word, but

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Trust but verify.

Mat Smith: exactly. And what steps can you put in place to ensure that the customer or the potential customer is getting the best experience possible? One thing everyone can do, whether it's yourself, a different team member or a new team member is play that role of quality assurance, customer experience. it gives you another opportunity to go after a deal that didn't close. And you take the frame of mind and you position it sort of like this, like, hey, hey Michael, I'm reaching out to you in an effort to improve our customer experience with XYZ company. My sole job is to see how your experience was with our sales rep, John. And then, you know, just by doing that. the prospect is likely going to tell you what really happened, whether they might not just might not have liked them. They might not have jailed. They might've been having a bad day, but you push back if they try and get you to close on that call, because your sole intention is to improve the experience. But by doing that, it gives you the other, it gives you another opportunity and you get to find out what really happened.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it's another thing to write you don't have to do it on every opportunity that doesn't close right you can do lakes spot monitor the situation say we're gonna do you know for doing a hundred for run a hundred leads a month and is five times. or 10 times. I like

Mat Smith: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: that. How many how many contractors do you know that are actively doing that.

Mat Smith: Um, with like, let's just use me as an example, probably 20%. But we, we actively push for it. We say, here, this is a great thing to do. Um, it's very simple and kind of just help make it someone's role. That, that same person plays the role of following up and trying to get more reviews on Facebook and Google as well. And then it turns into referral opportunities that were missed in the, you know, if the ref rep missed them. essentially trying to rehash as well. But yeah, it's probably the easiest thing someone could implement straight away, providing they've got a decent team structure, is to rehash their current opportunities, take it from that customer experience angle, you'll get a lot more deals out of it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: dropping golden nuggets here, Mr. Smith.

Mat Smith: Skull Bums.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Skull bones. What would you say is the biggest mistake that business owners are making when they're advertising?

Mat Smith: Uh, that's a good question. I would say, is this, is it doing it themselves or hiring someone? Or doesn't really matter.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Let's go both. So for the sake of the ability to reel this, what is the biggest mistake that folks are making when they're advertising their company themselves?

Mat Smith: Yeah, that's a good question. I guess if we're gonna go Facebook specific, it's not understanding the platform in its entirety. There are certain pieces to the puzzle that need to be done in order for it to be highly effective. Number one, you've gotta know who to put the ad in front of. You gotta know where to target it. You gotta know how to target. Number two, you've gotta have a great ad. It's got to stand out, it's got to grab people's attention, it's got to have a great offer. You can't just run a free inspection and think you're going to do well. Everyone's been doing that for 20 years. All right. So you need to figure out how the hell to stand out. You need to have an irresistible offer that's too good to refuse. And the way to do that is by pulling out the value of what you do and turning that into an ad, okay? The third thing is not understanding that Leads need to be contacted quickly. It is about speed to the lead. If you don't do it, it will not work anywhere near as good as it should. And number four, even when you've got a lead in, it's only, that's only the start of the process. Okay, the leads need to be followed up consistently. It's been statistically proven that a sale occurs after the 12th to 25th touch point. Appointment setting is very similar. We need a lot of touch points. Don't give up on your leads too early. turn it into a system where leads get contacted two to three times a day, every day, until you get an answer. This can be automated. It can also be just put in someone's calendar and it's a 10 to 15 minute task. It sounds a lot more than it is, but that's what we've seen the best success with from sales reps right up to top 15 roofing companies, right? The ones that do it well master that. And then you need to build up the intent of the lead, right? So if someone's just randomly scrolling along, they've seen a great offer, they still don't know who you are well, like not yet anyway. So it's then your job to consistently put your message in front of them in a way that makes them trust you. So without any of those things, your Facebook ads won't work anywhere near as good as they should. Not a lot of marketers that I've seen, not to bag anyone out, not gonna name names or anything. except Kevin, he's just a, we don't even know if he's a real guy at this point, but if they, he is, but Kevin is like the mantra for all fake marketers, right? Anyway, if you miss one of those crucial elements, it's just not gonna work anywhere near as well. And then you have to have the understanding of that's what the platform requires in order to get a great result. That's hard to do without really good training on it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Oh.

Mat Smith: Just in terms of training, I don't know if there's much out there that teaches all of those things. I haven't seen it, maybe it exists, I don't know. So yeah, if you don't have the right approach, it's gonna be very difficult. I imagine whilst not the same, if you were to run your own Google ads, you would experience similar problems in that if you don't understand the platform, if you're getting clicks run up like crazy, if you don't have a system for converting the lead, you're gonna waste a lot of time and a lot of money. And then SEO to do that on your own, damn. I think that would not be too easy, so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: although do look at this is plenty of folks out there look at all you gotta do is get surfer seo chat gpt and did you can

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: write a hundred articles a day and you'll be ranking in no time you guys do that and report back to me how works for

Mat Smith: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: you

Mat Smith: what a disaster that would create. Pretty

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: so

Mat Smith: sure Google doesn't like AI generated stuff just quietly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I don't know. All right,

Mat Smith: Ha ha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I'm

Mat Smith: ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: just the lead janitor here at Ascend, trying to make

Mat Smith: Hehehehe

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: sure everything stays clean, okay? What would you say for those that are hiring a marketing agency, what's the biggest mistake that you see?

Mat Smith: not vetting the person properly, and then just believing whatever they say, right? So a great marketer will set the expectation. They will be able to demonstrate real results in your market or similar markets. I have no doubt that's what you do, Mike. I feel I do that pretty well too. Another couple of guys that we both know do it well. They have proven results with people that are just like, you know, themselves. So that's super important. Okay. The other thing is that if the marketer isn't pointing out the flaws and the things that to be aware of and the reasons why it hasn't worked as good as it should, that to me is another red flag. It's one thing I'm very consistent about is sharing real results. I don't just take our dream clients who have the best results in from like Facebook advertising. Because if all I did was share them and I didn't set the right expectation that it's difficult at the start and it gets better as time goes on and you need a good

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mm-hmm.

Mat Smith: system and all that normal jazz, I feel it would be an unfair, like it would, it would not set the right expectation. So

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right.

Mat Smith: that, and then I, you know, sales gurus would hate it, but I, I'm, I'm more than happy to send references, connect with some people that I work with, connect with some people that I no longer work with to get the actual experience of what, what it's all about. I think

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Mat Smith: if you get those few things right, you'll always be in a good spot.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: yeah and you know and if it doesn't end up working out after that you feel good about the decision made and likely that the severity of the potential outcome positive and it will make it for sure is far less than the floors way higher right because let's face it you know The reason why people don't do the things that you just stated is because they understand that, hey, if I do this, there's less likely a chance that I close this person and do business with them, right? So they do things

Mat Smith: That's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: that

Mat Smith: right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: are disingenuous or less than forthright so that they don't have to address those things. So they keep the likelihood of that opportunity closing as high as possible. Well, again, the problem with that is that if you're not doing your due diligence and you're not vetting this person. There's a good like there's a lot more shitty marketers than good marketers. There's a lot more shitty dentists than good dentists, lawyers, roofers. Doesn't fucking matter. Most

Mat Smith: matter.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the majority of people aren't exceptional at what they do. And you heard it here first. Probably not, maybe not, but it's my show, so I say what I want.

Mat Smith: Exactly. If you think about

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Mat Smith: it though, think about every single person who watches this show can come up with some negative experiences they've had in any industry at any time. They're

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Mat Smith: all out there.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Protect yourself.

Mat Smith: So yeah, absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Protect yourself. And you made a really good point, like current people that you're working with. Like, I see people all the time given endorsements for individuals or companies, and they don't even have a fucking company. They don't work with

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: them. They don't even have a fucking company. They're in the same industry. You know,

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the roof is asking for us, you know, this guy that does. He's an HVAC technician endorsing this guy. It's like, dude, what?

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: So connect with the folks that you see and you know, I don't know.

Mat Smith: That's a good point too. Roofing marketing is not the same as advertising for a wedding business. If you find a generalist marketer who's great at doing local stuff, but they haven't done roofing, and I see this a fair bit, it like, I hate to be the one to break it, but it's probably not gonna work. Roofing is different. It's not impossible. There's people that do it well, but for the most part, for people who are, they might be good marketers at certain different niches and blah, blah. Come to the roofing, come to the real game. It's gonna sort you out, so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, and it's like you said, it's not impossible. Like. But there's like we deal in web development and SEO and Google ads. And there's, there's nuance to roofing that isn't the same as any, you know, HVAC or electrician, right. And there's certain vocabulary that's associated with the products and services that you guys are offering to your target market that we're very well versed in because for the last fucking, I don't know, eight years I've been doing it and my team, that's all they do. We've got like two clients outside of roofing and we're, we'll take clients outside of roofing. don't because everyone reaches out to us to work with us which is fantastic but we have a reputation for excellence in roofing we have a pest and lawn company that's in Memphis it was a referral of one of our roofing companies we fucking kill it for him

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I'll only take certain opportunities like that though because it creates friction in our process. It's not that we can't do it, but it requires a certain level of effort from myself and my team, and there's friction that comes along with that, and with friction comes headaches and less profit to where it doesn't make as much sense. So you can do it, but most companies aren't going, you know, they're gonna sign that contract and then fucking put in, you know, they're gonna half-ass it and your results are gonna suck. But if you vet them and you look through some of the work that they've done and you feel confident after doing that, then go with God. Give it a shot. But make sure, especially in that instance, that you dive, you dive deep, you talk to a lot of people, ask them what expectations are. Show show, ask them to show you a few instances of those expectations coming to fruition for clients that they're currently working with. Currently, recently. not legacy clients from 10 years ago, they've been with them from day one that they were doing work for free for so that they could build their business. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We've all been there, right? It's fine. But it's not a it's not a fair expectation. I love what you said, right? Pretty much, in not so many words, it's like, this is a potential outcome, but I'm not going to set this as the expectation, right? You can still market those you can still make it a an Instagram real or a Facebook story. I do the same shit. We've got a we've got a client east we've rebuilt his website to the some SEO like month one he ended up landing a deal that got him like a $600,000 commercial job. Now I could go around and tell everyone like you know, month one SEO we

Mat Smith: Yeah, 21

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: made him 600

Mat Smith: days

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: grand.

Mat Smith: in, 600k.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Dude, I

Mat Smith: Fight

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: mean,

Mat Smith: me. Ha ha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: you

Mat Smith: ha. Ha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: want

Mat Smith: ha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it or not? Like,

Mat Smith: ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: yeah, exactly.

Mat Smith: Ha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Like that'd be a

Mat Smith: ha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: fucking dick move. Right. Because

Mat Smith: ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I know that is such an outlier. Now I'll talk about it, but I'll also reign you back in and like, here's typically what you find. We've had clients that, you know, just step up to bat. They've never played baseball and they fucking smoked a fastball out of the stadium. And great. It's fantastic. We can high five a little bit, but I'm going to let you know that, Hey, let's take the win and move on because. And a month where your Google ads aren't performing well, I don't want you to fucking freak out. Right. That's why we typically deal with like a 12 month range. Like that's a robust enough data set and size of data to be like, okay, on average your lead cost was $148. That's good, that's a good expectation. We hit it, fantastic. Don't fucking, don't tell me that you want out of your agreement if it's 227 next month. And don't tell me you want to triple your budget based on the fact that we hit it at 96 bucks this month. Or if you want to triple it's fine. I won't fight you too hard

Mat Smith: We'll

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: on

Mat Smith: take

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it. But

Mat Smith: it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: shit son.

Mat Smith: I guess the other thing there is, yeah, don't, back to the legacy stuff, don't rely on the L Bundy of marketers. They killed it in high school, scored four touchdowns,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Ha ha ha!

Mat Smith: but haven't done anything in 20 years. I had to get that in there, it was in the head.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Good, it's so true.

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Is bigger better?

Mat Smith: Big R in terms of company revenue.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: bigger agencies

Mat Smith: Bigger agences?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: course we're talking about agencies

Mat Smith: Hmm, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't, I have to base this off the data that I've gathered over the last five years. I guess it's, I guess the thing that impacts the data, which is literally people reaching out, telling us about their experience with who they've worked with, blah, blah. They're normally reaching out because they haven't had a good experience. So I guess I haven't spoken to that many people who have had a good one with the big guys, but just from, if we just look at it from above. And by what do you mean by big? Like they've got 500,000 clients, that sort of jazz.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah, sure.

Mat Smith: Big, big, yeah. It depends what you're, what you're, what's important to you is quick responses, like same day responses or problems and questions answered and handled within 24 hours. Is that something that's important to you? I have to say that in my experience with roofers, and I think you would be the same, because we both don't suck. We have tremendous hair. That is important to most people. You want your shit answered. You want, my bad, we'll pull the swear. But you want your problems solved quickly, or at least to be heard in an efficient manner with a big company where you are just a number and you have a different account manager all the time. This is the feedback I've got. I don't think you're gonna get that experience. Add to that what are the results like. That's something I can't really speak of, but in my personal opinion, Um, I, I feel that you're going to get the best support and the best opportunity to get great results with someone who genuinely cares and someone who's very much invested in your company. Um, it's going to be someone who's just like you as a roofing business. Um, I don't feel that's probably going to come in, in the way of, of the big national people that, you know, they sign you up, you don't hear from them. Again, this is just sort of feedback I've heard. The

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah.

Mat Smith: only thing that's important is that the invoice is automatically paid on a monthly basis, which you can't get out of, right?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right.

Mat Smith: To me, I don't like any of that stuff. It's kind of what we took a stand against when we started. So my personal experience, long-winded way of saying it, I would believe that a smaller agency that has, you know, you're the same. We work with people in most states of the country. is going to be able to give you a better experience and a better opportunity to get better results.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Well said. I like especially what you hit on. My least favorite class in higher ed was political statistics with Dr. Michelle Benson. What's her name? Benson Saxton. She had two last names. And she was an awesome teacher. I just hated stats and nothing. The only thing I hated more than statistics was political statistics because I would, you know, I can usually read and digest things pretty well, synthesize the information, pull it out. I would read the same three pages four fucking times and I have no idea what I read. So it was challenging. Needless to say, you made a point about, OK, so I've got a I'm basing this off my experience. Now most people are not happy with their provider when they reach out. So it's skewed, right? So the skewed nature, that data, it doesn't provide for what's called random sampling and statistics. Right. So you're not taking a thousand people that are spending at least a thousand dollars throughout the country without regard to the size of the agency they're working with and then testing what their experience was with a large agency for a small agency. So therefore it would be statistically insignificant. doesn't fucking matter Matt Smith it doesn't matter what you say sorry

Mat Smith: Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: that's what that's what doctor Michelle will tell you so

Mat Smith: That's correct.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: if you're listening if you if you're listening I'm sorry haha or you're welcome one or the other I don't know I

Mat Smith: She

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: can't

Mat Smith: might

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: call

Mat Smith: love that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: it

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: yeah we will set a clip in an email or something I still have around my UB email so that's all good yeah I think you also you made some really good points as far as like you know what What is your desire for the dynamic of that relationship to look like? Are you okay with, you know? Folks getting taken three days, four days to get back to you. And that can happen with a smaller large agency.

Mat Smith: Ken.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Right. But there's going to be there's going to be clues leading up to your relationship. If you unless you just, you know, randomly talk to someone, say, let's do it. You know, test out like if you call them, are they accessible or whoever your point of contact is, do they respond to you? If they can't take your call, how long does it take them to get back in touch with you? Because I'll tell you what. If somebody is trying to get your money. by way of providing services and it takes them a day or two to get back to you. And there's no and shit happens. But if there's no explanation, if it's kind of just like you feel like they're not trying very hard, it's probably not going to get better once you commit to spending money with them. They're

Mat Smith: That's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: probably

Mat Smith: right.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: going to work the hardest they're going to work to get your business and to be high touch and accessible to you before you give them your money. So maybe it's a red flag. I don't know. I would like to understand what so

Mat Smith: The genitacy

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: what

Mat Smith: is all

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: what's

Mat Smith: though.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: the next well any jobs idea supplies you know so those

Mat Smith: Exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: was a great job I love that it was my best dad joke admittedly but fine whatever what is what you see in the future in is there anything that you see in the near future that's going to make a large impact in the way that people are

Mat Smith: I think that the classics are going to stay around for the next five years. One thing that will impact at some point is AI. I think it's a little while away yet from being something that someone can just go to and does all your marketing, does your SEO, blah, blah. And the reason for that is when someone uses AI and they make a post or they write an ad with it, the first thing someone can like when someone else sees it. Oh, that's AI,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: to

Mat Smith: that's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: LGBT.

Mat Smith: fake. Boom, they click off like an ad on the TV, on the old television, all right? You order, your brain is tuned in, it's like, ah, that's crap. So it's not there yet. It will be at some point, how long that is, I don't know, but the number one opportunity that I see is investing in your personal brand, is building an audience, not to necessarily make cash out of right now. But being well known, well trusted in your market is something that will pay off for years and years to come. You can do that by, you know, having half decent video. It doesn't have to be high quality stuff, but being consistent with content. I feel that's the number one thing everyone should be doing. Everything can be built upon from that. And if you're not doing it, someone else will.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: That's your fucking, that's your shit

Mat Smith: It's

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: right there,

Mat Smith: that simple.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: ain't it?

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: If you're not doing it, someone else will.

Mat Smith: It's a primal desire.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I like that. God damn.

Mat Smith: There you go.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I've got so we're going to end up doing another show because I've got a lot that I want to want to talk to you about as far as like Matt Smith himself and not the ads man right so we dealt with the persona and we got a lot of valuable insights into questions that I had and I'm sure is going to add a lot of value to everyone listening and I think that the next show what we'll do is we'll dive into and maybe I did it as backwards but again I don't give a fuck because it's my show I can do it backwards ha I think we'll do another show where we talk all about Matt himself and not the ads man. What do you

Mat Smith: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: think?

Mat Smith: I love that. Well, when you're the founder of Ascend and you go into the moon, who says we have to go directly? Like we can go whatever way we want. So,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: We'll take the scenic route.

Mat Smith: yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Yeah. I mean, would you be obliged to come back for another episode

Mat Smith: Yeah,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: at the

Mat Smith: for

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Mission

Mat Smith: sure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Control podcast? Yeah?

Mat Smith: Absolutely.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Okay. Well, then that's what we're going to do. Do you have any questions before we wrap up?

Mat Smith: Um, I liked your last question. Like where do you see the opportunity or the potential disruptors in the roofing and home improvement space?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: AI?

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: Is it a fucking cop out cause you said it? So, this is what

Mat Smith: Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: I'm thinking. You know, everybody understands the value of video. Nobody fucking does video. Right? Why? Well, cause I don't wanna be on video. Or, um, you know, it's just, I got so many things going on. That's like, okay, well then have one of your sales reps fucking go up on a roof when they're inspecting it and you know, do that when you're doing your 33 point inspection that you're advertising on Facebook as opposed to just a free inspection, I don't know. What do I know? But

Mat Smith: I would never.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: here's what I'm thinking, here's what I'm thinking. Is with all the technology AI like there's gonna be deep fake technology that's gonna be readily available to a lot of people and like many people use that malevolently and some folks will leverage that in a very positive way. So for instance, If I have, if I can input a hundred videos of Mike Stern saying a bunch of shit that nobody wants to hear about and then I can take that same face And superimpose via prompt like, hey, I want this person to say this, this and this. Well, now I can come up with an outline through like a chat GPT of topics that I want to hit. I can I can type all these things in, I can elaborate on them, I can make them mine, and now I can make a perfectly articulated video where you can't tell that the mouth is superimposed over my actual mouth, and it's an AI video of me as opposed to some fucking cheesy avatar that talks like this,

Mat Smith: Mm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: right? And it'll have my voice, and it'll have my delivery of my tone, my inflection. All the things that make y'all love Mike Stearns will be available through like a deepfake technology, right? able to create content, you'll be able to create trust and credibility, you'll be able to create sequences automatically through like your CRM, as far as delivering even intro videos of whatever sales reps assigned, they're going to get this video. And then when it hits this status, you're going to get another video, it's going to be this and it can be used in so many different ways. And for those that in there will still be a lot of people that don't fucking do it.

Mat Smith: That's Piro.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: It can be spoon fed to them and they'll spit it out and that's fine. uh... but for those that you'll take advantage of those types of advances in technology and leverage it for the better betterment of their company i think they're going to see fucking massive gains and who knows maybe i developed technology

Mat Smith: They've had a day first.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency: You heard it here first, folks. Dude, you're fucking awesome. I really appreciate you coming by. The ads man, Matt Smith, drinking from fucking skulls, folks. Appreciate the audience, and again, we appreciate Rufor for help bring this show to life. And we gone.