Mission Control Podcast

In today's episode, Mike is joined by guest Matthew Danskin. Matt is an entrepreneur who has played a role in many companies, such as The Building Experts Institute, Boom Institute, and Restoration Referral System, to name a few. He teaches restoration contractors how to develop productive referral relationships consistently. Matt talks about how they have stepped up the game with the production of their online courses and also gives insights into the challenges of successfully producing instructional content at a high level. The conversation turns towards AI and the future of technology—the challenges of raising kids in the digital age, relevant to both of them as fathers.

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

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

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

Matthew Danskin:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/matthew.danskin

Building Experts Institute:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buildingexpertsinstitute

Website: https://buildingexperts.institute/

Boom System:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Boomsystem.io

Website: https://boomsystem.io/

Restoration Referral System:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/restorationrs

Website: https://www.restorationreferralsystem.com/

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:01.647) Matt, what's going on, bro?

Matt Danskin (00:07.204) Hey man, just enjoying my time.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:12.623) Hmm, you and me both brother. We're back for another episode of the Mission Control podcast brought to you by your boy Mike Stearns and proudly sponsored by the team at Rufor. If you guys don't use Rufor, you should. There's a lot of reasons why, but few that come to mind are their instant roof quotes. They're great. Allow you to differentiate yourself and help give people what they're looking for when they're searching for you. You'll close more deals. Use that with their proposals. And I mean, their team is second to none. So there's gonna be a link down in the description. You can click it.

They'll know that I sent you and you'll be happy that you did. I promise. I promise. Without further ado, Matt Danskin back for a second tour part due of the Mission Control podcast. I mean, how excited are you to be here today?

Matt Danskin (00:56.26) You know, it's one of my lifelong goals to be on this podcast, not once, but twice. And I can check it off the bucket list.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:07.056) Yeah, you know, we make dreams come true here. So I'm happy that you feel that way and happy we can help you with that. I'm just, I'm happy to be a part of the, of your aspirations and bringing those to fruition. So thank you.

Matt Danskin (01:20.356) Thank you, man. I didn't know you were working with Rufor. I actually did a training with them on their like masterclass series thing, like a month ago and it went really well. Yeah. I was.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:27.824) Mm -hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:33.265) Yeah, they are. We've we worked with them for a long time. Just there's kind of like a symbiotic relationship between what roofers need from them, the way that ties in together. And for the longest time, it was like the instant estimator and them drawing up their proposals.

with a few hour turnaround or whatever. And, you know, consistently what we found is that every single one of our customers that we were working with, that were working with us, working with Rufr, just had nothing but great things to say about them as far as how well the products work, the experience that they had, you know, if they had issues, their customer support. So a lot of things aligned for us. And it's like it just made sense to kind of partner.

Matt Danskin (02:12.74) Yeah, that's awesome. I like what they got going on for sure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (02:16.114) Nice. What was the topic for the master class?

Matt Danskin (02:21.988) It was inspect something around inspection. So we actually did. We did a part two for that too, because we did the part one was so popular that they were like we gotta have you back. And so we did part two as well. Same, right?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (02:33.549) Same. Yeah. Savvy move. So you have a couple companies, right? Tell the audience, what are the names of those companies?

Matt Danskin (02:47.716) So restoration referral system, I've been doing for about four and a half years, teaches roofing contractors and restoration contractors how to create referral relationships with insurance agents. We don't do a lot of different things with that company, we just do that one thing really, really well.

And then Building Experts Institute, about a year ago I started with Matt Mulholland and another guy, John Tillman. We purchased the National Claims Institute. We produce really high quality, in depth.

expert -led training. So trying to tackle more of the technical side of roofing and claims as opposed to sales and management and all that sort of stuff that a lot of people focus on. We're, you know, properly identifying hail, doing a thorough inspection, dealing with engineers, writing exactimates, all, you know, documenting your claims, understanding building code, assessing repairability, all that sort of nerdy stuff. But that nerdy stuff is really important.

too.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (03:55.793) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So with restoration referral system, very specialized focus on one thing. And that makes sense, guys. You know, if you got a, if you've got a heart issue, you don't want to go to your just family physician primary care to have them diagnose what's wrong with your heart. You want to go to a cardiologist because they've been studying hearts for hopefully a very long time. And they're going to be much better equipped to give you guidance as far as how to have you an optimal cardiac health. I would think that's what I would do.

Matt Danskin (04:26.148) Sounds good to me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:26.354) So go see Matt, figure out how you can build these relationships to where you can get a ton of leads, huh? And then the Building Experts Institute, that is, you're covering a lot of stuff. So is it supposed to be a hub where I can come as a...

Matt Danskin (04:39.62) Yeah, so...

Matt Danskin (04:48.868) sorry, it kind of glitched out for me for a second. But, B E I, if you've ever seen.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:52.72) Christian, we'll cut this.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:58.417) So as building experts Institute, is it supposed to be a hub that I can go to as a contractor and really learn all facets of the business or are there certain clusters that you guys are going to specifically get people up to speed on?

Matt Danskin (05:12.9) So we're not trying to tackle all facets. Like I said, we're not trying to tackle sales. We're not trying to tackle management and running your company and your finances and your marketing and all that sort of stuff. Business development, it really is just focused on the technical side of things.

A lot of the the claim stuff that people take for granted and are lazy with and bad at because they don't know any better, frankly, we're.

we're taking and teaching very, very thoroughly. We're getting the best people on the planet. So my, you know, we've, we've kind of copied the business model of masterclass. If you're familiar with that, where they take who is, who is the very best person to teach and speak on this topic. Let's get that person. Let's go really, really in depth. It's not just going to be a little summary, you know,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (06:02.159) Mm -hmm.

Matt Danskin (06:18.372) on this thing, you're going to understand this better than 99 % of people in the market when you're done with this course. And...

and then we produce it beautifully. John Tillman is our director of media that we shoot it with multiple cameras that are really high -end cameras and he knows what he's doing with them and professional lighting and professional audio and then we added everything down so that's what we're doing right now with the courses that we have in production.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (06:49.04) Hmm. That's amazing. What my concern with whether it's enrolling in a course or like selling courses, the percentage of people that sign up and don't do anything with it, right? Like even if they attend it, they watch it, like it doesn't get.

there's no action plan associated with that is there some sort of methods that you have as far as trying to bolster what percentage of people that enroll in the course are actually consuming the content and not only that they're actually doing something with that content that's going to change their business.

Matt Danskin (07:25.092) Yeah, so with like with restoration referral system, it is very much like you could get all the information and then do nothing with it. And obviously that's going to do nothing for you. And so I've had to kind of bake into the process. All right, we're going to learn this thing. And all right, now we're going to do that one small thing. We're going to make sure, you know, I still can't make a horse drink, but I can cram their head pretty close to the water is what I like to say with with Building Experts Institute.

really once you have that information, that is going to work its way into your system. Understanding how hailstorms happen and the way that the damage presents itself and the way to document it and all those types of things, they may not adopt our processes 100 % the way that we teach it, but that information is going to better equip them to...

look at a roof and understand what did or didn't happen here and understand how to make that case to the insurance company or to the homeowner or whatever the case may be. That one's a little bit easier. I would say it's almost like a Netflix subscription in the sense of like you sign up for BEI, you get access to everything. Now I have a Netflix subscription and I haven't watched anything in a month.

but I keep my Netflix subscription because I might want to watch it next month. I might have some free time on my hands. I want to sit down and watch that new series that they've got out or that new course that BEI has come out with. And so we don't necessarily force people to do that stuff, but we do want to make the information so good and the way that it's presented so good that you actually enjoy it.

I know that's kind of a foreign concept in our industry because most stuff is shot on an iPhone with the wind blowing in the microphone. And I know you're sitting here in a studio with beautiful production. I'm actually on my laptop here. This isn't what our courses look like. And most of them are with people prettier than me. But the point of it is we're...

Matt Danskin (09:47.62) If you can make that viewing experience and that listening experience better, and then the information is so good that it makes you money, it makes you more successful, that's what we're doing to lead people to go, you know what, I'm gonna invest my time into this, I'm gonna learn this stuff, I'm gonna use it, because I got a little bit of it, and it's working.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (10:10.127) mmm I love that what's a what some of the critical feedback you've gotten thus far

Matt Danskin (10:17.892) Critical is in like bad.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (10:21.359) Not bad, just like not raining endorsements. Like when like we're doing this meetup thing and one of the things that we tried to do was like a focus group and it was a lot of things that people felt good about. I'm like, yeah, but I want to know like what you don't like about this. Like tell me, has there anybody, has anyone spoken out as far as things like where they see opportunity for improvement?

Matt Danskin (10:31.044) Mm -hmm.

Matt Danskin (10:35.844) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (10:40.612) You know, I think one of the biggest downsides to trying to have really high quality production and trying to go really in depth is that it slows down how quickly we can crank out courses. And so people are like, all right, I'm ready for the next one. I want more, I want more. And we're not gonna compromise on that quality. We're not gonna...

you know, just spit something out. And so I think that's been frustrating. I mean, that's frustrating for me because I'm like, I want to get all this information out as quick as possible, but it takes time to deliver on that level of quality. So like, that's like the, you know, what is your biggest weakness? you know, sometimes I care too much, right? Like, you know, it's a, yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (11:25.583) Good answer.

Matt Danskin (11:30.564) But some of the things I teach our inspection course, and that's probably been our most controversial because our test squares, I will mark every legitimate hail hit in a test square. So we might have 70 hits in a test square. And 99 % of roofers are gonna mark 10 and then just go 10 plus. And.

Because that's what the insurance company told them to do. That's what the adjusters taught them to do. And the problem that we see is these guys are marking 10 and then the insurance company is looking at their photos and maybe some of those hail hits didn't photograph very well. Maybe a couple of them are not hail. They're blistering or a manufacturer defect or whatever the case is. And then now they go, hey, four of those I don't agree with you on. You.

you got six, our threshold is eight to 10, we're gonna prescribe a repair. And instead of that roofing contractor spending five more minutes to actually document it, now they're stuck. And so some of those things like that, that I truly deeply believe this is the best way to go about it, there's just that friction where people are like, I've done it for 10 years, I've...

I've sold this many millions of dollars in roofs and I get this stuff approved, I'm gonna keep doing it my way. And I'm like, all right, cool, do it your way. But next time that you get one denied that should have been approved, that probably would have been approved had you spent another couple minutes on it, think of me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:13.138) So it's like a situation, and I'm ignorant to this stuff, but based on what you're telling me, so if you're doing 70 strikes versus 10, the sample size is way bigger. So even if they, let's say they minimize what you've marked up by 60%, you still have a situation where there's 30 strikes, right? And it's much harder to say, well, just repair it because there's 30.

Matt Danskin (13:33.38) Yeah, yeah, they, you know, for...

Matt Danskin (13:38.82) Right, yeah, so if their threshold and different carriers have different thresholds of what they consider, you know, significant that might be six or eight or 10 or 12 or 20, whatever it is. If we're taking a sampling of the roof, which is 100 square feet, and most people's process, and we're using that to determine how much damage is all over the roof. Again,

If I mark everything, they can say, hey, I don't agree with some of these. We're still going to be above their threshold. The result still ends up, this claim is approved. We're building the roof.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:17.522) That seems pretty intuitive, why is it controversial?

Matt Danskin (14:22.66) Cause people are lazy. I don't know if you noticed this.

Matt Danskin (14:29.412) Yeah, I mean, I don't know that it's all that they're lazy. It's just that they've had some success doing the bare minimum. And so it's hard to see the forest for the trees and say, you know what, the ones that I am struggling with could be solved very quickly and easily just by doing this every single time.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:52.338) I mean how much extra time on each roof does it take to make the additional 60 circles?

Matt Danskin (14:59.94) I mean like maybe five minutes. Maybe.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:01.585) Yeah, I mean, it feels like a disproportionate amount of upside for the effort that would have to be exerted.

Matt Danskin (15:08.516) Yeah, that's why it's one of those things that is like, I'm not gonna change even if you don't like this. I think this is the way to go. And so I'm gonna keep pounding that drum until people adopt it or don't.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:21.619) Yeah, whatever. It's your world, live in it. So what has been, I guess, as far as like the curriculum that you guys have deployed, what has been the most viewed? Where have you gotten the most engagement?

Matt Danskin (15:39.14) The first course that we came out with is called Defeating Unethical Engineering Tactics, which is just a master class on when an insurance company engages with an engineer, essentially for the purpose of denying your claim.

how to navigate that situation. It's like a college course on that topic. Matt Mohon does a really good job of that. He's taught that topic and developed that training for years now. And that's something that...

you're not going to find anywhere else. There's other places where they're going to teach you about what hail damage is, maybe not to the degree we do. There's other places they're going to teach you how to inspect a roof, probably not the same way that we do, but that's something that it's like nobody else touches. And so we kind of own that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (16:40.852) So how frequently I know that there's challenges to how frequently you're putting out content, how frequently is new content being added to the library?

Matt Danskin (16:52.484) It's about every six weeks right now.

we're releasing a new course. Our goal is to have that once a month. We're not there. We're not there just yet. We've got eight courses out, but I've got three that we've recorded that are in production right now. And so we'll have our next course out here in a couple of weeks. There'll be another one about four weeks after that, another one about four weeks after that. You know, we're not guaranteeing we're going to have a new course every week, but that is something that we are working really, really hard on.

really hard to meet that mark.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (17:34.132) Where did this come about?

Matt Danskin (17:38.916) the business in itself. So I've known Matt Mulholland for years. I've developed a restoration referral system. In doing so, I hired a video guy, John Tillman, and found somebody who's really, really great at that.

I saw Matt had the National Claims Institute, which he was providing great education. People had really good feedback about the information that they were getting. It was just difficult because you had to...

you know, fly down to Florida, take a few, you know, take time off of work, go, you know, sit through these courses. It's just the logistics of it added a lot to the cost. The fact that they could only train so many people made the cost high as well. So it was something that that business wasn't really thriving because they couldn't get enough people to spend a bunch of money on these courses. You know, it wasn't a great deal for the.

the students because they had to spend so much just to get there to learn this stuff. And so,

you know, kind of came up with the idea of like, let's get this really good information out to the masses. Let's record it really, really well. Let's have it available 24 seven. Let's make it accessible and affordable for everyone to have. so that, you know, we can, we can make our business successful by having lots and lots of users, you know, subscribing to this training as opposed to trying to make all of our money off of a handful of people.

Matt Danskin (19:18.982) that we're overcharging for the training.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:24.597) So how long did it take to go from that point to the inception of BEI?

Matt Danskin (19:33.224) About six months. You know, it's something that I, even as restoration referral system, I had kind of played around with the idea of tackling more topics and bringing other people in on doing that. But it was just a matter of like the right people and the right skill sets came together at the right time.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:00.885) I love that for you.

Matt Danskin (20:05.092) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:07.637) So what else is new, man? You're welcome.

Matt Danskin (20:08.74) Thanks.

man, I am, you know, it's, it's summertime here, at the time of this recording, if you're watching this later. so I'm kind of enjoying, being home and, you know, working from home and developing courses and all that sort of stuff. We get into the off season, so to speak, and it's, you know,

traveling for conferences, for trainings, for all sorts of stuff. So that's kind of the rhythm of my life right now.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:44.726) So how long do you get this reprieve?

Matt Danskin (20:52.676) About three months. It's about three months of not traveling and about nine months of traveling.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:59.734) It's a lot of traveling.

Matt Danskin (21:02.596) I mean, I'm not traveling constantly during those nine months, but there's a good bit of it. How about you though, man? You just had an absolute game changer in your life.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:15.542) Tell my little Everett.

Matt Danskin (21:17.956) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:18.742) Yeah, he's something special that kid. He's growing quick too. Bulking season was a success from months zero to six, so he's up to like 20 pounds. Now we're trying to lean out just a little bit. Not really lean out, more so just curb the bulk, right? So he's doing great. Brings me a lot of joy and yeah, it's amazing. It's a...

Matt Danskin (21:28.132) Okay. Nice.

Matt Danskin (21:37.828) Okay. All right. Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:43.286) My daughter's turning 17 and lots changed in my life and things that you buy for kids and things like that. So it's been a very interesting journey.

Matt Danskin (21:56.708) I bet man, I've got my youngest is two and a half and I'm glad to be done with the baby stage till the grandkids come around.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:08.854) Yeah, yeah, and then like the grand, I always look forward to being like a grandparent, right? It's like, yeah, bring my grandbaby over. We'll hang out for like five hours. They'll think I'm the coolest person in the world. I'll let them do whatever they want. And then here, take your kid back, right? Sounds magical. Yeah. Things at the center going great. Team's going well. We just brought on an account manager here. We're getting her trained up and

Matt Danskin (22:24.388) That's the dream.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:34.967) assimilated into the culture. It's been a lot of fun. I thoroughly enjoy it. We're fortunate to have a great group of clients and partners and things like that. So I mean, yeah, just one foot in front of the other. Brick by brick by brick.

Matt Danskin (22:52.036) Let me, can I ask you some questions? Does that work for the format?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:56.47) okay let's turn the table Christian do some sweet editing on this

Matt Danskin (23:05.156) So in the digital space, obviously it'd be great if customers came to work for you or work with you. What do you see, but even outside of Ascend or anything, what do you see as the biggest changes happening in the...

like website space, you know, not necessarily roofing specifically, but like, you know, I don't stay up to date on these things. Like it, is there any like major changes with, with AI or with SEO or any of the things?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:47.192) yeah, always changes, always big changes. You know, there's some like digital marketing coaches out there that'll tell you all you need is chat GPT.

You know, you can eliminate marketing agencies in their entirety and, you know, just, just do everything with, with chat GBT and you're going to be great. I don't take that stance. I don't, we've, we've used AI's and implemented it in the facets of our business really for efficiency. I think that the, it's a great tool. I think that there's plenty of opportunity for it to grow. I feel like from its baseline to where it's at now, it's improved considerably and it'll continue to do that. But I think that anybody for, for a lot of, especially marketing companies, the ones that are going to continue to add value.

and make impacts for their clients. It's going to be how they leverage these different resources, right? I'm a part of a bunch of forums like outside of roofing and you know, a lot of people are pushing like AI created images, websites, things like that. And it's like...

you can get you know you can tell that there there wasn't much time energy and attention put into these things like where will be in twelve months twenty four months no fucking clue honestly because the rate of innovation and and the rate of which things change it's it's crazy you know when when a i started becoming more pervasive

Matt Danskin (24:55.204) sure. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:05.943) I bet on Nvidia. I was like, they make like hardware to integrate with like these software things and AI. I'm like, yeah, we're gonna do that. I'm really glad I did that. It was a nominal amount of money, but it always feels good to get a win, right? So whatever. Interesting side note. Yeah, I think that.

It's like the AI stuff is so useful for so many reasons, right? Like if you're trying to create content, you're having writer's block. If you're trying to develop SOPs, but I think that there's a, there's an underlying principle that always has to be paid attention to. It's not just like here, put a, put a prompt in, pull all of this out, slap it on an SOP and like now go run your company. Like there's nuance to that, right? Especially like for, for if you're creating standard operating procedures, right? Like use that as a framework and then refine that framework and then take the framework that you've created for that SOP.

Matt Danskin (25:48.324) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:56.313) And then make it your own because your company, company A versus B versus C versus D, like they're all going to change a little bit. They're all going to have different flavors and nuance to them. So I think like that's an instance where as opposed to sitting down with a pen and a paper and trying to write out, you know, a 15 page SOP for something within your company, that really sucks and it's time intensive and not a lot of people are going to do that. Use things like AI and the tools that are afforded to you to streamline that process, make it easier on yourself and accomplish more, right?

yeah, I'm, I'm very interested to see like over the next 36 months where things had in general and, and not just specific to marketing, just like with businesses and the opportunities that AI will afford as it becomes more refined, and more real time, how, how things can change within a business by, by leveraging new technologies that are constantly being created.

Matt Danskin (26:28.26) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:59.735) What are your thoughts?

Matt Danskin (27:04.42) My thoughts, you know, I see the AI, on the AI side of things, I see the, with claims, AI.

taking that over really quickly. So a lot of the supplement companies and all that sort of stuff are already using AI heavily to do their job, right? To write an argument as to why, you know, we need starter on this roof or whatever stupid thing it is for supplementing. I think a year from now, claims are going to be getting settled and negotiated back and forth with AIs fighting both sides of that battle.

You know, to the point where it's just you're trying to build your AI bot to beat their AI bot. So that'll be an interesting development, I think.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:46.872) Hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:02.264) 12 months, that's a prediction.

Matt Danskin (28:06.276) That's my prediction is 12 months, there's gonna be a lot of that. Not to say that that's the only way it's gonna be getting done, but I think there's gonna be a lot of that in 12 months.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:17.815) Yeah, I'm I don't I don't think that seems far -fetched from and again I'm not intimately involved with any of these things but as far as I guess the the fluidity and the agility of AI to adapt and things and as they expand The resources that are invested to it. It doesn't seem like we're not talking about rocket science here, right? You know, it doesn't need to be

Matt Danskin (28:43.684) Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's a.

Matt Danskin (28:49.7) There's only so many different variables to a claim situation. And so it's just plugging in the variables and setting up algorithms to deal with all of them and you're done. Then you can replace billions of dollars worth of administration.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:05.398) Yeah. Speaking like AI and like progression of innovation. Have you heard of like Neuralink?

Matt Danskin (29:16.132) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:18.07) How far away are we from like that? Isn't that terrifying? I'm fucking, I'm fucking afraid.

Matt Danskin (29:27.158) I don't see that. I'm not gonna say that it's never gonna happen, but I don't see the path for people to be like, yep, put that in my head. I'm good with that. I think there's enough people that are just like, and I'm a technology adopter, right? I was on all this chat GPT, you know.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:40.664) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (29:55.524) a year and a half ago, which is fairly early on, right? I'm not leading the charge by any stretch, but I got an Apple Vision. I get the newest drone that comes out. I'm into technology stuff, but you're not plugging anything into my brain.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:15.863) Yeah, it's like the augmented reality stuff concerns me as well.

I think about when I was a kid, friends would come over, we'd play video games, and it was like a social experience, right? We're playing Resident Evil, fucking shooting zombies, whatever, right? A lot of fun. And then when PlayStation 3 came out with PlayStation Network, and now everyone could just throw on a headset, it's like now everyone isolated, and we still got that time together, but we're all doing it via our own room, and it's not the same. It's not the same experience. And it seems like...

Matt Danskin (30:48.772) Mm -hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:50.712) You know, with with everything being like internet related with social media, gaming and things like that, it seems like much less frequently now nowadays than back in my day. Like kids are getting together and like stimulating each other like in ways and like, I don't know, we used to go play fucking manhunt and go roof hopping when we were like 13 years old in the city. Probably not the best life choice, but it was a lot of fun, right? And I got experiences to draw off of not just sitting on fucking tick tock.

Matt Danskin (31:17.572) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:20.215) watching people dance, I don't know.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:26.871) Am I crazy? Yeah, crazy.

Matt Danskin (31:28.196) Yep. No, no, I yeah, it's, it's definitely something that we're very aware of, like, so my, the funny thing is my 13 year old just walked through with the Apple vision on over his head. Like watching a movie while he walks around the house.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:42.391) Mm.

Matt Danskin (31:49.252) and only he can hear it and only he can see it. Which I did, he was doing something with me and then I told him, I was like, I gotta do this podcast, go be by yourself for a little bit. But that stuff definitely is very, it can be isolating and so I think for old folks like us, we're always gonna crave that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:50.487) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (32:13.892) that social interaction and like this is the way that we're wired. But we're probably a generation away from people who are just being like, yeah, I'm gonna sit in my condo by myself and VR and have a date with somebody. And I prefer that experience.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (32:34.423) Yeah, yeah, I've got a couple of questions that come to mind. Like one, what is our responsibility to our children as far as putting guardrails on, you know, how frequently they can use technology, right? Whether it's social media, whether it's VR, like, is there, do we have that responsibility? And if so, in your mind, like how many hours a day? The other thing is like I heard not too long ago, something about like, like people having like legitimate relationships with with chat bots, like AI chat box on the internet.

and like spending hours consuming back and forth like it was fucking I was baffled. Yeah.

So I guess that one's not a question. That's more so that's just more so a statement.

Matt Danskin (33:17.412) Yeah, I mean, I think.

Matt Danskin (33:21.732) Yeah, that's just crazy. Yeah. I mean, I, we, we have, you know, very strict requirements with our kids in terms of like what content they're, they're consuming and how much and all that sort of stuff. And, you know, like, well, they'll get a little bit of time by themselves and then.

you know, if we do something, it'll be like a movie night with the family, which, you know, we've got kids from two to 13. So, you know, that stuff's usually pretty, pretty childish, type of content. But, yeah, we, we also like are very intentional about like getting the kids out and whether it's like sports camps or whatever it is, like you're gonna go be around people and learn how to interact because that, that is.

That is insanity to have a relationship with a software.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (34:15.351) Yeah, yeah, I'd say. And it's interesting, too, because I feel like some of the like the unintended consequence of all these great things that allow like convenient interaction, like like, let's say, for instance, like, you know, playing Call of Duty with your friends on like a headset or whatever.

I think that a social anxiety gets brought about as a result of that. If you look at the way that people typically interact on a website, if you know 100 people, let's say 20 that are age 20, 20 that are 30, 40, 50, 60, and how they choose to interact.

Right, like the older demographic is typically going to be like, I want a phone call. I want to talk to somebody where like at the other end of the spectrum, it's like, fucking I don't want to talk to anybody. let me just book my appointment. Right. And I'll, I'll, you know, if I have a husband, he's going to sit there and talk to it. Cause I don't want to deal with it. so it's like, well, we take that into consideration, like when we're building websites, right? So.

Matt Danskin (35:08.036) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (35:12.983) We don't always want to pigeonhole. If you're a roofer, right, you could be serving people from the age of 21 up to 70, right? And their preferred method of conversion could be very different based on how old they are. So we always want to make pervasive calls to action and diverse calls to action to accommodate whatever it is for the experience that you want, right?

Matt Danskin (35:35.108) way to bring it back around to roofing websites.

That's beautiful. But I mean, that's a great point or whatever is like we all like make like engage with technology differently. So the, I mean, that is a really important thing to make sure you're addressing the way different people deal with technology and the way that they want to engage. I was always as a roofing salesperson, I was always the guy that like,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (35:43.287) Hahaha!

Matt Danskin (36:06.468) I would have someone schedule their appointment with me and a lot of my customers really loved that. And a lot of times they wouldn't even be home and I'd go do my inspection. I'd send them a company cam link and I'd send them an e -doc. And like I literally had customers that I sold their roof, picked out materials, worked their claim, built the roof, collected payment without ever seeing their face. And you know, and that's five, six years ago.

And I wonder if that's going to become more of the trend. And you have people that are like, no, I'd never do that. Why? Why not? If that's the way that they want to engage with it and it's a profitable transaction and everything works for everybody.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (36:59.063) Yeah, I don't necessarily see a reason why you don't at least let it be an option. I guess the only thing is it's hard if you're trying to develop a sales process and you're building a sales team. Let's say you have a larger sales team. I guess they have to be situationally aware as far as catering to the customer and what the customer wants. But a lot of the times it's not them setting the appointment. So the responsibility, I guess, would fall on the...

Matt Danskin (37:07.396) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (37:26.871) whoever's answering the phone to make the determination are we gonna walk them down a path of an in -person appointment? Is it as simple as just asking them do you want somebody in person or do you want to do this remotely?

And I think that's a tough choice to take make because I think a lot of the times people like if I'm a company owner, I might want my salespeople in front of the customer to have the opportunity to build that relationship because there is a difference in that. Right. But to your point, there's a lot of people that they don't want to fucking see anybody. Right. And they just want give me what it's going to cost me to fix. I'm going to make a choice. And if it's you and I never got to see you and I can get a new roof like this has been fantastic. I'll give you five stars.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (38:10.711) I don't know.

Matt Danskin (38:11.684) Yeah, it's definitely not going to be for everybody, but I do think that.

really going forward, you know, talk about like, hey, your Salesforce, can they manage this? I think that allows you to have have AI fill in the gaps for your Salesforce to follow up with customers to, you know, answer their questions that are, you know, the repeat type of questions that they get to update people on what's going on. I think the automations and the AI and all that sort of stuff.

having that type of process and then sprinkling in, you know, if you want, if you want that person in person, great, we've got them too. Yeah, I think you saw that with customer service. People hated that when everything went to robot voice, you know, dial this number for this option or whatever. And then companies started killing it because they were like, we have live customer service.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:11.959) and you're just screaming, agent, agent!

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:21.145) I think, yeah, and that's where I was gonna go with this next was, you know, I specifically, I wanna talk to somebody and maybe that's cause I'm old. I don't know what it is. Like I like to talk to somebody, but it might just be how inept the technology has been, right? Where it's like, you know, you'll say, you know, choose from these three things. Are you calling to make a payment? Are you calling to change your service? And you're like calling to make a payment and the AI or the technology is like, did you say Dill Pickle?

Matt Danskin (39:21.86) What's that?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:52.472) And you're like, give me give me an agent customer service rep, you're smashing zero, right? And they take away your ability to bypass their stupid fucking system that doesn't allow you to do what you want. And it's the most frustrating thing ever. Now, fast forward, like if we have AI that's implemented where it actually is competent enough to facilitate the outcome that I want efficiently, I guess I'd be more more excited about using something like

Matt Danskin (40:01.988) Yeah.

Matt Danskin (40:22.34) Yeah, that makes sense. Like you said, there's no telling where this is going to be a year or two from now, but it's definitely progressing quickly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (40:34.296) Yeah. So you said that you had questions for me, and I think you asked me one question. What other questions do you got?

Matt Danskin (40:43.364) Okay.

Any growth spurts coming up?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (40:51.896) Yeah, Everett's about to hit a growth spurt soon. I'm not gonna. No, I'm five foot nothing for the rest of my life. So, that's rude, by the way.

But again, work on my posture and I look taller.

Matt Danskin (41:04.708) man.

Matt Danskin (41:09.892) There you go. Just angle the camera.

Matt Danskin (41:19.044) the you know if i was pretty as you wouldn't have to pick on your height so

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:32.984) Mwah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:37.944) Yeah, so...

Matt Danskin (41:38.052) It is it is so choppy right now. I'm I'm getting like little little bits and pieces of you so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:42.584) It is.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:47.672) Okay, well this was fun. We should do it again sometime.

Matt Danskin (41:50.98) Yeah. Yeah. Part three.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (41:58.04) Part 3 coming soon to a YouTube channel near you at Ascend Digital Agency. I think that's the handle, right? I don't know. Just punch in Ascend Digital Agency, you'll find the content. You go on Spotify, I mean we're everywhere. We're everywhere. Matthew, thank you so much for so graciously attending and providing value to the audience.

Matt Danskin (42:15.908) Yes, sir.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (42:19.512) I appreciate you.

Matt Danskin (42:20.324) Thanks for having me again, man. Sorry about the awkward moments there.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (42:23.224) Yeah, you're fine. Thank you to the team at Rufr for helping making this possible. And thank you to you, the ones listening. We do it all for you. Drop some comments, share it with somebody who it'll help, and we go.

In today's episode, Mike sits down with Stephen Spence, who runs Project Map It. Project Map It is an interactive map that showcases all your previous work and lets customers search by area, project category, or even product type. You can easily embed the map on your website, enhance your web presence with SEO, and show prospective customers your company's presence in their neighborhood. An extremely useful tool in an age where technology and business are becoming evermore intertwined. Stephen talks about his journey of getting started with Project Map It and the many struggles he faced along the way.

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! ==== ==== ====

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

00;00;02;08 - 00;00;25;17 Mike & Stephen Okay, Steven Spence, project map it. How you doing, man? Mike Sterns Acsend digital. I'm good.

00;00;25;20 - 00;00;43;04 Mike & Stephen Yeah, yeah. My friend. You see, we did a jersey swap. We're gonna do a little signing afterwards. You know, something like hold up. Yeah, yeah, we're going to do that, and it's going to be great. Thank you for coming. I'm very excited to be here. We're excited to have you bracelet with open arms. I mean, you get the concierge white glove service, like all of our clients, right?

00;00;43;05 - 00;00;59;27 Mike & Stephen As a partner, we can pick you up from the airport, bring you in. yeah, it's good stuff. So, shout out to roofer. you know, if you're looking for clean and pristine proposals, roof measurements, instant quotes, like anything you can to make your business better. Even a CRM hit up the team, a roofer down in the description.

00;00;59;27 - 00;01;19;13 Mike & Stephen There's going to be a link. You click it, you let them know I sent you. You'll be happy you did. Monday. We yeah. We love roofer. We're partnered with roofer. Yeah. We don't have many partners. we have a couple of project map it. we have roofer, and, I see that, like, a lot of companies, it's kind of just, a money grab, right?

00;01;19;17 - 00;01;39;06 Mike & Stephen Like, hey, sponsor this and we'll do this and we'll promote you. And I have a hard time doing that because I want to be aligned ethically as far as efficacy of whatever it is I'm sponsoring, I want to know that it works. I want to know that they're going to provide the same type of experience for my customers that a son aims to provide every one of our customers.

00;01;39;08 - 00;01;59;23 Mike & Stephen So so, you know what? With that we have I think we're I think we have like 13 partners, of which we really work with, probably six of them, like hardcore. And part of that, just our bandwidth. We're a small company, right. So we don't I don't we now I am now able to utilize my time a little bit more to work with our partners.

00;01;59;23 - 00;02;20;20 Mike & Stephen However, with what you just said. We do not do any kind of a rep share with any of our partners. We co market, we send customers to people we partner with, people that we know that are either going to help our contractors, leverage and use project mapping easier like certainty ABC supply, SRS distribution. That all just helps the contractor.

00;02;20;22 - 00;02;36;09 Mike & Stephen and then we have partners like you, you know, you're our go to website, full on marketing agency that we send people to. but yeah, no, Rob shares, I, I agree with you. It just gets muddy. You start saying, hey, I'll give you X amount if you send me referrals and crap like that. I don't like it.

00;02;36;11 - 00;02;54;23 Mike & Stephen Yeah, I appreciate that. What, have you talked to any of the customers that have had us do any work for them? yeah. Responsive roofing. Ron Hilliard is a stud. I love the guy. Ever since I met him, the very first time on our first demo call. Ron, Ron loves you guys. I was just checking out the website before we started this, and?

00;02;54;23 - 00;03;18;24 Mike & Stephen And it's a slick looking website, man. The aim to please. You're doing good stuff, which I. This which is why I've been through, I think, 3 or 4 other marketing agencies in my six years. And when I met you however many years ago now too, there's been a couple of years. You were three years, at dinner with TC Bakker, and, we were talking about acquired taste, but once you acquire it, you can't get rid of it.

00;03;18;28 - 00;03;39;27 Mike & Stephen Look, folks, I'm not for everyone, okay? I attract some, I repel others, and you know what? I'm okay with it. I used to try to please everyone, and then I said, fuck it. Are we allowed to talk about this? Yeah, yeah. So, like, we had dinner with T.C. Bakker. You remember that, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And. And the first five minutes you were giving it to the the lady waitress and I.

00;03;40;00 - 00;03;54;28 Mike & Stephen And I was sitting pretty much right across from you, and I'm trying to figure out it was the first time I really met you. Like, is this guy, like, just an asshole or is he joking? And then even throughout the dinner, like, the acquired tastes happened throughout the dinner, like at the beginning, I was kind of like, what?

00;03;55;01 - 00;04;10;28 Mike & Stephen What's going on with Mike? Everything. I can't tell if he's joking or not. And then by the end I'm like, this dude is is authentic and genuine as you can get. Yeah. And I think, I think she had a similar learning curve. Like I wasn't being explicitly an asshole, but I have a dry sense of humor. You do?

00;04;11;00 - 00;04;29;02 Mike & Stephen and I find it fun. Okay. And some people do. Some people don't. But we left her a nice tip. She was smiling. We did? Yeah. And, we had good food. The service was good. Yeah, yeah. And we, you know, it's funny because in that meeting we had talked a few months before that. I'm big on accountability.

00;04;29;02 - 00;04;45;08 Mike & Stephen Core value number one is accountability at the end. And, you know, seven, seven I were we were exchanging conversation and it was a screen share. So we had had a screen share a few months earlier. And she said, now that I imagine, you know, now that we're able to finally speak. And I was like, well, hold on a second.

00;04;45;08 - 00;05;02;10 Mike & Stephen I was like, you know, we we talked before, we talked in depth before on a screen show. So. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, I don't think, I think I reached out to you and like, we never then reconvene. Like, what happened? He's like, oh, man. And we started to and we talked through it because communication is super important.

00;05;02;12 - 00;05;19;06 Mike & Stephen Okay I was at no no excuse what Mike said. What you said, right there is 100% truth. I did forget that we had a screen share. It's all that was also going through a very dark time in my life when we had that screen share. And, you know, I was empathetic to that. I think you were.

00;05;19;08 - 00;05;56;12 Mike & Stephen You know, it's, you're a friend of mine, I think. I think it's important. I think it's important for, you know, any any healthy relationship that has any chance of sustaining the test of time at the foundational level. You know, everybody expects something from somebody, right? And what those expectations are, they vary from relationship to relationship. If you think about with a casual friend, with a partner in life, with, with a partner in business, with employer, employee, like there's always like these built in expectations and like I think the more explicit they are and the more accountability there are to those expectations, the better the likelihood that relationship has of succeeding over time.

00;05;56;14 - 00;06;17;14 Mike & Stephen Can I I actually want to speak to that. But before I do, I have some some props here. I only have one, but I do have a swim cap that you're more than welcome to wear. So if you want to wear it or I can wear it. and then I also have some swim goggles. And I made sure to get my sons red ones because it matches the sand.

00;06;17;17 - 00;06;36;05 Mike & Stephen So last time we spoke, what was the thing one of us or both of us had was one gap. My kids would not give me two swim caps. Okay, so would you like to wear it? Since that's your show or would that would that make your hair look bad? Because my hair always looks bad, right? It might fuck up my hair, but you know, I've been dying to drop the line.

00;06;36;05 - 00;06;52;11 Mike & Stephen I think it's I'm glad that. Are you not entertained? Yeah. And I think this would be the perfect opportunity to do that. Okay. There you go. I'll tell you about since you're doing that, I'll do this at least for a little bit. Until Christian says, Steve, you look like an idiot. You can take those off. Now, full disclosure, I've never put on a swim cap before.

00;06;52;12 - 00;07;10;17 Mike & Stephen Yeah, well, I haven't either. So you're going to be the first. Why aren't you a swimmer now? Yeah, I I'm a good runner. I was a lacrosse player. Lacrosse? That's right. Cross guy. So I think they start at the front like that and they just pull all the way back. It doesn't have to be perfect. Oh, yeah. You rock it much better than I do,

00;07;10;19 - 00;07;28;08 Mike & Stephen How's it feel? You don't have to go over your ears. But the swimmers, do. You? Look. You look like. Not over the years. Oh, you can hold it up. You. You can hear me. I'm like this. Are we good? And we're back. So back to what you were saying? about built. You took it off. Well, yeah, I was just.

00;07;28;09 - 00;07;44;07 Mike & Stephen Yeah. Oh, well, I'll wear it the whole time. You said you wear it the whole time. I have to throw it. I mean, that be bad for the podcast. Are those prescription, those glasses. Those are those, aren't you. Yeah. You know, I was I say I could throw on the red glasses, add some flare. But I do want to wear the got the goggles look good.

00;07;44;10 - 00;08;02;17 Mike & Stephen So, I got a message for you. You did much better. I don't know how to do it. I got a message from a guy. I got a message from a guy on LinkedIn. Well, just. I don't need to say names and and, And I. That's nice. That's all good. Yeah, yeah. All right. How's my hair? Kristen?

00;08;02;21 - 00;08;23;26 Mike & Stephen Yours looks good. so I got a I got a message from a gentleman p last night, and you told me I had to wear it the whole night. Take it off, I love it. Got a message from this guy. you were talking about building relationships with new, new partners and stuff like that. Yeah. got a message, said, hey, you know, I listened to your podcast with leap, and I really liked it.

00;08;23;29 - 00;08;48;22 Mike & Stephen In fact, funny enough, I heard you mention engage, which is another great partner of ours. And, we just pushed engage out to our dealer network, and I would love to talk to you. Oh, no. I'm sorry. Wrong. Running around. That was another LinkedIn guy. Two messages. So last week this gentleman texts this guy, message me on LinkedIn and basically said, hey, we have this program that does roof measurements.

00;08;48;25 - 00;09;06;28 Mike & Stephen We'd love to chat with you. And I said, sure, I'm always up for a discovery call. I messaged back, I said, here's my here's my email address, here's my phone number. Feel free to give me a call. And in my inbox like five minutes later, I got a calendar invite for a day like he picked a day. I didn't like that.

00;09;07;01 - 00;09;28;10 Mike & Stephen And because he's assuming, I said give me a call or whatever, it screams entitlement. It does like like, hey, here's the day you didn't ask me like, hey, when are you free? You know, it's just that was the first that was the first kind of interaction I had with beyond the messaging and LinkedIn. And so I canceled it and I just I email back, said, sorry, I can't make it that day.

00;09;28;13 - 00;09;44;02 Mike & Stephen And so instead of him saying, hey, any and he called me Spencer too. By the way, my name is Steve Spence, not Spencer. it's new nickname. Spencer. No, no. Yeah, not at all. I hate it. So you're probably a little too young. You won't give me your age, but Spencer for hire was a big show back when I was younger.

00;09;44;02 - 00;10;00;28 Mike & Stephen And people would call me Spencer, and I hated it. Got it. So he's been calling me Spencer this whole time, too. And I'm just thinking to myself, dude, you were. You were starting off on the wrong foot. Like you want to form a relationship with me. You can't even say my name, right? And secondly, you keep scheduling these meetings and I cancel the meeting.

00;10;00;28 - 00;10;17;18 Mike & Stephen I got a the meeting was supposedly yesterday, and I canceled it. He emailed me yesterday. Hey, sorry I can't make the meeting in time, I rescheduled it. He didn't even see that I canceled the meeting. So that guy is not ever going to get any of my conversation, business or discovery call again. Sure. Yeah. The the entitlement of.

00;10;17;24 - 00;10;33;09 Mike & Stephen Okay. You want to meet? Well, here's the date and time we're going to me. And I'll just assume even though you're running a business free, you're going to make sure that you're available. Yeah. It's, it's a needless power play, I would say. I was a teacher for 20 years, and I got to be honest with you, like, names were very important to me.

00;10;33;17 - 00;10;49;28 Mike & Stephen Yeah, we had a we had a young lady from Africa. Didn't speak a lick of English. Come into my math class one day and on the paper EJ said her name, although I'm was her name, but it was hard to enunciate and I asked her. I said, how do you say your name? She goes mayowa for short. Yeah.

00;10;49;29 - 00;11;07;06 Mike & Stephen I said, how do you say the whole name? I mean, she didn't. You understand what I'm saying? She finally, I think, understood. She said Ola Ola y mayowa. And so I literally spent like the rest of that class, just walk around in my head quietly saying all over my, all over my, all over my own. Because names are important.

00;11;07;06 - 00;11;22;24 Mike & Stephen I was called Stephanie by teachers when I was in school because my name is spelled with this. Like, come on, man, names are important. And when I'm on calls all the time, the first thing I say is I don't. I don't know how to enunciate your name. I want to make sure I'm saying your name right. And people appreciate that man relationships.

00;11;22;24 - 00;11;43;17 Mike & Stephen The details matter. Devil's in. The details matter. Yeah. I am a big believer in small details. Can make a big difference in anything. Yep. You know, I, I got a message I had reached out to David Carroll dough marketing. And that's my guy, by the way. At the time we hadn't had much of a relationship. I was like, hey, I was interested in, you know, doing some of these mailers or whatever.

00;11;43;20 - 00;12;07;21 Mike & Stephen And he responded with a calendar link. So when we got to talking, I was like, I was like, you know, a little bit of a power play to send a gala link. You don't acknowledge the message, just drop a Kelly link and I think that's more of a me thing. Right? I think that's me being, an opportunity for me to grow, maybe where it's like, you know, you're saying you want to you want to talk about something, somebody sending you a link to schedule some time, like that's fair.

00;12;07;24 - 00;12;23;13 Mike & Stephen The other side of me is like, you know, hey, how's it going? So we talked about it. We communicated, and he's like, never even thought of it like that. Communication. I don't think it's a mike thing. I think I think that is a I think the way you felt about it is the way everybody should feel about, to be honest with you.

00;12;23;14 - 00;12;47;19 Mike & Stephen Yeah. I think it's also so I think it's great that you talk to him about it. And he acknowledged it. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like especially in business, there's so many moving parts. Everyone's so busy like within, you know, my job my team job and and everything like that. And your roofing company and your your admins and your product fulfillment and project managers, there's so much stuff going on that without proper context, like we can't just assume what people are thinking.

00;12;47;19 - 00;13;05;09 Mike & Stephen We can't assume that like, hey, this dude is being malicious or trying to power play me because he just responded with a calendly, right? Like David was probably busiest because he runs a very successful company. There's a lot of things going on. It's like, let me just make sure I get this link out where it's like me. I'm like, okay, maybe you're being sensitive, right?

00;13;05;09 - 00;13;30;08 Mike & Stephen And we don't know. I was stuck in traffic yesterday, and, there's this woman, this she's, you know, she's going like 20 miles an hour and the speed limit is like, 35. And, you know, Everett, big guy at six months, 20 pounds, he's teething. He's in the backseat. He is screaming and crying. And in the moment I became furious that this lady is driving so slow.

00;13;30;10 - 00;13;48;23 Mike & Stephen Because all I want to do is get my son home, maybe get him some Tylenol. You know, as a parent, I don't love my son. You know, in the back sounding like he's in anguish right? So, you know, my my initial response was like, can you just fucking go, lady? And I wanted to like, blow the horn. But I thought about it like, she doesn't know.

00;13;48;23 - 00;14;01;05 Mike & Stephen Yeah, she doesn't know that I've got a screaming six month old in the back of the car. Right. She's, you know, for whatever reason, she's going a little bit slow, and it's not that big of a deal at the end of the day. And she's old. She may have been old. She was driving slow. I don't know that she was old or not.

00;14;01;05 - 00;14;17;13 Mike & Stephen I didn't look, but I was just trying to work on being situationally aware and like, not being so triggered by things that are inconsequential in life. I agree with that. That's that's my opportunity for growth. And I got to focus on that every single day because, you know, some things they they just really fucking strike a nerve.

00;14;17;15 - 00;14;39;26 Mike & Stephen Oh, I also just drove from the airport with you. So I am fully aware of how you drive and driving 20mph is. Oh, okay. Oh, you're gonna cut that and I'm just going to leave it. It was a fun ride though. It was. There's nobody that takes their job more seriously and works harder than the folks that are sitting, waiting at the arrivals gate.

00;14;39;28 - 00;14;57;06 Mike & Stephen and when you're pulling up and you're trying to pick someone up from the airport, they are the most zealous individuals, rigid, process. I mean, as soon as they see that you pull up, they come tap on your window. You can't be here. And now you got to justify that this guy's literally walking through the door, and it's okay.

00;14;57;09 - 00;15;10;15 Mike & Stephen Like, no, they have to be outside. You have to do a lap. It's crazy. They do a good job though. Yeah, they're doing their job and they're doing it well. And for that I appreciate that. And I like that you just use the word process. I mean I think that's important. I've never heard you use that word before.

00;15;10;17 - 00;15;32;12 Mike & Stephen Yeah. Something new I learned I saw it on TikTok. So yeah. So I learned that processes are important. And in the absence of processes, shit doesn't get done. but, you know, I also find having process isn't enough, right? A lot of the times people fall into a few different buckets and it causes points of friction and breakdown, within their business.

00;15;32;12 - 00;15;55;28 Mike & Stephen And, you know, they don't have processes, right? That's the first problem. Or they have processes. They're just shitty processes or they're not. They're not the right processes for where they're at or nobody's managing and holding accountable their team to those processes. Right. Which you could have the best processes for the, you know, the most contextually relevant processes for where you're at in business.

00;15;56;00 - 00;16;24;21 Mike & Stephen But if nobody's making sure that people are following those processes, what the fuck are we doing? Right? Or and or as people grow, the need for iteration or changes, those processes typically come into play. And, you know, we have processes that don't match our growth. They were built when we were at 2 million. Now we're at nine, and they have to be revisited to make sure that consistently, we're functioning in a way that's going to deliver the optimal customer experience, deliver the least amount of friction to our team.

00;16;24;25 - 00;16;52;04 Mike & Stephen When you Duvall's, and get shit done so that our customers are happy, our employees are happy. because if that happens, you'll have lower churn, higher retention of your employees. You have better reviews, right? and I think that's often overlooked is like these small breakdowns that happen in your business, whether you had a half million, a million, 2 million, whatever is the symptom is like someone being unhappy or production taking long, even if the customer isn't unhappy with it.

00;16;52;04 - 00;17;12;21 Mike & Stephen Like there's there's glaring issues, symptoms of these issues. But the issue is the breakdowns and those breakdowns become disproportionately more impactful as you scale. Right? and cause a lot of people a lot of headache and a lot of heartache. And the more people are subjected to that on the employee side, the less they're going to enjoy doing their job.

00;17;12;23 - 00;17;32;08 Mike & Stephen So I can talk to that. I need to take this off. Can I take this? This things give me a I don't know how my children do it. So, I, I'm in exactly those those shoes. I'm, I'm walking in those shoes right now. Right. We're a small we were a smaller company for the first three years. We were talking about humble beginnings.

00;17;32;08 - 00;17;50;07 Mike & Stephen And we can get into that if you want. We're going to. But, we've been growing right quite a bit over the last year and a half. And before it was just me. Yeah. And then I had me and Perla and I was able to train Perla slowly enough because business wasn't coming in so fast. That. Right. So Perla, Perla is like me.

00;17;50;07 - 00;18;07;15 Mike & Stephen She knows everything about the company. But then we started hiring. We have. We've hired 3 or 4 since, four since. And what we recognized quickly was a we're not leveraging our CRM the way we could with automations and efficiencies and stuff like that. so I spent I mean, it took me a good three months to figure out how to use HubSpot the best way.

00;18;07;15 - 00;18;25;11 Mike & Stephen And we finally dialed it in, and we're still dialing it in right now, but we're much better. And then the other thing I learned is I didn't know how to I knew how to do everything. But when we hired new Customer success manager, for example, that customer success manager had to be trained. And so we didn't have any like playbook to train them.

00;18;25;16 - 00;18;43;12 Mike & Stephen So we've built all that out. So we are finally at a point where our processes are at least at the scalability where we are right now. But we might have to hire 3 or 4 more people in the next month. Are we going to be able to evolve those processes? We will a lot more efficiently than before because we've put some stuff into place.

00;18;43;14 - 00;19;00;27 Mike & Stephen Yeah, I mean, I've dealt with a lot of that and it's an ongoing process. Right. you've got a lot to focus on when you're running a business. A lot of things that you saw coming up, probably many more that you didn't see coming. Yep. My biggest challenge and I talked about this. I was in Detroit with Eric Renault, and we shot some content at MGM on draft day a couple weeks ago.

00;19;00;27 - 00;19;16;28 Mike & Stephen But my biggest thing was getting the shit out of my head onto paper. Right. So then you can look at it, you can make you can organize it in a way that makes sense to somebody that's never worked in your business before. Right? As a new hire day one, this is what you should expect coming in as far as your roles and responsibilities.

00;19;16;28 - 00;19;39;12 Mike & Stephen And this is exactly how you execute that it it it's a transparent start, which makes it a lot easier for them to become integrated with the team and to do their job effectively and just have a better baseline line. Yeah. Starting point. Like for us, we have we have five in the states and two onboarding or two people that help us onboard that are in Argentina.

00;19;39;18 - 00;19;56;21 Mike & Stephen Yeah. And our entire team is great. But we started over the last three months affectionately calling it superpowers. Like, what is your superpower? Yeah, like I was a teacher for 20 years, so for me to build out a nice engage demo deck that we use as a sales deck is pretty easy for me because I was a teacher.

00;19;56;21 - 00;20;14;02 Mike & Stephen I know kind of how people work, how minds work, how people learn, and visualize and stuff. but funny enough, it's not funny. but one of our new employees, we started in December, Pat Martinek, he was a kid I used to coach in lacrosse. He was the hardest worker back then on my team. I coached him for six years.

00;20;14;04 - 00;20;32;18 Mike & Stephen He's one of the hardest workers right here. Project map. And now he's proven himself, that has extreme dyslexia. I did not know that when I hired him. Not that that would make a difference. But, you know, I quickly started realizing, like his emails were pretty. He was struggling with getting his words on paper, on emails to customers, and his job was customer success.

00;20;32;18 - 00;20;59;20 Mike & Stephen So he had to be able to communicate effectively with with our customers. Long story short, people with dyslexia might have problems processing numbers and and letters and writing and reading and stuff like that. But you know what they're great at? They are amazing at processes. Yeah. Everything else. So like when we're talking about how to build these processes into our into our, into our company, what's the best way to onboard a customer?

00;20;59;22 - 00;21;15;15 Mike & Stephen What are the best strategies when you're selling and things like that? When we have our weekly meetings, and I have a question that I put to the team like, hey, this isn't working out, how can we make it work better? Guess who always has the right answer at martech? Like that's that dude super power. He can't process letters and numbers.

00;21;15;15 - 00;21;36;18 Mike & Stephen They mix up and and he's not the best writer. He uses Grammarly to help kind of combat that, which was great. He figured that out on his own. but man, that that dude super is everything else. Yeah. And that's, you know, I'm glad he's making it work. I mean, I, you know, confusing like, that's got to be challenging for him.

00;21;36;18 - 00;21;57;03 Mike & Stephen And but he's using he's proactively using tools to help minimize the impact that that would potentially have on him professionally. Right. Every disability there's some stronger ability. Yeah I have I have ADHD. I mean, I was fed Ritalin for like ten years when I was a kid. That became problematic before I started using like calendar and technology to hedge against that.

00;21;57;03 - 00;22;16;19 Mike & Stephen Like if I had to operate based off of like a notepad with dates and times, I would miss every fucking meeting with you guys that you know, we're supposed to have. So I'm grateful that we have things like technology, a Google calendar, reminders, CRM to where I can categorize my life in a way where some of my shortcomings don't become the shortcoming of one of my clients campaigns.

00;22;16;19 - 00;22;39;18 Mike & Stephen Right? Yeah. and to your point, where it's like a cape and a Kryptonite, that's like the Kryptonite side. The cave side is, I mean, bro, I mean, I'm productive. Yeah. I mean, I'm up early getting shit done, getting shit knocked out, and I get a lot of stuff accomplished. Now, with that being said, I might do 79 things in a day and maybe 14 of them.

00;22;39;18 - 00;23;00;24 Mike & Stephen I left at 80% because I get distracted, right? Yeah. So I have a system as far as like how I'm opening up tabs on browsers and things to do. A recap to be like, okay, did everything get done the, you know, so on correctly, yeah. I tell you, I'm like, I'm broken, you know, so I'm just playing my slice in life when I'm golfing, I'm slicing in life I'm slicing, and I'm not fixing the mechanics of it, but I'm addressing the symptom.

00;23;00;25 - 00;23;14;05 Mike & Stephen So I'm just going to aim left because I know the ball is coming back. Right? And if I am left is going to land in the fairway. I'm sure I'm going to lose 30 yards on my drive. I'm okay with that. I know that I'm not hitting out of behind a fucking tree. You're so you're such a you're such a good wordsmith, man.

00;23;14;05 - 00;23;29;15 Mike & Stephen That was well said. But thanks. That analogy is great, by the way. I suck at golf, and even when I try to play my slides on the golf course, I fuck it up. But it's working better in life than on the golf. My grandfather always said, slow back, swing your hit it straight every time. So I don't hit it far, but I hit it straight.

00;23;29;18 - 00;23;46;12 Mike & Stephen Yeah. So at the time, one of these times we'll have to go play some golf. Yeah. Basketball. First Stephen challenged me to a basketball game. So in challenge, I just thought it'd be good content. It'd be funny. Get Christian out there to videotape. You beat my ass 15 bucks. So we got some content of picking him up at the airport drive, and then we had a conversation.

00;23;46;12 - 00;24;05;12 Mike & Stephen Now we're in the studio, as you heard from schoolboy Q in the intro. I'm just sitting in my studio. Anyhow, we're going to go to the basketball court after and maybe we'll play some pig. Maybe we play some 21, maybe it's just one verse one. call your own fouls. Yeah, 1V1 and I will foul I don't because I he's a hack.

00;24;05;12 - 00;24;22;29 Mike & Stephen Ladies and gentlemen he's a hack. That's okay. So we're going to I'm gonna. You've never seen a guy who's five foot eight worth the post like me. I'm telling you right now. So more awesome content coming in that regard. I'm five, six and three quarters. I've shrunk a half inch, and I work with those pretty well, too. I mean, these are words at this point.

00;24;22;29 - 00;24;38;11 Mike & Stephen We're going to have we're going to have actual data and actual video to go off, and we're going to have shot percentages taken versus made. Oh hell no. We're going to have pain points. We're going to we're going to see who's going to be dominant in the post. I would actually like to do like a charity basketball thing.

00;24;38;11 - 00;24;52;16 Mike & Stephen So it was kind of a few years back. Shout out to my guy Tim Brown. I played against him, I think kind of wrote it. I got thrown on to like a team that they had for it was like a roofers and recovery type deal. Yeah. And I gotta tell you, I'm not great at basketball, but I balled out that day.

00;24;52;16 - 00;25;06;19 Mike & Stephen I mean, I was in the deep three like nobody's business. It was a lot of fun. And I think that, you know, if we get a bunch of people from the industry to put together an event, that would be fun, contribute some money, you know, let's all come to a consensus on where we could donate some money to and have a good time.

00;25;06;21 - 00;25;22;00 Mike & Stephen Yeah, I like it. I think it builds the fibers of the community, you know, stronger. And we help some people along the way. Yeah. And there be a lot of good content out of it. It would be a lot of funny content, I think out of it, getting a bunch of contractors together to, play some basketball, full core basketball.

00;25;22;00 - 00;25;36;24 Mike & Stephen But I mean, back, you know, maybe a year, year and a half ago, Anthony, Mark, Raph and I, we were on a podcast. He he has clear cut exteriors out of, out of Minnesota. Shout out to my guy Anthony. Yeah. I said, Dimitri and Tim Brown. It's an open invite. Like, you want the smoke? We'll pull up.

00;25;36;29 - 00;25;54;24 Mike & Stephen I'll pull up to Minnesota. My guy Anthony and I, we could we could go against the Minnesota boys, see what's what on the court. I think it would be a lot of fun. You know, we could do a friendly wager that we donate to to the charity of the choosing of the winning team, right? Yeah. Whatever. Yeah, that offer still stands.

00;25;54;26 - 00;26;10;29 Mike & Stephen So you guys never played it? We never played. I thought you were going to say I never heard back. Maybe they were scared. They weren't scared. I mean, I'm five foot nothing. Come on. if you're five foot nothing, I'm five foot. Negative. Nothing. Is that a double negative? So, major, five foot something. Yeah, like a five foot something, a five foot.

00;26;10;29 - 00;26;34;11 Mike & Stephen Some look at you, but I'm sure you. You're telling me I'm the wordsmith? You're string savvy fella right here. Savvy fella. So we mentioned humble beginnings. I mean, what was the inspiration for Project Map and where did it start? How did it start? I mean, give it to me. Give it to me. yeah, I'm pretty humble. So I was a special education teacher for 20 years, taught math and, coached lacrosse.

00;26;34;11 - 00;27;02;02 Mike & Stephen I'm big lacrosse guy. I live in Maryland. So, you know, that's a big hotbed for lacrosse. So I was the high school lacrosse coach for 15 years at the at the high school I taught at for 15 of those 20 years. one of the one of the alumni of the guys that I coached. Yeah. Matt, that coach for years saw me ten years later, and said, coach, we need to get together and I need to talk to you about a new software that I've built.

00;27;02;02 - 00;27;29;04 Mike & Stephen I think you'd be great. So we met for about three months on and off, and he hired me. So I was the first ever employee at Project Map it. I left a 20 year teaching career making about 90,000. I was getting my I got my certification for to become an administrator. So the literally my 21st year, I was hoping to become, principal and assistant principal to start and then, as it usually takes you, if I was good enough at that, maybe I'd become principal then.

00;27;29;04 - 00;27;52;03 Mike & Stephen Superintendent. No, but, aim for six hours, guys. If you. If you hit the moon and you're still up. Yeah, yeah. I might have fucked that saying up, but it's all good anyhow. So. So I left a 20 year teaching career, and it wasn't long after I started a project map. It that we realized quickly that at that point in time, there weren't thousands of people signing up like we thought there would be.

00;27;52;04 - 00;28;18;27 Mike & Stephen Yeah. So, the owner, Matt, he owns a roofing company, which was his inspiration, built a great product. Yeah. he he continued on with his roofing company, and I was kind of left with sort of stranded. Yeah. A guy that taught 20 years of, math to high school students. All of a sudden, in this world of of contractors not knowing a lick of like, what certainty don't score.

00;28;18;27 - 00;28;42;06 Mike & Stephen And all these different things were, and trying to grow the company. So I had about $125,000 saved up in my 401 K. in an over the course of three years. That was pretty much depleted my first year salary. A project map it I think was $37,000. So I sat at my house and worked my ass off and and tried to get one customer at a time.

00;28;42;06 - 00;29;05;06 Mike & Stephen And for many months I was paying myself $3,000 a month, and then it became 5000. And then we're at a point now where the company is sustainable. We have some really big partnerships. People are reaching out to me instead of me begging other people to help bring leads in for us. So it's been it's been a, you know, I always say, I don't know, there's definitely signs for humble beginnings.

00;29;05;06 - 00;29;22;19 Mike & Stephen But, you know, I've just come from the old school cloth of working really hard. Yeah, I think there's no one in in our company or no one that knows me that would say Steve doesn't work hard. So I worked hard, worked many, many hours, probably at the beginning, probably 70, 80 hours a week. Now it's probably down to 6070.

00;29;22;19 - 00;29;42;04 Mike & Stephen I work on weekends and stuff, but, we're sustainable, we're growing. We have partnerships that are going to probably help us exponentially grow here in the next few months, and life is good, I love that. I mean, it had to be nerve wracking. More so for you than Matt. you know, Matt knew he had a fallback plan, right?

00;29;42;04 - 00;30;08;11 Mike & Stephen You could just get right back in the roof, and he has a great roofing type. Still, I think, whereas, you know, you leave a 20 year career, I'm assuming based on the prerequisite to become, you know, certified and have a degree to be able to teach high school math, right. I would assume you feel a lot more vulnerable, because if it doesn't work out, your employability is a lot more a road to that is more challenging than just hopping back into your roofing business.

00;30;08;11 - 00;30;26;21 Mike & Stephen I did not want to go back into teaching at all. So I mean, okay, how come? I was I loved teaching when you're in the classroom. When I was the sage on the stage, I was in front of the kids selling curriculum. That's why I'm a good sales guy, right? Like I sold curriculum to high school kids for 20 years.

00;30;26;21 - 00;30;50;06 Mike & Stephen Yeah. my last five years, I was, a department chair, and I was not in the classroom. And, you know, I didn't handle things super well as a leader of that department. In the beginning, I jumped right in and started trying to make changes, which was a learning lesson on my end. I wrote to a lot of people the wrong way, and, honestly, that that helped me at least get a taste of what a pseudo admin position would be.

00;30;50;08 - 00;31;11;05 Mike & Stephen And it's just kind of thankless, man. I just feel like no matter what you do as an administrator, since that was my path, teachers weren't going to really like you and I, and I have a personality that I. I don't like it when people don't like me. like, I need affirmation. I don't anymore. I've worked a lot of a lot on that with my therapist over the last two years.

00;31;11;07 - 00;31;28;18 Mike & Stephen So I know a guy you can talk to. I talk to him every Friday. In fact, tomorrow I've got my my one hour appointment. But point being is I just realized it wasn't for me. And when I left, I did 20 years, 15, in the classroom. And I loved those 15 years. The last five years was a great learning experience and I definitely had great memories.

00;31;28;18 - 00;31;45;10 Mike & Stephen But yeah, no, I don't I didn't want to go back into teaching, and there were certainly multiple times that came to me and said, we're going to close down project mapping. And I had to beg them now, like, if he closed down the project, map it in that first year, I wouldn't have had a job, you know, now, if Project Map it closed, which it won't.

00;31;45;17 - 00;32;08;13 Mike & Stephen Don't worry everybody. But if it closed, I mean, I have I think I have other opportunities because I've made a name in, in the industry. Yeah. So I'm not as concerned obviously now. But we're sustainable in the, in the company's growing. So I'm, I'm just really proud of that. Right. Like my second career I'm really proud to know that I, along with the team that I'm closely working with right now, we're growing and making making strides.

00;32;08;13 - 00;32;27;08 Mike & Stephen So it's fun to be a part of that. Yeah. And I think, I think there's something to be said about the baptism by fire approach, right? Being thrown into something that you have not much familiarity with at all, or in an essence completely ignorant to. Right? Totally 100. But I don't mean ignorant to be like, a term that denigrates Stephen, right?

00;32;27;08 - 00;32;47;08 Mike & Stephen Like I was just, you don't know, right? 100% ignorant. So you come into the situation and, you know, I mean, the most dangerous man is the one with nothing to lose, right? I was me, you're in there and you're like, oh, we got to fucking make this work. Yeah, right. So we're going to scratch and claw Chris. And cue the Al Pacino speech from any given Sunday halftime.

00;32;47;15 - 00;33;02;00 Mike & Stephen When he talks to his team, you don't have to kill. That's fine. but I'll tell you what I mean. That is a speech you know, that that few minutes that he talks about. Are you familiar with it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. we scratch and we claw for that inch. Bad impression. But go check it out.

00;33;02;00 - 00;33;20;13 Mike & Stephen You could drop a link in the description. yeah. That's, I mean, it's remarkable. I mean, even as early as a a year and a half ago, I mean, it was when Pearl and I were just working together, the two of us. It was like a pearl. You need to sell two more subscriptions, or we need to sell two more subscriptions to pay the bills.

00;33;20;15 - 00;33;40;29 Mike & Stephen Yeah, we're not like that anymore. That's good. We've got reserve money in the account, and life is good. I love that for you. Yeah. Thank you. So, what's the growth plan? Are you guys going to be marketing? Are you going to be focusing on acquiring customers by direct marketing and advertising to the roofers or contractors? Are you guys really leaning in on the partnership side?

00;33;40;29 - 00;34;01;15 Mike & Stephen Is it a blended approach like what does that look like? It's a blended approach. We certainly have only relied on partners and cold emails and stuff like that. You know, we've got about 6000 people in our database and we send out, you know, cold email campaigns, which brings in some good business, to be honest with you. Yeah. we've locked in the cold email system pretty good.

00;34;01;17 - 00;34;20;26 Mike & Stephen We use crossbeam with our partners, which is a way just to see mutual mutual companies that that work with us or our prospects of each. So that helps. We we've started over the last three months to try to do paid ads and stuff like that. So we are rebuilding our website now to be launched within the next 30 days.

00;34;20;28 - 00;34;42;19 Mike & Stephen this is building it. So one of good question. Ascend Digital now, one of the owners of Project Map it, we're a partnership of five. He is a marketing guy and he's branched off a little bit, from his. So he and his partner Carly are building it. So shout out to Ryan and Ali. So we're actually building it right into HubSpot, which is our CRM.

00;34;42;19 - 00;35;05;22 Mike & Stephen Yeah, we're just trying to get everything in one spot. So we do like the analytics are there. So you know true. What is it one of one truth source. What's it called. Single source of truth. Single source okay. So everything in HubSpot, so marketing's going there. We just hired a new social media person. that's going to be doing that for us.

00;35;05;22 - 00;35;23;00 Mike & Stephen So that's going to be pretty nice. We're going to be posting five days a week, doing some video editing and stuff like that. So we're hoping to use social media as a platform to, to gain leads as well. So we are going after our own leads now. So it will be a hybrid. In the past it's been more cold emails and calls, partnerships.

00;35;23;03 - 00;35;44;26 Mike & Stephen Dude, I think the relationship partnership route is like for our customer is the most underutilized and undervalued component of running a business. You know, if you think about it like it doesn't take much for roofing contractors. There's so many other different contractors that you can refer business with. You guys are all selling the same people maybe at different times.

00;35;44;26 - 00;36;01;17 Mike & Stephen Yeah. Because somebody, you know, furnace takes a shit if you have an alliance with that Hvac company and they notice there's a couple shingles in the yard, or there's a few shingles missing on the roof, it's an easy conversation because they've already garnered their trust to say, hey, we've got a great company. They're they're very they're authentic. They're ethical.

00;36;01;19 - 00;36;17;12 Mike & Stephen Have them come take a look at this. This is probably why you'd want them to come take a look. and just being focused and locked in on building and developing those relationships consistently over time and developing new ones, it could be such a great source for leads for a roofing company. And a lot of a lot of guys don't do it.

00;36;17;12 - 00;36;38;02 Mike & Stephen Some of you know, some will do it. some do it with just like property management companies because they've got like the complexes, the apartments, things like that. But, may having those strategic relationships with industry adjacent verticals, I guess, is could be so powerful. And like you just said, you've leaned into that and it's been very fruitful for you.

00;36;38;02 - 00;36;56;09 Mike & Stephen So it helps with any business. I don't care if you own a fucking salon, you own a roofing company, a marketing agency, or you send us two companies. And literally, I mean, I don't even have to demo them. It was like a text message in a five minute phone call. They're like, yes, I'm me up. If Mike Mike stern says, I need project map it, I need project map it.

00;36;56;16 - 00;37;12;05 Mike & Stephen And we and we have those, you know, I think, you know, we have we have very close relationships with all of our customers. I feel like we do a really good job with customer service. We check in on them. They know that they can call or text me anytime, even on the weekend. I'll probably respond, so there is that.

00;37;12;05 - 00;37;30;04 Mike & Stephen But you know, we also have under a thousand customers, whereas some of these huge industry leaders that are in the software world that we're partnered with, you know, they don't they have thousands and thousands. So their bandwidth is a little harder to be like, yeah, let me introduce you to Steve Spence. But I do think it is under utilized.

00;37;30;06 - 00;37;49;02 Mike & Stephen And honestly, it's been the main reason we've grown is because of we don't under utilize it. Yeah, we like I don't know if it's that we pride ourselves on our tight relationships with our core partners or if it just that's the only we haven't had paid ads yet or anything like that. So it's all I could lean on anyway.

00;37;49;05 - 00;38;12;28 Mike & Stephen Well, it's it directly affects especially for like our shared customers, it affects their profitability. Right. Because if you're if you're having to spend money instead of time. Yeah. Like there's a cost per acquired job. And that directly impacts what you're going to make from that job. Whereas if you know, you do five jobs from Google Ads or you do five jobs from a referral partner, there's significantly more profit when you're not paying out, correct?

00;38;12;28 - 00;38;33;10 Mike & Stephen $200 a lead to Google ads, sir. And you know, if you can build a business where you've accomplished everything you want, you know you can provide for your family, you can do everything that you need in life, and you don't have to spend money on Google ads or marketing, like, do that. Like it's all good, like and like I say that I encourage people to do that right now.

00;38;33;13 - 00;38;52;03 Mike & Stephen Like I always say, I'm like, I'm the fat kid, right? That always ran with a garbage bag to make weight on Saturdays for football. So like, I like cookies. And I think of lead source as an opportunities as cookie jars. Right. So like referral relationships is one of them. Google ads, another one SEO, Facebook trade shows. Right. Like like our customers roofers have all these different opportunities.

00;38;52;06 - 00;39;13;03 Mike & Stephen Go with the ones that make the most financial sense for you as far as keeping your company profitable while accomplishing the growth that you want. And that might be you have three different cookie jar as you want. Maybe it's only one. Maybe it grows into five, you know? So we have a really close relationship with certainty. so maybe dangerous me talking about.

00;39;13;03 - 00;39;32;16 Mike & Stephen But you know what? I'm a transparent guy. I really don't care. So we're hoping to have a really a deeper relationship with certainty. And as a smaller company with fewer, like, right. We don't have 140 employees. Yeah. Like some of these software companies that are our friends, that are our partners. We've got five in the states. You know, it's not big.

00;39;32;20 - 00;39;55;06 Mike & Stephen So like it's one of those things where I could I could put all of my energy on a relationship with somebody that we have a close relationship already with like certainty. But all my energy on that or I could have six different relationships with other manufacturers. And, now I'm being spread thin right now, I'm not going to give certainty as much attention and love, because I have to give some love to everybody.

00;39;55;08 - 00;40;11;11 Mike & Stephen Right? And so for me, it's almost like, hey, why don't you and I'm not putting all my eggs in a basket, but why don't we really grow this one relationship with this manufacturer so that their territory managers or their sales reps get to know us on a on a personal level, we get to know them on a personal level.

00;40;11;13 - 00;40;27;19 Mike & Stephen Now it's like, hey, we've seen project. I've been presenting for certain team all over the United States over the last six months, and I've gotten to meet a ton of territory managers. It's been so fruitful. They they finally know who we are, right? And they're like, oh shit, like Project Map. It's awesome. This is a no brainer. I'm going to find my contractors tomorrow.

00;40;27;21 - 00;40;42;00 Mike & Stephen So and it just makes sense, right. For somebody that's small and it's kind of one of those. It's kind of like the same analogy, you know, focus your own attention to focus your attention on one. And it'll be more fruitful than having to focus on 15. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I'm glad it's working out for you. It is so far.

00;40;42;03 - 00;41;15;14 Mike & Stephen So project map, we throw it on, throw it on a website and like this is my take on it. And it's funny because we, we developed a way less sophisticated. We we developed a way to try to accomplish the same thing in a way less sophisticated way. Years before we met. Right. So, we built a website and we did like, API with Google Maps and did like a pinning project where it was just showing the pins because I'm like, I want people to know that if they're looking for this contract and then this area, that they're going to be more comfortable because they've already done work for them, like we've talked about this.

00;41;15;16 - 00;41;38;12 Mike & Stephen and I mean, it sucked. It was good. It was it was better than nothing. It was. Yeah, it was better than nothing. But comparatively to like what you guys have available, objectively, it failed. so Project Map is really cool because if we're pushing people, I mean, I've got I've got clients that use it on every sales call their reps, you know, if they're out there, they're they're pulling it off.

00;41;38;12 - 00;41;55;12 Mike & Stephen They have whether it's in engage or they pull it up on the website and they know that, hey, we've done 11 projects within a, you know, a half mile radius, a mile radius. It's like, hey, by the way, like you're all your neighbors chose us. You could even take that a step further and your neighbor shows us, and you know, this person at this house, look at the review they left for us.

00;41;55;19 - 00;42;18;07 Mike & Stephen If you're doing a really good job getting reviews, you can follow me for more tips on getting reviews, by the way. But, you know, and you can cross-reference. And I mean, that just builds such like, a formidable, impenetrable close with that customer. If everything else in your sales process is dialed in, it's like that one thing that could really push them over the top, be like, it's a really easy decision.

00;42;18;07 - 00;42;34;14 Mike & Stephen You told us where you see why we're good company. You told us you understand why we install things the way we do. You told us you understand the value in our warranties that we offer, why we offer them. You told us all these things, and the fact that you find value in all the reviews that we have, and, you know, we're showing you that everyone else in your neighborhood has made the right choice.

00;42;34;18 - 00;42;50;07 Mike & Stephen You know, you you want to be the one that has to worry about the contractor disappearing. I don't want that for you. In good conscience. I can't walk out of here without you saying yes, or give me a really good reason why we're not your contractor today. Yeah, you did a good job there. Would you buy I? Would he buy these?

00;42;50;07 - 00;43;11;19 Mike & Stephen And even even if you were at a higher price point than the other two contractors that came out to my house, I'd still use you. Social proof is a really important aspect of sales nowadays, especially because the trend of the people that are buying those fixer uppers that are asking for new roofs, new windows, whatever, are the digital natives kids, younger people that grew up with iPhones and iPads in their face?

00;43;11;19 - 00;43;27;07 Mike & Stephen They're vetting you. They're looking you up online. They're looking at your Google reviews. Yeah. So now if I give them a tool that shows like, oh, by the way, there were 11 houses. If I just zoomed into my, my neighborhood and I see that, you know, my roofing company did 11 jobs. Yeah. I'm going to pick you. Yeah.

00;43;27;09 - 00;43;51;29 Mike & Stephen Especially if we can show them all the great reviews we got with the jobs. Yeah. Right. And so like, what is the talk to me about the process? If I'm a roofing company, I'm like, you know what, project map it fucking let it rip. We're doing it. How challenging is it? Because if we're you know, the idea is we can get photos right of these completed projects and show them the beautiful siding that we install, the Hardie siding or the the new shingles that we install through certain tiered.

00;43;52;00 - 00;44;13;06 Mike & Stephen I think it would be a landmark, if I'm not mistaken. They've got an excuse. But you know, we're showing and we're showcasing this. But what is the what is the lift for the contractor to get to that place where all these things are on their website showing their pictures, and imagine it had to be very challenging now. So since since you are mainly roofing, are you only roofing for website marketing?

00;44;13;09 - 00;44;32;20 Mike & Stephen Layer 9,595%. So we'll talk roofing because we're probably right around the same, right? 90% of our customers are reverse, so it actually can be real easy. In fact, we had a customer the other day we were trying to sell and they're like, wow, I think it might take a month. And I said, we can actually get you done in three days because of X, Y, and Z, because we have what's called an interview.

00;44;32;22 - 00;44;49;10 Mike & Stephen Once we sell them, we talk to him for five minutes just about the strategy of getting them up and running as quickly as possible, because as a company like we want our customers to get up, you work with contractors. You know, sometimes contractors don't respond to your emails or tax or they're busy. As busy as crap, right? They would rather do anything but talk to him.

00;44;49;13 - 00;45;08;00 Mike & Stephen Talk to us. so with that said, when I tell a customer like, hey man, we can get you on board and your map can be embedded on your website in three days. They're like, what? I thought it would take like a month or two. Nope. So we have good partnerships and some pseudo integrations with the biggest thing, right?

00;45;08;00 - 00;45;25;16 Mike & Stephen If you are mapping platform includes three things. Reviews your favorite thing. Right. So we can bring in all the Google and Facebook reviews, and showcase them on the map. So reviews pins on a map and photos. Out of those three things, the hardest is getting the pins on the map because it requires an import of a spreadsheet.

00;45;25;21 - 00;45;44;03 Mike & Stephen Or you can manually, like add a thousand pins, which nobody's going to do. Yeah. So we started working with companies like ABC supply and SRS distribution so far. and what they can do is we could when we talk to the roofer, we'll say, where do you order your supplies from? And eight out of ten times it's one of those two, right.

00;45;44;07 - 00;46;06;09 Mike & Stephen ABC and SRS okay. We can get that. All the deliveries that that SRS or ABC set that delivered to the houses that you order material from and use that spreadsheet. Like what? Yeah. You just fill out this form so we can get those spreadsheets pretty easily through ABC or SRS. With those two, we do shingle branding, color and siding, brand and color.

00;46;06;11 - 00;46;23;14 Mike & Stephen And then, CRM, we're very familiar with all the different CRMs. You can always export a spreadsheet from a CRM. It's not hard. It takes five minutes. And if they give us their login credentials, we can do it for them. And they're like, oh, I just need to give you my login links to leap. Okay. Yeah. And we take it, we take it from there.

00;46;23;19 - 00;46;43;05 Mike & Stephen The only thing a CRM doesn't spit out on a spreadsheet is the shingle brand and color. Right. And our map, which was a little differentiated, piece than what you had when you did the maps for your customers is that we have a filter button. So now if a sales rep is looking for that certainty landmark more black, they can click a filter that says more a black.

00;46;43;05 - 00;46;58;17 Mike & Stephen And the map is going to change to only show pins that have more black roofs. Right? Yeah. And I love that. as opposed to them lugging around the shingle board if you can. But a CRM doesn't spit that information out, right? Your, you know, they only spit out like it was a roof job or a siding job.

00;46;58;20 - 00;47;14;05 Mike & Stephen Well, plus, you know, I found and we talked about this in the past, I found the more that I can take off of your plate as the contractor, the less anxious I am, the better I feel, because you guys get busy and you might not be the best at responding in emails. And it's okay. Nobody is expecting anyone to be perfect here.

00;47;14;07 - 00;47;36;09 Mike & Stephen So if we can bypass the need for someone at your company to be responsible for A, B, C or all the above, let's do that. Let's go directly to the manufacturer. They have all the information we need, and they have more information than what we would get from you exporting it from the CRM. That's a brilliant workaround to be incredibly efficient and make it as easy as possible for the contractors to to utilize the the product effectively.

00;47;36;09 - 00;47;57;01 Mike & Stephen So that gets the spreadsheet taken care of. Right? We can handle the spreadsheet. That's not as hard as you thought it was. Mr. and Mrs. Roofer. Yep. Second thing photos. We have a direct integration with company cam. Again we know how to get into any CRM and download a photo and then upload it to project map it. So what our company will do is we'll spend two hours free service to load photos will connect.

00;47;57;01 - 00;48;12;29 Mike & Stephen If you're using Company Cam, which like seven out of ten people are always on company name. So then you give us access to come back and we'll connect company cam to Project Map. It will spend two hours loading photos for them. Or if they give us access to their CRM, we'll spend. Somebody just gave me a ton of, iCloud photos.

00;48;13;03 - 00;48;39;18 Mike & Stephen Yeah. By address. So we'll spend two hours loading photos. That takes care of the second piece. And syncing your Google reviews literally takes five minutes. You log into your Google Business profile and boom, they come in. Yeah. So to get onboarded is actually very simple. you heard it. Give me a call. Easy peasy. Very simple. Yeah, I like I said, I have I have customers that use project map it and their sales team are consistently referencing weather.

00;48;39;18 - 00;48;57;27 Mike & Stephen Like I said, they implement into an engage. pitch stack or they just use the website. It's, it's a game changer. And I appreciate what you do, and I appreciate you coming here and dropping some knowledge and sharing some experience with us. Man. That's, That's incredible. Before we wrap this thing up, do you have anything you want to ask me?

00;48;57;29 - 00;49;26;12 Mike & Stephen Oh, man. Nothing. What? What process in your company? I always like to ask this. You know, you being the the leader of your company, which I know you have multiple leaders, but for people that are still growing like myself and like you, what kind of advice would you give other business leaders or entrepreneurs when it comes to building your team?

00;49;26;14 - 00;50;11;09 Mike & Stephen so I'll give a disclaimer that I don't think that, you know, I'm the most qualified to give the best advice on this because I'm still young entrepreneur myself. I think what have you learned? I've learned that it's I would much rather turn away opportunities in the event that we will have challenges fulfilling that and losing out on those opportunities and taking the time that I need to get the right people in the right seats that I'm confident are going to consistently do the job the way that I want it done, the way our customers expect to have it done, then to hire somebody to fulfill a need based on us signing somebody and

00;50;11;09 - 00;50;28;00 Mike & Stephen not having the means to fulfill it. I'm very I'm very hyper focused on that. We've had several instances where we've shut down sales and we had to turn people away. Shout out to Eric Renault. He was one of them. He can attest to it. And he reached out to me like a year and a half, two years ago.

00;50;28;00 - 00;50;47;11 Mike & Stephen And I'm like, we're not in the position to help you. I gave him some some guidance as far as how I would make the decision to shoot somebody else. And it came full circle, and eventually we were able to to connect and do business. But we we weren't in the position, from a human capital perspective, to invest what we would need to, to give him the best quality of service that people come to expect from ascend.

00;50;47;14 - 00;51;20;17 Mike & Stephen So for me, that's the biggest thing is, you know, it's it's okay. We talked about it. Another piece of content we shot. Not every customer was your customer. Even the customers that are. The timing's not always right. Yeah. And, if that's the case, like hire in anticipation of the need. If you can. If not, it's okay if you're booked out for weeks on production and you're going to start losing opportunities because of it, it's okay to take a step back, and take a look at like, how do we how do we create a situation where we could still sell more in the future but not be bottlenecked on production or where we're overworking?

00;51;20;17 - 00;51;43;13 Mike & Stephen Because because that's another thing, right? That's putting stress on all your current team members when they're overworked. And there's just there's too much food on the plate. Yeah. It's you know, in theory, as a business owner, it's a good spot to be because revenue revenues loaded up and you've got opportunities coming in. But also it you know, it can cause some significant issues with your employees internally because you're asking them to pick up the slack of and then on top of what they're already doing for customers too.

00;51;43;17 - 00;52;02;23 Mike & Stephen Oh yeah. Yeah. Usually, usually at some point it'll lead to dissatisfaction from the customers because, you know, you know, the first things to go are like typically like quality control. Right. Like we don't have we usually have a project manager at every job site. You know, that comes by a couple times a day. He only made it there once or in the two day install.

00;52;02;23 - 00;52;21;03 Mike & Stephen Right? I mean, look at Boeing. They were the first ones to cut quality control. We might want to cut that. I don't know. We might be able to roll with it. Yeah. You know yeah. Quality control is really important, especially when you're flying 40,000ft in the air. so that's one thing that I would say is has been important to us.

00;52;21;03 - 00;52;46;18 Mike & Stephen And it's really been a focal point for me as we continue to grow, is making sure that we have the resources. The folks within the company aren't overworked to a point where they hate their fucking life, because that's not good for anybody. Yeah, I appreciate that. You know, I've learned we really and I and I've, I feel like I've always learned this or always felt this way, but I learned, I think, through my interactions when I hired Pat because I noticed Pat's emails stunk.

00;52;46;21 - 00;53;05;07 Mike & Stephen And I like I wanted to get mad because that's not my kind of email that I would write. Like, we we provide good customer service. And I didn't get mad. And Pat shared with me his issues with dyslexia and stuff like that. We came up with a solution. So for us it's, you know, we pride ourselves on helping each other out, right?

00;53;05;07 - 00;53;20;17 Mike & Stephen Like if there is something we just, you know, Ashley, just went on maternity leave. They just had a baby girl yesterday. it's not going to be this morning. Shout out to Dawson. Yeah, I've been texting with Pete a little bit here and there. So, we're down a person right? So we're all. We all know that.

00;53;20;17 - 00;53;43;12 Mike & Stephen We're picking up the slack. We aren't going to try to kill it on leads. Like, I know that sounds horrible, but we don't want to over we don't want to overextend ourselves. Well, we can't give customer the customer experience they deserve as well. But being a lifelong learner man like you're going to be, you're like, as a leader, your employees are going to fail and tie back are always says it put people in uncomfortable situations so they become comfortable.

00;53;43;15 - 00;54;01;06 Mike & Stephen Right. So you know brand new guy Eric started in March. He's like it like today he got his first week early, sold somebody and he's in charge of onboarding that person with Perla support. But he's going to be crapping himself, right. Like he's nervous as crap. But that's okay. We want you to be nervous. We want you to be a lifelong learner.

00;54;01;11 - 00;54;16;11 Mike & Stephen And it's okay if you mess up. That's our big thing. Yeah, and I appreciate that perspective. You know, I had somebody that reached out this morning. He submitted a form about a week and a half ago to have us do, like a discovery call intro call. And he submitted it again today and I called him. I'm like, look, man, I'm really sorry.

00;54;16;13 - 00;54;48;29 Mike & Stephen You know, for the delay, you know, we typically try to be expeditious with getting out, you know, speedily type deal. I think it's important people feel valued when you respond to them. And I didn't even acknowledge the first one. Right. And that's that's my bad. But I communicated I express, as I said, as much as we love growth and opportunities to work with new people like our allegiance, and our main focus is on our primary clients that our clients and customers of ours, I said, so it's been a fucking couple weeks and that's not an excuse that doesn't excuse me not acknowledging you are getting back to you, but I just want to set the

00;54;48;29 - 00;55;02;19 Mike & Stephen stage at like, you know, we'll be very cognizant of not letting that happen again. And I am sincerely apologetic. But he's like, dude, it's all good. I and I can appreciate that as somebody who wants to be a customer of yours. So he's not going to be a customer of years, he is going to be a customer. Yes.

00;55;02;20 - 00;55;22;21 Mike & Stephen Yeah. Cool. He was just saying he could appreciate that because why he's not a customer now that that little bit is focused. Lifelong customer. Right. Exactly right. Because I'm when he's on the other side of an he is a customer. He knows that I'm we're not going to, you know, skirt or cut corners or skirt out on his campaign to make sure we're, you know and if signing new class, if you take care of your customers, your customers go nowhere.

00;55;22;21 - 00;55;37;11 Mike & Stephen I had a customer the other day. He was charged for his yearly email me, why the hell am I getting charged? I didn't approve this and I said, we're too big now. We're like, we can't get your permission verbally. You get you get an email saying you're going to be charged. You know that you're going to be charged.

00;55;37;11 - 00;55;53;18 Mike & Stephen If you don't, you should know your annual. I said, I'm sorry. I'll refund you right away. Yeah. He's coming back right away within five minutes. You know what, Steve? You've always been good to me. I want to see you be successful. Just keep us for another year. You guys are good enough. And I know, I know, a couple of my salespeople, are using you for sure.

00;55;53;20 - 00;56;08;14 Mike & Stephen So, you know, you build those relationships. And honestly, man, we we joke, we didn't joke about it, but because I think it's true, like, there are two things when we talk to people, whether it's on a lead or a training, the first thing we always say on a on a phone conversation or a demo is, do you have a hard stop?

00;56;08;16 - 00;56;24;20 Mike & Stephen Or I respect your time. Do you have a minute to chat right now? And we want to make sure we're saying the person's name, right? I know it sounds funny, but it goes so far and we do not. We are not pressure sales. We don't pressure. It's okay if you see value in project map it. Awesome. We're here for you when you're ready to start.

00;56;24;23 - 00;56;40;25 Mike & Stephen If you do, if you don't see it, that's fine too. There's a hundred thousand contractors out there. We'll be okay. Be okay. A lot of times that actually that river. It's not reverse psychology on purpose, but a lot of times it you know, people will really, truly appreciate and want to do business with you because of that attitude.

00;56;40;27 - 00;56;58;10 Mike & Stephen Follow them for more sales training. Well, that's all the time we got for today, folks. I am very grateful for you coming out making the trek up to Buffalo. Hopefully it's everything you hoped for and so much more. And, you know, take a look for that basketball content because it's coming. hey, I promise you, it's going to be 15.

00;56;58;10 - 00;57;10;00 Mike & Stephen Nothing you but that's. And we gone

In today's episode, Mike is joined by guest Daniel Tighe. With hundreds of millions recovered and over a decade of Florida Property Damage Claim experience, Daniel's firm (Tighe PA) is Florida's leader in claims management in response to Hurricanes. They talk about how Daniel got started in the industry and go on to give insights into the ways insurance companies have changed in recent years, exposing fraud and much more.

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

Contact us : [email protected]

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Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:00.666) Welcome back another episode of the Mission Control Podcast. I'm your host Mike Stearns. This episode is proudly sponsored by you guessed it, Ascend, Digital Agency, and the team at Roofer. If you need instant roof quotes, clean and pristine proposals, which will give your prospects no choice but to buy from you. Make sure you hit up the team at Roofer. There's going to be a description with a link and click it. Let them know I sent you and you'll be happy you did. We have a very special guest today. Hello, Daniel Ty. How are you?

Dan Tighe (00:30.51) Hey, I'm great, Michael, how are you?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:32.794) I'm doing very well. Thank you for coming on the show. We're very grateful for your presence.

Dan Tighe (00:39.47) Yeah, absolutely, it's a pleasure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:41.305) Yeah, so you're down in Florida, yeah?

Dan Tighe (00:45.646) Yep, and it's starting to get hot. We got the summer weather kicking in. Also means hurricane season getting in the swing here.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:52.923) Yeah, what is it like 100 degrees there right now?

Dan Tighe (00:57.038) It feels like probably 105 to 110 and it's not going to let up for a couple months.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:02.555) That sounds fucking terrible. Once it gets past 85, I become like a toddler that needs a nap. Very frustrated, irritated, and it's not for me. So I love it for you, and hopefully everyone else that's enduring that heat is embracing it with open arms. It's just not for me. But then again, you guys don't have the three degree weather with a foot of snow, so I'm sure that's not for you. It all works out.

Dan Tighe (01:28.91) Yeah, that's the old joke is you're not stuck scooping, shoveling sunshine down here, you know?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:35.292) Mm -hmm, mm -hmm, mm -hmm. So hurricane season's upon us. So you work with a lot of contractors. I work with a lot of contractors. And we love contractors. Thank you all for tuning in. How did that start?

Dan Tighe (01:50.286) Yeah, great question. So probably unlike, you know, other lawyers who got in this field, I kind of discovered it in an interesting way. So I went to undergraduate my master's in business at a small school called Rollins College. And my, you know, from there I went on to UF Law, I went to New York. It was practicing law up there between Florida and New York doing some different stuff. And I connected with my undergraduate roommate who's still a big figure in the industry, Mike Weckerly. Shout out with C.

CSS, Contractor Supplement Solutions, good guy. But you know, I was just catching up with him. Hey Mike, how's it going? You know, great, I'm in roofing. okay, roofing, good, how's it going? Great, sold six roofs this week. Bro, no one's selling six roofs in a week. You must be doing restoration. And sure enough, he's like, yeah, we're doing restoration. We had a hail storm and I'm like, whoa, hail in Florida. He's like, yup, hail and wind and damaging these shingle roofs. And...

I just said, hey man, how can I help? I'm a lawyer and he says, well, I don't really know. I said, well, what do you do with your denied claims? And he goes, damn, they're denied. What can I do? They're not gonna pay them. And I'm like, bro, I sue insurance companies for a living. Let me try one. And that was probably a...

little over a decade or maybe more ago. And sure enough, you know, I laugh about it and obviously using a little artistic liberty. I had Mike in one ear, the adjuster in the other. I didn't know anything about roofing, anything about contracting. You know, I knew contracts well enough. So he's telling me, you got to argue this, you got to argue that. So I'm working this claim. Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, had the claim paid in full, had my attorney's fees paid separately in addition to the underlying claim value. And he did the roof. So it was like everyone was happy. And I was

I was like, Mike, this is awesome. Like love helping people love being able to work with people that I like and respect and my friends. How many guys you work with? I work with 40 guys. Great. I'm throwing a happy hour. Let's go, you know, let's see what we can do. Let's see how we can, you know, help more people. So that was the, the humble beginnings and, you know, started out doing a lot of small shingle roofs in central Florida. And through the years was able to build the practice up and, you know, kind of level up in sophistication and my understanding and the value I could.

Dan Tighe (04:03.488) bring to my valued contractor network and partners and then also to handling larger losses, more complicated stuff. It's been a lot of fun along the way.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:17.636) Love that. So somewhat serendipitous in the beginning, and it turned out to be one of those rare deals where everybody wins and everyone's happy. And look at us now, thriving. You touched on something there that I think is really important. And there's some parallels between what you did and I think what a lot of contractors should do. And some do, some don't, but you tried something different.

Dan Tighe (04:28.622) That's it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:40.701) just by virtue of having conversations with somebody you knew, right? Drove in, tested the waters, worked really well. And then the next step that you took was like, all right, I'm having a happy hour, right? So we're doing like a networking event to see how many more people we could help. And I think the parallel is like when...

Roofing contractors have the they have the ability to align with adjacent verticals within their market, right? So whether it's a drywall guy, a landscape guy, HVAC guy, like you guys are all selling the same customer and you can form alliances, refer people back and forth to one another if you guys have people you trust within your network. So kudos to you to setting up that networking event, because as you know, it can be very powerful, but often underestimated from what I see.

Dan Tighe (05:25.71) Yeah, I appreciate that. And what I look at is part of your marketing mix, right? And that's something I'm sure you guys at Ascend are, you know, very adept at helping people build out. You know, you don't want one channel. You don't want a feast or famine based on, you know, maybe a storm work or whatever, whatever it may be. You know, that's so, you know, certainly love that. But also too is finding like -minded people. And then the way you phrased it was people we can help.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (05:40.443) Mm -hmm.

Dan Tighe (05:51.054) And I love that, right? Because that's the mission. You know, at some point you've done, you know, your successor contract, you've done hundreds of thousands of shingle roofs. What's driving you on the next shingle roof, right? It's not, you know, maybe it's a partially love of the craft or, you know, but at that point, the money's marginal. You know, really you have to care deeply about what you're doing. You have to keep in mind that we're literally protecting people's homes. We're literally, the work I do, and I talk to my, you know, my lawyers, my staff, you know, we're putting people's, you know, roofs,

over their head, man. This is important, significant work with real true meaning. And that means that even those smaller claims or smaller clients or the annoying client who calls every day. Well, listen, what's the mission? The mission is to provide awesome service, to provide top in class legal work, but also awesome service, right? And help put them back in their home. So this is, you know, we take the work series and I think keeping the focus on the mission.

is that North Star to make sure you're making the right decisions trickling down all the way through your organization.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (06:56.988) Preach brother preach. I love that.

Dan Tighe (06:59.822) Thank you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:00.252) I listen, I am I tell my team, I tell my prospects, I tell my current customers all the time. Like we strive for a couple of things. And at the forefront of what we aspire to do is not only provide the best results, but provide the best experience. If I go to a steakhouse, you can give me the best steak that I've ever had. But if I'm waiting 15 minutes for another refill on my water and everything is just lagging behind and the waitress feel makes me feel as for the waitstaff rather 2024 waitstaff, I'm sorry, makes me feel as if I'm doing them a favor by paying

patronizing their business, right? The experience is shit. I'm not going to go back there regardless of how good the steak was. So I tried to look at it through that lens.

Dan Tighe (07:37.038) 100%. I love that analogy.

Love that analogy and I've used that before countless times because it is, it's true. Like you can have that sizzling steak come out just perfect, medium rare, a little char, you know exactly how you like it. But if you get seated by the kitchen and the wait staff doesn't pay attention, you're going to have a terrible experience. Not only are you not going to send your friends there, you're not going back. And then if it gets to the point, you may have people leaving bad reviews and that sort of stuff. But I guarantee a steakhouse that's run by a mission driven owner who says,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:49.052) Mm.

Dan Tighe (08:09.28) not serving stakes, I'm providing incredible bonding experiences for the people that were fortunate enough that take their time out of their day and spend their hard -earned money here. That guy's not going to have that experience in his business.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (08:23.679) That's an absolute fact. And I want to touch on something else you said. You said a marketing mix, right? Like we don't want to have dependency on one acquired lead source or marketing channel. And I couldn't agree more. And I always tell people like, hey, I'm a fat kid at heart. And I look at different lead sources and marketing channels as like cookie jars, right? And, you know, I want to pull as many cookies out of every cookie jar that I can, right? Be diversified. Don't be entirely relying on one. There's also like a fine line of like spreading yourself too thin, especially when you're doing like paid advertising.

So in those instances, like it's important to have clean data acknowledge what's working, what's not, where your leads are coming from and then making this database decisions, you know, premised off of those guidelines. So that's my piece. Yeah, man. Now I want a fucking steak. A nice ribeye.

Dan Tighe (09:10.058) You're the actor.

You're the expert on that. So, you know, obviously, deferring to you, but I do love, you know, what you're saying is data driven, right? And I've been down the road with, you know, countless marketing agencies really before I got in a, you know, this kind of roofing niche, and storm restoration niche, I should say. and it was always, you know, there was never data. It was like, yeah, it's looks like it's going well or, you know, and I'm a data driven guy and I don't know how you met, how you manage something if you can't measure it. Right. And that's so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:15.966) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (09:42.432) So I appreciate the approach that you take with that.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:45.886) Yeah, some of the stuff is qualitative, but it should be more quantitative than qualitative, especially if you're doing digital advertising. Not everything is attributable to say, hey, this person started here, and then seven clicks later they finish here. But for the most part, you can do a pretty good job on using data to deduce what's happening, attributing efficacy of different marketing channels and what's going on. So that's why I got into digital marketing. I love the idea that, hey, we can prove value. It's hard to argue with numbers. So yeah.

Hmm. So you started with in central Florida, mainly Shingle Roost, but you've evolved into you're more of like a high end white glove service for large loss. Is that accurate?

Dan Tighe (10:29.422) Yeah, so there was kind of an intermediate step there too. You know, I had kind of built this reputation here in Florida and I really, you know, what I do is I'm looking for relationships. I always have been, I'm the guy who answers his phone. You know, I lead the firm, but I'm not too big to text someone, call somebody. If a client's having an issue, even though, you know, one of our associate lawyers is handling, I'll pick up the phone and make them feel good. Like totally, you know, like that's, to me, that's just running a good business, but also driven by,

you know, my values, who I am as a person, I found a good fit here, where I'm working with people I like, trust and respect, and I don't mind making the extra call. So what happened was I was working in central Florida, running a great practice, having a lot of fun, meeting a lot of great people.

And then we started getting hurricanes. We didn't have a hurricane for all, for about a decade here in Florida, major hurricane. So, you know, there wasn't a ton of action down here. Sure enough, 2016 we had hurricane Matthew, 2017 was the epic hurricane Irma, which was a major hurricane swept through Naples, Orlando, you know, and really cause a lot of damage over a huge swath of the state. And what happened was there, a lot of guys nationwide came down to work this door.

So what do you do if you're a contractor and you're coming down you don't know the claims game here in Florida Well, you call other guys who are contractors or you call your guy at ABC supply and say what are these guys doing? I was very fortunate because of the investment in time and learning that I took You know to kind of figure out this market that when people would ask that question to other Contractors or other people in the industry all of them would say you got to talk to Dan Ty you have to call them And of course I'd answer that phone man

you know, there were no off hours. Let me put it that way. And,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:17.628) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (12:19.118) You know, it was wild. I was driving around back and forth between I looked out now in Jupiter, Florida, but you know, Palm Beach, Florida, Naples and Orlando. It was like a three hour triangle and sometimes I do two turns a day for meetings and just try to arm guys with the right tools to know how to handle what they were allowed to handle themselves correctly and then let them know that when they do have those specific claims that they really shouldn't or can't handle that we're happy to help them out with that and take that on. So we really built a

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:29.468) Mmm.

Dan Tighe (12:49.024) a big reputation on commercial and then tile roofing became a specialty. I actually helped develop some of the better arguments that are now very effective and used industry wide. So just having that passion, again, going back to who we are, values, wanting to help people. If you're a lawyer who just checks in in the morning, checks out in the evening, you don't do that extra work, man. And I'm sure your listeners, if they work with lawyers, a lot of them don't answer the damn phone.

You know, so we're different and you know, that's kind of what's got us to this place where, you know, we still help some of the companies that we started with, with some of the smaller stuff, but we've now kind of got a network for some of that. And our focus really is like you identified really on the commercial or more sophisticated high -end homeowner who really needs that white glove service. We're not the lowest cost option. We're not trying to be the lowest cost option. If your, you know, guide to success in how you choose someone to help you with this.

problem is just how little you can try to pay them. First of all you're not going to get good results and second of all you're very much not a fit for me.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:54.66) Yeah. When did you realize that?

Dan Tighe (13:58.83) And that may have some crossover to your business, right? If they're just looking to pay the cheapest guy and that's how they determine success is finding the cheapest provider, does that usually work out well for them?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:13.307) No it doesn't and you know there's gonna be a lot to go back to here in a moment but you know I will have somebody that comes in with a

with a website that was built by another company and was built years ago. And it's just, foundationally, if we're doing SEO, there are things that need to be intact and developed at the ground level to give you the best chance for long -term success. So people oftentimes, they're not too happy when I tell them, like, well, we would only do it if we built you a site, because a site's expensive, which I understand. But again, you're making an investment into somebody that's going to do things the right way for the long -term strategy, right? And it's, you know, I went to

When we've been asked, like, hey, can you do SEO on our site or can you just revise our site? It's like, you know, I don't know if you've got a shingle roof that's 12 years old, maybe it's got a couple of years left, but there's a bunch of damage on it. Like, would you want it repaired? Would you want us just to do a layover so that those underlying issues are still there and eventually are going to make you have to re -rip everything off and put on a new roof? Or do you want us just to do the new roof, right? And we're just going to rip it off and do it right the first time. And if cost is...

If cost obstructs our ability to do that, like that's fine. It's not always the right time. How, when did you realize that? I know, because it took me a few years to realize this. And I think a lot of roofing contractors even kind of kind of struggle with this. Like when did you realize that like not every customer has to be your customer?

Dan Tighe (15:38.958) Yeah, it was a long and I'm not going to lie, somewhat painful journey for me at certain times because, you know, like I'm sure a lot of business people, you know, I could be considered guilty of trying to, you know, do too much and maybe not having the bandwidth, keeping up with it. The intentions are always good. I'm working 24 hours a day. We got the team firing, you know, as much as we can and all that. But still your ability to sell can sometimes out clip your ability to produce. Right. So.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:43.898) Hahaha

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:49.242) Mm -hmm.

Dan Tighe (16:08.864) You know, I kind of learned that the hard way. I had a partnership that unfortunately didn't work out and we've moved on and rebuilt things a lot better kind of under my direct supervision to solve some of these problems, which has been huge pain, but huge blessing in disguise. And you know, when I rebuilt this platform, what I said was, I'm going to look first at results, of course, right? Because you're hiring a lawyer, you need top, you know, top, top legal work. That's going to be first. But second, we're looking to service. What is the service?

is that experience right? We use our steakhouse analogy. Okay we got great steaks and we got the chef cooking them up just right.

But how are they coming out? Are we getting people? We want to build a business where the experience is so good that we're building exponential growth in the markets that we want, that we choose. We don't want to be everything to everybody. We want to spend our advertising and marketing and business development efforts wisely where we have a good return. And what I mean by that is where we're working with the type of people we want to work with, not necessarily just ROI.

And, you know, so it was a little bit of a painful process. Worked it out and, you know, it is what it is. But, but I think when I had that chance almost to blank slate it, I said, what do I want to build? What's in my heart to build? I don't care. I run through walls, man. Like anyone who's working with me knows you call me any time of day. I'm texting with guys. My poor wife hates it, but she gets it. You know, you know, these are my guys, right? And I'm looking for a limited number of people who want to say Dan's my guy.

back and have a relationship, obviously, within what, you know, technically not permitted a direct referral, whatever, with the lawyer bar rules, but like a personal relationship, right? If you call me about something else, I'm going to give you my time and because I like and respect you. And so I kind of was able to, you know, clean slate, rebuild it back with the vision that I wanted. And I'll tell you, it's been awesome. You know, the call we get, we look forward to client calls now. We look forward to, you know, our, our valued contracting partners.

Dan Tighe (18:14.608) reaching out to us because we know their clients are happy and they're happy. It's not like, no, what's the nightmare now?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (18:18.874) Right. Yeah, I love that. I think sometimes...

The way that the roofing industry promotes it, there's a lot of coaches, a lot of people screaming from the rooftops, work on the business, not in the business, right? And people become obsessed with working on it, not in it. And I think that kind of clashes with the personal touch, right? As you move closer to working on and not in the business, I think people are less likely to engage in those things directly, or even their lower level employees, which is fine, but I too am of the same mindset where, you know, we've got systems, we've got processes, we have a team, and when we onboard a class,

and like after they talk to me for the initial consultation, they go to Charlie and then they work with the team from there. But I'm always like, you know, don't hesitate to reach out to me. Like you have my phone number. I work all the time. I'm sick. I love my sickness. My medicine is working. It's OK. Yeah, for sure. You know, so like I always implore people like.

Dan Tighe (19:12.874) Yes. Yes. Yes.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:17.53) Even exactly. I'm like, I don't work at the micro level of your campaign every single day. Like Charlie, Ashley, Dan, like that team does. But like if you have specific questions that you want to talk to me about, I mean, it's nothing for me to get up to speed, hop in and then have a discussion about it and just be like a true strategic partner. Because I think like that's what we want to deliver. I think that's what people deserve. And I think, you know, as far as like our competition, I think that's where they lack. So and ultimately, it makes me feel good at the end of the day. Right. When I've got to stare at this ugly

face in the mirror while I'm brushing my teeth and like are you happy with what you're doing? Are you doing the right thing? Right? That's our six core values. Do the right thing. Have you done the right thing? I can say yes and then go sleep like a baby. It's fine.

Dan Tighe (20:00.878) Yep.

No, I love that. And I mean, what you're talking about there is, you know, it's actually pretty similar to what we do is I'm working on the strategy, the big picture issues. You know, I'm working on the, you know, large important client relationship stuff. You know, if you're a follower of EOS, more of the visionary type role, you don't want me handling the day to day on your claim. I'm not the best suited lawyer to, you know, be all in on this one claim and get it to the finish line and research the new case law. You don't want me doing that.

You want me helping you at the intersection of business, law, service, you know, all these great things that I've been able to get good at and combining them to one thing where I'm truly special at that rather than, you know, and the nice thing is we have lawyers that are amazing.

at that one specific claim and pushing the adjusters and doing that, probably the same thing like, I'm not hiring you because I want you clicking the buttons on the keyboard. That doesn't make sense. And you know, it's funny, just, you know, sometimes contractors are like, wait, you're not my lawyer. I'm like, no, I am your lawyer. I'm not the lawyer for, you know, filing this motion on this claim. I know exactly how it works. I developed the strategy on how we do things. And then we have a team that's really

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:59.834) Alright.

Dan Tighe (21:19.92) dedicated, myopically focused on executing the strategies that we've put in place. So now that means, hey good news, you've got someone who's obsessed with it, they're waking up doing it, they're going to sleep doing it, and you've also got a guy who doesn't have his head in the daily grind who can help you work out better strategies, help you network, help you grow your business, help you build systems and processes that will take you to the next level.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:46.138) All right. Love it. Absolutely love it. I'm glad we're having this conversation today.

Dan Tighe (21:51.598) You tell.

Yeah, you can tell I'm a little passionate about this stuff. And, you know, I hope that shines through cause I love it, man. You know, there's people who say they haven't worked a day in their life. Like even the tough days when, you know, it seems like nothing's going right. You're getting some, unfortunately, some, you know, client problem, this, that, the other thing, like, you know, at the end of the day, I'm smiling. Like that makes you feel alive, you know, solve the problems, you know, kick the doors in. I got a good buddy of mine in the industry. We joke. It's like, you know, like we're shovel guys, right? Like, you know, shit, we got some.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:55.674) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (22:23.632) trouble. All right, where am I showing up and I'm bringing a shovel, bro. Like, let's get to work. You know, it is what it is, man. I don't know what the problem is, but if you call me, I'm there with a shovel. Let's fix it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:26.682) Bye.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (22:34.234) Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. I...

years back I got licensed to do real estate, not for anything other than like look for investment opportunities on the MLS and things like that. And I sold a few houses where it was just like, hey, you just got to list it, do the paperwork and then negotiate, which like negotiating super fun doesn't take much time. But I got to tell you, even just having to do like the disclosures, like the lead paint disclosure, then the COVID disclosure, the buyer agreement, the seller, I mean, it got, I felt like every minute that I was doing real estate, I was fucking working 20. Right. And I don't feel that in what I do.

I could have a 15 -hour day and don't get me wrong, sometimes I'm exhausted, but I could work two hours in real estate and it would feel way worse than working 15 hours on what I do every single day. I agree. Find something you love to do.

Dan Tighe (23:19.662) Yep. Well, and I'm sure you've, yeah, I'm sure you've earned that privilege too, right? When you started up, you didn't just say, hey, I'm LFA and I have this great staff. Like you got to build it, right? You got to, you know, and I said.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:33.658) We had four people.

Dan Tighe (23:35.662) You got to take a bite of the shit sandwich first, you know, like, and that it is what it is. And likewise, like, you know, that was my background was doing, you know, wearing a lot of hats, doing everything I've done, you know, state court trials, federal trials. You know, I joke now, I'm like, if you see me in a courtroom, must mean I'm a defendant, man. I shouldn't be in that courtroom.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:37.882) Yep.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:54.586) That's so funny.

Yeah. And you know what it did and I think that a lot of the audience that's going to listen to this, they can relate with this. It's like, OK, so you start up a roofing company, right? And you're doing everything. You're doing sales, you're doing marketing, you're doing supplementing, if you're doing storms, you're meeting with adjusters, you're fighting the claims. You're doing all this managing the production, ordering materials. And it's like now what that allows you to do and while being baptized by fire, it allows you to understand those roles very intimately. Like being a roofer and running a roofing company are distinct.

different things, right? You have to, there's a change of mindset that has to take place if you're going to eventually be successful, especially at scale. And I think when people start hitting like a million and a half, like the one man band owner operas, they start to realize that really quickly. It's like, fuck, I got to find some people that I can trust to do things that need to happen. And because I've been, you know, manging on this shit sandwich for the last 12 months, I know exactly what needs to happen in order for me not to be force fed a shit sandwich next year, right? So it makes them like uniquely qualified to

Dan Tighe (24:27.47) huge.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (24:56.348) to not only bring people in, but train them specific to their market and what their challenges are within dealing with their customer experience to make sure that what's duplicatable, I guess, is a process that is everything but what they don't want to happen.

Dan Tighe (25:13.454) Yeah. I mean, that makes all the sense in the world. And again, we, we like the EOS, you know, traction, Gina Wickman, kind of training. We're not strict adherence to it, but you know, we've built out our own style, our own processes. And, that's kind of, like you said, that's probably the toughest jump is from the guy doing everything himself to getting a couple, you know, employees or team members, whatever that are, because then you have to think you have to stop and you can't just do, you have to build processes that are repeatable.

and scalable and that takes a little work. It takes some deep thought. Also, if you're that one man band and you're getting successful, now the phone's ringing and you got to make this and then on top of that you got to do all this stuff because and we see the same thing with law firms. There's a lot of great lawyers out there who are one man show and as long as you don't give them more than you know eight claims, they're going to do a great job.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:47.514) little work.

Dan Tighe (26:05.486) Most likely, whatever, right? They may not have other resources, whatever, not for the purpose of this discussion, but like they'll be fine until they're not. And once they're not, they're really not fine, you know? And on the other end of that too, and just because we're getting into it, you know, there's kind of, for me, there's kind of a sweet spot and it may be similar to contract and maybe similar to marketing agencies. Once you get too big, you also don't give a shit.

You know, it seems that way. The experience falters, right? Because the guy with the big name who's been doing it forever, he's on the door. That guy's out sailing, you know, doing whatever the hell he's doing. And he's not paying attention to shit. And, you know, he's got some other three layers of management who are then saying, here's the experience you want. So there's, I believe just in my experience, there's probably a sweet spot where, you know, you got a solo practitioner probably doesn't have the resources you need. If they haven't been successful, they don't have the resources. And then if you see some,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:38.169) Right.

Dan Tighe (26:57.776) organization scale too big, you're just a number. The relationship, it's more transactional, you know, so it's interesting, like you said, watching guys scale from kind of that one man band. And probably it helps having a lot of the pressure taken off by working with partners like you who can produce leads so that they can at least not deal with that portion, you know, going out networking or whatever they're doing, banging doors. They can at least outsource that and then buy some time back to work on the other stuff.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:27.962) Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think that I agree with your point, like with scale. A lot of the times you compromise the quality of the experience because there's there's more of a disconnect, right? And there's like small issues become disproportionately more burdensome as you grow. Right. And a lot of the times it's a reflection of a few things. It's either you lack systems and processes. You haven't evolved like your systems and processes as you continue to grow, because, you know, what works for you process wise at a million is going to look different.

than at seven million, right? And then the other side of this, like people, you know, they have these things, they have the boxes checked, like this is our SOP for this, this, this, I've got these seven fucking binders, but nobody managing, actively managing the staff, holding them accountable to those processes, training and developing those people within those processes. And at that point, what the fuck are we doing here? Right?

Dan Tighe (28:19.95) Yeah, and then add to that recruiting, hiring, and training.

You know, not just the managing, getting the right butts in the right seats and you know, how do you even go about hiring and all that? And again, I've been through all of it. So I laugh coming out the other end now. And now we've got processes to build processes. You know, but it's, you know, but again, and you and I seem to be similar in this vein. Like I like working. I'm not going to go sit on the beach for, you know, five days like that, which would be terrible for me. I like building. I like helping people. So like I can look back and laugh at those 15 hour days.

and say, hey, wasn't that fun? You know, at the time it was tough, but wasn't that fun?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:01.37) Yeah, I mean, it's to your point about sitting five days on the beach, it's so funny. Like even if I, based on my schedule, if I've got a day where I don't have much going on, like in theory, I get excited in the moment. man, I can't wait till Thursday. I'm light Thursday. I've got one meeting, don't got much to do. Like everything's caught up and then Thursday comes. I'm like, I gotta fucking get something done. Like I feel, I feel useless if I'm not getting like.

I'm an anxious person and my cure to anxiety isn't eating benzodiazepine, it's like going out and being productive, getting a workout in, doing things for work, accomplishing shit. That brings me a level of satisfaction that nothing else can. It's fucked up.

Dan Tighe (29:41.39) Yeah, I know what you're talking about and I definitely feel a similar way.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:45.915) I envy the people that can sit there for two days and just enjoy themselves. I just can't. I haven't figured out how. Told my therapist, like, if I have a slice in life, I play my slice. I've never fixed the mechanics, right? I just obsess over different things, right? And it's like work, working out, family. But work's a big part of that, because it makes me feel really good being productive, whatever. And he's like, you should work on that. I'm like, that's why I'm paying you the big bucks.

Dan Tighe (30:09.102) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (30:13.006) I think that's part of the human condition too is, you know, like, and what I, I don't purport to know anything about the bigger picture, unfortunately. I wish I could share that with you, but I think humans, you know, like we're builders by nature. You look at every civilization, it's always about building, improving, and then that aligns, I feel good when I'm doing it. So, you know, this is probably something towards the direction I need to be moving, you know, and I, like you, I get a good feeling out of it.

the outcomes are good. The more work you put in, the better outcomes you're having as well.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:48.187) Absolutely, love that. So what are some of the challenges that you're seeing that roofers are facing right now as it relates to the things that you guys are doing for them with large loss?

Dan Tighe (31:01.262) Yeah, sure. So obviously we've had a lot of changes here in Florida over the past couple of years. Insurance crisis and legislative sessions have been eroding rights of policyholders, which makes it very difficult to get a full and fair recovery, which then trickles down to the roofing contractors or general contractors who are traditionally restoration based working these storms. It used to be that these homeowners and policy owners were getting a very fair shake. Right. And if they weren't,

There were some tools that I had as an attorney where we could level the playing field against that big bad insurance company. Unfortunately, a lot of that has been eroded and it really, I use the word unfortunate, it probably goes beyond that to fraudulent. You see the work that Doug Quinn and his team at the American Policy Holder Association are doing to uncover systemic corruption at the very least and fraud, probably a more accurate term between regulators, legislators.

and insurance company leadership, but they've eroded a ton of rights. So getting back to how that works with roofing contractors and restoration contractors is this business, they don't make their money when they knock on your door. They don't make their money when the claims process is going on. They only make their money when they build the roof and collect the check. So it went from a situation where an insured would have a valid insurance claim, right? So covered peril in the right...

policy period and damage, we'd get them paid out in full or darn near close to it. And the contractor would be very happy because the homeowner or policy owner's happy and they could pay the contractor with just their deductible or their deductible, a little bit of contribution capital and get their job done. And that's how the contractor makes money. What we saw here in Florida was when they stripped away a lot of those rights, these contractors no longer had the ability to kind of sell based on restoration work.

except in the strongest best cases where they would hope that the insurance company would do the right thing, which is unfortunately a somewhat smaller proportion of the time, certainly less than they should. So it's had a very big chilling effect on the restoration industry, which of course negatively impacts roofing contractors, general contractors, restoration contractors, but also homeowners. At the end of the day, I'm serving...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (33:25.177) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (33:27.918) the people of Florida. The roofers are serving the people of Florida. People are vilifying contractors because it's an easy target. They're vilifying lawyers because I get it. I don't even want to hire a lawyer unless I have to and I am a lawyer. So another somewhat easy target as opposed to the good hands of the good neighbor or the multi -billion dollar marketing budgets from these insurance companies who also have the legislature, you know, I don't want to say in their pocket, but certainly very influential.

based on how fundraising goes in politics. So it's kind of been a perfect storm down here. What I'm kind of advising people as best I can is, you know, it's more important now than ever to make sure that you're doing things the right way. You're going to be watched, right? You've got to make sure you're, you know, crossing your T's, dotting your I's. You're doing things the right way. You're not saying things that are illegal to say now. You're not giving contracts out that are viable.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (33:58.233) Sure.

Dan Tighe (34:27.776) the law that carry with it penalties, you can't just do that anymore. Whereas for decades, people got away with just running kind of like a, you know, run and gun style of business. Now we need to tighten up a little bit. You know, so that's, that's been some of the bigger changes, which ties into some of the work that I'm most excited about is we actually acquired a law firm that is licensed in a number of other southeastern states, and we're going to expand our presence. We're going to expand our

We should have Colorado and Texas, then Minnesota and Arizona set up hopefully this year, but we want to do it right. And again, looking at relationships where we have good people that we like, trust and respect with a relationship of familiarity and trust where we can advise what to do, what not to do with people who actually listen. They don't just try to do what they think is going to make them the most money in the short term. That's unfortunately kind of a common scenario.

in roofing and restoration.

And then just building out these processes, which is what I enjoy best. And I think one of my biggest strengths is, you know, building them, building the processes, literally saying, Hey, here's your claim process after 14 days, send a letter like this after, you know, seven days after this, send a tickle letter, you know, pull the adjuster license information, all these different things. And I can set the processes up and almost hand it off to the guys that we like and trust who we want to work with. And then they can take off, pair up with someone like you to feed the leads in one end.

They've already got the process and system, run it with accountability, and boom, man, you're off to the races. So I'm really excited about doing more of that work. That's what I'm most passionate about. And that's, again, kind of based on some of my experiences here in Florida, some of the market changes, some of the business relationships I have changed. And that's really kind of pushed me to launch this new model, which we are just so excited about.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (36:29.179) Yeah, I can feel the excitement. I absolutely love that. So.

Dan Tighe (36:32.142) You're sorry, that was a lot.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (36:34.747) No, it's fine, but I'm gonna play devil's advocate here. I've seen the narrative that, you know, roofers have done this to themselves over the years, putting in fraudulent claims, manufacturing damage, all these different things have led us to the point where the insurance companies are tightening up for these reasons, right? How big of a role have these actors played, do you feel, in policy change versus the other side of it, which is, you know, potentially fraud, corruption, et cetera?

Dan Tighe (37:01.774) Yeah, I mean, I know specific to Florida best. Obviously, that's my market. And first of all, when you say devil's advocate, it's to the insurance company. It's not to me because I agree with you, brother. So, you know, so we're on we're on the same team, right? So, you know, a lot was made about fraudulent actors, bad actors. And the worst part is they do exist and they're very public. Some of the biggest companies.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (37:10.406) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (37:25.55) you know, we're taking money from lawyers per claim and they would, they would literally sign up anyone. They mislead little old ladies. Like it was happening, right? My argument is the insurance companies were in the best position to see who was doing it and to turn that over and to prosecute it, right? That's what we do. If someone commits a crime such as fraud.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (37:43.865) Hmm.

Dan Tighe (37:48.59) It's a crime. We already have laws that prosecute bad actors committing fraud. Well, why didn't they do that? Right. Well, the reason they didn't do it is, number one, they're disjointed and everyone thinks these insurance companies are a lot more organized than they are. Maybe some of the big state farms and some of them are very more sophisticated. In Florida, there's a lot of what are called takeout companies and beyond the depth of the time we have here for this podcast. But these were groups of businessmen who get books of business from citizens.

or just do some networking and marketing. These were not sophisticated insurance entities. They were buying policies, buying reinsurance on them. And they got caught with their, you know, the little joke is when the tide goes out, you can see who's swimming naked. Like I mentioned earlier, these.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (38:34.553) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (38:36.43) In Florida, we didn't have a hurricane, a major hurricane for about a decade, right? So these insurance companies were just getting fat and happy. They were racing to the bottom in terms of what they're charging for premiums because they wanted more of this risk. Right. So then when the storms inevitably started, this is Florida, man, we're going to have hurricanes. When it inevitably started turning, right, the luck ran out. These people were not positioned, these companies were not positioned properly. They had not properly underwritten their risk, which is the

is the fundamental of what insurance is, risk pooling. So, you know, what they did was they looked for easy scapegoats. So getting to the question you asked directly, right? Is it better if I'm Joe Megabucks on my second yacht in the Florida Keys to say, you know what, I fucked up.

Is it better for that guy to do that or say, we're losing money because of fraud. And it's all these low life roofing guys. Look at them. They're jerks. They're this, they're that. You know, like it's just such an easier thing for them to do. There was no accountability. Heritage, a big insurance company here in Florida, just got fined $1 million. You know how much $1 million means to them? The CEO made 20 last year.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:36.378) Convenient scapegoat. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (39:49.018) Probably not much of them.

Dan Tighe (39:52.462) Right? You know, like it's unbelievable how little oversight there is. So I think it was a convenient scapegoat. And the worst thing is this was the Florida play. This was the Florida program. If you are a restoration contractor listening to this podcast, it's coming.

They figured out the playbook on how to further leverage their money, right? They risk pool, they invest it, right? And if you haven't watched it and you're in this industry, Warren Buffett talks about why he bought Geico and puts it succinctly and perfectly, just like he has a knack for doing, of how much money they make investing other people's money.

You know, the float, it doesn't, it's not even their money. Most of us, a lot of it should have been paid out, but they're still investing it. So, you know, if you, if you're in a different state, you're going to start seeing the Florida model roll out to your state. And of course I'm pretty active as you are in social media and some of these groups, I see the common complaints against, you know, like, it's in, you know, everyone in, you know, Minnesota, no one can get an, XYZ insurance company claim paid. They've turned off the spigot. And then the next month it's some other.

other company and you know and what I try to keep in mind and what I wish you know we as a community could keep more you know further in mind would be that ultimately it's the policyholders that are getting screwed it's not us you know it hurts our business model it's not good for us either but ultimately this is someone who's paid insurance so that they didn't have to save money to repair their property in the case of a catastrophic event or maybe you know whatever everyday loss you know and they're the

the ones who now have to figure out how to finance it. And, you know, we're still, roofers still going to build roofs, man. Lawyers still, you know, there's still going to be denied claims, coverage disputes. People are still going to need lawyers. We just have to charge more, right? You know, when we lose some leverage with attorney's fee shifting and, you know, we have to spend more money underwriting cases. So it changes the model, but ultimately it doesn't affect my life and lifestyle that badly. The people that really hurts are the people who are counting on those proceeds to be able to put their life back together.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (42:00.25) Yeah, it's got to be a really tough position to be in as a homeowner, I'd imagine.

Dan Tighe (42:06.222) Yeah, we're getting calls, you know, we get calls weekly, you know, people and they say, well, if we're using this money to pay you, how do we get a roof put together? And, you know, they're right. It's not fair. The law in Florida used to be that you'd get attorney's fees in addition to your underlying claim to offset the cost of having to hire a professional. They took that right away. And in states where that still exists, they're coming for it. In states where AOBs exist, they're coming for it. In states where bad faith exists, they're trying to make it, you know, more stringent.

to prove bad faith. We just saw too, there's now a model public adjusting bill that they're trying to introduce the insurance company lobby as the anti policyholder, anti.

public adjuster and anti restoration lobbies, right? Funded by the insurance company is trying to push nationwide adopted adoption of a new bill that, you know, hard caps fees for public adjusters that has all these other stringent requirements. So, you know, it's not all doom and gloom, right? If you're a restoration contractor, it's still one of the greatest recession proof, great business, you know, good margins when done well, you're helping people still a great business, just, you know,

It's just getting eroded as probably a lot of businesses are these days.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (43:26.428) Yeah, I hear that. What's one piece of advice you'd give to a roofing contractor that operates on this model?

Dan Tighe (43:34.446) Yeah, I mean, I think the best advice I would give is is kind of just general business advice, right? It's not even necessarily claims. It's just realize that things are fluid, right? Just because you're running this business and you're hitting these revenues, you know, this year doesn't mean the business model isn't changing, right? All of a sudden, supply houses are charging more. All of a sudden, the laws change and this, that. Also, you get a storm in your market. That's a good thing. So don't be static in your thinking. You know, build a team of people. Again, I'm big on relationships.

Relationship, you know, I'm I talk to guys all the time that I don't even work with, you know Maybe they only do smaller shingle stuff and I I just I'm not a good fit for them But I still talk to all the time. I'm happy to do that I know you're very generous with your time and kind of build a community of okay, you know Even if they're not using a sin, but they're doing something I'm sure you'd take a call if they said hey, you know, hey man, like our cost per click went through the roof You know, do you mind just chat with me a little bit about why that happens? You know that sort of stuff kind of

build a little community, realize that things are going to change. You know, nothing static, everything's fluid all the time every day. You know, so kind of look out to the future and then build that team that you can, you know, you know, get those shovel ready guys like, you know, shit, this market just collapsed for us. Boom, let's go man. Next market. Let's roll. You know, build that team of people that you're in the fight with.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (44:57.82) I love that. A fluidity mindset. It's a beautiful thing and very well put. What questions you got for me, bro?

Dan Tighe (45:06.062) Yeah, I would say, you know, kind of the same question to you is like, where, you know, we've had some nice conversations as lawyers, we have some restrictions on what we're able to say and how we're able to communicate things. We have to run advertisements through the bar. It's very difficult to do any sort of direct marketing. But if I was, you know, a roofer or a public adjuster,

My biggest question is, because guys ask me this stuff, what's like the first thing, obviously there's no silver bullet, you know, very obviously, what's the first thing that they should do?

Like where's the initial?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (45:44.092) We open up a new roofing company tomorrow.

Dan Tighe (45:47.918) Maybe, if I get good advice.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (45:50.365) So if that were, assuming that would be the case and we're opening up a brand new roofing company, the first thing that I would do would be to figure out like who I'm servicing. I would get my Google business profile set up.

claimed out to make sure that people can start to know about us, that we can post content on that Google business profile, we can get reviews for happy customers. And prior to that, I would assume that we've developed some sort of understanding, not only who our customers are, but how we're going to acquire customers in the beginning. So some companies will open up a roofing company and they have money from an old venture, they come in with some sort of budget as far as marketing and advertising. Other guys are like, hey, I'm a subcontractor all day, and at night I'm going to start running

my own leads that I'm going to generate or on weekends and things like that. So I guess depending on like what the context was as far as that's concerned. But I would certainly get a Google Business Profile up, fill out all that information, services, products offered, things like that. Google Local Services, that's the best thing to ever happen to contractors in my opinion. You get a fixed cost per lead. It's usually like 60 to 80 bucks for roof replacement leads.

And it's great because you set it up, you be thorough about it. They have like a little mini CRM where you can document if you booked a lead or if it's a disputed lead or what have you. They're pretty good with disputing. One piece of advice I'd give with local service ads is if you're going to be a Karen and dispute every lead that's not a roof replacement, they're probably less likely to position you towards the top. If every time they're giving you an opportunity, like I want my money back. There's a lot of people that will pay for that without that friction to Google. And Google makes a lot of money off of ads.

ads and it's a very under priced cost per lead. If you compare it to like the home advisor, Angie model or like even Google ads. If you can satiate your appetite for leads for your sales reps just with local services, just do that. Don't pay a marketing agency. Right. And then I would figure out a website and you know whether if we had no budget, I would do it on like a Duda or Wix. And what I would do is I would look at site structures from like marketing agencies that

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (47:58.609) get really well endorsed based on the work and the sites that they build. And I would kind of mimic their site structure and create content in a way similar to what they do so that I have an idea that I'm in the right place and on the right track versus creating a four page website, you know, with, you know, just a bunch of scattered content everywhere that nobody could ever find. Cause ultimately Google's going to read your website. They're going to crawl your website and they're going to, they want it to be intuitive. They want the user experience to be good because the better that is, the more people are going to come back and the more

more people come back, the more they can charge, you know, roofing contractors for their ad campaigns, right? Higher cost per click because we have more eyeballs. So think of it when you're building out a website, your site map or the collection of URLs is similar to like the index of the owner's manual in your truck, right? You have all these different categories or subcategories. It's very intuitive. It's alphabetically ordered. And then there's, there's, there's sub subheadings where it's like oil, oil pressure, right? Okay. Oil change. I need to know what kind of oil I need for my oil change. So you go to oil.

I know you'll change it's this page, this paragraph that's similar to how like your site map should be when you're building a website. It should be like residential roofing services. roof storm damage. That's exactly what I'm looking for. Roof repair, roof replacement, roof inspection. Right. So we make it very intuitive. And that's what I would do if I didn't have the budget to hire somebody else is I would find a company that has a good website and to kind of start to mimic the things they do and do it on a very, a lower level design capacity because it's going to be a drag and drop builder. So we're not going to have the flexibility from the design side.

but structurally, it's gonna be set up very well. Long -winded, but that's what I would do.

Dan Tighe (49:32.238) Yeah, that's, no, listen, that, and again, my wheels are turning a little bit. I'm joking, I'm not saying I'm a roofing company, but the Google My Business, I'd imagine that lends some credibility and then having the website. So that's not only just kind of marketing, but it's also, you know, if those homeowners, you knock the doors or you get introduced by a property manager, they come and they look for you online. It looks professional. I'm sure there's value there too, right?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (49:57.054) Yeah, well because, I'm gonna say, I'm gonna take a controversial take here, but homeowners don't trust you, roofers. They don't. And that's okay, because you, roofers, don't trust marketing agencies. I always say I'm uniquely qualified to empathize with you, because I know how it feels. So like your website is, what's that?

Dan Tighe (50:06.542) Yeah.

Dan Tighe (50:14.254) Well, fortunately everyone trusts lawyers, so I don't know what you're talking about.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (50:19.282) So like, but your website is like your first, usually going to be your first, your first interaction, your first opportunity for an impression. And it's like, what is the...

What do they feel? What resonates with them when you land and you're going through the site? Can they find what they need? How is it presented? I can say the same thing a thousand different ways, and you can interpret it a bunch of different ways based on my tone, my inflection, my non -verbals and all that. We have less within communication when we're just doing a website, but like custom design components, where things are worded, heading structures, things like that can influence how somebody's going to engage with your website, and it's ultimately pretty important.

Dan Tighe (50:58.318) Yeah, and you're kind to give such a valuable starting point. But I'm sure the idea of simply going to someone who you do their digital, they do a great job, mocking their web page versus all the back end stuff work that your team's doing, I'm sure there's just a mile of difference.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (51:19.933) There's a gap, right? But if we're trying to start off and we're being pragmatic and we're saying, okay, this is our budget, this is what we do, okay, we can't afford to hire a web design company. So if our starting point is a four out of 10 as opposed to one out of 10, that's a huge win. And maybe we can get it to a five by ourselves. The further down the road that we can get on our own, the better position we're going to be long term. So when we align with a strategic partner, we're not starting from absolute zero, right? Or the closest thing to it, which is,

what happens a lot of the time. And as I sit here and I think about the question that you asked me, another thing that I would do very early on, a lot of the smaller companies, you know, they don't have conversations about cooperative advertising with their manufacturers because they think they're too small and they're not ready. It's like, no, have that shit day one and try to hold your your preferred manufacturer accountable to like some sort of paygate as far as like volume of shingles you're purchasing and what you can expect. There's a reciprocal relationship there. Right. The more shingles you're purchasing, the more you're

the better off you're doing, the better off your homeowners are doing if you're installing a quality product. Ultimately, the better off you should do and there's mutual benefit for you selling more. I don't think manufacturers are eager to offer to go out of their way to say, hey, we'll do more for you because just like any other business, I'm sure they have a regional budget or territory budget and it's usually going to be squeaky wheel gets the grease. But try to get some sort of expectation of like growth. Hey, like, hey, we want to go from a million to two million to three million over the next 24 months, assuming we hit the

this benchmark each of these next two years, we're going to be purchasing this many squares. Like, what could you do to assist in this? We're going to invest more into marketing and advertising. What can you do to help us? Right. And a lot of the times early on, they might say, hey, but to start you off, we'll do your truck wraps for you or we'll pay 50 percent of your truck wraps. Right. And if I'm a day one business or I'm early on in my business, that's a huge help. It's a few thousand bucks. Right. So leaning into that more of that relationship stuff that you were talking about, developing that relationship, having expectations.

Dan Tighe (53:10.094) Huge way. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (53:19.405) of one another. I think foundationally is really important to the success of any relationship really, but especially with like your manufacturer, supplier, and other strategic partners in the space.

Dan Tighe (53:29.742) Bro, that is...

Day one, so valuable. I'm going to start taking that and telling my guys, people who call me, you know, the nice thing about roofing too is you often get guys who are in a sales capacity or production capacity, then they roll off and start their own entrepreneurial venture, which I think is totally cool. I know one guy out of Orlando has been doing this. He's like the OG in Orlando of it. And he's spawned from guys who left his company, probably like 30 local companies, right? And, and he treats them well. He doesn't, you know, he's great. Go get it, do your thing. And I just.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (53:54.842) Mm.

Dan Tighe (54:00.576) I think that's such great advice though. Some of these guys, they're like, Hey, I know I can do it, but where do I get started? And I've got probably two or three guys in mind that I've known for years who did spin off separately. And I'm going to call them this afternoon and be like, bro, go get your trucks or after, you know, call your rep, you know, and get your trucks or after get them to spend a little bit for you. Cause I never even considered that. Like you said, if you're a small guy, just starting, you know, they, they should be inclined to, you know, help build that relationship and inspire some loyalty.

from you, assuming the products are good, you know, inspire some loads. Hey man, we were there from the beginning. You know, we're going to sit down. We're going to try to make this successful because a win for you is a win for all of us.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (54:40.698) Yeah. I've been party to these conversations and have helped move the needle significantly in some of these conversations where like a manufacturer is like, we don't have a structured deal. That's not how we do things. And it's like, okay. So what I did is like, we went over CRM data and what our marketing and advertising strategy was. They love to know that, you know, your numbers, right? Weird. Like we know what it costs to acquire a customer lead, a job. We know our gross, our net profit. So like we've, we've got a system here and this is how we're scaling our business. This is what we're trying to scale too.

This is what you guys are currently doing a lot of the times They're just gonna say upload it to the portal and we'll do what we can right and kick you a few hundred bucks for yard signs or this or that You have to force the issue and especially if you're a younger company talk about the lifetime value of you as a customer, right? You know, if you're if you're 33 years old, you've been in business for two years But you're showing year over year growth leverage that any positive indicator that you're heading down the right path It increases the level of confidence that it's going to be a sound investment. I don't care who you are when you're investing

You want to make sure you're putting your money and you're betting on the right pony, right? Show them that you're the right pony. Scrape up any bit of data that you can to frame it in a way that makes you undeniable, and you'd be surprised how much more willing they are to acquiesce to say, okay, maybe we can make an exception for you, and we'll lay out a structure to where if you do X amount by this date, we'll do this. If you do this much, we'll do this, right? And then that way, you have something to lean into as far as goal setting, accomplishing, and growing. So.

Dan Tighe (56:09.678) Dude, that's dynamite. Yeah, I like, I mean, I like mine. I'm sitting here like mind exploded. You know, like.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (56:11.322) Thanks man, I appreciate you.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (56:16.57) Hahaha!

Dan Tighe (56:19.15) I'm just literally, I'm like excited to, you know, not to wrap up with you, but to get a chance to call these guys and like, bro, have you negotiated with your supplier to help you out with some ad spend? So I think that's also indicative of the type of guy you are and the type of organization you run where you're not gatekeeping all this stuff. You're making time. You're networking with people in the industry. You're running this podcast, which, you know, it's not, not a lot of work for me. I showed up, I'm in my home office here, turn my laptop on, spin my office chair around. Not a lot of half for me, but.

You know, you invest heavily in it and you know, this is value you're bringing, taking time from your life, taking time away from the important work that you do, other important work that you do. And you know, it's indicative of the type of guy you are. I appreciate you doing all this and I can't wait to pay it forward with some of this fire advice, man.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (57:06.297) Yeah, man. I appreciate your time as well. Thank you to all of you who that have tuned in. Make sure you, you know, mash that share button and just share with somebody who some of this stuff would help. Shout out to Rufor. Appreciate you guys helping make this happen. And that'll we're out for the day. So see you. Yeah, dude.

In this episode, Mike is joined by Matt Kulhaneck, who runs All Access Builders in Buffalo, NY. Matt previously worked in marketing for contractors before switching to contracting work himself. He gives insights into what his struggles and triumphs have been throughout his journey.

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00;00;00;26 - 00;00;20;26 Mike & Matt Some weather we're having some weather having six or seven degrees of sunny. How's that feel after eight months of I mean, it feels like years. It might only be two months, but it feels like a really long time. It's just gray skies and defeatist attitudes. It's like a breath of fresh air, just trying to get back out of the cave.

00;00;20;26 - 00;00;43;27 Mike & Matt Like yesterday. It was foggy for the first 20 minutes of my drive, and then I see the sun come out and I'm like, I'm alive again. Yeah, it's it's crazy what a little bit of sunshine can do for for your soul and for your for your sake. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, it's good. All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast.

00;00;43;29 - 00;01;01;00 Mike & Matt As always, probably brought to you by the Sun Digital Agency, the brand and the team over at Roofer. If you need instant Roof quotes, clean, pristine proposals which will give your customers no choice but to buy from you. Quite honestly, if not the team of roofer, you can. My guy Christian is going to drop the link in the description below.

00;01;01;07 - 00;01;29;15 Mike & Matt You're going to click it. They're going to know iSentia and we're going to ride off into the sunset. Very special guest today. Some of you may know Matt, Matt Kalanick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So you were in marketing, you did sales. Now you you own a construction company in interim? Lee Inter I've been running it for a few years since I left marketing.

00;01;29;17 - 00;01;54;19 Mike & Matt What inspired you to make the pivot from working with contractors and their marketing strategies into I want to work for a contractor. I wanted to become an owner of a contracting company. There's a few things at play for that I would say. I grew up around construction. My father was a general contractor. Naturally, when I did marketing, I gravitated towards construction workers and things that I was familiar with.

00;01;54;21 - 00;02;18;01 Mike & Matt And, you know, I started to see how successful these guys can be, You know, seeing my father not very successfully provide for three children, I didn't really realize that it could be a lucrative business where I can become a good provider doing it. Until I did marketing and saw all the money I was making everyone okay. Did you ask for a cut?

00;02;18;08 - 00;02;39;26 Mike & Matt I want to draw every time. And they never gave it to me. It's. It's fucked up. Guess what? I'm interested because it's been, what, four years since you've been in marketing something like that over five. Over five. I'm interested to see what the struggles look like for you and your clients back then versus what that looks like now.

00;02;39;26 - 00;03;06;11 Mike & Matt As we know, a lot of things change day over day, week over week, especially year over year. So I like to take like an opportunity to kind of ab test or observe rather, you know, the struggles on the struggles. And I'll see what overlap there is, see what differences there are. When you were in marketing, in providing marketing and advertising for roofing contractors, what were some of the biggest challenges that you guys were faced with as far as producing opportunities?

00;03;06;13 - 00;03;34;29 Mike & Matt For a lot of it was experience, experimentation going into new markets, not realizing a field and how people were searching and being able to capture the correct audience, finding out which strategies worked in different markets where one market was heavily, you know, organic traffic, another market may only get leads off of paid traffic. Some of the things change throughout the years where you'd be able to have ads in the map section.

00;03;34;29 - 00;03;57;29 Mike & Matt And then Google Guarantee came along and it just continued to progress. It was something that you had to continually keep up on with market trends and each specific market that you were working, especially me, much like you, I did not really make it a habit to work with competitors, so I wasn't saturating a market with my marketing as well.

00;03;57;29 - 00;04;25;24 Mike & Matt I was, you know, all over states, all over the country. I had clients all the way from Washington to Florida, back up to Maine, just learning curve. And I would say, you know, it's diligence and keeping on top of it, making sure that your fulfillment is as informed as you are, as well as monitoring it and keeping your customer relations.

00;04;25;26 - 00;04;56;16 Mike & Matt Yeah, Communication's important, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I see. I work with a lot of businesses. I have friends that own businesses and a lot of the times when you boil down the the symptoms of issues that they're having within the business, it can all be kind of drawn back to breakdowns in communication, whether that's from company to client, whether that's from colleague to colleague, from ownership to management at some fast that usually has some semblance of a breakdown in communication.

00;04;56;19 - 00;05;38;07 Mike & Matt Absolutely. You'd run into situations where you would be communicating with your client just as client maintenance and some of your clients you'd become friends with. Very, very often I have clients that are no longer my clients that are now good friends of mine and you know, a couple of them, and you're actually doing their marketing now. However, you know, in the conversations that you'd have with these folks, you would not get the information about often the bug in their ear about the, you know, the the nice new girl who says that they're going to do so much better for you and leave your wife and all that stuff until it's almost too late.

00;05;38;14 - 00;05;56;28 Mike & Matt Yeah. Where you're being diligent, you're keeping on top of things, you're always calling to check in, you're always making sure that you're doing everything to keep the customer happy, as well as making sure that you're helping them provide to feed their family and all the families of those that they employ, which is priority number one. I apologize for that.

00;05;57;04 - 00;06;17;22 Mike & Matt Yeah, And it wouldn't come up until they already had a sour taste in their mouth because of he said season type things. Yeah, that's a it's actually a well-timed point because we just had a similar situation yesterday with a customer and you know, we have I usually tell people we'll give you as much time as you'll give us, right?

00;06;17;22 - 00;06;36;19 Mike & Matt So as a worst case scenario, we would love to meet at least once a month. But that doesn't mean that, you know, myself or my staff isn't available to call us. If you want to schedule biweekly meetings. In this particular instance, we have biweekly meetings and client was I hate to call you and tell you this, but you know, we're going to go in a different direction.

00;06;36;21 - 00;07;02;13 Mike & Matt Okay. Like, let's talk about it. And, you know, they had their ad account audited by a couple of people. And, you know, we're running experiments and, you know, testing things. Right. Like that's how you optimize ad campaigns. You do what you're doing. You take the feedback that Google's giving, you try to parse through what is more malevolent and for their self-interest, that's going to make Google more money and what's going to actually serve your client better as far as getting them more opportunities.

00;07;02;13 - 00;07;22;21 Mike & Matt And then what the strategists are seeing and then we're drawing, we're deducing things based off that and making our best informed opinion. And then based on that, we're going to create tests. So we had a we had a test run, and I think, you know, we had spent like $8,000 on a budget that was, you know, spending like 30 grand a month and it got six leads.

00;07;22;23 - 00;07;38;27 Mike & Matt And, you know, he had seen or somebody pointed out to him like, I can imagine the conversation being something like, is this how you want to spend your money? And I assured him, like, you know, this is like there are successful tests, there's unsuccessful tests. And like, that's a spectrum, right? It's not it's not binary like this work.

00;07;38;27 - 00;08;01;16 Mike & Matt This didn't work. It's like what? What worked within here? What can we learn from this? You know? And you can't make changes like this on an aggregate level, you know, especially in Google ads. So I get if I run a sample or if I run a test and the sample size is five days and let's say we expect to be at a cost per lead of $200 and the cost for leads $37 and it's just killing it.

00;08;01;16 - 00;08;23;28 Mike & Matt And then we go implement all those changes across all the ad groups and campaigns like you're setting yourself up for failure, right? Those things, there's a spurious relationship as far as like the advocacy of the changes that you're making based on how small that sample size is, You have to let those tests run and then there's obviously a cutoff point where it's like, okay, for reasons A, B, C, and D, this one's a flop, or this one is performing really well.

00;08;23;28 - 00;08;46;26 Mike & Matt This is what we're going to take away from this. We decided to try to save the marriage. We're going to keep working together, but it's the communication, right? And and I told this client, regardless, I'm I'm very close with this guy and I'm like, we're good regardless, right? If you decide to go, like, I'd hate to see you go, but at the same time, I understand it and we'll still be cool, Like we're still boys, whatever.

00;08;46;26 - 00;09;10;04 Mike & Matt And I just, you know, we have biweekly meetings set up and sometimes he shows up to them, sometimes he doesn't. And I get it. You got like contractors are busy. I understand that. But some of the points that are being brought up that seem to be points of contention and frustration are, you know, well, we notice that these calls, you know, we're getting an assignment of calls that are under X amount of length.

00;09;10;04 - 00;09;33;23 Mike & Matt And these are typically going to be things that aren't going to be actual opportunities. This is why we want to have that constant interaction, right? Because we're looking at KPIs. And KPIs are what we have to go off of. We can't listen to every single call that's coming in, you know, and I'm I'm relying on my team to meet with you and your team to communicate the information so that if there is a situation like that, we can try to get to the bottom of it.

00;09;33;23 - 00;09;56;08 Mike & Matt Like if there's an issue where we're getting a lot of spam calls, like what ad group or ad campaign are those coming from and how can we reverse engineer to try to enact pivots to make sure that that doesn't happen again? And if we don't have that communication, we're just operating off of KPIs, which is second best to having feedback from your the team, but it's still second best.

00;09;56;11 - 00;10;28;06 Mike & Matt And like Ricky Daddies, Bobby said of you in first year, last, that's a challenge that I had to endure quite a lot because you get a tendency as a business owner and somebody who is running a business to get tunnel vision and look into a very small sample size. If I were to look at my sales in the middle of February where we had a pretty rough winter, I'm out of business right now, where same thing with marketing.

00;10;28;06 - 00;10;55;02 Mike & Matt You know, it's an average, right? Is this marketing a good investment overall, 25% of a budget being used effectively? Not necessarily a big moneymaker, but it's a growing thing, right? It's something in order to help the campaign grow, in order to help the campaign succeed, you have to know what doesn't work just as much as what does work in order to avoid it.

00;10;55;02 - 00;11;15;25 Mike & Matt You know, Same thing with my customers now in construction, I need to tell them all of the possibilities of different things and I need them to communicate with me their concerns. If they don't tell me that they're concerned about their prized rosebush. Right. I'm going to make my normal efforts to protect it as such and knock off a flower.

00;11;15;25 - 00;11;35;16 Mike & Matt It's the end of the world. I didn't have the opportunity to present them like we're going to be tearing off, you know, tens of thousands of pounds of debris off of your roof. We're going to protect things with plywood. We're gonna protect things with tarps. We're going to have a guy monitoring these different things. There's a chance that you may have some temporary recoverable damage, just like with marketing.

00;11;35;16 - 00;12;00;12 Mike & Matt You know, you can have different points that you're hitting and everything's not going to be 100% year round trial after trial. And but that's the job, right? To your point about the recoverable damages and lack of communication, have you enacted things within your business to try to get ahead of those things? So let's say we go out, we visit a lead, we sign that customer.

00;12;00;14 - 00;12;21;27 Mike & Matt Do you have any processes in place for communication as far as like, Hey, here's what you expect coming into your end. So your schedule for this day, here's a punch list of things to, you know, inspect your attic, put down the tarps over things that mean something to you. Communicate to us externally, you know, things that are important to you that you want to make sure that, you know, don't take any damage or do you have anything like that?

00;12;22;01 - 00;12;48;28 Mike & Matt Absolutely. It was a hard or hard learned experience. I actually implemented an addendum, an entire addendum in my contract to go over all of these tidbits and pieces, drywall cracks, drywall damage, things like that are a direct result of Spanish. So this is a perfect example doing a customer's house, who has a roof in their houses is not the greatest condition to have laid in plaster ceilings.

00;12;49;01 - 00;13;15;10 Mike & Matt These ceilings are already on the verge of falling. We're doing our job. We're installing a roof, we're dropping bundles on the roof like we need to do. Ceiling Falls was responsible moving forward. I have now have an addendum. If it's not a result of a direct penetration of a hand or tool foot or something that we directly cause, if the work itself causes it, you know, we can try to help you out.

00;13;15;10 - 00;13;40;17 Mike & Matt But it's not our responsibility that your house is out of maintenance. Yeah, that's got to be really tough for a customer. Absolutely. Absolutely. I get hired. The people that hire me love me. The people that don't hire me are probably scared of me for telling them the truth. I mean, I just can't imagine. I know how careless I can be when I'm reviewing a contract ever having a conversation.

00;13;40;17 - 00;14;18;05 Mike & Matt So I talk to you? Yeah. Yeah, everything sounds good. Sent over the agreements. 14 pages. There you go. It's six pages. Okay. So is it something you explicitly talk about? The addendum? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. It's something that I found to be of paramount importance to save any future friction with clients. It helps to avoid uncomfortable conversations later. It helps to avoid a lot of hurt feelings on both sides, right where we may both feel justified in it because we didn't have a conversation about it.

00;14;18;07 - 00;14;44;13 Mike & Matt Yeah, yeah. Relationships fail and flaws with setting and either meeting or exceeding expectations or not meeting them right. And if you guys aren't communicating about what those expectations are, it's impossible to be on the same page. So the likelihood that there's a discrepancy between what you feel and believe and what your customer feels and believes is significant. And it's really I don't want to say it's a powder keg, but it's not far off.

00;14;44;15 - 00;15;11;22 Mike & Matt Okay. Yeah. So we want to do everything that we can to consistently ensure the best experience possible for your company, your employees, also your prospective customers and your customers and future customers. Right? That's What are some other things you do to help achieve that? I hired project managers to also kind of hold hands, so to speak, with customers throughout the process.

00;15;11;22 - 00;15;34;04 Mike & Matt Similar like you'd have an account manager, somebody to consistently be a point of contact. Obviously I'm out, you know, doing several different things and I'm often not on the job sites. So there needs to be a point of communication there. So that person's there to reiterate the things that I went over with them in the addendum, not in the addendum.

00;15;34;04 - 00;15;58;18 Mike & Matt Other things to be on guard for, to be honest, mostly to point out the negative and to show the positive, to say this could happen. Hey, we were running into this just so you know it also, we're going to take care of it. It's going to turn out wonderful. Yeah, that's smart. So do you have a project manager on every job?

00;15;58;18 - 00;16;28;27 Mike & Matt So, yes. Do they stay there or are they floating between multiple projects? So no, what they're citing, citing foreman managers citing he's not installing is the project manager, but is he boots on the ground at 1 to 3 anywhere avenue start to finish of the project unless he has to run to get materials. Yeah. Okay. So how many project managers do you have to do and what's what's the breakdown as far as three?

00;16;28;27 - 00;16;53;09 Mike & Matt I take that back because I have a project manager that manages carpentry and framing and then I have siding and roofing. What's your breakdown look like as far as like jobs sold over the last year? Roofing, siding, framing. I'd have to get back to you on those numbers, brother. Most importantly, you got to know your numbers, guys. Absolutely.

00;16;53;09 - 00;17;27;10 Mike & Matt Absolutely. I, I know a roundabout that I have been seeing a downtrend in roofing and an uptick in framing. I've gotten a pretty good influx of building projects, garages, additions, decks, fences, whatever things that my framers would perform. Yeah, and my siders and roofers and carpenters would finish up in a big downtick in roofing, mostly because of cost.

00;17;27;13 - 00;17;49;00 Mike & Matt Obviously, as you know, in the conversations that we've had on personal level, you get to a point, at least me specifically, where you do sales, you do sales, long time sales a long time, and you just want to be a person and be honest with people and tell them the truth about what's going on. And do you want it or not?

00;17;49;03 - 00;18;18;03 Mike & Matt And, you know, I do tend to give a good value offer, but I have noticed that in our market and conversations with, you know, like past clients that are in other states, that the economy is really, for lack of better words, budget chopping right. Whereas myself running an established company who's five star rated on Google, Better Business Bureau accredited, not that that means most big BBW guy over here.

00;18;18;05 - 00;18;43;22 Mike & Matt To some people that means something. And that's what counts to me. We've been in business long enough to stand the test of time where you know the statistics 80% of roofing companies go out of business within their first year. 80% of those within the next five. We've stood the test of time in order to be able to hang in the market and show that we're going to be there to follow our warranties to support you if you ever need anything else, we're here again.

00;18;43;25 - 00;19;08;10 Mike & Matt That's how the business was established. We started out as a fencing company and then we got a guy who knew how to do this and people said, Do you know how to do that? Now we do. And then before you know it, we're a full service. GC Building custom homes. So that's my point. There. That's okay. It was good up until that point.

00;19;08;12 - 00;19;42;20 Mike & Matt I'm proud of you. You're doing great still. You're welcome. You're welcome, Steve. So what would be the ideal break down as far as roofing siding, framing in your mind, and why? As far as revenue dollars or day to day performance, let's say revenue revenue dollars, I would say 70 roofing would be ideal. I mean, I'd take 100% roofing because the roofing is fast or money.

00;19;42;20 - 00;20;17;13 Mike & Matt It doesn't keep you as cash. Poor production times or days, not weeks, not months. No. That's why a lot of people like roofing, a lot of people who are on roofing companies never touched a roof. Maybe I should open up a roofing company. Ascend Roofing will get on top of that one. Hey, that was something that's. That's worked well for you as far as getting new customers over the last few years.

00;20;17;16 - 00;20;39;18 Mike & Matt Relationships. Also, let me back up for a second before we get there. I think it's I don't think it's mutually exclusive of, you know, either being honest or, you know, being sales or sales oriented. I think you can do both in if I'm here. The way that I heard it was kind of like is one or the other.

00;20;39;21 - 00;21;02;25 Mike & Matt But I think what you're the point that you're trying to make is that you're just fucking tired of of going, doing, doing the show to get the dough. I think that's fair. I'm not quite the exhibitionist anymore. You know, in today's modern technology, we don't have to get at roofs anymore, right? If we want to view the type of decking, we just go inside the attic or look in the crawl space, or look under the drip edge.

00;21;02;28 - 00;21;18;14 Mike & Matt People still want to see that, right? They still want to see somebody take that ladder off your truck and put it on the roof and take a look at it. Even though none of the information that you're going to gain matters because the measurements remain the same and the amount of layers that you determine from the ground maintain the same.

00;21;18;16 - 00;21;20;13 Mike & Matt They still want that exhibitionism.

Take something that is working and make it work better! In this episode, Mike discusses how you can improve your referral campaigns by leveraging a current job site to attract potential customers who are nearby.

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! ==== ==== ====

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00;00;00;12 - 00;00;23;40 Michael Stearns Take something that's working, make it work better. So, for instance, if you're running a referral campaign where you're rewarding people, you're past customers to send you business and be brand ambassadors, that's fantastic. But what if, for instance, we rewarded people that were nearby your customers? So we all know that, like in roofing, you will get jobs in the neighborhoods just by knocking doors around the job site.

00;00;23;40 - 00;00;47;18 Michael Stearns People senior tracks your pop ups, you know, whatever it is you have on the brand as far as like that branded location. But what if instead of paying the people that are referring people to us, we pay folks to do business with us that are around the job site. So, for instance, hey, we're in your neighborhood, $500 off a full roof replacement if done in the next seven days, have a sales schedule for inspection.

00;00;47;22 - 00;01;05;57 Michael Stearns This will have a sense of urgency for those folks to get the conversation going and might make the difference between them acting on that piece of correspondence. So that door hanger, they that boo.

00;01;06;01 - 00;01;19;07 Michael Stearns This creates a sense of urgency. That might be the difference between them throwing that door hanger out and them deciding to reach out scheduled inspection and ultimately giving your sales team an opportunity to help that customer do this today. Let me know how one follow the page for more tips

Protect Your Time! In life, especially in business, people are going to try to take your time away from you. The onus is on you to manage your schedule and make sure you have time for yourself. In this video, Mike gives some advice on how he's done that for himself.

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

00;00;00;00 - 00;00;17;43 Michael Stearns Protect your time. Look at in life, especially in business, people are going to try to take your time from you, and that's okay. But putting boundaries around that and not making your time accessible to everybody for everything is also okay. The way I like to think of it is think of yourself as an investment company or a private equity firm, if you will.

00;00;17;48 - 00;00;39;11 Michael Stearns And they make investments into companies and hopefully for financial gain. But they don't just go to any company who's got an idea and say, okay, well, here's $1,000,000, right? Think of your time as your investment portfolio, your capital that you'd be investing and like, what are you going to get out of that? Because if private equity companies invested into any company, they would likely fail.

00;00;39;12 - 00;00;56;08 Michael Stearns They put guidelines around the type of things that they want to see in order for it to make sense, for them to feel confident that they're going to get a return on that investment. You should do the same thing with your time. This will allow you to waste less time or mis invest time into things that aren't going to yield benefit to you and whatever that means.

00;00;56;08 - 00;01;11;33 Michael Stearns Right? That could mean money in business. That could be time with your family, time with your friends, whatever that looks like for you. Be pragmatic as far as and be cognizant of where you're investing that time and ultimately position yourself for success moving forward in the future.

00;01;11;33 - 00;01;21;38

In this episode, Mike discusses the benefits of consistently speaking with your sales reps. Your sales reps are out daily talking to homeowners, trying to convince them to do business with you. Through this process, they'll better understand what objections, questions, or concerns prospective customers may have. You can use this information to better position your brand.

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

00;00;00;01 - 00;00;22;45 Michael Stearns What's one of the best sources to understanding what your customers are thinking? It's your sales reps. Your reps are out there everyday talking to homeowners in the communities, trying to convince them to do business with you. And they're invariably going to be met with resistance. They're going to have resistance from your prospective customer. As far as like objections, they have, questions they have, etc..

00;00;22;50 - 00;00;44;34 Michael Stearns I think that what a lot of people could and should do is have conversations with your sales reps. Get your finger on the pulse as far as what your avatar or your ideal customer is thinking. The questions they have, concerns, apprehensions, etc. and then use that information to better position your brand, whether it's with social media content, whether it's with email marketing campaigns.

00;00;44;39 - 00;01;13;33 Michael Stearns There's there's a ton of different ways that we can communicate our value in advance of meeting with these prospective homeowners or prospective customers. There's a lot of different ways that we can position the brand proactively prior to meeting with the homeowner. That makes them hold our brand in high regard and builds trust and credibility. So take the information that your audience is giving your sales reps on a consistent basis and leverage that to create a better experience for your future customers.

00;01;13;38 - 00;01;15;04 Michael Stearns Make sure you follow the page for more tips.

In today's episode, Mike is joined by guest Jonathan Cater. They review a list of the top 10 best jobs in 2024 and give their thoughts on each. The list is heavily focused on the tech sector so certain jobs are not listed. Thank you for tuning in!

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! ==== ==== ====

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

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

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:21:02 Mike&Jon But you've told me we've just spent an hour together, an hour and a half, 2 hours ago, talking about this entire fucking process and your project. And you've told me every step of the way that we're really good fit. I'm going to make it as uncomfortable as possible for you to tell you.

00:00:21:04 - 00:00:41:24 Mike&Jon Welcome back to another episode of the Missing Control Podcast. It's your boy, Mike Stearns, with the Ascend Digital Agency, Jonathan Carter. You came all the way from Detroit. He's upset with me, folks. Is a little bit upset. I'll tell you why he's upset. I was in Detroit. I was with Eric. Eric Green of Paramount Roofing. And that's that's also John's stomping grounds.

00:00:41:24 - 00:01:01:11 Mike&Jon And I didn't check in. Go check in. And that's I mean, I'm lucky, you know, Let me slide on that one. You know, it could have been unfortunate, but here we are. And, dude, thanks for stopping by. Dude, the the the reality is, if anybody goes into Detroit, they got to check in. That's just you know what I'm saying?

00:01:01:14 - 00:01:19:24 Mike&Jon But honestly, it's an honor. So when I come in to Buffalo, I got to check in with Mike and I'm saying I got check in with this team. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So much. You know the fucking vibes. Isn't that what the kids are saying? This is forking vibes. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, the show's brought to you by not only the Central Agency, but the team over a roofer.

00:01:19:26 - 00:01:44:20 Mike&Jon So if you need its roof quotes, clean and pristine measurements, serum. You got a serum cooking here. It's pretty cool. Head of the team, a roofer. You can find that in the link below. Tell them I sent you. They're not doing. They're not doing matches. They're not doing matching roofers with roofers. What's it roofers do? What is it?

00:01:44:20 - 00:02:05:06 Mike&Jon Was it called the roofer dating site? Okay, moving on, moving on, moving on. So what's up? What do you what type of segment do you want to do today? I understand you'd brought to my attention maybe doing something along the lines of trending jobs in 2020 for nothing roofing related. It's going to you know, the reality is, is people are out here looking for jobs.

00:02:05:09 - 00:02:32:15 Mike&Jon Right. And so we're going to help people out with some of the positions they should probably be looking to fill up. Right. And like give a little bit of critique as to why that is. We already got a bubbly that was going to snap off with you, bro. Okay. Give me a clean, bubbly head. The DMS. If you want to sponsor the show, you make LinkedIn, go and get it and look at I'm a man of the people, so I very much value having this conversation and giving my opinion that it is worth anything.

00:02:32:15 - 00:02:58:20 Mike&Jon But I'll give it to you anyways because it's my show and I'll do what I want. How are you, Christian? Pull it up. What are we got for 2024? Most sought after jobs or number one data scientist Number one, data science data scientist. Does that mean I imagine like beakers, imagine computers. I imagine one in zeros. I'm assuming what a data scientist is.

00:02:58:20 - 00:03:37:26 Mike&Jon What is the actual definition of a data scientist? Data scientists analyze and interpret complex data sets to inform business decision making. They use statistical methods, programing and machine learning to extract valuable insights. I could see why that is very sought after and trending. I feel like, especially like with AI and machine learning, being able to digest large datasets and then actually pull value and meaning out of them would be incredibly valuable to I mean, any business for sure, right?

00:03:37:28 - 00:03:57:14 Mike&Jon There's no doubt about it, dude. If you're in a 1 to $3 million range in this industry, you don't have to look at data. Yeah, yeah. You don't need you just don't need to look at it because it's not a metric for success. You shouldn't make decisions based off of that. No, you should make decisions based off of feelings because feelings will drive you.

00:03:57:17 - 00:04:18:29 Mike&Jon Feelings are fact. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, you probably don't have the time to look at the data like. And that's good enough. I'm going to go off on a tangent here. I'm going to start a little rant and, you know, the tendency for people to evade accountability. You know, I hear people all the time. I just don't have the time.

00:04:19:02 - 00:04:37:09 Mike&Jon I would challenge you and what I would challenge you to do is, you know, open up your phone, Look, look at where you're spending your time activity wise, just in your phone alone. How many minutes or hours are you spending on Instagram, on TikTok, on Facebook data, you know, on dating apps? I mean, there's a lot of data, right?

00:04:37:12 - 00:05:04:00 Mike&Jon And what we're not doing is we're just not prioritizing certain things that could be done with time that we're mismanaging and spending in places that are intended to distract us or make us feel better or just kind of pass time. So that's my rant is stop saying you don't have time. Make the time, make things that you need to do a priority and let the things that are less impactful or should be a lower priority actually fall down the list of priorities.

00:05:04:02 - 00:05:34:13 Mike&Jon Yeah. Do you do you have someone in that position that isn't like a data tracker or. shit, I think we all, we all look at data all the time from the content team, design development team, you know. Charlie Dan I mean, we were all consistently digesting data. I don't think we're data scientists not saying that, but we always look at data because we do what we can to improve user experience on websites, make pivots in SEO campaigns, Google ads, things like that.

00:05:34:13 - 00:05:57:11 Mike&Jon And that all is premised around understanding what's happening as a result of the things that we're doing so that we can make iterations and ultimately be better and better as time goes on in 2024. What do you think are the top data points that you look at in order to decide whether you want to maintain or grow, deciding whether you want to maintain or grow?

00:05:57:11 - 00:06:16:23 Mike&Jon So I'm a roofing comedy. I'm doing $3 million do. I'm trying to decide if I say status quo or if I go to four or five 6 million. I don't. I think the the leading indicator and the thing that I would follow would not necessarily be data. It would be how I feel and how much of my sanity I want to compromise for growth.

00:06:16:25 - 00:06:36:16 Mike&Jon For real. Absolutely. When you're going from, you know, 3 to 4 million, in my experience, is not terribly challenging. But if you're trying to go from 3 to 6, from 6 to 9, you know that type of growth, you're going to, you know, break a lot of eggs to make that omelet and it's going to be stressful. And not everybody wants that.

00:06:36:18 - 00:06:56:13 Mike&Jon And I think that some people that think they want it don't actually want it, and they don't know that they don't want it until they actually get it. I've seen this before where a company goes from like 10 million to 17 over the course of a year. Man, there was some fall out. There were there were a lot of hard conversations, a lot of long days and nights trying to figure things out.

00:06:56:13 - 00:07:15:27 Mike&Jon Cash flow issues, right. Which are very taxing on the soul. So I think that would be the first thing that I would look at when trying to decide, okay, do I really want to grow this thing or am I good enough where I'm at? Because, you know, if you're doing if you're doing $3 million in revenue or, you know, whatever, you know, you're not profiting off that.

00:07:15:27 - 00:07:39:06 Mike&Jon Maybe you're making 150, maybe maybe you're making 300. Like if that's good for you and you can sustain your family, your needs and put money away, like as that the data point, then you're looking at like bottom line, net profit. Well, that's going to influence, right? My decision once I get past the point of, you know, what is how do I feel as it relates to my work life balance.

00:07:39:09 - 00:07:59:25 Mike&Jon And that's going to change for everybody because me, I like I work a lot all the time and I like it and that's why I do it. Some people don't want to work 60, 70 hours a week and that's fine, right? You know, you're running your business, you get to do what you want to do. But I think that there's a tendency to for people to hype up girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls, girls.

00:07:59:25 - 00:08:14:25 Mike&Jon And not everybody necessarily wants that. So be, you know, reflect on what's happened over the last 12 months and what your financial situation is and what position you want to be in 12 months from now. Like, do you want more money or do you want to be able to take an extra vacation with your kids while they're young?

00:08:15:02 - 00:08:32:24 Mike&Jon Because I mean, I have a six year old daughter, you blink an eye and they're fucking grown. You know, you don't get that time back. Do you think that because right now you're that data person, do you think at some point that you would offload that or do you think you'll always have some sort of capacity for it?

00:08:32:27 - 00:08:59:19 Mike&Jon Because I've seen some people they'll take the they'll take basically they'll try to find either a strategic partner that is like a CFO, CEO, slash position, and the CFO kind of almost operates in that CEO position where they're looking at data to make financially different decisions. Yeah. So like, you know, we did that year or two with having like a CPA having bookkeeping and services like that, right?

00:08:59:21 - 00:09:20:06 Mike&Jon I don't think that any of us within my company will get away from ultimately looking at data, you know, and maybe as the company grows, there's more people come in and have a dedicated role to specific data and making decisions for the company. But, you know, we're all going to be in these deep in data in perpetuity for from as far as I can see.

00:09:20:08 - 00:09:41:10 Mike&Jon Do you think that do you think that when you're looking at data in your business that you could be looking at too much and as a result, you don't really make a true decision? Like do you think that it has to always get simplified? The answer is yes. I think people it's just like anything else, right? You know, if a realtor shows you 50 houses, right.

00:09:41:10 - 00:09:56:06 Mike&Jon They don't do that because the likelihood of you making a decision is fucking zero because you've got something you like about all of them. And it's just really hard to make a decision. That's why he going to restaurants where there's three page menus. Yeah, it's, I don't know just like be really good at a few things and like let me see what's from those.

00:09:56:08 - 00:10:30:11 Mike&Jon And I think it's the same thing when you're talking about like companies and you know, being bogged down and it's like the paralysis by analysis thing. You've got all these different KPIs that you're looking at. For me, it's, you know, there's going to be a few that are way more important than the rest. And that's not to say those other ones are meaningless, but, you know, I don't want to get into a situation where we're wasting time, energy and effort focusing on things that have diminishing returns as far as like consideration, consistent consideration, right?

00:10:30:12 - 00:10:52:02 Mike&Jon Like if I'm a roofing company, what's really important to me from a marketing and advertising perspective, my cost per acquired customer, that's the one thing that I'm going to try to figure out, right? Not the cost per lead, not the cost per click, not how many website visitors I have. Like what is it costing me to acquire a customer like full lifespan, Like from the time they come in to like the time they get closed contract signed?

00:10:52:06 - 00:11:11:15 Mike&Jon Yeah, exactly. Collect it. Right. Because now if you figure out what it costs you to acquire a customer, now you can start turning this into a math problem. Okay, well, it costs us $700 to acquire a customer by way of marketing and advertising. And we know that you know, we want to do an additional two and a half million dollars in revenue.

00:11:11:17 - 00:11:43:19 Mike&Jon We close at 35% as per our CRM, assuming we have clean data. So now becomes a math problem. How many leads do I need in order to accomplish the growth that I want? Right. And they don't all have to come from marketing and advertising. They can come from relationships and networking, referrals, things like that. But it allows you to paint a clean picture to where, again, if you can boil it down to a math problem and just have variables, those are easily the easy to solve versus things that are like qualitative, where it's it's more guesswork, It's it's less attribution and numbers driven.

00:11:43:22 - 00:12:09:02 Mike&Jon What do you mean by clean data? Yeah. So when I say, you know, you know that on average your ticket is this much and your net profits, thus that's assuming that folks within the company are properly inputting data, right? So your customers, when they come in and they call in and you're going to do business with them, you're documenting their name, you're documenting, you know, their address, their phone number, their email address, you're documenting where they came from.

00:12:09:04 - 00:12:32:02 Mike&Jon And then throughout the entire lifecycle of that customer, from the time that the inception of that first contact through them paying their final invoice or, you know, the claim being approved and finalized, all the information accurately being documented. And a lot of the times that's not the case. So like my question then becomes, what's worse, not using data at all or making decisions based off of data that's wildly inaccurate.

00:12:32:04 - 00:13:06:09 Mike&Jon Yeah, yeah. I had a situation like that. I mean, even in the beginning when we were trying to really get structured, it seemed like we took forever to find to find, just like our CPAs, because then the mismatched labeling. So you don't get like exactly what you're talking about together and it's never going to be someone came through Google, but they were actually actually that's one thing that that I've been dealing with a lot is like people that are referrals and the referrals will come to you, but they'll come to you through Google because X, Y, Z person told someone about you.

00:13:06:09 - 00:13:28:28 Mike&Jon Yeah. And you know, it's on a Rolodex. Yeah. You know, it's like, I'm a look this name up on Google and go through Google and then it's a Google lead. But it was really a referral lead. Yeah. And that's why, I mean, it's never going to be perfect is the same way as when, like if we're running a Google ad campaign, we usually spend a small percentage of the ad budget on branded search.

00:13:29:09 - 00:13:48:18 Mike&Jon yeah, It's not because we're trying to trick you into thinking that we got your leads, that we're just repeat customers. It's because I know that a lot of my customers, if somebody is looking for roofing contractor, let's say in Dayton, Ohio, right. A lot of your a lot of your competitors will have roofing in their name, right?

00:13:48:18 - 00:14:16:01 Mike&Jon So if you're not running branded ads and someone is looking for your company's name, well, let's say it's ABC Roofing. By virtue of them targeting the keyword roofing, they can show up for your branded search before you because you're not running ads for branded search. Right now, the people that are searching, you have to understand the behavior. When they're searching, they're assuming that Google's giving them the most relevant results to their query.

00:14:16:04 - 00:14:32:05 Mike&Jon So if I'm looking for ABC Roofing, the first thing is Pops. Pops is definitely going to be ABC Roofing, but it's not if you're not running branded search to protect your your brand of traffic. That's why people say, they're running, they're running ads on my name. Yes. A lot of the times it's not the case. Sometimes it is.

00:14:32:07 - 00:14:58:11 Mike&Jon You can specifically target people's name, but a lot of the times it's just a consequence of you have your keywords that you're targeting for that ad group, roofing, roofer, roofers, roof is part of that keyword site. And because your name has, you know, one of those iterations of roof in it, they're being served up. So, you know, the antidote to that is running branded campaigns so that if somebody is looking specifically for your name, you're getting preference.

00:14:58:11 - 00:15:19:02 Mike&Jon As far as placement on the search engine result page, do you think Angie's List runs ads on their current clientele so that they can look at Matt, I don't want you in trouble here. I mean, listen, man, I don't know nothing. I mean nothing about Angie. I never heard her name before. Yeah, I mean, you know, why wouldn't there?

00:15:19:05 - 00:15:40:04 Mike&Jon Yeah, I've always wondered, because if they are, they're ultimately they, they profit off this, the traffic coming through their platform regardless of the third initially looking for you, looking for them, looking for a general keyword. So I would assume that they're going to do everything that they can to get as much traffic there as possible. But then if you're running Google ads now, you're competing against yourself.

00:15:40:06 - 00:16:04:24 Mike&Jon So yeah, to some degree that's somewhat an escape. Yeah. When you talk about like lead aggregators. Yeah. You know, Christian, how much does a data the data analysis data scientist, data scientist who's just a data scientist. Christian You're like Jamie on the Rogin podcast. It is better though. Look at him. Average salary 99 to 1 7899217. Lucky ship.

00:16:04:24 - 00:16:27:25 Mike&Jon I might become a data scientist. What the fuck is the difference between 99 to 170 Expertise and experience? Dirty dirty data Dirty data vacuum. Mr. Cole, Mr. Clean can have the dirty air. So if you want to start off at 100 K, go be a data scientist. What are the requirements for somebody to pursue a a career in data science?

00:16:27:27 - 00:16:52:06 Mike&Jon I mean, bachelors degree, I don't want to say that useless now, but you know, they're like the equivalent of a GED 25 years ago. Everyone's got them. So I'm assuming you're going to need some sort of grad degree. Many companies are happy to hire someone with the right skills required for the job and relevant coding experience. So. Well, maybe there's yes, I'm sure there's some people that would be self taught that could, you know, do those things or whatever types of resumes they jumped in.

00:16:52:10 - 00:17:14:02 Mike&Jon Like if you're literally a data management company and then you go into a service based company, they're going to be like, okay, yeah, give this guy a higher salary. Some employers prefer or require a master's or doctoral degree, appears to be a Ph.D. in data scientist get saddled with $300,000 in debt and then we're going to pay you 100 a year or two.

00:17:14:02 - 00:17:42:26 Mike&Jon We barely survive. Good luck paying this off. Yeah, you got to get at that 170, Doug. All right, what's next? Number two on the list, AI and ML Engineer, Artificial Intelligence and machine Learning Engineer. Yeah, that's stupid. Huge. Yeah. Yeah, because everybody's at the beta phase of of AI, and I still think AI for the most part is at the beginning 2.0 going into like 3.0 phase.

00:17:42:28 - 00:18:18:06 Mike&Jon But I think companies really have to figure out not how to eliminate positions, but create positions that integrate that. I mean, there's a lot of there's coaches out here that just swear that you are is turnkey and they can already take the place of whole marketing agencies. I mean, coming from a creative standpoint, I don't think that it it misses the human element and so it misses the originality of the human voicing that each brand has.

00:18:18:09 - 00:18:45:12 Mike&Jon So I think to the level of caliber, you miss a little bit of brand voicing coming specifically from a creative. And because yeah, it's just like it's, it's, it always hits maybe like like a 60 to 70% there, but then the 30 to 40% is really noticeable. Yeah. And if you're writing like a 2000 word piece of content, like it tends to be very, very repetitive, you will see sometimes it gives us factually incorrect information.

00:18:45:15 - 00:19:08:11 Mike&Jon Yeah, where the fuck did you get this? Because then because then it's because you put in the wrong prompts. So naturally it'll give you like the response based off your prompts. And if your response, your prompt isn't right, then it's, it's not going to be able to perform high caliber, but it's still polling. It's not, it's not like pulling organic decision made data.

00:19:08:13 - 00:19:28:15 Mike&Jon It's pulling it from other places. So you're going to get repeat shit all the time. Yeah, that's another thing is like plagiarism where, you know, we've seen instances, we always toss that and we continue to test and we use it, but we use it to streamline things. We don't use it to say, okay, we're going to click a button and there's, ah, there's your content calendar for the year, took 7 minutes, chopped me out.

00:19:28:17 - 00:19:53:11 Mike&Jon You still got to make it. There's, there's, there's got to be there's a lot of steps in the process to where it can be used to be more efficient but ultimately like it's not like I, I haven't seen success stories like some people claim some some coaches. And in our industry I've seen to where it's as simple as you know what do this you don't need a marketing agency owning a marketing team.

00:19:53:13 - 00:20:13:25 Mike&Jon You just need one person, you know, to spend an hour, a month, 2 hours, a month. You're good. I just think right now is good for pre prep for Yeah, it's good for like the mundane stuff. But when it comes to like stepping to the plate, you need to be able to know how to use it enough and then know when not to use it.

00:20:13:27 - 00:20:36:03 Mike&Jon You know, like I think too many people want to use it because they want that that scapegoat out or they want to, you know, say if you want to eliminate a position and just have that be, I like that's not that's not where as out right now. Yeah. So what do they make Christian how much money. How much money but like coding shit.

00:20:36:06 - 00:20:58:00 Mike&Jon I think coding is like really big for like API because then the time it takes to like write code versus like having I write code like that's like a beginner error type of. Yeah. Well, let me ask you this. So let's say we have to write some code and write a program, All right? You integrate that into your business.

00:20:59:03 - 00:21:17:15 Mike&Jon Code base. Yeah. You don't know where does now? Well, I don't know. Well, it's a problem you have to hire air to fix it, and. Yeah, Yeah, you're going to find a way through our how to fix it, or you have to pay somebody. And if they don't, maybe they don't code it in the same programing language.

00:21:17:17 - 00:21:37:09 Mike&Jon Or maybe it's it's, it's there's just so many variables and I'm not, I'm not an expert coder at all. I'm not even a good coder. I'm not a coder. But I can tell you like there's members of my team that code and you know, there's there's a lot of issues that come up when you're coding things out and it can be a challenge.

00:21:37:12 - 00:22:09:07 Mike&Jon It that's why I think you still need the position. You still need that human element that keeps it accountable. I must say making Christian $196,620 less than the data person. They're no data scientists, but scientists, you know, they can make decisions well, number three, Number three, three, health care professional doctor, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical practitioners.

00:22:09:14 - 00:22:28:19 Mike&Jon I'm out on that. I would never want to do it, but that's me personally. And obviously you're out here saving lives and I appreciate that. And when something goes wrong, I want a doctor. I want a licensed nurse practitioner or whoever to be able to save me. I just can't do it myself. Yeah, my. It will. Joe and his two sisters.

00:22:28:19 - 00:22:56:26 Mike&Jon Yeah, they're all in the medical field, so, you know, they're they're looking at like 100 plus thousand dollars of debt and then they probably won't be able to recoup that for quite some time. But I think it's definitely highly sought after just with, you know, situations that happen and like between recent history and stuff like that. But I don't know where that is lucrative.

00:22:56:26 - 00:23:16:24 Mike&Jon It's really not as lucrative as number one. And number two, number one. And number two, you can tell, I think I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. You think you get out of like you're doing your residency and all the good stuff like Ty around, like a specialty, like cardiology, right. You get out of that, you're making three 5450, right?

00:23:16:24 - 00:23:38:29 Mike&Jon You're doing, you're doing pretty well. Now you also have a quarter million dollars in debt, but you you have much more. So the means to pay that debt off. Yeah. You know, versus if you know you're going you're getting a degree that costs 60 grand. And when you get out of school, you're making 60 grand. It's it's a lot tougher to to live a comfortable life while having money to pay for that.

00:23:39:01 - 00:24:02:01 Mike&Jon Do you think health care professionals can make enough money to be wealthy working for someone else or they have to go private? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I mean, it depends on what you consider wealthy. I mean, at this at this stage it would probably be just with kind of everything would probably be between the 3 to 6 range, right.

00:24:02:02 - 00:24:36:17 Mike&Jon Yeah. And I mean then you can start investing in stuff like I don't think I don't think an earn is going to be making 3 to $600000. But I'm sure like specialty doctors, neurologists, cardiologists, things like that. Yeah, I think they certainly can. Okay Kristen, what do we got for the the the health care professionals? The average U.S. physician earns $350,000 annually, average doctor salary through 50 K, the national average R in salary is $94,480 per year.

00:24:36:19 - 00:24:56:15 Mike&Jon I've got some friends that were nurses and during COBRA, like travel nurses, I mean they were fucking cleaning up. Joe sister's the travel nurse. She's like, she, she gets contracts in three months, three quarter increments. Yeah. And so she'll just either renew it or she'll jump to a different place. That's wild schedule. Good for them, I guess. I mean, I could totally see the travel nurse like direction.

00:24:56:17 - 00:25:22:18 Mike&Jon Like pharmacy is a little bit man. It's, you know, because health care is so wide then there's so many different types of directions that you can go. Yes and no. Like with our ends, probably not traveling nurses a little bit better. I know she's she's taken up being a traveling nurse and then it's convenient to her schedule to Joe's doing well.

00:25:22:21 - 00:25:54:18 Mike&Jon But then, you know, if you're in pharmacy it really depends on where you're set up. But if you're in retail or if you're you could probably speak way more on that. Yeah, but what would you say the earnings were at 100. 200. 100 or 200 is not terrible. It's not. Do you think that you can make a decent living based off of, I guess, a traditional what would be considered traditional success after 200?

00:25:54:20 - 00:26:26:26 Mike&Jon I don't see why not. Yeah, I lost something. This was a couple of years ago, but I think it was Jordan Peterson where he talks about the correlation between money and happiness. Money and happiness and the fact that it almost that correlation never ceases to exist, but it gets a lot looser, like past $70,000 for that, too, because around $70,000 is where, like your needs are met, your immediate needs are you have some disposable income to be able to do some things that you want that you don't need.

00:26:26:29 - 00:26:45:06 Mike&Jon Put a little bit of money away. I mean, then then it's like, be your man. More money, more problems. Is that is that money in the bank that he's talking about like that or. No, I think that was annual income or annual income. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. What are the trades on here at all? I mean, I feel like, yeah, trades are getting pretty good.

00:26:45:06 - 00:27:19:21 Mike&Jon I'm not just saying that because of the audience, but if you look around at the 20 somethings, there's not many guys or girls that, you know, look like they're going to be ready to do any type of plumbing or, you know, this is blue collar work, missing calluses on the hand. So with that being said, I would assume that as time goes on and the supply of those individuals ready and willing to do that work diminishes and the demand stays the same, they're only going to be in higher demand and, you know, paid more, paid more, less people.

00:27:19:24 - 00:27:39:21 Mike&Jon What do we got for number four or market number for a digital market? How you be a digital marketer? Hey, look at all you got to do is watch a YouTube video. You sit in your mom's basement and launch an agency, of course, using cheap do and you'll make millions all year. Let me tell you, I'm gonna give you the secret to success.

00:27:39:23 - 00:28:00:14 Mike&Jon It what you do do like Alice for Moses. This goes through all your contacts, create lists, all these things, and just start adding people on Facebook and you send them a message and it goes something like this. Could you handle 20 to 30 more route replacement leads? We're looking for someone in your area. Can you always looking? Can you leave?

00:28:00:14 - 00:28:20:11 Mike&Jon Are homeowners looking for a roofer right now? You think you could handle 3 to 5 more installations a week? You do that, you're going to be golden. You're golden Ponyboy. I get people that hit me up for leads, not even in this industry. And I'm just like, I'm not at a point where I need leads. Yeah, at a point where I need like, fulfillment and maintenance.

00:28:20:16 - 00:28:42:14 Mike&Jon Yeah, right. So it's they hit me with that and I'm just like, You got anything else here? The other thing is really gone south. I mean, I get hit up all the time asking if I want more roofing leads, and it's very obvious that I'm not a roofing contractor. Yeah, it's very obvious that I just service roofing contractors.

00:28:42:17 - 00:29:11:12 Mike&Jon Right. But, you know, people scrape the Internet and they create these lists, send out auto messages and emails and all these different things, and you're just part of a team. You're just part of this. And I mean, this dude, when I used to do sales, prospecting was my favorite part. Yeah, I loved it. There's something about like going on the hunt, finding people that, like our solutions made sense for convincing them that they should want to talk to me instead of the other 175 people calling them about their Google listening.

00:29:11:19 - 00:29:43:06 Mike&Jon Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Challenging. A lot of fun. Do you have do you have an example of kind of your first your first biggest one in sales when you were doing digital marketing? My first biggest win, Yeah, I think so. My first big sale at the time, it was like a few thousand dollars a month and what we were doing was like for the size of the company and where it was located.

00:29:43:06 - 00:30:01:23 Mike&Jon We were doing like an aggressive ad campaign and I had found them on home Advisor. It was just kind of like, Hey, how's, how's that experience going? So I'll walk you through, start to finish what the process was. So first I found them on Home Advisor, then I found this Facebook page and I liked his Facebook page. Create the norm of reciprocity, right?

00:30:01:25 - 00:30:21:22 Mike&Jon Because no one else I guarantee you is going out. And I want to mention I come to figure out who actually ran the company. So I found his name like the Facebook page for the business. Then I called the number directly from Home Advisor. I assumed it was John. John Yes. Hey, John, it's Mike. How's it going? it's going well, man.

00:30:21:22 - 00:30:41:12 Mike&Jon How are you? Good, I, I got some. Some contractors. We're getting leads for it. Around 100 bucks. A hundred? 25 bucks. And I thought it might be of interest to you. I saw you and home Advisor. I like your Facebook page. No need to thank me. It's okay. Man of the people we talked about this thought it might make sense to have a ten or 15 minute conversation.

00:30:41:12 - 00:30:59:12 Mike&Jon Right. So now from the consumer side, like you've taken time to educate yourself about their business, you don't sound like every other person that's calling them. You've already gone out of your way to help them by like throwing them a like on Facebook. Now, it's not it's not massive, but it's something it shows that you care enough to take an interest in somebody's business.

00:30:59:12 - 00:31:23:04 Mike&Jon And if someone is calling me about my business, one of my favorite interview questions is like, you know, when I'm interviewing candidates, so what do you know about it? So, son. You'd be surprised how many people I know you guys work with roofers. What else do you know? Yeah, well, really, that's it. Okay. Like you're coming to me telling me I should pay you X amount of thousands of dollars every month to come work here.

00:31:23:06 - 00:31:40:18 Mike&Jon You think you would take an interest? So they haven't taken an interest to go above and beyond, like, surface level things. I'm probably not going to consider them for position. But the same thing with like that customer, that prospective customer at the time. It's like when you're cold Kong people, you have a split second to do where you're going to lose their attention.

00:31:40:18 - 00:32:03:29 Mike&Jon They're going to hang up on you. You're going to they're going to decide to keep listening, right? So do things differently. And it's no different with any other type of sales. Be different, memorable. Do that shit. Do that. I should say the first name only too. It's just assuming it's the same thing with like assuming the sale like a lot of people get to the point where they've done a really good pitch.

00:32:03:29 - 00:32:20:12 Mike&Jon They've proved value, they've gotten trial closers every step of the way. So you see how that could make sense for your business. Do you see why this person is getting this and you know you're getting this? Do you see why we do it the way that we do it? Do you see how this could make an impact? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:32:20:12 - 00:32:47:06 Mike&Jon But then they get to the close and it's like, you know what I found? I found that businesses that are actually businesses that are actually succeeding by helping people and digital marketing qualify the fuck out of, you know, like, there are a lot of questions. They don't just take your contract. They don't just assume you like you have to go through this.

00:32:47:09 - 00:33:14:16 Mike&Jon You have to go through, you know, the 10 to 15 minutes of like answering a lot of questions. And the ones that generally are a red flag, they're they're going to ask you the least amount of things because they just want to close you move on to the next. Yeah, but to my point about, like the awkward clothes, like once they get through with like, let's see if they've done everything perfectly from the prospecting to the appointment held, whether it's a digital marketing company or it's a sales rep and roofing, right.

00:33:14:19 - 00:33:36:22 Mike&Jon People have a really hard time doing like the simple thing, which is transitioning into the clothes. So it's like I'm a roofing salesperson and I've just knocked it out of the park and I've gotten there. They're buying every step of the way, and they've told me explicitly a dozen times that, you know, yeah, this all makes sense. I'm going to transition to okay, like I've got Thursday available to get you on the schedule.

00:33:36:25 - 00:33:56:10 Mike&Jon Does Thursday or Friday work better for you? You know, because we're booking kind of tight right now. We had a cancellation Friday and we have Thursday available. Which one would be better to get started? I'm going to make them super uncomfortable being like, what do you mean? Like you've told me, we've just spent an hour together, an hour and a half, 2 hours together talking about this entire fucking process and your project.

00:33:56:12 - 00:34:10:07 Mike&Jon And you've told me every step of the way that we're really good fit. I'm going to make it as uncomfortable as possible for you to tell me, like, I'm going to put the. I'm going to make it put the onus on you to be like, What do you mean? And then I'm going to make you feel crazy for asking me what I mean.

00:34:10:15 - 00:34:27:18 Mike&Jon I got to. I'm sorry. Did I miss something? Yeah, but you told me that you checked out our reviews. You said that you saw value in what we bring to the table as far as your installation methods, best practices, things like that. You said that you saw what other happy customers were saying. You said that you understood why, like, process was so important.

00:34:27:18 - 00:34:46:14 Mike&Jon Why it's important that we have, you know, liability, workman's comp, and we can prove that to you, you every step of the way. You told me that, you know, we would be doing business. So, yeah, I want to get you on the schedule. That would be the next stop here that I missed something. Now shut up and stare at them bewildered.

00:34:46:16 - 00:35:14:18 Mike&Jon Dude, sometimes the best thing is, is to shut up. Yeah. Make it really uncomfortable. Because if you think about it, like, our time is super important right there. Time's important. Our time's important. Yeah. Not just amuse running around to give them information, and, like, whatever. Like I'm here to say, you know, that I'm a salesperson. Yeah, well, it also gives people an even in communication, rather than filling it with word fillers, it's best to just pause.

00:35:14:20 - 00:35:35:21 Mike&Jon Yeah. Yeah. It gives people time to digest what you just said because you rattle off a ton of stuff we've been through. This whole interview process gives them time to think and time to answer with any objections, because the biggest problem that you could have is that at the end of the closed, they have more objections, but you just want to flush it all out and address it all.

00:35:35:22 - 00:35:55:04 Mike&Jon Yeah. Also, I'm not a sales coach, right? So maybe this is shitty advice and it wouldn't work. I think it would work. No, it's common things that I've seen each time in time and again with just different salespeople and whatnot. And I think that, you know, I think you're being pretty humble on that. If if anyone thinks that wouldn't work, I want to put it to the test.

00:35:55:04 - 00:36:11:11 Mike&Jon I'd be happy to come out and go do some roofing sales out in the field. Do Christian. We're about to hit the field dog. Are you ready to get this behind the scenes? A little behind the scenes. Mike in action. I feel like I could sell a roof. Feel like, No, I know you could sell a roof. You have to sell.

00:36:11:12 - 00:36:30:05 Mike&Jon I feel as if, yes, it's my language. So they taught me that in psych and they taught me in Therapy Island, which I feel how I feel, feel, felt, found. Sure. Yeah. Well, all right. What are we at number 508. How much is it? How much? How much can a digital marketer get paid in 2024. I'm excited to hear this.

00:36:30:08 - 00:37:13:09 Mike&Jon Yeah, it's going to be an off the hook number. According to Ziprecruiter, $68,500 is the 25th percentile salaries below this around lawyers. $100,000 is the 75th percentile in Buffalo that 5070 range 50 to 70 seems low to everyone thinks we're just reds are on money it's not the case cause let me hold some know it's just you know just seems to it seems it seems like there's too much demand for it for it to be that low.

00:37:13:12 - 00:37:38:24 Mike&Jon So I don't think that they're I think that they're talking about somebody who is a practitioner of digital marketing that's working for a company, not somebody who has 20 clients and does a freelance like agency agency base. Okay. Yeah. So if you're an agency and you want to hire people, that's your range. Up next, cybersecurity analyst. How much is that?

00:37:38:26 - 00:38:06:18 Mike&Jon I don't know. I just want to know how much it sounds really important and equally awful. $180,000. Do the rug and I people in the positions are just battling with the cybersecurity people. The entry level position starts at $89,268. Damn, that seems low as fuck for cybersecurity. Yeah, I want nothing to do with it, but hey, it just seems like a fucking headache for fucking 19.

00:38:06:18 - 00:38:40:29 Mike&Jon She's like, way more than the fucking Jews disagrees. I don't know. I'm very I'm a dumb person. So, like, thinking about, like, what goes into cybersecurity, It gives me anxiety. Like you need asset protection. whiz, what's up next? Human resources manager. Manager. God. What do they make? 70, 30? Some of these. Most companies just go, We don't really need human resources.

00:38:41:02 - 00:39:11:16 Mike&Jon Between 50,075 K to 5075. I think that make sure people don't think like we we have like a fractional role for h.r. Aware. We have like a consultant. Charlie they do the know. They do the handbook. They do all the types of documents that we need with hiring, with firing like forms, improvement plans, onboarding. Yeah. Okay. To where it's not in-house position, but we have that as a resource to anything that we need.

00:39:11:19 - 00:39:40:03 Mike&Jon So it's really helpful and it's very. And you guys use a h.r. Agency or is that is that what it is? It's a division of our payroll agency. nice. Yeah. Do you recommend for payroll? Nobody. Nobody. Yeah. Up next, full stack developer. What the the your front back end full stack developers possess expertise in both front end and back end development.

00:39:40:06 - 00:39:55:22 Mike&Jon They can work on the entire web development process. that's. That's your field. That's the. Well, the database is the back end, and then the front end is the user interface. Like what you see as a result of what's going on the back end. Usually it's one of the not usually there's people that do front. Front like the looks.

00:39:55:26 - 00:40:30:02 Mike&Jon Yeah, exactly. There's people that do the looks, there's people that do that like the hard coding shirt. And so there's unicorns that do both full static, what do they call 9130, 147,000 software in San Francisco according to built in or the 147 for a full stack estimated starting pay $45,000 full stack pop. Well, because that's a big disparity what with what you're you're going to make either 40 grand a year going to make 130.

00:40:30:02 - 00:40:53:14 Mike&Jon What do you want to do. Depends of your half stack the can't afford of a small stack of pancakes, please. No. Do you, Do you how how hard is it to find a full stack candidate out there? Is it do you find that most full stack candidates are either they, they're either stronger on the front end of the the back end or like they know how to equally think?

00:40:53:14 - 00:41:14:10 Mike&Jon It's really hard to answer that question. Is it? Yeah. It's not like there's one there's one situation that's incredibly pervasive and you're consistently saying that like, yeah, people are full stack suck on the back end. I mean, everyone's going to their preferences, their strengths, things like that. So what kind of personalities are they? Super fun at parties. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:41:14:12 - 00:41:46:29 Mike&Jon Are you a full stack? Three. Yeah, I cloud developer. So is that like servers like their parent, even servers and stuff like that. It's in the cloud. They design, develop and maintain applications hosted on cloud platforms, forums. Well big tech. So based off of this whole list so far, tech is like the main focus. Yeah. People are coming in to they're not even coming in to trade yet.

00:41:47:02 - 00:42:20:28 Mike&Jon We haven't heard a single trade thing yet except for maybe coming from Croatian LinkedIn article. Probably just some echo article out there. Yeah. Is is trade or any trades on this list at all? See, no, see, I just have I have a hard time believing that. Did LinkedIn, did LinkedIn actually post it or is it LinkedIn is also a tech company.

00:42:20:28 - 00:42:46:16 Mike&Jon And so I feel like there's an inherent bias there, like they're trying to drive more positions onto LinkedIn that are in tech. There's big technology solutions company that posted this blog. but is ranking it, but it's ranking on Google Ultimate Top ten Future Proof Careers in 2024 Future for was there is there is there another website that we can get the top and what are we at now.

00:42:46:18 - 00:43:13:19 Mike&Jon Right. Like number eight seven developers number eight hey what's the next one. Right next. Wait, how much a cloud developer how much does a cloud developer get to get purchased? Seven average is 77. You don't really see anything. Is there a four on came out with that? How important is it to have 41k and like a company that matches and things like that.

00:43:15:00 - 00:43:42:08 Mike&Jon I've never been part of a company that has a401k match, so I'm not too sure. I guess in my experience it's not that important, Do you do for a1k match? Yeah, it's. I think it's important. It's important for people to be incentivized to not just keep the blinders on and look at today and tomorrow. What what revenue threshold do you think that companies should start considering?

00:43:42:08 - 00:44:10:27 Mike&Jon Do doing 401k match and benefits like that? I think once you get past a couple employees, maybe like three or four employees and because we had the conversation with like our payroll team as far as like, okay, like when is the right time to do like because initially we were kind of like subsidizing health care until we actually had a plan in place.

00:44:11:00 - 00:44:31:21 Mike&Jon And then once we got a plan in place, that's when it kind of transitioned. But like all that stuff, like I'm not the I'm not an authority on those things, and I'm sure I've made plenty of missteps. I'm just I would say as early as possible. yeah, Yeah. You want people to enjoy working where they work. You want them to know that they're taken care of.

00:44:31:21 - 00:44:50:14 Mike&Jon I think like health care benefits for one care. I think those things are all really important because it's, you know, show me. Don't tell me. Right? Yes, I have. They get paid. But like, do you care about other aspects of my life that aren't like, right here, right now? Do this? Yeah. Like dental or like. Yeah, and a call for one K.

00:44:50:16 - 00:45:22:25 Mike&Jon So small things. They go a long way in my mind. Kirsten might be sitting around, but I hate this fucking guy. I don't know. He wouldn't tell me if he did. I'm sure. At least I have a phone, kiddo. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you don't hate me, Kristen. Silent, silent fucking cricket game. Yeah, I, I It's because I don't really hear many companies within the industry talking about different types of benefits that they're offering, like staffing and stuff like that.

00:45:22:27 - 00:45:41:24 Mike&Jon Yeah, well, you've got the whole divide between like 1099 and W2 and that seems to be changing pretty quickly and like, what's legal, what's illegal, what's considered what? Again, I'm not an authority on any of that stuff, but I pay close attention. I know that I've got clients trying to figure it out right now. There was some recent legislation passed.

00:45:41:27 - 00:46:04:09 Mike&Jon If you are an authority on that topic and welcome you onto the show, come on in. We can talk about it. That's actually a good that's a good that would be a good episode to listen to. Yeah. I mean, there are they all are. But that would be like a really insightful one. Yeah. how much for a cloud developer was there?

00:46:04:09 - 00:46:26:16 Mike&Jon Like 77,007. Seven. What was what's after that summer nine Project Manager project. What kind of project? They are responsible for planning, organizing resources and ensuring that projects meet their goals within specified timelines. I mean, that is the most ambiguous. I mean, what kind of goddam project are you managing now? Yeah. Are you doing like a city planning project?

00:46:26:16 - 00:46:45:12 Mike&Jon I imagine a couple of roofs. It's a personality though, that you're hiring for then, because you're hiring somebody that knows how to like LEED knows how to like see through a task all the way without their hand being like, how? Right. That's like the person that they're looking for. What's that? I guess what's the average range for? How can you give an average range?

00:46:45:17 - 00:47:08:23 Mike&Jon There's no scope of work. yeah, because a project this is called 80 gram sugary, 80 gram, 80 gram for a commercial Commercial project manager. Yeah. We've got 47 facilities being built from the ground up. You're in demand. All of them for 80. You get 80 gram. No for a1k 80 gram. Yeah. Yeah. that's, that's pretty broad spectrum.

00:47:08:25 - 00:47:42:02 Mike&Jon Yeah. So what else. we talked about the ten most future proof jobs at the ten digital content creator. Digital content creator Zap J Boy. Yeah. What do they make? $52,550. It's going to say like 61,000. I mean, I think I've, I think I've seen people say 152, 99, 38, 99, 61. I think it's like right in the middle of those two.

00:47:42:04 - 00:48:05:00 Mike&Jon Yeah, Onlyfans is a little bit higher. Click the link and buy a digital creator or digital content creator, right? That's like, you know, everything that we're doing here. Yeah. Yeah. I would almost argue that that's bullshit because like, I don't know. I don't know.

00:48:05:03 - 00:48:26:23 Mike&Jon You know what I find? What do you find? Jonathan People don't know how to vertically move digital content creators. Well, I don't know what you mean by vertically move. So, yeah, like people think that, you know, you make content and then there's no vertical. Like, what's the next step other than creating the content? And I think people that don't get really creative with, you know, that position.

00:48:26:25 - 00:48:55:11 Mike&Jon Yeah, they'll think of like, okay, how do I, how do I, level up someone within their position for, you know, what, what are some of the positions that you have that you would promote people into within a century? So like our level one content writer got promoted to a content facilitation specialist. So essentially she's not only like helping out the content, but she's also managing the process.

00:48:55:14 - 00:49:25:17 Mike&Jon Yeah, improving the process, things like that. So some would say that there's like vertical movement within that, right? And then even offering just different. So for you, a prime example is like you brought on Christian Christian's doing content, but then you one, you invested into coaching, you invested into a studio. So you're thinking of how to like, push the things or at least provide some sort of space for them to grow vertically.

00:49:25:19 - 00:49:42:20 Mike&Jon Yeah, a lot of people fuck that up. They just don't think about it. They don't really consider it because they don't have time. Jonathan Yeah, if they don't have time, then they shouldn't be mad. When they don't perform, they don't have time. It's not their fault. They just don't have the time. It's hard. It's hard. It's a great excuse.

00:49:42:23 - 00:50:03:04 Mike&Jon No time is a great excuse. These are so our second core value to send solutions, not excuses. Exactly. Figure it out. Make it a priority. This has been fun. Yeah, I'm tired. You're tired? Tired. Thank you all for tuning in. Thank you to the great team over at Roofer. Thank you to Kristen. You've been a great help and thank you to Jonathan.

00:50:03:07 - 00:50:30:27 Mike&Jon Appreciate it. Shall we talk about next, throw it in the comments section below. You're watching the Mission Control podcast and manager John thank you so much for having me.

In this episode, Mike sits down to have a discussion with Eric Reno, the founder and president of Paramount Roofing in Detroit. They go over the benefits of offering roof repair as a service and the best ways to get started with it. Eric goes on to give insights into some of the things he has learned through his many years of experience running a roofing business.

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

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00:00:00:00 - 00:00:18:00 Mike&Eric All right. Welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast. I'm your host, Mike Starnes with the Sun Digital, and we are in Detroit. So for the draft, or maybe unreal, I'm with my guy Eric Reno on Detroit's finest. I appreciate you letting me come to your city. Thank you very much. How do you feel about the first round pick for the Lions?

00:00:18:00 - 00:00:43:20 Mike&Eric Huge, huge shot down corner guy. I was reading all through the grades today, and I just usually lay down the lines and just his reaction to what you got picked. And he's like, I'll say, I love it. So a lot of folks that watch this show, they're going to be in roofing, obviously. So I get guys that come to me and girls and they're running a company and they say, I only only do roof replacements.

00:00:43:20 - 00:01:04:02 Mike&Eric We don't do repairs, just replacements. My question for you is, is that a good strategy? And then why or why not? So I love repairs. I think repairs are some of our best margins and rebuilds an entire repair team. It is a different animal that everybody wants to go for the big. You know let's replace moving it done.

00:01:04:05 - 00:01:19:05 Mike&Eric But I'm more of like I'm planting seeds every day. So if I can just go for a bear and just plant that seed like, Hey, you're so good for two more years. Three more years, five more years. And I prefer that strategy. But it is a little harder. Like I'm one of the only companies in my area that does be merged.

00:01:19:12 - 00:01:34:24 Mike&Eric So a lot of the other companies that I'm going to be doing because they just can't get there. okay. So from a sales perspective, what would you say as far as percentage of sales that turn from repair to replacement? Like what does that look like? They start out as a repair and then they turn into a replacement?

00:01:34:24 - 00:01:48:21 Mike&Eric I think I mean, we have a lot of them. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what percentage it is, but it's a lot. I mean, once you get in someone's house, they trust you to the only guy that said you don't need a roofer. Right? Like, we can just do a quick repair or a routine job or switch these pipe collars.

00:01:48:21 - 00:02:05:15 Mike&Eric I'll get you another five years. Then when it's that time, you're not calling anybody. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. You build that trust, right? And then you can command the price that you deserve. Yeah. And then from the marketing side, like, the way that I explain people to think about it is that most people, they're not looking for the most expensive solution initially, Right?

00:02:05:15 - 00:02:22:27 Mike&Eric So they can have a five year old roof, a 25 year old roof. And if they know there's some sort of issue, they're going to like roof repair. Right. So it's going to they're going to lead in with the most cost effective solution to their problem to get that remedy, even if they know in their heart of hearts that ultimately it's time for the roof to be done.

00:02:22:29 - 00:02:40:18 Mike&Eric So it creates a problem, like when you're trying to focus on like running Google ads because you have you know, they're searching for a repair even if they need a replacement or like them, the majority of service is going to be in generalized keywords, right? It's going to be roofers, roofing contractors. There's no way for a marketing agency to discern what the intentions of somebody looking for a roofer in their means.

00:02:40:19 - 00:03:03:13 Mike&Eric Right. Could be a repair. It could be a replacement, could be storm damage. We don't know. And if that's a large percentage of search or alienating yourself and the opportunity as far as like getting in front of that homeowner, it's tough. But I think for in a lot of instances, it's smaller companies that don't do repairs. And I think because of based on the feedback I've gotten, it's the logistical challenges of, okay, I don't have a team to do the repairs.

00:03:03:13 - 00:03:23:08 Mike&Eric I don't have a repair tag that I can rely on that's readily available. So like, you know, what would your advice be to somebody who is, let's say, a one or two man operation if they want to get into doing repairs while still growing their business? Yeah, the best way for me is like the network through the different subcontractors and posting ads like in different Facebook groups.

00:03:23:11 - 00:03:42:22 Mike&Eric And we're targeting, you know, like, Hey, are you sick of working on a roofing crew? Are you tired of dealing with like, I'm trying to get paid and chasing down dollars? Like, here's a solution where I can work you. I do salary. That way the guys are guaranteed and near seasonal. I don't want my vertex going to looking for work in the winter.

00:03:42:22 - 00:04:02:06 Mike&Eric Right. So I'm paying and whether they're working or not. But I think that's that's the biggest part of it is recruiting those guys that have talent and that are just sick of the crew life because it's high time with the hundreds. Time Yeah, every day. You know, we're going to different houses finding up and down. And as these guys get seasoned, they get older, they're looking for something that's a little bit more structured and guaranteed.

00:04:02:09 - 00:04:19:16 Mike&Eric And I think your salary position in marketing yourself like that to them is kind of where I've really found a sweet spot. Okay. Is that something that a lot of companies do as far as offering salary, or is that something that you feel like you do a bit differently? Yeah, I mean, I think at our size it might be a little bit more common, but I don't think so.

00:04:19:16 - 00:04:42:20 Mike&Eric At a smaller size, they're trying to pay, you know, less. If you think about repairs, are, are net on repairs, is this much greater. Right. Like we're getting a lot more we're getting a lot more margin on the site. So to guarantee that work and just makes it feel better. Right. You're going to get a better quality candidate versus just like $25 an hour and a lot around that.

00:04:42:27 - 00:05:01:10 Mike&Eric Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned something that I want to touch on. You mentioned Facebook groups for finding crews and things like that. It was a very well thought out pitch. So we're going to talk about your pain, Why it's hard not getting paid to tell you this. I this here's a slogan. Call me. Right. But you showed me something last night when we were at dinner.

00:05:01:16 - 00:05:23:11 Mike&Eric And this is something that I've been preaching for years for people to do because it's so effective. Right. So you were in a local Facebook group. What was the area? Washington Township. So if you find this Washington Township Facebook group on Facebook, so, you know, you can fact talk to us, you can go to that group search like roofing, wanting 2.7 thousand, 22.7 thousand people.

00:05:23:14 - 00:05:41:15 Mike&Eric And somebody asked about a roofer and you were there. I mean, no less than 15 times. And I might be grossly underselling that right? Somebody in need was looking for a roofing contractor, and it was paramount. Paramount, paramount, paramount, paramount, paramount, paramount. Right. And the thing of it is like, not only is that person who has the issue, are they going to reach out to you?

00:05:41:15 - 00:06:02:10 Mike&Eric Most likely. It's all those other 22,699 people that aren't in need right now. Like those are brand impressions that are super powerful because not just like a generalized advertisement or a billboard, it is all these people building you up as an industry. It's the referral engine. Yeah. It's fucking amazing. And how do you how do you make it happen?

00:06:02:12 - 00:06:22:04 Mike&Eric I mean, there's a couple of different things, right? Like, you're building your brand, you're doing well, you're doing good work in the community. But for us, like communities, one of our five star here, so it's a five star experience and I would live and die there. And one of the stars is community. Yeah. So not only do we you know, we won't lay mulch for the community.

00:06:22:04 - 00:06:42:11 Mike&Eric We've done a lot of different events, but we're constantly doing braiding ourselves into the community. And not only that, but we're creating raven paint. So when we finished with the jobs of like, let me send you some writer reviews, let me remind you where we're sending out our referral program. Like we're always because with roofing, it's not like grass.

00:06:42:13 - 00:07:05:07 Mike&Eric Take grass every week. Like I don't give me a current cost. I mean, one or two right down the road, but I'm not doing a roof and you're not one for that same house. So how do I stay on top of their mind without pestering them with emails until they stamp me? Right? Keep me on top one. So it's the branding, it's the raving fans, it's the community involvement that's actually being a part of the community and being the team there.

00:07:05:10 - 00:07:28:16 Mike&Eric So we're there just seeing it all day. So it's on billboards, guard sides, trucks, their website. Every time you open your Facebook. Right. There's my face, right? Like that's it's a good face. So that's how we do it. So. So when you first go back to the original question, when you're tour is when you're first building that, you know, you really have to think about like it's not about the cool trucks and like all these graphics all over your trucks.

00:07:28:16 - 00:07:44:24 Mike&Eric Do you see it so many times, like you see a rap truck go by, right? And you can't even read If there's something on it, you can't even read it. So simplicity about simplicity and just keeping your brand and the colors and everything uniform goes a long way. Yeah, I agree. I think that's that's a very good point.

00:07:44:27 - 00:08:01:25 Mike&Eric So I wanna put you on the spot here because I'm kind of an asshole. That's all I like to do. So you've been in business for a while now. What's one thing, one decision that you've made where you look back retrospectively and you're like, I'm so fucking happy I did that. there's a lot of those. Name a few of them that come to mind.

00:08:01:27 - 00:08:18:20 Mike&Eric I mean, the first one in the hardest one for me was the delegation process. Like you're going from like 3 million to 5 million them believing that, you know, as owners we think we're the best at everything because we've done it all and we built it all. Yeah. So say like, I'm the best sales guy, right? I'm just going to go sell.

00:08:18:22 - 00:08:42:25 Mike&Eric And then to actually train a team and let them take it. And then you just all of a sudden you're like, Man, I was that maybe I was good. But this engine still operates so long that right and that that's hard to get past but when and happens I mean hiring real leaders that's another one like real managers like you have people that you've grown your business.

00:08:42:25 - 00:09:02:10 Mike&Eric You have people that you started but right. Yeah. You're surrounded with you're kind of dedicated to. Sure. But most of the time you'll find that those are real leaders and real match ups where we can be here, you know, hanging out for draft weekend. And I was in Florida all last week, right? My phone's not rings. That vibrating pitch is being taken care of.

00:09:02:12 - 00:09:22:15 Mike&Eric So you're hiring yet? You put me on a rocket. So I think, you know, those are the two biggest things where it's like I regret not doing it sooner. I regret like, kind of kicking the can down the road, like trying to mold people versus like bringing people in that can make a difference off the get go. Just like the draft, right?

00:09:22:16 - 00:09:41:03 Mike&Eric Like first round pick. We're big, we're bringing people in that can play. We're not bringing people in that could sit on the bench like Arnold said. Yeah. And and the people I leaders on I want would like absolutely. And whoever spot he's going to take is is that like he's a terrible cornerback you know he's still a professional athlete in the NFL does well but we're doing it for the betterment of the team.

00:09:41:04 - 00:10:01:06 Mike&Eric Yeah and it's like when you take your top sales guy and you automatically put them this is in my situation and I know it happens. And a lot of companies are like, this is my guy sales guy, so I'm gonna make him a manager Manager, right? It's a totally different player, right? yeah. The guys that are the go getters and the door knockers and the hazards are different than the people that are analytical.

00:10:01:06 - 00:10:21:11 Mike&Eric Like QB Jack to the jeebies pushing. Yeah, yeah. So it's I've done sales, I've done collections and it all has kind of like a same like commission based structure, heavily incentivized and like usually it's going to be the people that are successful in those in the sales business and role they're going to be alphas, they're going to be competitive, they're going to drive maybe some vices.

00:10:21:17 - 00:10:42:28 Mike&Eric Right. But but and so but like, if you if you now if you bring that into the management perspective, that's not necessarily I don't think the traits that you want with that. Also like when they see other like high performing sales reps they're typically going out earn their manager right. And that's really hard for somebody. If you got somebody that's making 250, $300,000 a year in sales, they take a position as a sales manager.

00:10:42:28 - 00:10:58:21 Mike&Eric I mean, are you paying them $253,000? Yeah, right, right. Selling out of the team. So now we're taking a step back and let's say we're doing it for fulfillment because we think that's what we want as that salesperson to transition into a management career. And now they see the next guy making 300, right? I think that's tough. I think it's tough.

00:10:58:22 - 00:11:15:10 Mike&Eric I think it's a different set of skills. So I agree with you more for mindset. And then to your point, I think the the one thing I wish I would've done sooner is get shit out of my head and on paper. Yeah. And it kind of goes hand in hand with like bringing people in and delegating and things like that.

00:11:15:10 - 00:11:32:22 Mike&Eric And I think that if I would have wrote shit down and seen all these issues on paper consistently in front of me, instead of dealing with them as they come day by day, you blank of years gone by like, I'm still dealing with this fucking dumb issue. Like, but there's 37 of them, right? So you're consistently being riddled with it's like death by a thousand paper cuts.

00:11:32:25 - 00:11:52:09 Mike&Eric Plus, if you're working in the business side of the business, you can't even see most of the stuff because you sell like horse blinders. I mean, you can't see who's up beside you. You wanna see in front of you, right? Yeah. So it's really like training yourself to take a thousand foot view of we're looking over tile and we're watching pieces move versus versus being increases, you know.

00:11:52:12 - 00:12:07:06 Mike&Eric Right. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. I mean, you know, for us hunters out there, right, like you got a bow and arrow and we're shooting a deer at 35 yards, museum gear runs, right? And then you got to find blood and like, man, I know it was right here. And you look back at the tree and you weren't even that far away.

00:12:07:06 - 00:12:36:15 Mike&Eric Which can you find it right here? Ground. So it's kind of the same thing in business, right? It's like you have to be up here because when we're up here, we're running, running this stuff down and capturing it. We can really make that, you know, you let that sink in. That's just crazy. What do you what have you noticed as far as, like changes in the industry or any impacts of your business in the last 12 months?

00:12:36:18 - 00:12:56:15 Mike&Eric I don't know, man. You know, like, maybe I should be more open to, I want to say like a very focused on what I'm doing. And I'm so I feel like I just learned and I was just telling my dad's, you know, you're talking about private of private equity companies. And so he's asking me about what would you entertain that?

00:12:56:18 - 00:13:27:23 Mike&Eric And it's like, honestly, I feel like I just learn how to how to actually scale and build something that is, you know, a leg. Like I'm just like I feel like I just limited. So for me, I mean, I know there's stuff changing on the outside. I know like the private equity is coming in. I know that the mergers and acquisitions are happening, but I'm just I'm so focused on what I'm doing that, you know, I no matter what, you're going to find a different, you know, as technology the Internet came out, this comes out every day.

00:13:27:24 - 00:13:51:05 Mike&Eric It's always something new, right? Yeah. And humans always find a way to survive. And we always find a way to counteract what's coming to our business. So I'm not even, you know, like, I'm just bringing, you know, like, all competing and sensible, bring it a bring it up like four of the bigger companies that are here again. Now, the last 12 months were like, you know, what do you think I'm man, I want to cube it, bring it out in the store.

00:13:51:12 - 00:14:13:22 Mike&Eric Okay, let's get it. What would you say? Like, let's say you got a company there at $1,000,000 and they're residential only, but they want to break into commercial. Like, when is the right time? What are the things that they look forward to? Because I would assume, like if you're taking on commercial jobs, like everyone loves the idea of commercial big tech and like big money, but like, what if something goes to is there a right time for that person?

00:14:13:23 - 00:14:39:24 Mike&Eric Are there things that they can do in anticipation of getting into commercial to set them up for success? Yeah, I mean, I know very few. The everybody I know in the country, I don't think there's a state I don't know somebody that that's about right. So I know very few that have done a success because it's such a different of I mean sure you could get into coatings, you can get in dabble and stuff, but we're talking about like prevailing wage pay tbo dirt less.

00:14:39:27 - 00:15:03:23 Mike&Eric EPDM You know, it's a different industry. Yes. Everything we do, everything we do, like we dabbled in it for five years, like, yeah, we do commercial like kind of like we talk, Yeah, we do a commercial, but now it's like having superintendents and, and the, you know, an entire infrastructure estimates that are just for commercial. We're it's, it's a huge, huge I mean that's a huge liability.

00:15:03:26 - 00:15:30:12 Mike&Eric You know we're not working over drywall and TV's now we're going over you know servers and and you know knows the millions of dollars of flipping and you're working with and it's just different. So I think like find your niche for riches are on the mentioned so I think find your niche like if that's what you want to do then yeah go full blast But you can't just dabble with large and let's just call them saying look, we can all roots.

00:15:30:15 - 00:15:52:04 Mike&Eric Is there, is there like a one tip that you could give somebody who decides, okay, I'm going to dive into commercial. Is there one thing like through your experience, if you would have known then what you know now, you would have been a lot better off. One of the two things of those fine investigator that knows everything, right, from safety, ocean standards to like, that's how they're built.

00:15:52:05 - 00:16:12:18 Mike&Eric No, Brett is I mean, man, he's so good and he came from a huge to top And then the other one is your cruise. It's not like least for us, it's not like you find subs to just do roofs like we do for residential. You know, it's like all of ours are in a house we pay a lot of you to like.

00:16:12:18 - 00:16:38:29 Mike&Eric We have in-house crews for us and our superintendent is and he's got to be the best in the state. You know, and we made the mistake, you know, office of just trying to sort it out and not having these key components in place. But those were the two big ones, like with the issue, again, getting real leaders and putting them in the place, recruiting them from their companies with the knowledge.

00:16:39:03 - 00:17:03:10 Mike&Eric Some areas instead of just because it's not a lot of trailer, the compressor gone. Gerald was right but this is a different animal. I, I think those are two really good nuggets. Yeah. And I'm very grateful for that to make sure that that because these are unicorns, they exist. And if you create something that they want to be a part of in your marching bands playing loud enough and they want to complain too, then it works.

00:17:03:12 - 00:17:30:12 Mike&Eric Okay, well, that's a nice transition into like, how do you build that culture right? That culture that people see it, they hear about it, they feel it, and they're like, I want to work for this person. I want to work with these people. Well, I think our great thing started and I don't want to give myself credit. My team does more than anybody, but it starts the job where it's like, I'm not afraid to like going to, you know, talk to other recruits and congratulate me and do whatever I have to do.

00:17:30:15 - 00:17:52:26 Mike&Eric Right. Like I'm friends with everybody in the state. Yeah, I think it's it starts with that. We're other companies are calling you, asking you for advice and other business owners and we're meeting people and like it start it starts from there because sort of like figure out how to like deliver like doing the fundraising, talking about creating the brain.

00:17:52:28 - 00:18:12:12 Mike&Eric How do you how do you make it go when you get to a point where you don't have to recruit anymore and people walk to your office and asking you for a job or asking to work with you, that's when you can get those higher level. So the leaders that I'm talking about that that are in my space are people that I worked with that I for.

00:18:12:12 - 00:18:41:00 Mike&Eric They seen me like just putting videos out and just being me. Right? Like authentically. Yeah. And I feel like people I own nobody money. No, I, I never and all of those things are what it really takes for guys that actually have a career somewhere to leave their career to take this journey with you. Right. They have to believe right there has to bleed.

00:18:41:03 - 00:18:58:22 Mike&Eric Yeah. Because you know that type of person, they're probably in a pretty good position in their career financially. And in order for them to leave, I mean, it's a it's a huge risk. Yeah. So the more stable you are, the the more it seems like they're going to be a part of something that is winning. Continuing to grow with that comes opportunity, upward trajectory in their career path.

00:18:58:24 - 00:19:26:29 Mike&Eric Yeah. So yeah, you know, I say that makes a huge impact for sure. Yeah. I mean that's great and it's not going to happen overnight. Like I said, it's you can just advertise. You get some crews or different positions, sales guys, sales reps. But it's again, these kind of guys that you need to really build something great athlete wife and you only have track record that they're willing to invest their lives and their families lives with You.

00:19:27:01 - 00:19:45:18 Mike&Eric So the person on the other side of this camera, why should they start doing video today for their business? It's huge transcendence. I mean, everybody knows and everybody's heard about it. And the number one thing is I want to I'm going to start doing it or I don't like to be on camera. I get nervous. I, I grab your iPhone and start shooting.

00:19:45:21 - 00:20:05:18 Mike&Eric Yeah. Just document what you do and who you are, who you really are. And when you do that, it makes it makes such an impact. You know, everywhere I go, I need somebody or ask you on YouTube or like, you know, at our little grocery store, like, I see you posting your videos on our Facebook, you know, And it's like, yeah, like, man, he did a great job last fall.

00:20:05:19 - 00:20:30:18 Mike&Eric Yeah. How you branding to, like, I don't have to sell you something to get my brand across. I don't have to be me being me and just documenting what I'm doing right. Yeah, I absolutely love it. And by the way, like, I think anybody who gets on video, regardless of introvert, extrovert, like, comfortable with public speaking, I think the first time, like when I first started recording and I still suck at video, I'll say that, but I suck a lot less than I did the first time.

00:20:30:22 - 00:20:56:12 Mike&Eric Like, and I can typically talk in a group of people and I'm fine and I'm sociable. I hit record, I started fucking sweating. I was stuttering, bro. I mean, it was an absolute dumpster fire. Like, what the fuck I did? It was like a 62nd video. I must have shot the thing 15 times. And then, like, you'll also evolve and, like, understand it better because, like, then if I fuck up in a three minute video and I'm 30 seconds in, I'm like, okay, I could take a deep breath, restart it, and then in post they can clip it up.

00:20:56:12 - 00:21:14:28 Mike&Eric Right in the beginning I made the 15 minute video and I kept fucking it up and dude, it took me like four days to shoot this thing because I wanted it perfect through and through and through because I was just ignorant. I didn't know any better because I didn't get the reps in previously. Yeah, and that's the thing too is like, you know, being repetitive in a lot of the videos for me, I don't even watch because I don't even want to critique.

00:21:14:28 - 00:21:28:15 Mike&Eric Like, I just wanted to be Israelis again. So yeah, this is what happened. This is how it came out. You know, like Anthony will edit out like where I if I say something twice or if we have to like edited but I don't mean like I don't want to critique myself. Yeah. Like I just want to get the information out.

00:21:28:15 - 00:21:48:29 Mike&Eric It's not for me, it's for somebody else. So I just want it, you know, like just run it and just keep doing it. The first time that one of the first times I was on camera my body gave it is a big landscaping out YouTube videos like sequences. This is one of my best buds. We're in the middle of a mall this busy as hell, right?

00:21:48:29 - 00:22:16:12 Mike&Eric I didn't even go with people. Just walk through them all. So this guy runs up to me with a camera, right? And he's like, All right, we're on video. I go there green. All my friend needs a roofing. And I'm like, What? That was the first time, but that's. Rose Yeah, well, anything else? I mean, we got to get the reps in which had the as a kind of that we're going to shut down by security.

In this episode, Mike discusses reciprocal referral relationships between roofing and HVAC companies. Before establishing a relationship with another company, it is important to do your research. You want to make sure you're teaming up with the right people, and these tips and tricks will help you make a decision. This benefits both parties involved and can be a great way to drum up business.

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

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00;00;00;00 - 00;00;15;03 Mike Stearns All right. So welcome back to another episode of The Mission Control podcast. I'm your host, Mike Stearns. This episode was proudly brought to you by the team of roofer. You need instant roof quotes, clean and pristine proposals, which I mean, it really gives your prospective customers no choice but to buy from you.

00;00;15;05 - 00;00;54;26 Mike Stearns You know, the team of roofer tell them I sent you simulated on the description. Use that. So today we're going to talk about referrals, more specifically referrals and reciprocal relationships with other contractors in your market, just in different verticals. So if you're a roofing contractor, for instance, leveraging agency contractors or h-back, if you will. So if you're joining us with video today, it's going to be more beneficial for you because I'm going to do a screen chair where my editor, Kristen is going to be so, so kind as to go ahead and show the screen that I'm sharing on my computer to kind of walk you guys through how you can find and team up

00;00;54;26 - 00;01;22;03 Mike Stearns with the contractors that are going to yield the most benefit to you from a digital marketing perspective, because let's face it, we can we can team up with a local company and send business back and forth to one another. And that's that's a great advantage of doing so. But if you could also get the supplemental benefit of exchanging content and links with a company that has a strong online presence that would benefit your SEO, that would just be it'll be gravy on the taters.

00;01;22;03 - 00;01;25;10 Mike Stearns So we want to do that and I'm going to show you out. So

00;01;25;26 - 00;01;48;27 Mike Stearns Okay, So you'll notice here that I'm looking for fat companies in Providence, Rhode Island. So my biggest concern when I'm referring anyone to businesses, is it going to reflect poorly on me and affect my relationship with my customer. So what I do to hedge against that is I find good companies to refer business to, right? So if we look for that, companies in Providence, Rhode Island, we're going to see a lot of different people here.

00;01;48;27 - 00;02;10;16 Mike Stearns And we've got T Gomes heating and cooling. I'm going to look at the number of reviews that they have and what their average rating is, right? So T Gomes is probably someone that I'd want to take a look at because they're at a 4.7 rating with 118 reviews. Regan won 4.361 reviews. I'm not touching them. Red Company has 4.9, but they only have 37.

00;02;10;16 - 00;02;41;24 Mike Stearns That's a small sample size prime heating and cooling 4.9 rating with 341 reviews. That's definitely somebody I'd want to take a look at. Partner up with. You know, So from there we would pull up their websites. So you see here prime heating and cooling. And we don't really care too much what their website has or doesn't have as far as like the actual build itself, what we care about other things behind the website as far as like whether it's authority score, backlinks, organic traffic, things like that, because all links are not created equally.

00;02;41;24 - 00;03;21;09 Mike Stearns So if we get a backlink from somebody who has a very high authority score, if they get a lot of organic traffic, there are local company like that link is going to benefit us more than maybe some other links that are not industry specific. They're not local, they're more spammy links. So if we'll take a look here, we're going to copy and paste, get prime age fact icon, and then we'll plug that into this is some rush and I already did it, but you just go command V because I'm on a mac or control V if you're on a windows and this is going to give you a snapshot, this is some rush dot com

00;03;21;12 - 00;03;46;02 Mike Stearns shows you authority score. I'm not the biggest fan of authority score because it's a third party metric that they come up with based on all the information that they find on the Internet keywords you have ranking things like that. So it's somewhat subjective and I like objectivity when we're looking at these things. So they've got 2000 backlinks and they're around 330 people to their site a month as a projects.

00;03;46;02 - 00;04;08;20 Mike Stearns To summarize, just a side note, if you're trying to gauge your your organic traffic use Google Analytics, it's much more accurate than any third party like MAS airdrops or some range. But for all intents and purposes, in this exercise we're going to use summarize because they tend to be pretty good. They're ranking for 195 keyword total. So decent, not anything earth shattering.

00;04;08;23 - 00;04;33;20 Mike Stearns The next company we chose was American home heating and air conditioning. So we're gonna do the same thing. We're gonna go back to summarize command, we going to take a look at what they have going on. So they've got an authority score of 81.7 K and backlinks and they're averaging around 250 people a month. Not too much going on here.

00;04;33;23 - 00;04;52;25 Mike Stearns If you look at this trend, it's pretty flat over the last six months, over the last two years, there's some ebbs and flows in. Overall, it seems like their organic presence is kind of declining, so that's worth considering. And we're going to take a look at furnace duct that's furnace and ducts supply company. So this is a supplier.

00;04;52;25 - 00;05;16;13 Mike Stearns It's not even h back like install and service company. But let's take a look at what they got going on that it's a really nice trend. Like these are the type of trends we want to see in digital marketing. This makes me very happy, makes my heart warm, makes me smile. So they're getting around 1300 people a month on their site, and that's increased markedly over the last 7 to 8 months.

00;05;16;16 - 00;05;46;25 Mike Stearns They were at around 10% of that back in June of 2023. Nothing's changed too much, and there are organic keywords as far as things are being found for, but their traffic has increased considerably. Authority score 17, They've got 478 backlinks. So this would be someone that I'd want to obviously take a look at. Now in this instance, what I would do if I were the company, if I were the roofing company trying to make a reciprocal relationship here, I'd probably do both.

00;05;46;25 - 00;06;13;14 Mike Stearns I would probably go with prime heating and cooling based on their volume of reviews and their overall rating. And then I would probably reach out to the supply company furnace and dogged and see, okay, can we have some sort of partnership. So and that's going to look differently for each one of these companies because with the AC company, the ones that are doing, you know, maintenance, repairs, installs, I think that's a different conversation because, hey, you guys are ultimately selling the same customer.

00;06;13;14 - 00;06;32;05 Mike Stearns You guys are going after homeowners that obviously have things that go wrong within their home. You're heating and cooling units are going to need to be maintained. Tune to replace like that just happens. And same thing with the roofs, right? So if we reach out and just have a conversation, hey, you know, I'm in the same market. We do a lot of business with the same people.

00;06;32;07 - 00;06;54;02 Mike Stearns So I thought it might make sense based on our reputation and your reputation for us to start sending business back and forth. Right. And that's an easy way. It's an easy conversation to have, an easy way to help one another to point out to that would be, you know, creating content, create a blog post for one another's website, adding value to people that come to their website.

00;06;54;03 - 00;07;18;15 Mike Stearns So, for instance, there's going to be overlap between roofing and HVAC, and maybe it's something where, you know, if they do a commercial, you're talking about commercial units and them being on commercial roofs and issues that can happen, you know, when you're repairing or replacing a roof as it relates to those commercial units, you write the article for them in this, have them included backlink and anyone.

00;07;18;15 - 00;07;42;11 Mike Stearns If they have it looks like they have someone managing this website, including a backlink, is not terribly difficult and they could do the same thing for your website. Write something regarding the the overlap between roofing and HPC and you could even write it for them, right? And then send them a link and then you exchange those links. You both procured a local link that's going to help both of you in a meaningful way.

00;07;42;15 - 00;08;07;06 Mike Stearns As far as SEO is concerned. So you're going to get business back and forth from one another and you're going to get SEO benefit. And it's one of those situations where both of you, when in the instance of the furnace and duct supply company, you know, I would just have a conversation with them like, you know, we're a local contractor, we have alliances with local HPC companies and we have a content team that's willing to write an article for you guys on your website.

00;08;07;09 - 00;08;22;23 Mike Stearns You know, all that we ask is that, you know, you share a link on the Web page. We'll even write it for you if you're not sure how to add it to your website, our Web team can help you. And if you're working with a marketing agency that cares, you know, I'm sure that they'll be happy to do that.

00;08;22;23 - 00;08;42;08 Mike Stearns And, you know, if they need help getting it on their website, they would help facilitate that as well. So that's just one way in a local market that you can DIY some SEO opportunities, but more importantly, the referral and relationship side of things to where this is another cookie jar that you can pull cookies from, so to speak, that you're probably not doing now.

00;08;42;15 - 00;09;08;09 Mike Stearns I've been in this industry for almost a decade and a lot of contractors do have referral relationships with other contractors, but they're not intentional about consistently establishing and maintaining those relationships. And I haven't found one instance where they're writing content for one another in exchange of backlinks and for local ACL. Local backlinks can be incredibly helpful. So hope this helps you if it helped you share with someone else, that'll help.

00;09;08;09 - 00;09;10;16 Mike Stearns And we look forward to speaking again soon.