Mission Control Podcast

In this episode, Mike talks about the biggest mistake that companies who focus predominantly on insurance claims make when trying to enter the retail market. When making this transition, instead of just relying on the traditional forms of generating business like door knocking, it's important to increase marketing and advertising efforts through tools like Google search. These types of sales require different methods, and proper training is crucial.

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00;00;00;01 - 00;00;18;28 Michael Stearns So today we're going to talk about the biggest mistake that companies that focus predominantly on insurance claims and restoration make when trying to get into the retail market. As we all know, things are changing in the insurance industry. This is what I'm told by, you know, you roofers and a lot of more people are trying to transition into a retail model.

00;00;18;28 - 00;00;46;13 Michael Stearns And what that requires is as opposed to just door knocking or relying on traditional means that are generating opportunities for insurance claims, doing things that are more aligned with generating leads from marketing and advertising. So things like Google Search. One of the biggest pitfalls that I see when companies are making this transition is that they put somebody who is very, very adept and very productive on the insurance claims side of things.

00;00;46;15 - 00;01;18;20 Michael Stearns And they're their top performer, their top sales rep, if you will, into a position without the proper training to sell retail roofing contracts. And it is nowhere near the same. Think of it, there's an art form. And I'm not dismissing how challenging it is to doorknock and to get claims filed, etc., but you're going into a situation where you're selling them the homeowner, something that's ten, 20, $30,000 in value for 500, a thousand, 1500 and $3,000.

00;01;18;23 - 00;01;39;23 Michael Stearns So you're giving them a massive discount, an incentive to purchase the roof from you as a result of their insurance claim. Let's be honest, it's not the same type of sales, Right. Versus in a retail environment, you've got let's say a homeowner goes on Google and they're looking for best roofing contractor near me. They're going through the results.

00;01;39;26 - 00;01;59;29 Michael Stearns They pick you, they call you. There's several there's several different components of this journey that are super, super important. One, what is it they see when they're exposed to you online? Once they reach out to you, what is that intake process like? What is their experience when they're dealing with whoever it is that's answering the phone? What questions are being asked?

00;02;00;04 - 00;02;34;02 Michael Stearns How are we positioning that sales rep? And then ultimately when that sales rep gets there, what does that conversation look like? Do you have a bullet proof sales process that's going to do things like isolate their different pain points, magnify these pain points systematically, get there by and then trial closed throughout that sales process to where you're proactively pulling out the objections, answering questions that they have, and getting that customer to acknowledge that in fact you would be a good fit because this is how you would solve that issue.

00;02;34;04 - 00;02;55;25 Michael Stearns Because then when you get to the end of the conversation and inevitably the I've got to think about it or I've got to talk it over with, my wife comes about, you're now equipped to circle back into the point of the conversation where you've already addressed it and have that conversation. Like those are the type of objections that are not going to be present in the insurance claims process.

00;02;55;29 - 00;03;17;12 Michael Stearns Like if we're door knocking, getting inspections that route, it's a completely different sale. And so if you treat your leads that are coming from Google or advertising the same way that you do from the leads that you're generating through insurance claims, door knocking, you know, and that type of marketing, you're going to be very disappointed with the outcome.

00;03;17;15 - 00;03;42;22 Michael Stearns I had a client a couple of years back. They were making this transition into more retail and they wanted to cancel after a few months. And when I asked why, it was simply because it just wasn't working the way they thought it would. So the primary vehicle that we use to deliver opportunities to this customers, Google local services or Google guaranteed if you're not doing it, regardless of the type of roofing company you are, you should do it.

00;03;42;24 - 00;04;11;21 Michael Stearns Click the link down below and you can get enrolled today. But this is a fixed cost per lead platform and typically it's significantly cheaper than, let's say, Google ads or other alternatives. So it's very, very nice and can be very productive. This particular client had 200 leads over the course of three or four months. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to listen to these calls like what is happening that we're not getting sales because 200 leads is a lot of leads not to feel as if this campaign is productive.

00;04;11;24 - 00;04;29;17 Michael Stearns So we monitor the calls and they receive calls. One of them I remember vividly was, you know, the homeowner called and said, we had this fix last year, but the wall is still leaking. So the issue was obviously still there. We know it's going to cost more, but we want to make sure that we get it done the right way.

00;04;29;20 - 00;04;52;18 Michael Stearns Now, the salesperson that was in charge of this lead was historically the best closer and the highest producer for that company, you know. So I asked them, like, what happened with this lead, right? Because for me, that's a golden opportunity. They're confessing. They went that she brought. So they're they're explicitly saying they're okay with paying more. So what more could you ask for out of the situation?

00;04;52;20 - 00;05;14;21 Michael Stearns When I asked the sales rep about it, you know, he couldn't recall. So I said, okay, let's pull up your CRM. Let's see what happened with the lead. There was no record of it in the CRM, so there was never an opportunity for this. This prospect, this high quality prospect to actually become a paying customer. And because of that, and that wasn't an isolated instance, they saw no value in the leads that were coming in.

00;05;14;21 - 00;05;40;17 Michael Stearns So we have to be intentional about creating systems and processes around how we're generating leads, and that can change from each marketing medium, right? So it could be Facebook, it could be Google, it could be home advisor. But understanding contextually where we're bringing in the customers from what our process is for that marketing medium to make sure that we're consistently optimizing that process to get the most out of every dollar that we're putting out for advertising.

00;05;40;17 - 00;05;46;15 Michael Stearns So I'm sure there'll be some comments. Drop them below. Share this with somebody that would help. And we look forward to talking to you again soon.

In this episode, Mike sits down to have a discussion with Stephen Spence, the Managing Director at Project Map It. Stephen explains the utility of their software and how contractors can use it to increase sales. A point is made that many contractors often pay for software like CRMS and only scratch the surface of what they're capable of. As your business grows, it's essential to set yourself up for future success; unaddressed issues can compound and leave you with significant headaches later down the road.

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

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (00:03.613) So we're live, dude. How are you?

steve spence (00:05.134) I- it looked like I saw the countdown. I'm good, man. How are you?

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (00:08.817) I'm doing well. I'm happy to have you today. Yeah, we all fucking better be. Welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast. It's your boy Mike Stearns with the San Diego agency. We've got a special guest, Mr. Steven Spence with Project MAPIT. If y'all don't know, you're gonna find out today. You're gonna learn today. Shout out to the team at Roofer. They helped bring the show to life. If you need clean and pristine proposals, roof measurements, instant roof quotes.

steve spence (00:11.854) I'm happy to be here.

Ha ha

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (00:39.045) a CRM that'll actually work for your company. Hit up the team at Rufr, link down in the description. Y'all know what to do, just do it. Tell them I sent ya.

Alright, so it's Friday. We're almost in 2024. How was 2023 for you?

steve spence (00:57.006) 2023 was good. I'm sorry, I'm fighting this cold, so I probably don't sound as sexy as I normally do. But 2023 was good. 2023 was good for the company, was good for my personal life. So I cannot complain and I will not complain.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (01:03.517) You sound great.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (01:12.016) Okay. What is Project MAP-IT?

steve spence (01:14.758) We're digital mapping portfolios. So imagine a map with a bunch of pins of all your past installs on a map. It's interactive. So it becomes a really good social proof tool, credibility tool, if you will. On each pin, you can load project photos of the jobs you've done. You can display all your Google, Facebook. We are our own review platform as well. So you can display reviews. So essentially social proof, right? Homeowners are looking for three things. Are you reputable in our area? Yep. Look at all the pins around your house that...

we've done installs for. Do you have good reviews? Yep. Click a button on our map, there are reviews. Do you have some pictures of the work you've done? Yep. Oh, what color shingle are you looking for? More A Black? Okay. You click a button that says More A Black and the map will change to only include those products. So that's what we are in a nutshell.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (01:59.753) Mm-hmm, okay. So why wouldn't I just take like a picture of like Photoshop pins and you know, not pay project map it.

steve spence (02:10.09) Yeah, so homeowners, especially nowadays, right? We're dealing with digital natives, right? 50% of the home improvement projects are now being asked to be done by millennials, people that grew up with phones and devices in their hands, right? You know this, Mike, right? So what can you do? They know what a Photoshop-looking photo looks like.

All right, and I've actually been on some inspections with some contractors myself, where they used Project Mappin. And for example, one scenario, husband and wife, they were trying to decide between a pewter and a charcoal black roof. They were able to pull up some pewter roofs with jobs that they did.

Very authentic looking pictures. It doesn't look like your classic, you know Google photo that you would find on Google images They were able to find some charcoal black photos and out of the out of the wife's mouth was this is why I love this Software I can see that pewter is the color I want because I'd rather see it on a house Than on the shingle board and she pointed outside where the shingle board was laying

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (03:12.777) Hmm. Okay. So I'm a contractor. I wanna build more trust and credibility with my target market. So I install this thing on my website and now people can click and they can see projects that we've done. They can filter it by shingle color or manufacturer, whatever their needs are, right? Is that accurate? Okay. So now you've got this thing on the website.

steve spence (03:14.919) Ahem.

steve spence (03:18.37) Yep.

steve spence (03:35.35) Yep, that is accurate.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (03:40.985) Is there more value than it just sitting on the website and hoping that people see it and engage with it?

steve spence (03:46.642) I feel like you understand our product pretty well because of that lead in question you just asked. We actually pride ourselves with three things, but two things we really pride ourselves on. And the very first thing is something that's not just the website. It's a sales tool. People like Rufr, we're partnered with Rufr and some other proposal platforms out there. We're partnered and really in deep with Engage. That team at Engage is awesome. So we are a sales tool. We will help.

a homeowner realize that you're the right contractor for the job because of our social proof deck that we have, our map. Sorry, you'll have to edit that out. But...

to answer your question, sales tool, that's what we are. I mean, that's what we're bred, that's what we're made for. So add it to your Engage Deck, your Prezi, your PowerPoint presentation, your proposals that you're using at the in-home sales appointment. Literally, when you open up the map and you click a button, it dives in to where that homeowner lives and they see pins around it. That wow factor, that credibility factor helps close deals just alone, just by showing the pins around that house.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (04:55.385) Yeah, that's really cool and I could definitely see how that would help if I'm a consumer and I'm getting pitched by a service based company. I could understand how that would certainly make me trust that person more and feel more comfortable working with that company. My concern is, in the spirit of transparency,

As contractors, there's so much cool tech out there. So many things that, hey, if you do this and then you do ABCD once you install it, like this thing will help you immensely. And what I find is that a lot of the times, you know, they purchase a technology and then they don't do the things necessary to get the intended benefit or the maximum capability out of it. Do you see?

Contractors struggle with the implementation of it on the sales side to where they're curating each pitch Maybe they've got a decker or a slideshow or they're using engage like in my mind if I own a service a home service company what I would do is like I would have my standard deck and then

I would make sure that before I go on every call that I modify a screenshot on one part of the deck where it shows that customer's neighborhood and all the pins that are, you know, around that neighborhood to help build the credibility. Do you see contractors doing that? And if so, like how do you guys help train them set the expectation of what they can do to best leverage that technology to convert more people into sales?

steve spence (06:20.446) Yeah, you bring up a really good point, right? In any software, and I know that you work hard on processes with your contractors and building in the right processes, you need to add it to your process. And we tell that on the sales call when we're doing a demo for a contractor that's considering using Project MAPIT. My favorite stat that I say during my presentations when I present about social proof is just 80% of the usage of software is done by 20% of the users. So that means 80%

potentially 80% of the Project MAP-IT users out there aren't leveraging us the way they could. So we've actually, funny enough, about two months ago have changed the way we train our customers. We've become more consultant-like in how to leverage Project MAP-IT unless, hey, this is how you add a photo, this is how you add a pin. Because honestly, they can do that on their own. So we've built out some digital training modules that I'd say has cut down about 60, 70% of our onboarding process.

because we've built out videos that are pretty simple to follow. We're not a tough system, right? We're not a robust CRM system. We're like adding pins, adding photos, syncing your Google reviews once, and then it does it for you. It updates your map with new Google reviews down the road. So we're not hard. So we've changed, we've shifted the way we've trained our contractors in that they look through these training modules. We'll always train them how to add a pin and stuff. That's always been there, it always will be there, but.

We've shifted from training them how to update Project MAP-IT to how to leverage Project MAP-IT. So for example, we set them, we have five steps. It's how to add pins, how to add reviews, how to add photos, how to add this to your sales process. We have a video on how to add it to your iPad and how to navigate it on a tablet. So they go through those themselves. And then when we get on a strategy session, we talk about how to leverage it.

and the three pillars that we really talk about are the three processes at the sales point are pre-appointment email that goes out, right? So you could build a map. People are always like, I can't update my map. It's gonna take forever. Update your map once. Some people literally update their map once, have a ton of pictures, ton of reviews, and they don't really even update it except for maybe once a year. Put it in that pre-appointment email. I ask people all the time, Mike, and you probably ask people, what's in your pre-appointment email? And what do you think they always say?

steve spence (08:46.334) That's a question for you. I'm putting you on the spot. They, you know a lot. So they say, oh well, our pre-appointment email is pretty simple. It just says when, who the sales rep is, when they're coming out. If you have any questions, call us. I'm like, well, have you considered doing two things? One doesn't have anything to do with our product, but we always recommend when we consult with our contractors that are leveraging Project MAPID. In that pre-appointment email, get a video of your sales rep.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (08:48.169) I don't know, bro. I know nothing.

steve spence (09:13.514) Right? Like have them introduce themselves so that they know who that sales rep is before they even knock on the door. I was at a recent event with CertainTeed and one of the guys said, yeah, get them to know you before they get to know you.

Exactly, like pretty simple, right? I've talked to people that are like, I'm not putting my sales rep in front of a video. They will not do a good job. OK, well then have your owner do a video that's kind of standard for everybody. This is what South Shore Exteriors is, and this is the process that you're going to see when we come out. But the second part of that pre-appointment email is put a link to your portfolio. Like people want to see that you're doing work in their area.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (09:53.765) Yeah. I think.

steve spence (09:55.61) I saw you smirk. I saw you smirk when I said, uh, video. Talk to me.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (10:00.797) Yeah, so our second core value at Ascendant Solutions is not excuses. So like we can make every excuse as to why we don't want to do this, why we can't have a sales rep on camera. But there's like there's always a way to accomplish making your process better, building that rapport with your customer better and like not only even in business, just in your personal life as well. It's much easier to find reasons why you can't do it. I find like through observation of myself.

you know, historically and those people around me that a lot of the times you were talking about, you know, training the contractors and this is what you got to do, this is what you got to do. A lot of the times people that aren't successful in their own mind and whatever that means to you, right, I'm not going from my subjective interpretation of success for you, whatever you deem to be successful, a lot of people don't get to that milestone that is success as defined by themselves. And it's not because

they don't know what to do. It's because they won't do the shit necessary in order to get there, right? So like, how do we bridge that gap? Because as contractors, they're super busy, right? There's a lot of shit going on, like, and a lot of their attention's getting pulled in so many different directions. So like, how does this become a priority to make sure, even if it's being onboarded and set up once, how do we make that a priority so that they're getting maximum benefit?

steve spence (10:59.982) correct.

steve spence (11:21.85) I agree, 100%. And honestly, we're starting to grow. You were asking how 2023 was. 2024, I feel like we could probably double in size with our customer base. We've got a lot of good things cooking for us. And so for me, I'm growing. And one of the things we always talk about, and it's the same stat, 80% of the usage is done by 20% of the users. We're starting to grow, and I have a CRM. We use what's called HubSpot. And literally, I've put in over the last two months knowing that this growth phase is about to hit us.

we've been putting in a lot of automations that I didn't realize HubSpot did. So I would always recommend anybody you asked about technology, anybody that's using technology, you probably are already using technology that will do some of the stuff you want. So dig a little deeper with the customer team, customer success team of that technology, whether that's a CRM or a company cam or whatever tool you're using and learn how to use it better.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (12:15.205) Yeah, that's a really good point. I come across it all the time, whether it's, you know, let's just go with CRM, because that's what we're talking about. There's so many companies, like even young companies that are paying for something like Acculink, like Acculink is, it's a good CRM. It's more expensive than some of the alternatives. So like if you're going to

You know, not by the base model that'll you know, the car that'll get you from point A to point B because you want all the extra cool features and bells and whistles, but you're never going to use them like what's the point. Right. And that's not saying that's, you know, that's not necessarily saying get away from what CRM you're using. But to your point.

steve spence (12:45.428) Yeah.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (12:51.473) Figure out what it's capable of and then actually get yourself and your team on board with adopting that technology and using it the best you can to minimize friction within your processes to minimize the likelihood of human error. Because as you know if you're a two million dollar company and you're going to go to six million next year or the year after these small problems become disproportionately more of a headache as you grow right. I've witnessed this firsthand.

steve spence (13:16.054) bigger problems. Yeah, correct.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (13:20.281) So we can get ahead of that. And like you said, you're anticipating growth, so you're starting to leverage these automations that you didn't know exist. If we can be proactive to digging into these things, it's gonna make your life and your team's life a lot easier when that growth is actualized, right?

steve spence (13:36.834) could not agree 100% more. That is well said.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (13:43.137) You know, I'm not necessarily a creative person. My team is super creative and they're fantastic.

steve spence (13:48.311) Yeah.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (13:50.493) But like as we're sitting here having this conversation, like I started thinking, okay, I'm a marketing and advertising guy, although we don't do Facebook, I started thinking about like Facebook ads. And maybe there's like a drone, like a drone shoot, like going around a house that then zooms in to like the install taking place. And then it jump cuts over to like project map it at like a 30,000 foot overview. And then you click into that neighborhood that you're targeting and it zooms in and shows all the pins on the map. And then it zooms back out and shows continued production.

steve spence (14:18.359) Hehehe

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (14:20.447) of the job, right? And it's like, I think that would be really cool because you can create 10 different ad sets in 10 different neighborhoods that you want to have a strong presence in or that you do and you want to perpetuate. And you could run ads like that, that I think would be really engaging.

steve spence (14:35.694) I can't wait to see a couple of your ads that you're going to build out that are exactly you just. No you said you said ads I thought you were talking about like don't you do Google ads and stuff. Yeah the media I know.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (14:38.905) I ain't fucking doing it, bro. You gotta hit up like Matt Smith or something. I ain't touching Facebook. Facebook is such a-

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (14:48.609) Yeah, we do Google ads and stuff, but like, you know, Facebook is going to be more like media related ads, you know, to where you can leverage like that type of cool concept. And I think really make a meaningful impact from

steve spence (14:59.138) I'm gonna have to tell my boy Jordan Harrison to do one of those for one of our clients that we share.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (15:04.989) J-dubs get it done, baby. And I'll tell you what when you see the return on it All I ask is for a little bit of credit. All right

steve spence (15:14.142) Well, you did bring up another good point in just the idea of drone photography and technology. People are using them now more and more for roof measurements, but also more for marketing purposes. And there's nothing like on Project MAPIT, the best roofing before and after is with a drone, right? The same angle.

before followed by a same angle after photo. I always got to give credit to Joe Ailer over at Tariel Construction Group. They're out of Maryland, Harford County, Maryland. If anybody's watching this and they want to see what good marketing is, Joe was using drones before drones were even a thing. He hired a guy full-time about five years ago. So drone photography is pretty legit. I love it, especially in the exterior remodeling.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (15:54.886) Mm.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (15:58.193) Nice. Yeah, I mean, I'll say I have customers that use Project MAPIT. They enjoy it. It's definitely worth checking out and having a conversation, figuring out like what how you can take that technology implemented into what you've got going on to strengthen, you know, the different aspects of your business that it can that it can do so. So what questions you got for me, sir? You got anything for me?

steve spence (16:10.623) Yeah.

steve spence (16:23.126) I'm a little disappointed that I didn't have you stopped doing the dad jokes. Is that what's going on?

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (16:27.301) No, you know, we just, dude, we're just taking a break. It's not goodbye, it's see you later, okay? So we had some technical difficulties with the new studio set up this morning, which caused me to be a little bit behind schedule. And you know, and if you come for just the dad jokes and I failed you, accountability is our first core value here, I'm sorry, I will own that shit. This is your formal apology, and I'll be better next time.

steve spence (16:31.399) Alright. Okay.

steve spence (16:41.388) Yep.

steve spence (16:48.467) Ha ha

steve spence (16:54.026) I want to know from you how you're doing over at Ascent in your personal life. How are things going?

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (16:58.825) Dude, things are great, man. We're growing. Customers are happy. Team seems happy. I don't know if they tell me if they weren't. I've got Christian. Christian gave me a thumbs up, so he's happy. And he's the only one within an earshot right now. So we're one for one, baby. Had a baby boy about five weeks, four and a half weeks ago. Little Everett Michael. He's a little champ. Very active hand, so I'm excited to see maybe if he gets into boxing or something like that. And.

steve spence (17:03.297) Yep.

steve spence (17:06.845) Yep.

steve spence (17:24.214) Boxing.

some hoops.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (17:28.098) I won't influence his decision making. I'll just be there to support him.

steve spence (17:34.519) I have a ninth grader and he's a lacrosse kid. I grew up playing lacrosse, but he's also a really good swimmer. So I try hard honestly not to influence because I'm his coach as well and that's always not a great mix.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (17:46.674) Yeah, I am fun fact the least efficient swimmer you'll ever meet. I would say, I don't know, 80% of the time I forget to kick my feet. So it's like, you know, I swim a half a lap and my shoulders are smoked because my upper body is doing all the work and I don't understand why. You know, I'm just not intentional, I guess. You got to be more deliberate. Kick your damn feet, Mike. Okay.

steve spence (17:49.848) Yep.

steve spence (18:06.551) Yeah.

steve spence (18:11.427) I'm a short dude, so short legs, short arms. I do not swim well. I have two swimmers in my family. My daughter, she just got upgraded to juniors, which is pretty legit. She's doing really well and she works her butt off. So yeah, swimming's not for me, but I am now a swim dad. So I go to my son's Friday swim meets, which are long. Do you know, have you ever been to a swim meet? It's like a fricking, it's the worst thing ever.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (18:22.888) guys.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (18:33.681) No. I've been to gymnastics meets, which I'd imagine are...

steve spence (18:36.766) Yeah, it's the same concept, right? You're like watching your kids for two minutes total out of like three and a half hours of sitting there. I mean, cheering on the team, I'm getting used to it, but that's been fun. I do have one question for you, and it's selfishly for me. You know, as we grow, I'm hiring new people. We just hired two new people for the company. I anticipate that growth to continue probably.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (18:44.299) Very similar. Sure.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (18:51.475) Shoot.

steve spence (19:02.434) February, March, April, maybe we'll have to hire a couple more. What kind of things do you do with your team since your team does love you and loves working together? Can you give me like one or two things that you do that you think helps your team be inspired and get along well?

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (19:20.538) Yeah.

Here's the thing I claim not to be. I don't claim to be a guru on this stuff. I have what I think is right. And I try to follow that. And I try to remember it wasn't too long ago when I worked for someone else. And in life, a lot of the times, it hasn't been like, I know the answer. It's I know what I don't want to happen. And like in my previous employment history, things that I didn't like and what it resulted in. So like, that's kind of the lens that I look through. Not saying it's right, but it's what I do. So since you asked, here you go. We did a nice dinner.

steve spence (19:25.998) It's fair.

steve spence (19:29.538) Yep.

steve spence (19:37.559) Yep.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (19:53.035) you know, for like a holiday party with some recognition. I wrote Christmas cards. We all had, again, I think a great time. I enjoyed myself. I hope they did too. We had a we had a sales goal this year.

Which is tough for them because they don't directly impact it per se because they're not having the sales calls. But like it's really important because every piece of my team that is fulfilling different aspects of customer needs have a massive impact. And I've, I tried to, and I should do a better job of consistently reminding them that like the only reason that these sales happen are because of the work that you do. So that's my takeaway from this meeting. Thank you. Um, we're doing a retreat in Tampa. Um,

steve spence (20:27.83) Right? Yep.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (20:33.897) we're gonna do like a little bit of planning for 2024. And maybe that's like a few hours that we're gonna do out of like a three day trip. And then the rest of the time, we're just gonna do some fun activities that's coming up in February because we hit our sales target. Yeah, and I think they don't know this yet. And...

Hopefully they can't hear me. I wanna do something called Teach It Tuesdays, where we just have a morning meeting and everybody comes to the table with something they can teach the team. And it can be something with regards to their job, their position, something that they've learned or something that they think would be helpful to the team. It could be something that they wanna teach the team about themselves, a book that they read, whatever it is, like just come and bring something to the table to talk about that it has meaning to you. Because I think that...

steve spence (21:09.399) Thank you.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (21:21.093) The better we understand each other, the more we know about each other, the easier it is to relate, be compassionate, and be unified as just one cohesive unit. So we're going to start that in 2024.

steve spence (21:33.13) I love that idea. I think I'm going to steal it. I think that's a great idea. We meet once a week, but I like the idea of engaging your employees in that respect. It definitely shows empathy, trust, all that stuff. Speaking of trust, I heard Eric Obram talked about the team model. I loved it. So if anybody wants it, I don't know if you know it, but it was, it really was an aha moment. Kind of like your teach a Tuesday thing was an aha moment for him. So appreciate you sharing that.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (22:00.137) Appreciate you listening, man. If you wanna steal it, steal it, it's fine. Tell them what was your idea. I do it all the time. No, no, you don't do that, you don't do that. Always a pleasure, dude. I look forward to more of these meetings. Next time I do have one request. In light of you being a swim dad, I want you to narrow from the neck up and I want you to wear a swim cap.

steve spence (22:01.631) Yeah man, for sure.

steve spence (22:06.254) Okay. I'm gonna tell them it was your idea.

steve spence (22:14.786) Yeah, man.

steve spence (22:20.034) Yep.

steve spence (22:29.502) a swim cap. Yeah, I can do that. I mean, it'll go on pretty easy. I don't have much hair. So

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (22:32.553) Sweet.

Alright, dude, just make sure that you're 100% hairless from the knockup with a swim cap so it can be appropriate and we'll go from there. It'll be great. Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's gonna be great. Alright, maybe I'll throw a swim cap on too.

steve spence (22:43.17) Do I wear it for the whole interview? Okay, deal. Done deal. I love it.

steve spence (22:53.518) Good man.

Stephen Spence and Mike Stearns (22:53.721) Um, yeah, dude, I appreciate you. I appreciate all you that tuned in today. Thank you to Rufor for helping make the show possible and we gone.

steve spence (23:02.146) Thanks, brother.

In this episode, Mike goes over tips and tricks on how to get the most from your marketing manager. Companies often hire a marketing manager without a proper vision for them. This can lead to frustration on both sides. Clear expectations and a well-thought-out plan will ensure you can get the most out of your marketing manager, which benefits both of you.

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Contact us : [email protected]

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00;00;23;09 - 00;00;31;01 Unknown What is the roadmap to making sure that your marketing manager is making the biggest impact possible for your company, your customers?

00;00;31;03 - 00;00;47;03 Unknown I recently put out a short piece of content and drew the ire of some people that have marketing managers. So I want to talk about the solution. What can we do to make the most out of the position? And that's what we'll do in this video. Stick around till the end because there will be a bonus piece of content that will be truly meaningful and impactful.

00;00;47;05 - 00;01;09;28 Unknown So the first thing I'd recommend doing is market research. Understand what your prospective customers, what they want. You can analyze your historical data, use leverage your employees like they're talking to these customers and have historically get insights from them as far as what your customers prefer, what they like, what they don't like, and analyze and understand your competitors.

00;01;09;28 - 00;01;28;18 Unknown What are they doing that maybe we can do better and they'll be a point of differentiation so that we can really stand out in the market. On the digital marketing side. You can use tools like samurais or rafts or Mars to understand what they're doing online, the type of content that they're creating, what type of backlinks that they have.

00;01;28;21 - 00;01;36;12 Unknown And again, ultimately the goal that we want to achieve is differentiating ourselves and ultimately get more visibility is from your target market.

00;01;36;12 - 00;02;00;28 Unknown Another thing is brand management and identity. What is your brand? There's a lot of things that are encompassed within brand, and that's a topic for another video. But making sure that your brand is clear, consistent messaging is consistent across all platforms and what you're conveying to your current customers, your future customers is the same throughout it. What you want it to be homogenous, right?

00;02;00;28 - 00;02;17;28 Unknown You don't want, you know, messaging in this county to be different than messaging in this county or your door hangers here to look different than your door hangers here. You want as much synergy as possible so that it really resonates with your prospective audience as far as who you are, what you stand for, and why they should work with you

00;02;17;28 - 00;02;26;20 Unknown content creation and management? What type of content are you guys putting out? This goes for blogs. Google Business profile, posting videos.

00;02;26;20 - 00;02;46;26 Unknown What are you putting out and why? So developing a content calendar to make sure that the content that you're putting out to your target audience is consistent with your values, what you bring to the table as far as value and really helping educate your prospects in advance of their need can be absolutely huge.

00;02;46;26 - 00;02;49;14 Unknown As far as making you a trusted industry authority,

00;02;49;14 - 00;03;09;02 Unknown CRM management, what's going into your CRM? How is it being used? What type of automations are being leveraged in that process? This is an opportunity for your marketing manager to pay attention to these things, to ultimately optimize what's being done or what's not being done to make sure that everything within your company is a seamless as possible.

00;03;09;04 - 00;03;27;03 Unknown There's the least amount of friction as there can be because as you increase friction, you increase the likelihood of unhappy employees and negative customer experience. And if there's just a little attention to detail consistently set forth to that process and understanding how we can maybe make it better, it goes a long way.

00;03;27;08 - 00;03;54;03 Unknown Analyzing data and reporting this is another opportunity to add a tremendous amount of value to the company for marketing manager. This can be reporting from your digital marketing company. It can be reporting from your CRM, but understanding these insights. What's going on with different aspects or spokes within the company, and then taking those insights and deriving a plan to improve every nature of the business is absolutely vital as a growing company.

00;03;54;05 - 00;04;07;01 Unknown And whether you want to grow, whether you want to be more profitable, whatever the case is, making sure that we understand the numbers around our business are an integral part of growth and being successful. So we want to make sure that they're paying attention to these things,

00;04;07;01 - 00;04;13;05 Unknown setting and managing budgets right. So what are we spending? Where are we spending it?

00;04;13;08 - 00;04;41;20 Unknown What's coming as a result of where we're investing our money? We always want to make sure that for every dollar out, we're getting as much back to the company as possible. So your marketing manager can make sure that they are in consistent analysis of all these different places that we're placing our money, try to do their best to understand the ROI associated with these different channels of marketing, advertising, branding, to make sure that we can make educated decisions moving forward to best position ourselves for success in the future.

00;04;41;24 - 00;05;11;13 Unknown Collaboration and strategic partnerships is absolutely huge, right? So it could be collaborating with your sales team to get a pulse on what they're hearing from their customers. It could be building a strategic partnership with a another contractor, whether it's in the same industry or an adjacent home service industry to ultimately send more referral work back and forth. Like this is a great opportunity and a just a fantastic use of a marketing manager's time to create more opportunities for your company moving forward.

00;05;11;16 - 00;05;18;17 Unknown I highly recommend that any marketing manager out there focuses on these because the upside is tremendous.

00;05;18;17 - 00;05;21;27 Unknown For marketing Manager. It's important to understand that

00;05;21;27 - 00;05;38;22 Unknown what worked five years ago, what works today will work five years from now. It's fluid. It often change so consistently doing research as far as trends in the industry, in your market like that can be a very valuable component to consistently optimizing where you're

00;05;38;22 - 00;05;49;27 Unknown spending your money from marketing and advertising perspective to make sure that we have our ROI top of mind and we're consistently doing the things that are necessary to be as successful as possible.

00;05;50;00 - 00;06;22;18 Unknown Another great opportunity is to make sure that your marketing manager is consistently meeting with the people responsible for your marketing, whether that's an internal team, it's an external team or some sort of hybrid blend of both. It's important that they're committed to having consistent meetings, understanding what's taking place as it relates to the marketing and advertising for your company, because with this knowledge they can consistently hold people accountable, make any type of iterations or pivots to the campaigns that they see fit to ultimately position us for success moving forward.

00;06;22;23 - 00;06;44;08 Unknown Okay, so having said all that, I promise you a bonus tip at the end. Here's the delivery. So if you have a marketing manager set up routine meetings with your sales team, your sales team is consistently talking to people within your market that own homes and ultimately need service. Some of those meetings will result in sales for your company.

00;06;44;11 - 00;07;17;00 Unknown Some of them will result in absolutely nothing other than the feedback that they got from that customer. That feedback is still very important because if we can understand what the most typical reasons are that a homeowner decides not to do business with us, that gives us valuable insights as far as how can we proactively in the future cater our branding, our messaging, our conversations, our sales pitches in a way that proactively disarms those objections or mitigates the impact fulness of them and neutralizes them in a sense.

00;07;17;02 - 00;07;28;00 Unknown And if we make a concerted effort to do that, we're going to be better positioned on our ongoing sales calls with a higher likelihood of closing those prospects and having them become customers of ours.

00;07;28;00 - 00;07;45;00 Unknown So I hope that you found this information helpful. Drop any comments that you have. If you think this will benefit somebody, share with them. We want as many people to see this as possible so they can make the best use of the resources within their company to again, position themselves for success today, tomorrow, and beyond.

00;07;45;02 - 00;07;46;02 Unknown Appreciate you viewing.

In this episode, Mike shares the insights he's had in his life about the difference between influence and control. Understanding this comparison can help you avoid disappointment and change how you approach meetings.

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Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:00.522) Okay, so we've got influence, we've got control. Two completely different things, and understanding the difference between the two has made a massive impact in my life, and hopefully it'll help you make an impact in yours as well. Welcome back, I'm Mike Stearns with the Send Digital Agency, Mission Control Podcast. This episode's probably brought to you by Roofer. If you need instant roof quotes, roof measurements, clean and pristine proposals, or a CRM, get up the team at Roofer. It'll be linked down in the description. Tell them I sent ya, you'll be happy that you did. So.

Influence versus control. Like what is the difference between the two? The way that I perceive this is, if I go into an expectation, with an expectation that I can go into a situation and influence an outcome, what that means to me is that I ultimately am not in charge or responsible for that outcome itself. I can have an impact potentially.

on the outcome, but it's not guaranteed, right? It's not causal. Whereas in a situation where I have control, if A, then B, it's very clear cut, right? My action, my words will 1000% guarantee this result. And when I was younger and even to this day, it's something that I work on all the time. I found when I was younger that I would typically go into situations where I didn't necessarily have control. I would only be able to influence.

potentially the outcome, and I'd go in the mindset where I can control this. If I do these three different things, this should happen, right? And it was misguided, right? And what that would do is it would create a ton of negative emotions, because I'm a competitive person, I like to win. So if I set an expectation for myself that, hey, Mike, if you go into the situation and you do A, B, C, and D, the outcome's gonna be exactly what you want it to be, it's comforting.

In the moment, it feels good to have control. But again, when that doesn't happen, you're sad, you're anxious, you feel like you haven't won, like you've lost, you feel defeated. And the biggest thing is that these isolated instances, they can compound if you do them consistently, right? And after years of doing this, I had to be very intentional about, you know, kind of taking a look back and like, why do I feel this way? Why am I so upset?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (02:23.97) that I didn't get the result that I wanted. And in a lot of the instances, it was simply because I went into a situation under the assumption that I could control an outcome when I couldn't control it at all. Again, if we have control, we feel comforted, right? We feel very comforted in the fact that I can dictate an outcome. But a lot of the times we don't have control.

There's too many variables in an equation outside of ourselves and our actions and our words that are ultimately going to dictate what the outcome is, whether it's desirable or not. So again, for me, delineating between those two and understanding, hey, you might be able to do A, B, C, and D, Mike. And those actions, those words, those activities may increase the likelihood that you get the desired outcome. But it doesn't guarantee it. What that did for me.

we didn't get the outcome that I wanted is essentially, I didn't feel as bad, I didn't feel as defeated, didn't create that anxiety to the degree that it would if I was operating under the pretense that I was going to get the desired outcome. So again, it's something that I work on every single day and I'll continue to do so in perpetuity because those events again can compound and be defeating quite honestly. So hopefully this has helped you.

Be sure to follow us on every platform, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, tik tok. Love talking to you guys. Look forward to talking to you again soon.

In this episode, Mike invites Tim Brown, owner and CEO of Hook Agency, to discuss lead generation. Tim shares insightful tips on what you should be cautious about when buying seller leads. They also dive into the importance of referrals and why they should remain a significant focus even when business is booming.

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

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Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:00.738) So did you hear about the crustacean accused of promoting his own shellfish interests?

Tim Brown (00:08.179) I had not.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:11.622) I mean, okay, they don't all land, but you keep trying. Shoot your shot, and if you miss, shoot the ball again.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:44.27) Well, welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast with yours truly Mike Stearns of Ascend Digital Agency. Today we've got Tim Brown. Welcome, Tim. Thanks for coming.

Tim Brown (00:58.242) Thanks for having me, bro. I appreciate you putting me on.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:01.994) Yeah, man, of course. And as always, thanks to Rufr. Great company. You need instant quotes, roof measurements, clean and pristine proposals that give your prospects no choice but to buy it up the team at Rufr. Down in the description will be a link y'all know what to do. Tell them I sent you, you'll be happy you did. Okay. Moving on. So what is lead gentem? I mean, people ask me all the time and they're like, Hey,

You guys do lead gen? And I'm like, well, yeah, I guess technically speaking, we do generate leads. But I feel as if there's usually a disconnect as far as what I perceive their question as and the lens that they're looking through. So what does lead gen mean to you?

Tim Brown (01:45.994) I think the most concerning is when somebody is like, do you got leads? It's like, what, what leads? You got any more of the leads? And they're kind of, they're talking about purchased leads. They're talking about like, if they're used to Angie or home advisor or one of these resellers of, or sellers of leads, right. Which is honestly, if you're for real as the bottom of the barrel of leads.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:51.902) Y'all got any more of them leads, man?

Tim Brown (02:15.346) It's right up there. It's just because they are often, where do these leads come from? You've got different sources, right? You've got one place that commonly they come from is call centers, which there was no intent to purchase originally until they got called. They got called and then they got shoved into this label of lead. And then on Angie and Home Advisor,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (02:16.462) Why is that?

Tim Brown (02:44.194) they are using every possible way to get out onto the internet, including very vigorous, they purchase next door and put their ads everywhere on there. Right. And then calculators and then advertising so that people with some interest. And that's the thing is like some interest, not necessarily like they're looking per se, but maybe they're looking for a price and they have calculators on their site and they're

they call that a lead. And then it's all deteriorated a little bit by the fact that they sell it more than once. Right, if you sell a lead four times, it's really 25% of a lead. Because now, and it's the worst part is, is that you're competing with people, you have to lower your prices and you actually could wear out your salespeople from it. So those are what people sometimes are calling leads. And even worse, I had people at Rooftop

that came up to us and like, hey, do you have any like, ah.

Like people that are going to go sell these to somebody else that are talking about like, do we buy aged leads? Aged leads? That's not a lead anymore. That's a contact, bro. You're going to give me some something that I've got in my CRM from six months ago and sell it back to somebody else as a lead. Like. I don't know.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:10.531) Mm.

Tim Brown (04:11.498) why people still fall for this. So the real contrast with a marketing partner and a leads company, and I like that, like I do think of myself as lead generation, but we're not like a lead selling company. The real contrast is that somebody's trying to help you build up your own house and somebody else is just trying to.

kind of sell you stuff that's like rehashed and garbage. I don't know. I mean, like, obviously I'm saying that too strong for somebody to think I'm impartial. But the point is, is like we're talking about selling context. It's context more than a lead. So I just wish there would be people would be more accurate about what they're saying when they're talking about selling leads.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:59.606) Yeah, and that's kind of, I too think of our company as one that generates leads, but I also think that, I think that most contractors, and this is through my experience, and I guess I shouldn't paint with a broad stroke, but I'm going to. Most contractors I've dealt with when they're asking for a lead gen, they're asking for a fixed cost per lead, right? I wanna buy leads at this dollar amount from you, and I wanna make money from doing that. And it sounds well and good, but as Tim mentioned,

you know unintended consequences of that pursuit is that you get recycled leads you get people that are like straight up I never asked anyone for a roofing contractor to come out With that being said Have you found instances where it's beneficial for a contractor to leverage a platform like an Angie or a thumbtack? Or any other type of lead aggregation service?

Tim Brown (05:55.518) Yeah, I mean, well, I hear stories. I hear, I hear stories of it being successful, right? Like few people in the industry that I respect that talk about lead aggregation, Chuck Tokey talks about it. Chuck Tokey says you have to have a system. Most people that use buying leads, they don't have a good enough system, which what he's really saying is you better be super on it super quick.

And I think it's also understanding that it's more of like a, it's a partially interested contact than it is like a super ripe lead. So you have to be much more. Aggressive with that prospect. Like you should almost treat it like we're going to go door knock again to this house that like we got a lead from, you know, like you, you almost have to take it a different route, like it's a different, just like with Google is a different route than like door knocking or like.

If somebody doesn't know how to close a local service ad lead, then maybe they're not going to close a Google ad lead that because there's a different route, right? People don't know you that well. Same with these. So I respect his take on that. Um, Jonathan bros has said, you know, they use this, you know, sometimes they buy Angie leads or, you know, different things he has said, I think he's his active prospect.

to confirm whether it's a real lead. I think that system essentially, it even provides a screen recording of them filling out the form on the website just to confirm that it's a real human being and to give a second, you need almost like a second party accountability structure in place for Angie. Because here's the deal, like that company is kind of known for some shadier ethics.

And like, that is where it comes down to like, from my point of view, it's like, if you gotta do all that, maybe I don't want your leads in the first place. But I mean, with a company like his, where they are a big growth company and they're taking every conceivable option for getting more leads, if you have a system in place, those are two people that I know that have talked about it in a positive way that I respect.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:49.19) Sure.

Tim Brown (08:16.414) Some of the people that I hear talking about on a positive I'm like, I don't know if I, you know, like sometimes it's like one year it's good and then one year is bad, so it's just hard to know who's accurate when they're talking about it, those two people I do respect though.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (08:19.403) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (08:31.746) Yeah, yeah, likewise. Shout out to John and Chuck. What I find is, yeah, for companies that use it with success, so these lead aggregation companies, there's a process around how the lead's going to be handled and that process is actually followed. Big difference.

between having a process and following the process. And there's somebody who's responsible for consistently keeping them honest, right? So, you know, checking in on the quality of the leads and then disputing and going through, it's not as easy as like, you know, a lot of the times Google local services is where if you're disputing a lead, you click a button, you get an email, four days later, your lead dispute has been resolved. Energy doesn't make it that easy. So you have to have somebody that has the time and...

Tim Brown (08:54.72) Yeah.

Tim Brown (09:11.55) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:17.558) the perseverance, the grit, the moxie to deal with the Angians on the other end of the line to potentially hold them accountable in that event that takes place. And I think that's, and it's been helpful. I've talked to some younger guys that are smaller companies and they've had success with it.

Tim Brown (09:21.516) Yeah.

Tim Brown (09:28.279) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:36.234) you know, because I think that, you know, if you don't have leads coming in from seven different venues, it's a lot easier to pay attention to that one avenue that's bringing you opportunities outside of repeat referrals, word of mouth and things like that. So yeah, that's what it's my two cents for what it's worth.

Tim Brown (09:53.43) Great. Two cents. I didn't think like, you know, so just so people know Angie's the biggest one. We've got call centers is another big one. Um, Angie has their stock has been slipping. Right. For the last few years, stock slipping Angie's list purchased home advisor, or, uh, sorry, home advisor purchased Angie's list for the positive brand association.

and then applied all their systems to it and call it Angie. They fucked up their SEO. They're like, and I, my little known fact, one of our SEOs got, got grabbed by the company doing SEO for Angie. And it was right about the time that everything was

And I was like watching, I was like, Oh God, that was sucked out. The dude it's giant website, total redirect from Angie's list.com to Angie. And we know how annoying these projects can be. You have to like try to redirect every single page on the website to the corresponding page on the new website. And it's just this giant monster. And I'm sure some resources were lost when you have like all these tools, these calculators on these websites and stuff like that. Probably lost a bunch of this stuff that was driving some traffic.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (10:59.416) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (11:07.658) at the same time their stock was going down. But good news for the stockholders are the, uh, the, uh, there was an increase in revenue at the same time that they're having less leads. How did that happen? I don't know. I don't know exactly. And I wasn't, this wasn't like now, like we've got a, this was like a year ago. So there was like.

Right now there's a decrease in, well, there is increase, decrease in inquiries in general for home services, right? So I don't want to like rip on them for any of that, but it's just, it was funny that the decrease in inquiries was also at the time where the revenue was going up, which means they were just selling less leads for more money. And that's funny. That's funny to me for some reason.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (11:57.53) Right.

Supply and demand baby.

Tim Brown (12:02.482) Yeah, exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:05.594) Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. Search volume goes down. We could speculate, right? Interest rates, borrowing money, cost more, right? People, because of that, the economy's not great, or at least perceived, it seems like. So in light of that, people tend to hold onto their money with a tighter fist, are more apprehensive to buy, and because of that,

Tim Brown (12:08.02) Yeah.

Tim Brown (12:14.085) Yep.

Yeah.

Tim Brown (12:28.938) Yes.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:32.982) If you got 10 people clicking through to your website, they're probably less likely to get a higher percentage of those to actually submit a form than maybe two years ago. And then when you're having sales meetings, you're probably, if you're closing at 40% two years ago, maybe you're not closing at 40% now, just because everything is becoming much more challenging to ultimately convince that customer it's time. And then when you convince that customer it's time convincing them that you're the best for the project.

Tim Brown (12:40.558) Mm-hmm. Yep.

Tim Brown (12:50.452) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:01.102) What are you seeing on your side as it relates to those statements?

Tim Brown (13:01.742) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (13:05.854) Yeah, you know, pressure on lead price going up, right? There's there's pressure and probably every market, but particularly ones without storms, that's not super unusual. But yeah, we and I don't know, I'm guessing you do something like that. But we talk about like closed deals, right? Like we talk about what's closed. And so that conversation gets a little hairier when conversion, like when.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:32.792) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (13:35.842) sales conversion rate goes down because then it's like, is the lead quality down? What's going on? You know, like it's lead quality is down, I think, in more places, but it's not it can't like, wow, it's I was like, is it marketing's fault? It's you know what I mean? Like it's the angel. Like, yeah, exactly. We're all pointed. Then it's not really.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:54.09) Right. The salesors are marketing and it's just like the Spider-Man meme, right?

Tim Brown (14:03.166) I think our smartest customers almost lead with it. They lead with like, Hey, I know what's happening in the broader market. We still got to try to like keep a positive look and try to get the best results we possibly can under these circumstances. The worst customers of a marketing, the worst partners of a marketing agency are the ones that go.

They don't have one finger pointed at them, pointed at you. They've got both fingers pointed at you and they're thinking agencies fault, agencies fault, agencies faults. And those are usually the ones that go through seven agencies in seven years. Right? Like it's going to be tough, dude. It's going to be a tough next year. Like we're not dealing with like ideal circumstances in roofing or any kind of contract or home service business right now. We're lucky that people just still need roofs.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:55.415) Yeah.

Tim Brown (14:56.214) We're lucky that we're lucky that people still need roofs. And maybe some of this pressure that we're experiencing now is a foreshadow of insurance companies tightening up, you know, over the next five, 10 years where there's going to be less covered coverage on these roofs in general. Right. Like the difficulty it's going to be harder to close. So what do we have control over?

You know, that's all that we can do. And my company is different than in a roofing company. If I'm a roofing company owner, I'm thinking, how can I get more referrals? How can I implement? I like shout them out constantly, but, you know, Matt Danskin's restoration referral system, how can I? You know, there's a new game. There's a new game in the market. Restoration referrals dot com. Or sorry, it's actually sorry, it's roofing referrals dot com. And it's by.

the dude, Randy Hurtado from DT Roofing. And there, it's like kind of around insurance agents, realtors and other people that often refer. And it's essentially like their recommendations plus an app, plus a community. Anything you can do to increase referrals and anything we can do to make it easier to purchase. And it's all complicated by the fact that like my game.

I've been suggesting financing for a long time and now that's getting harder too. So it's getting to a harder game. We're getting to a harder game. That's what I feel right now for roofers. And that's not, it's not the same for everybody though. So maybe you just have less competitors in a few years.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (16:29.411) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (16:36.694) Yeah, I mean, that's the silver lining of it. And I mean, if any of my clients are listening to this or are going to listen to it, you know, you've heard it from me, it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better, right? Buckle up and like, this is why the conversations that we had a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, are so important as far as like building your brand, building a community of brand ambassadors, educating your previous, current and future customers as far as how they can actually

Tim Brown (16:47.918) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (17:05.934) do the most for you as far as being your brand ambassadors with loyalty programs or referral programs, having a sticky name to that referral program. We got a client, his name's RainWorks. So we created the Make It Rain referral campaign, right? So you get X amount of dollars for every roof, here's a trackable link, show them, educate the customer how to share it, where to share it, next door, Facebook groups, on their Facebook, whatever. But if you're...

Tim Brown (17:12.043) Yeah.

Tim Brown (17:21.547) Oh, that's awesome.

Tim Brown (17:34.51) That's incredible.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (17:35.542) If you're intentional about doing that systematically all the time, it's just a matter of time until you start making it rain for them and yourselves. And it's a little, I hate to say it this way, but I think this is how it's perceived. It's less important when everyone's in the street getting fat because things are coming so easy. But, but when, you know, shit really starts to shrink and constrain, that's where you get the fruits of the labor and the massive payoff. Because you know, if you're, your lead cost goes from

Tim Brown (17:52.38) Oh yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (18:02.758) $189 to $247, that sucks, but it sucks a lot less if you still have 30% of your business being referral as opposed to 17% of your business being referral, right? Yeah, it's hard out here in these streets, bruh.

Tim Brown (18:14.359) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (18:19.558) Dude, no, for real. No, this is so important, the things you're talking about, though. We can just hope that some people go. I mean, it's hard to say, because if you're one of those people that goes out of business, it's sad. But that will happen. That probably is happening. We're seeing people that are eminently employable unemployed. We're seeing things that are.

indicator early indicators of kind of more. Pinched economic circumstances. So, yeah, I'm like hoping for a. Not a hard recession in 2024, but just like a little like. Just like a little bit more of like a.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:01.318) Cheers.

Tim Brown (19:05.866) clear because I feel like when it's like unclear because this year was unclear, I feel like. And now it's getting a little bit more clear. There's a little bit unclear than people like do different things or you're, you know, like you're just not taking massive action when you should be right. Like those types of things. Um, and we talked to, we, so you and I had the podcast one year ago and we were talking about this and I think

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:10.415) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (19:31.05) I didn't think it was going to be as hardcore as I feel like we're seeing the look now. Maybe it's just a year behind what we thought it might do. I think I was hopeful and I was like, you know, it's a little bit more hopeful. But we were trying like I think like it's real. It's real. You know, hey. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:45.947) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:53.078) It's not real. I'll say that.

Tim Brown (19:56.982) Speaking of referrals though, you referred to us, McCormick Renovations in Pittsburgh. And they're working with us. So you gotta tell me what I can get you as a gift.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:05.144) Okay.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:13.518) This is under referral back, bruh.

Tim Brown (20:16.182) Michael and I have, we didn't ever give each other any money for referrals. Like we've got a different game going, which was like, kind of like we were ramping up the gifts a little bit. Like, so I got somehow, like I think I got Mike a fridge, a Bill's fridge, and like a few other like trinkets. And then Bill, and then I don't know which order happened, but then Michael hit me back with a.

a very nice bottle of cologne and I've been still using it. Now I think I'm addicted to it. So I'm probably gonna, it's very good. But basically like gifting is another strategy for referrals. So we might as well throw that real behind the scenes in here like.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:47.846) It's a great cologne. It's a good one to be addicted to. Yeah.

Tim Brown (20:59.866) I think sometimes those are more impactful than money, you know, for certain people. You ask, you talk to certain people. I think it's people with money. And I'm not saying like Mike and I have a bunch of money, but like for instance, like people in the industry I've found in roofing industry, like it's definitely more impact because it's like kind of feels a little weird sometimes getting money because we're all trying to like in the in the industry, we're all trying to refer only the ones we really feel like are doing a good job and like

So money feels a little weird because it feels like you're being affected by money. Sometimes. I don't know. I haven't had as much success with that for roofing industry referrals. Not, not to go too far into that. Cause I know this is for roofers, but.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:41.474) Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, gifts are great. Like, like.

And I think it's worth noting, like there wasn't an agreement struck where it's like, hey, if you start giving me referrals, I'll do this for you. It's kind of something that happened just by virtue of like, you inspected our roofs, we inspected your roofs, and we approved of the work that you were doing and vice versa. You know, so when I gotten a referral from you, and it panned out, it's like, let me do something nice for Tim, right? Tim and his team, or advice versa, right? So it's like,

And gifts, they hit a little bit different than money, for being honest. Like if you go to a 14 year old kid's birthday party and give them 50 bucks, they're gonna be happy. Maybe a 14 year old kid's not great. Maybe a 30 year old, right? If you got a friend who's 30 and it's his 30th birthday, if you give them 50 or 100 bucks, it's like, eh. But if you get them something personalized, it'll actually mean something to them. I think it goes a little bit longer, of a way.

Tim Brown (22:17.874) Yeah, like, think about it.

Tim Brown (22:34.802) Yeah, I think that probably applies like my sister-in-law is a realtor and no amount of money, she's doing very well. And no amount of money, my brother is a stay at home dad and he loves it. And he's like, I like anyways, but he...

Or like if I gave them a hundred, like $500, I just don't think he's like, they're even gonna like, they probably won't even open the envelope for a whole month or two, you know what I mean? But if you gave them a pat, like something based on what I knew he was interested in, if I gave him, fuck it, I won't even say a huge thing. I'll say like a bunch of pool toys for the kids for their third home in Florida.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:09.466) Yeah.

Tim Brown (23:25.706) they would open it up and be like, that was so thoughtful. And we're so excited and we're going to bring those and have a great time in Florida. You know what I mean? Like, so just certain things, when you put it on a monetary level, I don't think anyone's going to be offended, but there's a, like kind of a friend level. This, the book that goes into this stuff in real depth is giftology. There's some...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:52.037) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (23:54.134) relationships, if they can live on the gift side of things, it's like almost more impact, like you're saying. I think that's a great book. If anyone hasn't checked that out, check out Giftology. It's a very fun thing to get into, and it does take work, but it is fun.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (24:12.83) Yeah, and I think that I think where most people fail on like the referral side is making it a systematic every single time approach like this is our process for educating the consumer like that this exists and that they have an opportunity to earn and show and then Show them the opportunity like take that opportunity to show them the transparency right like we can actually track it. We can show you you're going to compensate and here's what you can expect. I think that's one part of where people fail a little bit.

Tim Brown (24:23.499) Yeah.

Tim Brown (24:41.178) Oh yeah, yeah for sure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (24:42.684) like actually like paying people and going through with it. Unfortunately, you know, you like, you gotta keep track of this shit. Like if you're gonna put it out there, otherwise it's gonna have the exact opposite effect on the brand that you want, right? The idea is that we could build goodwill by looking out for people that are looking out for us and that compounds very, very quickly.

Tim Brown (24:48.394) Yeah.

Tim Brown (24:55.854) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (24:59.572) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:03.514) And hey, there's financial gain from it, which never hurts in a capitalist society, but go ahead and not pay people for referring you and see how quickly that fucks your game up. That's a problem. But there's like some...

Tim Brown (25:11.462) Yeah. Oh yeah, there's some psychology in there. Like the, there's the, they talked about when you pay like your kid to read a book, weirdly it has the opposite effect sometimes because like, especially it has a very, very negative effect if you ever don't pay them.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:33.634) Yeah.

Tim Brown (25:34.77) It will literally stop them in their tracks. Like the Pavlov's dog effect, if there's one time where it doesn't happen and you had been, it like has very, like the studies on that are crazy. That has a very negative effect on them ever reading. So your kid will just stop reading.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:51.941) Right.

And you know, this guy will stop referring and he'll probably blast down Google for being a crook. So we don't want that. That will have a detrimental effect to our brand. Don't do that. Make sure that you pay your people for referrals if you say you're gonna pay them. And you get creative with it, right? Like, I don't know, like, what kind of gifts can you give people like custom doormat? If you're doing referral program, and you're giving them 250 bucks a roof, get like, get custom visa cards made like with picture of your team or picture of something like it's an opportunity for you to

Tim Brown (26:19.208) Mmm, that's cool.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:22.581) them right which like

Tim Brown (26:24.13) I think like one big one that like you could do for, you know, insurance agents or realtors or people with a brand too. Like I think like their brand is huge, right? Like if you get their brand on like a bottle of whiskey or their brand in a like cake or their brain or like for some reason people love that and also you might get an additional benefit of like the social media posts, you know, that type of thing. So like.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:35.779) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:51.011) Right.

Tim Brown (26:54.218) for B2B referrals, that's a huge one.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:59.126) Yeah, right. Like if I sent him in a sun shirt, how often he's gonna wear it. But if I send him some dope hook swag, which I haven't so shame on me. You'd be much more excited about it, right? Because it's your thing. I mean, it just it just makes sense. Just makes sense.

Tim Brown (27:14.186) Yeah, what would you, what do you really wear a lot? Like, what do you, what would you like, you know, just hypothetically, you know, like you think about like, what is something somebody really actually would enjoy wearing? Like I did try, I tried with somebody in the industry and I did like a, their logo on the back of a jacket. I didn't think they really wear it. But you know, you gotta take shots. You gotta spend a little money on these things and take some shots. It's, it's,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:21.622) My heart on my sleeve.

Tim Brown (27:43.31) probably going to be the ones that you go a little bit hard on. But I didn't mean to say hard on.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:48.681) What about like company branded cougar paws?

Tim Brown (27:51.746) Oh yeah, that'd be sweet. That would be super cool.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:55.714) It would have to be more so for the owner operator, not the guy that's removed, right? So that would know your audience and it would be relevant to somebody like that.

Tim Brown (27:58.27) Yeah. Alright.

Tim Brown (28:03.966) Yeah. Think about like, if you did like a

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:07.246) Or you can buy him a bunch of branded synthetic underlayment.

Tim Brown (28:13.63) Oh, I've thought about that a lot, Michael, by the way. I've thought about, we, I looked into pricing and everything. The, it's like $20,000 for like the minimum order on branded underlayment.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:16.41) Ha ha ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:27.331) You got it, ball out.

Tim Brown (28:27.382) And I'm like, well, okay, I, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I mean, no, it could be a strategy though. Like as far as like talking to roofers, think about the, what are their branded items with some, like if you're talking to realtors and insurance, like, could you do like their logo on the inside of a suit jacket, the liner?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:49.319) Mmm, yeah.

Tim Brown (28:49.518) I feel like the only problem with that is like the, but like something like a little bit more creative where like they would like be really proud of it and excited. Like those are the types of swag items. Obviously if you get them like a hundred pens, they're probably gonna be like kind of happy, but it's not like, you know what? A hundred pens would probably work, but you know, the point is, is like trying to do creative stuff. So it's remarkable, right? Like we're trying to do stuff that like kind of gets stuck in their head and they want to talk about.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:03.93) Pants suck.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:16.719) Hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:19.898) real estate agents and insurance agents.

Tim Brown (29:23.154) Even like, I was saying like three quarters zip, like what could you do that's like a little higher? Embroidery is always cute. Like if you could do embroidered items. And then it's like kind of getting your partners for this stuff. Like it's like, can you...

Can you roll it out kind of quick? Like, can you get something to somebody in like three weeks? Like, if you have a partner on embroidery, if you have somebody that's, like, then you can roll stuff out quicker. You could do 10 quarter zips for your referral partner versus like bigger companies might need like 100 for a run or something like that. So I just think it's like, yeah. I'm trying to do.

Right now, I don't think I can share my screen, but I'm working on a best damn roof. Okay, you got the good, good Riverside hub. I think mine is limited. I'm trying to do a, here, I'll share my screen here. Window, entire screen, uh-oh.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:13.891) You can share.

Tim Brown (30:34.99) Let's see, oh, here it is. So I'm trying to do a little label for Fireball whiskey for a roofing process. And then we're going to hand out these little bottles of Fireball. But I'm trying to co-brand it with BDR.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:47.343) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (31:03.294) So referrals are fire. And then maybe the back is like our three unique value propositions or something. Because he's going to be there playing music in our booth. So that was like our activation style thing for roofing process. So we'll see how that goes. I mean, I know something. Hey, you coming?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:10.262) Yeah. That's it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:22.414) Nice. Maybe maybe I'll come by and drink a couple bottles.

Probably not. Yeah. Baby's doing like a week, so.

Tim Brown (31:29.21) Oh, really? OK. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That happened to me last RoofCon where there's a baby in the middle. And like, I know, like. I wanted to be there pretty bad. It was like a little like I was a little bit like, yeah, that looks fun as shit. I was watching videos come out, I was like, oh, man. But, you know, I think this year might have been a little bit better than last year on RoofCon. But.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:58.798) Yeah, that's good. Looked like fun from the outside looking in.

Tim Brown (32:02.472) Yeah. Well, it's always it's a spoiler alert. It's usually more fun outside looking in the FOMO thing happens.

Tim Brown (32:14.55) Cause last year, I think, I mean, like, I don't think it's a secret. Vendors were a little like, eh, with.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (32:18.626) Well, we lost him, but I want to take a moment to thank all of you who have taken a minute to take a listen to our conversation. You guys are the real MVPs. Once again, shout out to Rufor, and we'll see you guys again soon.

In this episode, Mike empowers his followers by allowing them to determine the content. He solicits questions from his audience, spanning topics from the future of AI in marketing to inquiries about Mike's Admirable hair.

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

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Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:00.338) Welcome back to another episode of Mission Control Podcast brought to you by Mike Stearns and the SEND Digital Agency, sponsored by the team at Roofer. If you need clean and pristine proposals, instant roof quotes, roof measurements, hit up the team at Roofer. They're fantastic. There will be a link below. Go ahead and click it. Tell them I sent you. So I wanted to ask you guys a quick question. And that question is, what did Ben Franklin feel when he discovered electricity?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:31.054) Believe it or not, he was shot.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:35.79) Another great dad joke, another one in the books. So I made a post and I wanted to give people an opportunity to ask me questions and to give you guys answers to questions that you may have, personal, marketing. We got a blend of both, they didn't disappoint. So the first question was by Corey Combs and he asked, does Bigfoot really exist? I'm gonna go with no. If we spent all this time on energy and effort trying to find Bigfoot and he hasn't turned up yet, I'm guessing he's not around. But I've been wrong before.

So David Jared Cohen asks, what's your opinion on Google Ads versus Google Local Services from an ROI perspective? So if I'm running a company and there's Google Guaranteed, Google Local Services, I tell everybody that's the first thing that you should do. Regardless of if you do ads or not, you should 100% do Google Local Services. They provide a fixed cost per lead model. It's very transparent. It has its own little CRM where you can track the leads that are coming in. You can dispute ones that aren't necessarily legitimate opportunities.

and it's usually gonna be at a lower cost per lead than other marketing avenues like Google Ads. The one issue that you might run into with Google Local Services is that there's only so much that you can do to influence your placement. So if you're being placed seventh or eighth on the list out of 15, 20, 50 different contractors, it's very likely that you're not going to get a ton of volume and there's really not much you can do outside of fully filling out your Google Local Services profile.

documenting or dispositioning the accounts in the Google provided dashboard, and getting reviews to that very specific Google Local Services page to influence where you're going to be positioned. Conversely, if you're running a Google ad campaign and you're noticing that you're getting lackluster results, you can increase your bid, your target bid for different keywords to make sure, hey, if we're showing up third or fourth at the bottom of the page for Google ads, we can then increase our bid to make sure that we're showing up top.

which then obviously manipulates the amount of opportunities that you're gonna get by way of visibility. So that's the one benefit that Google Ads has over Google Local Services. But I will say, even if you're not getting a ton of leads from Google Local Services, one massive missed opportunity is leveraging that in your sales process, in your branding, that check mark with Google Guaranteed, a lot of people have inherent trust in Google and that's why, quite honestly, I have a company. That's a really good thing for us and it's a good thing for you guys as well.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (03:04.126) If you're educating the consumer as to what it means to be Google guaranteed and be part of Google local services program is, Hey, like we're, we're vetted by Google. They recommend us. The reason they do is we passed a background check. We have all of our appropriate licenses and insurances to make you sure you guys are covered. They actually guarantee our work up to a certain amount. These are very strong. These are very strong value propositions to somebody who's making a purchase from your company, especially when with, you know, contracting specifically, a lot of the times,

Credibility is called into question. So this could be a great way to develop a rapport, to strengthen your relationship with the prospect, and ultimately differentiate yourself from other people, even ones that are Google guaranteed, because a lot of the times nobody talks about it. So that would be my answer for you, David. Derek Daniels, most important question, why didn't you run with us this morning? So I'm a part of a run club, run club 54. I make a cameo appearance every 30 days or so. We do, I don't know, somewhere between five and eight miles, depending on how.

Phil feels. So I didn't go this week because I took a knee to the calf a couple weeks ago and I'm still not even close to 100%. It was pretty bad. Some significant bruising. Lack of... I'm not able to run. That's why I didn't come. And I'm sorry, I'm sorry Derek. I miss you and I'll see you again soon. Jordan Harrison, how do you get your hair to look so damn good?

Well, it's not one thing, it's a lot of things. I take care of it, you know, consistent shampooing and conditioning, routine maintenance, so I go and get haircuts, hair products, you know, like a texturizing cream. Also, I find a nice balance between happiness, anxiety, and stress, and I feel like those are the three main ingredients. And if you can strike that balance, you too could have hair like this, Jordan.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (05:02.698) uh... eric cohen why did the chicken cross the road he still trying to figure that one out less than men when you get there let me know because haven't scratched my head on this one for quite some time christopher scoville when you're building a website for client are you building it from the perspective of what the consumers looking for the most basic level uh... parentheses needs and wants of the home service being offered or building it from the perspective of what your client wants ego

and proudness of their company? That's a really good question, Mr. Scoville. So typically when we come into a situation, we'll talk to a prospective client or a client that signed and we have a process to go through. In many instances, we don't run into this scenario. It's typically like, you guys know what to do, so please do it for us, make us something great. But in the event that it's somebody who has very particular things that they want, we'll typically advise like, hey, based off of our history of doing this,

in our track record of success, these are the things that we would want to do. This is the way that we would want to do it. And these are the reasons why. Because a lot of the times, if I have an opinion about something, it's typically because I feel like I know enough about it to have an opinion, but my opinion is not always right. And somebody can educate me as to why they would do something a different way. And a lot of the times that'll be enough to move me off of my opinion. And it's the same thing I find with most clients that we deal with.

So I think it's an opportunity to educate. We have certain things that we incorporate into web designs that we know work for certain. And we strongly encourage people to allow us to do those things, but then there's some things that are kind of just less important from a user experience perspective. And if a client really wants it, ultimately it's their site. We'll encourage them to do things the way that we found to be most impactful, but ultimately, it's their service that they're paying for. So.

We'll acquiesce if need be. Jonathan Burrows, who's the best roofer in Tampa? That's easy, Salish are roofing in exteriors, not even close. Dema Liss, how can I lower my marketing expenses to almost nothing using AI? That's easy, Dema, all you gotta do is pull up ChatGPT, ask them this question.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:24.066) Get a bunch of content and consistently make, you know, dozens of pages on your website. You'll be ranking number one for everything, everywhere. No problem. And you'll never have to hire a marketing company again. Diego Dante, my guy Diego, how you doing, man? What really happens in area 51? I've got no idea, man. I wish I knew. And again, this is gonna be one of those things where if you find out before me, let me know, because I too have wondered this from time to time.

I'll never claim to know something that I don't, and that's one I just don't have a great answer for. Ty Cobb-Backer, what's up Ty? As someone who regularly interviews experts in these areas, what key insights have you gained that have made a significant impact on your own life or business? Whew, that's a good one.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (08:15.862) Well, you know, one thing that is for certain is, you know, I've always been big on systems and processes and hearing a lot of feedback from folks that I have on the show and how their business has grown and having their perspective of things, how things have been, how things are now and the impact that those things have made always keeps me at a heightened level of awareness as far as like the importance and magnitude of having sound systems and processes for sure.

A lot of it otherwise is perspective, right? You meet and talk to a lot of different people that have completely different upbringings, maybe something's in common, maybe nothing in common. And just hearing like the grind, the struggle, and the perseverance that people have when approaching their business, like, you know, and where they started, where they are now, how they got there, and the journey. It's a lot of the times easy to look at people just that are successful and like, oh, he's successful.

but you don't know the back story, so you can't have a full sense of appreciation. I won't say that you can't, but it makes it harder to fully appreciate what they've done. But when you hear of somebody who was working a daytime job and then, I was on with Eric Reno, he's like, man, I'd go over, stop at a restaurant, do a quick bird bath and then go work at night as he was getting his company off the ground and kind of all the blood, sweat and tears that have.

rolled into the success of some of these people. I mean, it's amazing and it's inspiring, honestly, right? So I can kind of pull that inspiration into productivity within myself and my company and it helps keep me going. And for that, I'm grateful for everyone that's been a part of the show and yeah, thank you. Let's see here, Dan Antonelli, what do you do when you have a client with weak branding that you know will adversely affect conversions?

Woo, Dan, coming in hot. I like it. That's a great question.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (10:15.638) So typically, our sales process is a bit different, right? We typically, we do a consultation where we go over a ton of things within the client's business. Very little has to do with like a send digital, doing marketing and advertising for the customer. That's maybe 10 to 15% of the meeting. The other couple hours are kind of spent on like, hey, what kind of CRM are you using? What kind of automations are you using? What are you doing?

As far as getting like co-op branding from your manufacturer, what is the hierarchy of your company, roles and responsibilities, have you fully optimized your Google business profile and those types of things. We talk about branding, like what their brand is and what they're doing to build their brand along the way. At the end of the day, we're not a branding agency. We do digital advertising, we focus predominantly on custom websites, Google Ads and SEO.

our side of the street clean is doing everything that we can uh... to make a client successful and what i will say is that we've had we've had plenty of clients over the course of i've had plenty of clients over the course of last decade where they've had what objectively would be considered weak brand and have been successful however there is absolutely no denying the impact that having a strong brand what it will do for conversions uh... and your long-term cost per acquired lead

Um, in having a sticky brand is very, very powerful. So we do our best to lead people down the right road as far as like, Hey, like if for me, this is what I do. Um, unfortunately, you know, with like investing into brand, there's a lot of kickback with contractors or not kickback pushback, uh, with contractors. So, you know, when you talk about spending 10, 15, 20, $25,000 on, you know, the, a brand kit or the things associated with the brand, things like logo, content wraps, things like that. Um,

I don't sell it every day, but when I've thrown out recommendations, a lot of the times we get pushback on it. I think that's an opportunity for the industry to grow quite honestly, is to be more cognizant of what kind of brand do you have out there? What's the messaging that people are receiving when they hear of your company? What are people like? I think a brand is like your business's reputation, right? If I take my reputation, what I say about me doesn't really matter. What I'm more interested in is...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:36.182) What are the conversations that other people are having about me when I'm not around? What do people think of me? And I often think of like Brandon the same way, like, you know, when, when people are talking about a contractor and they're not in the room or somebody's asking a group of people about an experience that they had with a contractor, what exactly are people talking about? What are they saying about you and what is the narrative? And there's, there's a lot of things that we can do to control that, right? Like, what kind of logo do you have?

Where's that logo being placed? What kind of messaging do you have? Do you have a slogan? What is the experience that customers are having when they're dealing with your company? And like that starts at the inception of a phone call, right? That start, you know, that continues on down the customer lifecycle when they're being visited by a sales rep. There's a lot of things that roll into brand. And I think that the industry would benefit as well as the customers that you're servicing. If we took

you know, the brand and brand development a little bit more seriously for sure. It's not one of those things that's as easily quantifiable as far as ROI, but you know, there's a lot of studies on it as far as the impact that it makes. And my guess is anyone listening to this has been influenced to make a purchase decision, buying decision based off of branding for sure. Maybe even today. So that'd be how I answer that, Dan. Thanks for the question, man. Chuck Allen, who does your hair? Maybe the best haircut in the industry. So.

I've got two guys, my guy Colby and then my guy Robbie over at Slawich Cut and Shave. They're in North Tonawana, New York. So if you're in Buffalo and you're hearing this, go check them out. They do some shit. It's good. Michael John Palmieri, how do I hit a 20 yard flop shot with backspin? I'm not, I'm not an authority on all things golf. In fact, if you were golfing with me, I might shoot an 88, I might shoot 110, but I can, I can't tell you what the right way to do it is, but I tell you what I would do.

I'd keep the ball far in my stance. I would open up my stance a little bit. I'd grab a 60 degree and I would just swing it. I would commit to the swing. A lot of times when I don't commit to the swing, because it's such a short distance, I end up sculling it 50 yards past the green. And that's not good. That's not what you want. So that's the best that I could give you, Michael. Hey, if it works, let me know. I want you to go try it and then I want you to report back and I'll play it out for you. Katie Honan.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (15:02.122) Why are you so extra? I mean, I don't know how to answer it. It's just who I am, Katie. And I hope you appreciate me for that. Pete McKendrick, what's the best part of living in Buffalo? Aside from my family being here, I would say the food. We have incredible food here. Diversity amongst the food is incredible.

You want Mediterranean, you want chicken wings, you want pizza, you want Italian, you want a good steak. We've got it all. So if you're thinking about coming to Buffalo, make sure you do some research or shoot me a DM. I can give you some really good recommendations because I eat a lot of food so that you can have the best dining experience possible. And then obviously while you're up here, shoot up to Niagara Falls. It's one of the wonders of the world for a reason. It's a great place. Well, not outside Niagara Falls, just the actual falls themselves are cool. Bring Mace.

Why is your hair always perfect? That's from Nick Capobianco. I just wake up like this, Nick. Let's see. Matthew Danskin, does Santa know you left the workshop? That's Matt alluding to the fact that I'm much shorter than him, and I don't know if it's that I'm shorter, if he's freakishly tall. I responded with a gif of the Jolly Green Giant, to which he responded with a little person falling out of a car. And I'll tell you what, though. I got a lot of love for Matt.

Even though Matthew here is attacking me being vertically challenged. It's all good, Matt. I saw you on TikTok one time, shooting some basketballs. Maybe we get a basketball game going, huh? I mean, I might be short, but I can ball. Let me know. And if you guys are looking for ways to grow your business, reach out to Matt. He has some great things as far as developing relationships that will lend to sustainable growth, and I've seen it work, so.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (16:58.922) Last but not least, Wes Arnold, has Google local contractor gotten better results or worse than the last year? From what I've seen, I don't know if worse would be the right word, but gun to my head between worse or better, I'd say worse for most people because year over year it's gotten more saturated, meaning that if three years ago you had 10 contractors in your market that were Google guaranteed, now you've got 20, 30, 40. And with that usually comes diminished opportunity.

I've been saying this for years, like get Google Local Services yesterday because the price is only going to go up. If you think about it, they are a business. They're very smart businesses, Google. They do billions and tens of billions of dollars in ad revenue every year. So the average cost per lead that we see on Google ads, right around 150 bucks, 200 bucks, depending on what market you're in, 125 bucks. But it's between 100 and 200 bucks, let's call it. And when Google Local Services started...

You were getting leads for 40, 50 bucks for replacement. It just doesn't make sense for them to consistently do that. So as it's evolved, I've seen prices increase as far as a cost per lead basis. And I've seen a lot more contractors participate in it. Again, one thing that you may or may not be doing in my experience, if I'm going with numbers here, you're probably not doing is, is using it in your branding, in your presentations, talking to the customers about the fact that you are Google guaranteed.

and leveraging that to ultimately get them to the finish line. So if you're not getting the results that you want from a lead perspective, make sure you're getting the secondary result from it. So with that being said, those are all the questions that we had. Really appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks again for the team at Rufor for help making this happen. And again, thanks for you all listening.

In this episode, Mike invites Drew Paetow, President of Best Exteriors INC, a former territory manager for GAF with a wealth of experience in both manufacturing and contracting. They delve into customer buying behavior and highlight key red flags to watch out for.

Drew shares insights on optimizing business potential through friendly competition and the art of saying 'no.' The conversation also explores essential questions to ask potential or current manufacturers, providing valuable guidance for businesses in the industry.

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 (00:01.079) It's a great day. It's Monday. Dude, I got to be honest with you. This Monday has been a complete shit show. So don't nothing to be jealous about over here. Welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast. It's your boy Mike Sterns on Digital Agency, bringing you this bringing you this great show. We're delighted to have Drew. We'll get more to that in a minute. Proudly sponsored by the team over at Rufr. If you need roof measurements, clean and pristine proposals.

Drew Paetow (00:01.642) jealous of that, jealous of that hair.

Drew Paetow (00:08.91) I'm done. Hahaha. I'm done.

Michael Stearns (00:29.731) Instant roof quotes? I mean, if you want your customers or future customers, your prospects to buy from you, click the link below. You'll see it in the description. Also, they're a great team. Drew Pato with Best Exteriors, Inc. Welcome.

Drew Paetow (00:48.045) Hi Mike.

Michael Stearns (00:49.107) How are you? Good.

Drew Paetow (00:51.404) I should have worn my Ascend shirt so I killed two birds with one stone. I know.

Michael Stearns (00:54.951) Well, we talked about this in the green room, you owe me a picture in the Ascend shirt, and I will not soon forget. So I'm gonna put you on a drip campaign where you're gonna get daily reminders via email and text if I don't get the fucking picture soon, so...

Drew Paetow (00:58.718) We do. I do. I do. Don't you worry. Don't you.

Drew Paetow (01:09.751) Hey man, they work. Those drip campaigns work. We'll get it done.

Michael Stearns (01:15.151) I got a question for you though. What did one wall say to another?

Drew Paetow (01:17.166) Sure.

Drew Paetow (01:21.786) Ooh, I'm a dad joke aficionado and I don't know this one.

Michael Stearns (01:29.287) I'll meet you in the corner.

Drew Paetow (01:32.074) I thought you were going to say like I meet you in the middle or something. That's a good one. I like that. Well done. I like that.

Michael Stearns (01:39.223) Yeah, so we'll do, yeah. Well, I'm trying to cue up an applause here. Apparently that's not working, but it's power for the course on this Monday that as I.

Drew Paetow (01:48.947) Mike's having technical issues today, so if the quality is bad, it's all him.

Michael Stearns (01:51.963) Yeah.

Michael Stearns (01:56.027) But listen, the content's gonna be fire, so make sure that you tune in from start to finish. We will deliver, it'll pack a punch. Yeah, exactly. So you'd mentioned, when I told you I'm gonna put you on this drip campaign, which I will, if I don't get my picture, you'd mentioned that type of stuff works. What kind of, within your company, what type of stuff are you guys doing to provide a better experience, get better results from things that you're doing in-house?

Drew Paetow (01:59.522) which is all that matters. Which is all that matters. Definitely.

Drew Paetow (02:10.68) Mm-hmm.

Drew Paetow (02:22.598) Oh man. I feel like this has kind of been the year for us to kind of like get like, stop chasing like the bright shiny things and just really kind of focus on what works. After like the, at least three times of actually trying to like, put it into place, we finally got rolling with dope marketing.

a little while ago, I would say probably, probably four or five months ago, and that's been really, really good. We're starting to get calls from that. We're starting to get people like, oh, I've seen you, like you're in the neighborhood. You, you know, you're really, it's a really good brand awareness thing. So that's been really, really working well. And I.

I like the way that works. I like that it, I like the way that it shows up and I don't have to do too much. It's very easy, which, you know, there's not too much that in the life of a roofing contractor that is easy, but that really was after it's like up and running, it's like, okay, cool, nice. So that's been really good.

We use a catch-all on every single one of our roof installs now. That has been really, really good. Some people, I always try to ask if we can set it up the night before. Just leave. And if you leave that there with your logos and just all set up in someone's house covered, because it kind of looks like a hazmat situation, the neighbors.

Michael Stearns (04:15.236) Yeah.

Drew Paetow (04:16.098) text right away. Hey, what do you got going on? What's happening? Everything okay? And it's like, no, we're getting our roof replaced tomorrow. You know, that, that's huge. Now, it's pretty rare. A lot of people don't like you to do it the day before, but if someone's gone out of town, or hey, I'm just going to set up these couple parts right here and just leave these off to the side and then in the morning, guys will finish closing it off. You know, that's really worked well for us. And that gets you some really nice...

some nice buzz in the neighborhood, which, you know, it's a customer, potential customer the other day, hopefully he's a customer. He, he kind of, you know, he was very successful in his professional life and he, he kind of put our world into a very simple sentence, which was, hey man, you know, you're selling a service that people need, you know, once every 20, 25 years.

And you know, you got to be memorable. You got to stick out. And I was like, wow, that's very, I know he's kind of known that, but to hear. A customer say it and recognize that it's like, yeah, we do. We got to, we got to be different. We got to stand out. We have to be more memorable. And, you know, then, you know, him and I talked about branding and stuff that works, what we do, you know, it was, it was very.

Michael Stearns (05:26.066) Right.

Drew Paetow (05:44.474) is the most enlightening customer I've had in a long, long time. And he gave me some really, really good ideas and some stuff that he used, like I said, in his career. And many of those things will be implemented here, you know, once we can kind of pick our spot. So that was I don't at this point. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'd love for him to, you know, choose to work with us. But he I.

Michael Stearns (05:51.536) Mm-hmm

Drew Paetow (06:13.926) I got more out of him than we can really put a price tag on. It was really eye opening and like, okay, cool. Like a consultation almost. Like I'm supposed to be here talking to you about what you need and you're over here telling me everything that I need to be doing. So that was really, that was cool.

Michael Stearns (06:24.264) Hmm

Michael Stearns (06:27.996) Right.

Michael Stearns (06:33.663) Yeah, that's awesome. And I'm glad that you brought that up because I don't know reminds me of like shit that my parents would tell me 100 fucking times when I was a kid, right. And then, you know, I would hear it at school from a teacher and it just met something different hearing it from somebody who was just unbiased. I'm like, you know, and I come home and it comes full circle now because like I have a daughter. And you know, she's like, Oh, I learned this. I'm like, you learned that what? Who taught you that? It's like

Drew Paetow (06:47.626) Yep. Yes.

Drew Paetow (06:56.379) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns (07:02.439) I've been telling you that for seven years. But it's crazy, like the affirmation of somebody on the outside, like what that can do psychologically to make something click or to make it more valuable to us sometimes.

Drew Paetow (07:02.626) Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely...

Drew Paetow (07:16.542) Yeah, and to just hear someone say, you know, to just put everything in a nice little nutshell and be like, hey, you're selling something people don't need every day. Like, you're not McDonald's, you're not the grocery store, you're not even a car wash, you're not even selling a new car. Like, you're literally like, you're gonna come in, you know, tear my house apart, leave the same day or the next day, and then no one's ever gonna see you again.

you know, barring anything catastrophic for, you know, like I said, 20, 25 years. So that was really eye opening. And to just hear someone else say that I'm like, do you have friends that are roofing contractors? Like, how did you just like encapsulate this whole business? Well, you know, I started researching stuff and so I'm sure he was on the, you know, I'm sure when he, you know, Googled roofing contractors, he wasn't just looking at reviews, I'm sure he was consuming, consuming content somewhere along the way. So.

Michael Stearns (08:13.839) Yeah, and I mean, I think there's different customers, right, and their buying behavior is not all the same. Like we like to sometimes paint a picture of like, this is our avatar, this is what our customer looks like, and this is how they're gonna behave, but like it's a spectrum, and the way people are going to interact with your brand, other brands and things like that are gonna be remarkably different from one person to the next, even if they're the same age or the same gender, they live in the same area.

Drew Paetow (08:17.579) future.

Drew Paetow (08:26.856) Mm-hmm.

Drew Paetow (08:35.33) for sure.

Michael Stearns (08:40.803) So I always like to plan for all of them, do everything we can to accommodate everybody, and then just cross our fingers, right? Just hope for the best.

Drew Paetow (08:41.302) Everybody's very different.

Drew Paetow (08:46.438) Mm-hmm.

Well, you just kind of, you're right. I mean, you gotta, you always say, you know, you don't want to be all things to all people, but for us, like you kind of have to be all things to a lot of people, or many things to a lot of people, pardon me, and you know, you gotta try and check off as many as those boxes as people have, but you know, there's some people, you know, we can't help you, whether it's I meet you and it's like, hmm, just not.

person that we want to do work with or if it's just not the right situation or they're not ready yet or whatever the case may be but you're 100% right. Not everyone is your customer but not everyone's a good prospect either.

Michael Stearns (09:34.575) What's the best way to turn down a customer? What's your line? So you meet with me? I'm a homeowner, right? Hypothetically, I'm a homeowner that calls out best exteriors. And you just get like, the worst vibes. I start asking questions that you probably don't love things like what is a what is a labor?

Drew Paetow (09:39.646) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Drew Paetow (09:51.546) You come outside with a clipboard. When I get that, it's like, tshhh. It's okay, it's okay. I'm all for organized questions, don't get me wrong. But when I see the clipboard, it's like, damn.

Michael Stearns (09:55.055) Yeah, okay. First red flag clipboard. If you're listening to this and you're a homeowner, don't bring a fucking clipboard to the meeting.

Michael Stearns (10:08.503) Yeah. So if I'm a customer, you come visit me and the first question I asked maybe is something like what's a what's a labor only prize? I've got the materials. Maybe that's something that would turn a contractor off. Maybe not. I don't know. But if I'm if I'm

Drew Paetow (10:13.506) Mm-hmm.

Drew Paetow (10:22.218) Yeah, we don't mess with that. We don't mess with that.

Michael Stearns (10:26.963) If that's the case, right, and then you immediately get the sense that like, this is not somebody that I want to work with, how would a contractor put that in a way with tact to where I don't go blast you because you made me feel like an asshole because I'm not the right customer for you?

Drew Paetow (10:31.746) Mm-hmm.

Drew Paetow (10:39.786) Right.

Drew Paetow (10:45.13) I just feel Mr. Stearns, like our services just don't align with what you need right now. I can refer you to X and Y and Z and I don't I know it happens to us on occasion. I never do it. I'm a huge monumental believer in karma. So like I never send a bad referral or like a bad lead to

one of my main competitors. Like I seem to go up against a lot of the same people a lot, but I don't, you can't talk shit about people. It's a super small world. And even back when I worked for GAF, me and my coworkers used to always say for a really heavily male dominated industry, it's like the middle school, like, you know, girls, you know, lunch table.

because it's just constant drama, constant shit. And so like I never play in that sandbox. For me personally, I just don't do it. So, you know, I have certain competitors that I am very, very friendly with. We trade work with each other, not trade. I refer them to people if it's like a good job, if I'm too busy or I know, you know.

Michael Stearns (11:40.743) Hahaha

Drew Paetow (12:07.038) If I know it's like right up their alley or something like that, I have no problem. We will refer someone so that the customer gets the best experience. Right. Cause at the end of the day, that's really kind of all it's about. Um, so for, for me, that's, that's really big. Uh, but I, I also know there's certain people that.

They'll work cheap. They'll take a labor-only job. They'll do one slate repair on a church steeple or something like that. You kind of get to know who those other competitors of yours are so that you can refer those guys out. Like I said, I hope that when the time comes, if someone wants to refer us to something, whether or not they call us and say, hey, I came from so-and-so.

I think as a contractor, if you, obviously you're not going to say, hey listen, I can't work with you, you know, you're asking too many questions or you know, you already have shingles or whatever. You can't do that. But what you can say is, hey listen, you know, I just don't think that our company lines up with what you're looking for right now. You know, I don't think we're in a position at this very moment to help you. I suggest you call X and Y and Z. So even now, like when we get phone calls of, you know, the person that needs, you know,

one foot of fascia board replaced an hour away or something like that. And so, I'm like, hey, I'm not your guy, but here's who to call. And I feel like if you're at least helpful and you're positive and you have a good tone and you're showing them that you want to help and that you want to care, even though your company is not the one doing the work, I think that goes a long way with most people.

Michael Stearns (13:36.273) Yeah.

Michael Stearns (13:57.259) Yeah, no doubt. I mean, it's, it's you're exercising goodwill, right? Because even if you're not in the position or you don't necessarily want to take that job at that moment, you're still providing them some sort of solution. You're showing that you care enough to not just be like, okay, fucking I'm out. I mean, I do the same thing with, you know, Tim Brown and hook agency, right? Like

Drew Paetow (14:02.581) It's here.

Drew Paetow (14:14.446) Friday.

Drew Paetow (14:19.062) Yeah.

Michael Stearns (14:20.075) And I'll take it a step further. And I'll be like, you know, have you found any of this stuff helpful? Like, you know, because there's usually like a preliminary call. And maybe it's something where there's a conflict of interest where we're maxed out in that market, and we can't take them like, you know, what company that I actively refer people to as hook agency, they do great work. And, you know, after that conversation, I'll ask that prospect like, have you found anything that we've talked about, like helpful? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, would you mind sharing it on Google? It's an opportunity for a review, right? Because you are providing

Drew Paetow (14:30.667) Right.

Drew Paetow (14:45.941) Yeah.

For sure.

Michael Stearns (14:49.431) Right? And I think that... Let me ask you this. Have you always been okay with saying no to people as it relates to your business? Yeah. What made you...

Drew Paetow (14:56.51) Yes, 100%. I mean, go ahead, ask your question. I think I know what you're going to say though.

Michael Stearns (15:05.283) Yeah, what made you okay or realize that not every customer has to be your customer?

Drew Paetow (15:14.658) Uh, that first year in business when I said yes to everything, no matter what it was. And it wasn't until, you know, I'm, you know, painting a fascia board in my, uh, in my garage the night before a gutter installed and I'm like, holy shit, I can't do this. I gotta get real defined on what I can do.

And, you know, don't get me wrong, the subcontracting crews and the folks I have that are on my team that work with me and, you know, they're great. And I believe that a lot of guys can do anything. And there are many, many contractors in my area who have, you know, I think there's one guy here who's got, I've heard, I don't know, like 15, you know, roof repair techs.

Unstaffed like that's ridiculous. I don't think there's that many repairs out there Maybe there are maybe there aren't but that leads to a lot of guys, you know ripping butts and sucking back coffee at you know, 11 o'clock because they're done with their day and Good for them, but you know, I think you got a really You got to say no to some stuff because there's so much out there that you just don't want to get involved in But you only realize that when

they're not, you know, when you only realize that you need to say no once you're in a position of being like, oh my God, I just, I don't know what to do here. Like, how do I, you know, and there's been some times where you just take a job and you just know like, okay, I'm gonna really not make a lot of money here or hopefully the neighbor comes out and I could.

I'm something because I'm not gonna make it here, but that first that first year in business like you learn a lot about What you want to do who you want to work for you learn about what your capabilities are Once you learn what you're capable of Or what you feel comfortable doing it's that usually sticks with you. So You know Yeah, it's it was a tough learning experience

Drew Paetow (17:40.942) That's for sure.

Michael Stearns (17:42.575) Well, it starts with fear for me in my business when I started my business, the evolution is crazy, right? Because you're initially, I was initially fearful that okay.

I just took a leap of faith into myself. I'm starting this business, I got to make as much money as possible. Right? So you don't I don't have the luxury of saying no to anybody. But then you quickly realize when you start saying yes, everyone, you're like, holy fuck, I can't afford to say yes to everybody. Right now. And like you said, now you start narrowly defining, like, who is it that I can say yes to? Who is it that I should say no to? How can I? How can I say no to people without being an asshole and make people hate me? Because, you know, just because you're not a good fit for our company doesn't mean you're not a good fit for somebody, you know, just because

Drew Paetow (18:07.84) Yeah.

Drew Paetow (18:22.778) Or that you're not a bad person. Yeah. Sometimes it just doesn't work.

Michael Stearns (18:24.699) Right. Yeah, exactly. Right. And like you were mentioning, there's guys out there that'll do a slate repair, or they'll go paint three feet of facial and there's different companies that can serve different customers. And that doesn't make them less of a company doesn't make it anything other than just a fit, right?

Yeah, and I was baptized by fire in the first year for sure. You know, wearing 15 hats and running around with my hair on fire trying to figure out how I'm going to do x, y and z because I decided to be like, yeah, we can do it. We'll figure it out. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no doubt. No problem. And it did and they didn't end up manifesting as problems for the for the customers. They were just problems for my sanity. Right? Yeah, yeah. What?

Drew Paetow (18:52.398) Mm-hmm.

Yeah, sure, why not?

Drew Paetow (19:04.555) Right. And for your sleep rhythm on your watch. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Who are you? Who are you?

Michael Stearns (19:08.631) Yeah, what is REM sleep? I haven't had that a long time. Yeah, I gotta start I gotta start saying no. And I think that that's something that was really impactful. And I think a lot of people will struggle with that if they're opening a business, right? That that desire to obviously drive up revenue as much as you can make as much money for that for that sense of security, right? That we that we all want to be able to provide for ourselves, our families and what have you. But you know,

Drew Paetow (19:26.894) For sure.

Drew Paetow (19:35.374) But I think that's also why a lot of people.

I don't want to say don't make it, but a lot of people kind of fade out or get kind of pigeonholed into doing certain stuff because it's really hard to say no. When I came in, I was pretty blessed because I had so much industry knowledge and really just kind of knew already what it took to be successful. But still, you still have to do it. You still have to...

make sure it happens. But there was so much of the of the unknown. And the person went, you know, damn, probably could do this, you know, stupid, you know, gutter guards on someone's house right now, and not have to get myself involved. And I can do it myself. And you know, I can, I can, you know, buy this stuff, I can take all the, you know, take the profit at the end of the job, which, you know,

That stuff goes through your head because that's the goal, right? But at the same time, too, it's also like, you know, did I set the ladder? You know, how much experience do you really have and how comfortable are you doing those things?

Michael Stearns (20:49.731) Yeah, no, I agree. So you had, you previously worked with JF, right? What was your role there?

Drew Paetow (20:56.938) Yes, yep. I was a territory manager, so it was my job to go and call on roofing contractors, help them build their business, and get them to register extended warranties. But it was really to, yeah baby, it's a real deal. But it was also to grow the business, grow the brand, be there for people.

You know you talk about wearing a lot of hats. I mean when you're That was a really good Was a really good place to learn a lot about multitasking because you know there could very well be a phone call that comes in because you know a Truckload of ice and water shield became available or it was a contractor Calling you with a material complaint

Michael Stearns (21:38.352) Mm.

Drew Paetow (21:53.782) you know, you needed to have an answer, like right down in there for them. So it was, that part was great. Like I said, I learned a lot. And you know, you go into some of these companies and you see the good, the bad, and the ugly. You see some people that are really not, you know, gonna do things the right way. And then there's other companies you walk in and it's like, oh my God, like, this guy's got it together. So yeah, there was, there were some, definitely some, some

A lot of takeaways from my time there. And I made some great connections, great friends, great people, and learned a lot. And it was really good while it lasted.

Michael Stearns (22:35.991) Yep, but now I install Owens Corning. Do you install GAF?

Drew Paetow (22:40.278) Certainteed actually. No, hey listen, I have I Got a great rapport with the certainty rep in the area and You know, they helped me really get the ball rolling and get the business Get a good get a good partnership together from like day one. So that was really good for me We've had

no issues, no quality issues, no problems with anything, knock on wood, it's word. And, you know, now, don't get me wrong, if a customer says, hey, I really want this shingle on here, no problem. You can have whatever you want. I don't play favorites. I just, I make a suggestion. If someone wants something else, more than happy to install anything. We are certified with GAF, so, you know, so I can still.

differentiate when that customer wants that specific product. You know, I can differentiate myself and offer them a different warranty and you know still keep on top of what's available and what they're doing and you know make sure that at the end of the day make sure the customers take them.

Michael Stearns (23:57.915) I like that. That's good. Good for you for forging that relationship. And I'm glad that they're looking out for you. So you've got 40 you got 45 seconds where you're going to explain to a young roofing contractor what types of things they should ask for from their manufacturer to help them along in their journey.

Drew Paetow (24:03.959) Yeah, I appreciate it.

Drew Paetow (24:12.243) Oh, ho, ho.

Drew Paetow (24:16.738) 45. Okay, gotcha. You're gonna need to know...

Drew Paetow (24:25.646) Ask me the question again. Sorry, my brain is going about a thousand miles an hour there. I'll probably have to edit that part out.

Michael Stearns (24:31.451) That's fun. Jen chop it out.

Drew Paetow (24:33.198) Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Michael Stearns (24:35.907) in 45 seconds or less explain to me and young contractors what they should be looking for from a manufacturer to help them along in their journey

Drew Paetow (24:46.555) So if I'm a young contractor, I got to first like the product. So try it. Buy a roof of Owens Corning, buy a roof of GAF, Certainty, IKO if you want to, whatever the case may be. But find a brand that you like, that you feel comfortable with. Check them out. Make sure it's a good fit for you. If you're going in and you're just trying to be the cheap guy and

you're not interested in differentiation, you could probably spin your story to be whatever brand you want. If you're only working off insurance proceeds, then the brand that you offer, if you're not gonna try and upgrade people or do certain things, the brand that you offer isn't really the best. So find a shingle that you like, number one. Find a product that you like, find a full system, et cetera, et cetera.

Make sure your distributor has it. Make sure your distributor can get it. Those are obviously very important. I realize I'm already going over the 45 seconds, but the other thing is, is reach out to the territory managers for the different manufacturers. Interview them basically like, hey, what do you have? What tools do you have to help me? Everybody has a lot of different things, whether it's good, better, best, whether it's extended warranties.

Michael Stearns (25:44.423) Mmm.

Drew Paetow (26:10.186) whether it's gimmicks, whether it's sure nail strips, whether it's hey, our three bundles of Archangel are a true square, whatever the case may be, everyone has their thing. Like I said, see which one fits and works best for you and your company. And then ask for help. Hey, how can you help me? You do this every day, Mr. territory manager. What's worked for your biggest customers?

If they're smart, they'll give you generalizations. They're not going to give you all the, they're not going to give you the keys to the, you know, to what, you know, the big dogs in the market are doing, but, you know, you can theoretically put on a lot of the same stuff that some of these other companies are doing and do a lot of the same things. Uh, sometimes you may even have the same subcontractors as some of them. And, you know, you can really differentiate yourself by, you know, by.

by making yourself look as professional as humanly possible in those situations when you're with the homeowner.

Michael Stearns (27:13.235) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns (27:18.675) Can we are you in the role play.

Drew Paetow (27:22.35) What are you asking me? Yeah, yeah, sweep.

Michael Stearns (27:26.195) All right, why don't you be a territory manager for a manufacturer and I'll be a I'll be a year one roofing contractor and let's say I'm finishing up my first year and I did. I don't know million dollars in revenue. I had a good first year. Okay. All right. So Drew, we're here at Mike Stern's roofing. We're looking for we're looking for a long term strategic partner that's going to be there for us that's going to grow with us right because we feel as if you know you guys are it.

Drew Paetow (27:29.961) Oh, okay.

Drew Paetow (27:40.302) Okay, yep. Mm-hmm.

Drew Paetow (27:51.522) Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns (27:55.899) However, at the same time, it's my obligation to my company and my staff to make sure that I'm making decisions that helps them and the company as well. So, you know.

Drew Paetow (28:03.382) benefits everybody. Yep.

Michael Stearns (28:05.071) Yeah, right. One of the truly one of those relationships where everybody wins and you know, I want to know what can we do as far as like, hey, we're looking to increase our marketing, we want to do 3 million next year. So we want to do more marketing, more advertising, more brand awareness. And I'm just curious as to what we can do as far as Maybe having you guys help us contribute with it because, you know, I don't know much, but I feel as if you know the more squares and shingles that I buy from you, the better off it is for you, the better off it is for more customers that we install them for and the better off it is for my pockets.

Drew Paetow (28:15.938) Mm-hmm.

Drew Paetow (28:31.8) Definitely.

Michael Stearns (28:34.985) So I feel like everyone wins there. Is there something that you can do to help me?

Drew Paetow (28:37.65) Everyone wins. Yes, absolutely. Let's talk about the certification program. That'll give you a leg up against Joe Reifer. And it adds to your level of professionalism. So at the end of the day, when Mr. and Mrs. Smith are sitting there with three to five estimates, and one guy is down here, and you know.

you're in the middle and then there's whoever else and they're pick a number, 1,000, 1,200 bucks a square, whatever the case may be, you're able to get that job and just based on professionalism and being in this program. So with that, you can offer extended warranties, which again, gives the homeowners better.

gives the homeowners better peace of mind and protection knowing hey you know you have a full system of integrated products on here that's gonna give you a 50 year labor and material warranty that's transferable to the next homeowner. We as a company have gone through training we've been vetted by the manufacturer so we've been trained our insurances licenses have all been vetted so you know we have you know basically a multi-billion dollar company backing us up and

I don't know about who else you have in here going through. I don't know who I'm competing against sometimes, but I feel like that's a pretty good tool in the home for you.

Michael Stearns (30:16.023) Yeah, absolutely. No, I could see how that would be very valuable, especially when it comes to the consumer making a good decision and how that would help us.

Drew Paetow (30:22.142) Right. So let's also talk about the marketing that you're asking about. When you're certified, you have access to all these different tools and we can help you with your websites. We can recommend different things to you. We can put you on a postcard campaign. We can give you pretty folders to put your materials and things like that into. We can...

Drew Paetow (30:49.614) We can help you with a membership through NRCA, all those sorts of things. So there's a lot of different stuff out there that you have access to and availability to.

Michael Stearns (30:59.435) Awesome. Yeah, I have a I have a buddy. He's been in business for like three years now and he's doing pretty well. He's like five or 6 million. But he works with another manufacturer. But essentially what they did was they put together like a tiered system as far as like marketing and advertising to where based on the purchase volume of shingles, they were going to contribute X amount of dollars to like his marketing advertising. Is that is he bullshitting me? Or is that something that you guys could help with?

Drew Paetow (31:15.267) Good evening.

Drew Paetow (31:27.158) Are we still role playing here? Okay, good. Let me get that hat back on. Absolutely, we can help you with that. Let's set up a program. Let's work backwards based on your goal. If your goal is three million, three million's probably gonna be somewhere around 125, 150 roofs-ish. So let's work backwards. Let's figure out how many squares you did.

Michael Stearns (31:29.425) Yeah.

Drew Paetow (31:55.466) Yeah, we'll set up that campaign and every time you know, you hit a different gate, you know, you'll get more from us. And you know, you can get you all the logos and all the things like that and get you really where you need to be in terms of your marketing. You know, having that consistent message, but you know, hey, I need to see our company logo on your stuff when that time comes. So, so you have an ad.

Michael Stearns (32:22.671) Yeah, I got this marketing guy. He said he said something about brand guidelines and they would follow the brand guidelines I don't know what any of this shit means. I'm just a roofer, but I would pass that along to him and yeah

Drew Paetow (32:28.966) Yep. No, that's cool. Perfect, yep. Everything would be cool then. Just ask that if we come to you with a, if we come to you with an opportunity or with a, hey man, I need you to do X and Y and Z, let's talk about that. You're also gonna be held to a certain standard of, you're not gonna be out there.

Cutting corners, you know, taking deductibles, doing things unprofessionally, like this is a professional program and it's gonna be treated like such, otherwise we don't have a place for it.

Michael Stearns (33:07.567) okay and i mean i think that's fair uh... my promise to do my paperwork on my warranties very quickly and that made my wife to him she's super excited about it so you know we'll get that squared away and will

Drew Paetow (33:14.038) there.

She's excited about spending all that money? Yeah, I got it. Ha ha ha.

Michael Stearns (33:21.787) Um, yeah. So, you know, one other thing.

Drew Paetow (33:27.699) Everybody always used to be super excited about, we're going to register all these warranties and every homeowner is going to get one. Man, I was like, I'm going to get one. But now we're not real playing anymore, but we'll get it done.

Michael Stearns (33:37.155) Now we're now we're back to role playing. One other thing that's important to me is I want to be like at the top level as far as like accreditation with your manufacturer. I think that that's super important. My my buddy, he works with different manufacturers like, you know, platinum or some crazy metal. I don't even remember what the metal was, but he's at like the top. And I think that there's a lot of credibility associated with that. So like, what does my path to that look like with your company?

Drew Paetow (33:44.106) Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Drew Paetow (34:03.81) So there are, here it is, it's always written out, it's always written like the manufacturers always have that. You sometimes can fudge around it, to my fellow roofers, sometimes can fudge around it, sometimes they can, sometimes they can't, it all just depends. But anyway, back to our role play, you have to be in business for a certain number of years. One of the things that we used to always look for back in my day was a track record of success.

Michael Stearns (34:12.138) Mm.

Drew Paetow (34:33.27) So you're either successful using our products or with another manufacturer's products. And it was pretty much that you were kind of committed to the brand. And I mean, just like the shingles, like you're purchasing the accessory products and you were doing all those sorts of things too. Again, you know, there's an incentive for us both.

I don't just have a shingle plant, I have an accessory plant, I have a warranty plant. So again, you help me with my plans, I'll help you with your plans. And that was the way that I would hopefully find the right people that would get us to where we needed to be on my end and that's what we can do for you.

Michael Stearns (35:23.119) i like that now we'll have a role play i think that uh... i think sometimes it's here i've been a part of a couple these conversations uh...

Drew Paetow (35:27.938) I'll PTSD from that.

Drew Paetow (35:35.248) Yeah.

Michael Stearns (35:36.303) So this is how I look at it. I'm just literally I'm just a marketing guy, right? I work closely with my clients and I've been a part of these conversations and like I was working with one manufacturer with them and like they weren't committing to like a Gate system as far as like what they they're like, we don't do anything like that I'm like, I'm like here like and from my

Drew Paetow (35:54.71) then adjust.

Michael Stearns (35:56.799) Yeah, exactly. Right. And I'm like, I'm like, you guys don't have to understand, like, they're a very large company, and they're investing, right. And if they have X amount of dollars to invest into one market, right, that's going to get divvied up. And that's probably going to go to the people that bring them the most like it makes sense, right. So if you're like a younger company trying to prove yourself, you have to make them feel compelled to invest into your company. Otherwise, they'll probably give it to somebody else. But like the way

Drew Paetow (36:22.031) Yeah.

Michael Stearns (36:22.971) The way that we approached it was like, okay, so number one, like our year over year growth for this particular client was fantastic over three years, right? They were still a younger company, but the year over year growth was fantastic. He had very good data in his CRM as far as revenue, profit, gross net profit, right? And as far as like marketing mediums, what channels were actually driving traffic? You know, we touched on like the lifetime value of him as a customer, him being 33 years old, and like how long he plans to be in that market versus somebody.

Drew Paetow (36:50.956) Yeah, that's a young dude. That's a young dude. You gotta jump on that.

Michael Stearns (36:55.087) Right. So like we're just painting a picture as far as all the different value propositions of like investing into a younger company. Right. Because it just makes sense. And after three meetings the conversation changed. Right. When we started talking about like the cost per acquired lead the cost per acquired job and how we have a very proven process as far as marketing and advertising and how we just want to scale that and we wanted to leverage them to help that and how it's going to benefit everybody.

they got considerably more as far as a commitment. And it wasn't just like, hey, submit this, and we'll do what we can, right? Because that's the easy out that everybody wants is like, non committal, we'll do what we can because there's not you can't hold accountability to that, right? You can't hold that accountable.

Drew Paetow (37:30.539) Yeah.

Drew Paetow (37:36.362) Yeah, like now again, I haven't worked, I haven't worked there since 2020. So I don't know 100% how things are going or how things go now. Um, but you know, if there is definitely a, Hey, you know, you scratch my back. I'll scratch yours. We'll do, you know, if you're doing, you know, 5,000 squares, you're going to get this. If you're doing 7,500, you're going to get this. Uh, if you're doing 10,000, you're going to get this. But.

If you're gonna do those things, I need X and Y and Z from you. You know, whatever that may be. And you know, sometimes it just happens organically and naturally, and you know, you just hit it off with a certain contractor and their business grows and you're there, you know, for the ride. But then there's other times where it's just like everything is like pulling teeth and commitments get broken and stuff like that. And that's really when... That's when it sucks.

right? Because you got to go in there and you got to say, hey listen, you know, I heard you're not, you know, you're not doing this, you're not doing that. I heard, you know, you have a big, I drove by a big, you know, condo project and I saw you using another brand, that sort of stuff. I mean, that's when things get really kind of, can get sideways and that's, that sucks. Because there's really not a lot, you know,

Michael Stearns (38:51.859) Sure.

Drew Paetow (38:58.154) when you're when you're a manufacturer, what the hell are you gonna do? You can't do anything except be pissed. And you know, it's like, you know, you don't want to go out and like, sign up someone new or take their, you know, our genomy on or something like that and sign them up and give them all the same program. Like, you don't want to do that. But you also want to like get the relationship with, you know, back in and like, hey, how do we get this partnership kind of back on track? So it's a really

Michael Stearns (39:04.017) Right.

Michael Stearns (39:17.398) Right.

Drew Paetow (39:27.658) It's a tough thing sometimes to really kind of balance all that stuff. And then sometimes, you know, you get to be such good friends with some of these people when they're not doing what they are supposed to be doing or what's kind of corporately mandated, you know, it gets real difficult when you got to walk in there, you're like, Hey man, I got to boot you out of the program. You know, you're not doing this. Uh, your insurance isn't great. Uh, I've heard, you know, you know, hearing ramblings on the street, you know, you're

you're not doing the right things, you know, hearing you don't, you know, your insurance flaps, whatever the case may be, you know, those are all difficult conversations. Those are tough to have with people that you're friendly with. Those are really difficult conversations to have when you're friends with people, so. I don't miss those days. I don't miss those days, man, I don't miss that.

Michael Stearns (39:59.535) But...

Michael Stearns (40:08.913) Right.

Michael Stearns (40:14.375) How important is it? I'm sorry, go ahead. I don't miss those days.

Now you mentioned a scenario where you drive by, they're installing something else, right? Now is that something that could be addressed on the front end because you said you do certain teed, but if a customer wants, like I have this GAF HDZ shingle I want installed, you're like, hey, I'll install it. So is that something where just be transparent on the front end with your rep, like, hey, while we're going to do this and we're going to stick to our end of the deal, I want you to know that, like, if a customer insists on wanting a shingle, I'm not gonna force a shingle down their throat, right?

Drew Paetow (40:33.046) You think? Yeah.

Drew Paetow (40:45.054) Of course, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, and I think most manufacturers reps, if they're getting 80 to 90% of your business, I think they're very, very happy with that. But there's always gonna be that one homeowner that wants something different. Or, you know, we've had a couple people lately who are just like, and I don't know where they're getting their information from, and just like, hey, I want this.

do you? Are you sure? Yeah, exactly. Like who sold you? Um, because I want to hire a man to sell you that. Uh, again, I'm not gonna name names, but there's some stuff out there that is just trash. And I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to have that installed on my worst enemies home. But if that's a situation where that's what someone wants, then hey, go for it, act yourself out. You know,

Michael Stearns (41:18.143) Why?

Michael Stearns (41:29.149) course.

Drew Paetow (41:45.954) We can do a lot of things. There's certain There's certain stuff. I would really try to You know, it's funny. I had a customer who Reminds me. I had a customer back in Massachusetts who He had it specifically on his contract that if you chose a certain brand of shingle that He is his warranty ended the day they were done with the roof

Michael Stearns (42:14.567) Ah, haha.

Drew Paetow (42:16.254) He was, I uphold and you know, he would, he would call it out. I have pulled all professional standards. We will install your roof the same way as we would any other brand. But I have found that this manufacturer and my 30 years of business, you know, it does not honor their warranties as no problem screwing over a homeowner. And your warranty ends the second to last nail goes in on this job. And, you know, it could not have been any more clear and, you know, made them, you know, initial it and sign it.

like all this stuff and it's like oh my god but that's just that's what he would do because he just knew that hey this is just but that particular brand of shingles was very popular at that time and um it was just really not what you wanted to see so but i thought that was very smart but i am

Michael Stearns (43:05.615) I mean, it is right like be honest be forthright and let them know like what to expect like hey If you're gonna do this expect this and like you got to be okay with that But and he's okay with losing the job if they're not okay with that simulation, right? Which there's a risk to that for his revenue But at the end of the day his reputation is not gonna go to shit because he refuses to you know Go back and right. It's uh, that's I like this guy. I don't know who he is, but I like him If you still talk to him tell him I said hi

Drew Paetow (43:09.602) for sure. Yeah.

Drew Paetow (43:17.686) For sure, for sure, for sure.

Drew Paetow (43:25.439) Exactly.

Drew Paetow (43:31.914) Yeah, good man. I will.

Michael Stearns (43:33.731) Yeah. How important is it to like should contractors shop for different relationships for manufacturers, suppliers, and if so, how frequently should they do that?

Drew Paetow (43:36.803) been there.

Drew Paetow (43:48.598) I don't know man, that's a tough one. I have heard, I know some companies, they, some companies they would do this every year. But you know, it's really hard to switch. It's really difficult. You know, you gotta change all your quote templates, you gotta get all your certifications and stuff like that in line. Like it's tough to switch. But I think.

Michael Stearns (44:04.519) Yeah.

Drew Paetow (44:17.078) You know, there's always that natural inclination like, oh man, I wonder if the grass is greener. I wonder if someone's getting a ton more sales by using this brand or this brand or this brand. I just never found that to be the case. I think if you're a company, you can do what you need to do and you can form your story, get your credentials in line, get your...

Get your story, your customer story set, and have a really good product that you feel comfortable with. There's certain ones that I just don't, I just never understood why people would wanna do that every year. Now some people were shopping, they're shopping for a rebate, which is cool, hey, I get it, I understand, I know that's part of it. But there's other companies.

where it's like every three to five years, and we're gonna take a look, we're gonna interview different vendors, we're gonna check things out. And I always kinda like that because, especially as a customer that I was working with for a long time, I always liked that because I would feel good and be like, hey man, you know me, you know how we deal with things, you know how I take care of you guys, that time we went fishing, blah, I took care of Mr. Jones.

Michael Stearns (45:37.971) Thanks for watching!

Drew Paetow (45:39.042) took care of Mr. Stern's, whatever the case may be, you know, you could really do what you needed to do, really take care of them. But sometimes that actually kind of solidified things where it's like, oh, I wonder if the grass is greener on the other side. Well, it isn't. But I think everyone, you know, there's always that match. And don't get me wrong, like I look at some manufacturers, you know, like literature pieces.

Michael Stearns (45:56.915) Hmm.

Drew Paetow (46:07.778) samples and some of their colors. I'm like, damn man, this looks good. This looks really good on the house. But then it's like, okay, if someone really wants something different or like a really cool look, like I'll, I'll hook them up with that, but I'm not going to get too far in the weeds with certain things. It's just too much. It's such a pain in the ass to switch. And like I said, to just learn new language and, you know, winter guard to weather watch to weather law. I mean, it's like, Jesus.

Michael Stearns (46:11.59) Yeah.

Drew Paetow (46:37.438) You know, I got too much, I have limited space up here for trade names in different provinces. I've got to maximize whatever spots I have left available.

Michael Stearns (46:50.44) Makes sense.

What's the toughest lesson you've learned in business since you started?

Drew Paetow (46:58.638) Um, wow. Toughest lesson.

Drew Paetow (47:07.094) I think saying no, number one, that's going to save you and avert many crises that will pop up. I think that's really number one. Say no. You've got to have really good installation crews and you've got to take care of them, whether it's...

you know, spending, you know, when you go to the grocery store, you know, buy a case of Red Bull or buy a couple cases of extra water, put those things on ice and show up to a job site with an ice down, you know, Gatorades and Monster Energy Drinks or Red Bulls or whatever the, whatever your crew likes, you know, whatever that is, you know, find out what it is. And if you show up to a job site like that, then they will go the extra mile for you. Like there's no doubt.

So always take care of your crews, learn to say no to people. And I know it gets talked about a lot on many different podcasts and things like that and whatever else, there's actually two more. Avoid the bright shiny thing. Just focus on implementing one to three, depending on your bandwidth, new things. Integrate those in every year if you can do that.

I think my first year, man, I went all in. I bought so much shit that I didn't use, and I wasted so much money and time and just sitting there like, oh, this is gonna be great. And I was like, oh, I never did any of it. I just didn't have the bandwidth for it. It was only me, and you just don't have the time, and you're sitting there at the end of the day, and I'll never forget chipping ice dams one day out of people's gutters all day.

Trying to stop leaks and things like that and then like sitting there freezing my ass off like I'm gonna write a blog about You know, this is when I did my own website. I'm gonna write a blog about you know about ice dams But you know, that's what you had to do and then the Kind of the most important thing and I don't get like I said, I know it gets talked about a lot

Drew Paetow (49:33.522) is really understanding the health of your business financially and understanding where you're at in terms of what are you spending, what are you bringing in, what can you afford to pay yourself, what can you afford to pay someone else, how you're going to pay them, whether it's either 10.99 or the W-2, whatever the case may be, you need to really get that part figured out.

and make sure your business is very compliant. There are certain, you know, not only, obviously, you know, numbers are important, but there are certain locales that are very tight on who can work for you, when they can work, what classification do they have to have. You know, you gotta know where your working rules and regulations really well, and you gotta operate within them.

really keep that together because that's really...

Michael Stearns (50:40.815) I think those are some really good lessons to have learned. And I think they'll be very helpful to people that are listening.

Drew Paetow (50:45.367) Yeah.

I hope so. I hope so. Hopefully no one makes the same mistake I made. Some of the mistakes I've made. Hopefully no one does that. That's the plan anyway.

Michael Stearns (50:56.903) Well, let's hope. We'll cross our fingers and pray for the best. Do you have any questions for me?

Drew Paetow (51:05.678) Um, well, Mike, there has been a lot lately at press time, a lot of, you know, I would call it hate, but it's more like frustration with marketing companies. Uh, online, there seems to be a lot of, you know, how am I getting leads? I've spent this and not getting this, whatever the case may be. You know, you asked me about interviewing, uh, shingle manufacturers.

walk me through interviewing a digital marketing company to help grow and scale your roofing.

Michael Stearns (51:44.407) Okay, what side of it do you want me to play? You want me to be the roofer? You want me to be the marketing company? Oh, okay. So...

Drew Paetow (51:48.671) I don't really want to role play, man. It's almost 5 o'clock, dude. I'm going on being awake for 12 hours. I don't have much. No, I'm just kidding. I can if you want to. But, I mean, to you, what makes a good partner for a certain company?

Michael Stearns (51:54.047) Alright, he's all roleplayed out, folks. Got it, got it. Alright, so... No, it's fine.

Michael Stearns (52:06.547) um... yes so lake track record right so and i don't mean just like all i saw four people tag this guy in face book like and that's what is going to give my money like you know that shit there's a lot of indicators right

Drew Paetow (52:15.758) Hehehe

Michael Stearns (52:20.987) that you should take into consideration when making investments, right? And we'll talk, we'll stick to marketing because I'm definitely not a finance guy and I'm definitely not proficient in investing. In fact, my crypto's down like 10 grand since I first bought it, so I'm pretty inept when it comes to that. But what I'll say, yeah, seriously, click the link below.

Drew Paetow (52:26.326) Definitely.

Drew Paetow (52:33.31) Word. Me too.

Drew Paetow (52:41.301) So someone better sign up at the end of this is what he's saying. Appreciate it.

Michael Stearns (52:48.879) I think I think track record is important I don't think that that's something that you should only rest on though because there's a lot of legacy brands out there right companies that did really well for a long time and then they fall off and they're not what they were at one time right so they may have some people saying some good things but. You know they've kind of they've kind of evolved into less than what they were and maybe you succumb to that experience and lackluster performance because of it so. Maybe look at reviews sort of by most recently asked to talk to the people that they work with right.

and ask them questions, right? Don't let them just necessarily steer the conversation in a way that paints this person in the most beautiful light possible. Come in with intentional questions to ask that person that you're interviewing. I'd recommend maybe doing somebody who had just recently signed up, maybe the last 60 days, someone that's been with them for six months, someone that's been with them for a year plus, maybe two years, so that you can see kind of like, hey, because a lot of people have a tendency like, hey, sign the contract, then we're moving on, okay. And that can result in a shitty experience.

Drew Paetow (53:39.372) Anyway...

Michael Stearns (53:48.613) first six months we're gonna make sure we take extra special care of our customers and then you know they kind of lose focus and then they're kind of brushed to the side for the new customers and whatnot and you don't want to necessarily for that to be the case so that's something that would definitely take a look at ask them I made a quite I made a piece of content like 18 questions as a marketing company before hiring them

right and there's a lot of good stuff within that video the video quality sucks by the way but if you go to the ascend digital agency YouTube channel you can watch a really shitty quality video with really good information and it's just it's I sat down it was like seven o'clock I was sitting in my office was like one of the first nights I was actually in an office and not at Starbucks or my table and I was like what are all the

Drew Paetow (54:29.143) Do you hear me?

It's a great feeling to be in your own space, man. That's awesome.

Michael Stearns (54:34.871) Yeah. Oh, there's no doubt about it.

But I sat there and I thought, what are the things that I most recently hear of why people are reaching out to us, right? Because we're usually the second or third company that a customer's or prospective customer's reaching out to. And it's because we're more expensive, like honestly. We're at the top end as far as what it's going to cost to work with us, but we provide what I think is exceptional value. So with that being said, I made these. And it's things like, hey, do I own my Google Analytics? So if you don't know what Google Analytics are, they're essentially going to be the gauge

indicators for website traffic, where traffic is coming from so you can take data and try to understand like what's going on with your website and things around it. Do you own your website? Like a lot of companies, they sell you a website, but you actually lease it, right? You're making small monthly payments and it's attractive because they're not charging you a $10,000 setup fee. They're not charging you $25,000 for the website, but you don't own anything, right? And they're not necessarily always forthright with the fact that, hey, you don't actually own this.

and you get a website, you can check it off the box. You know, the problem is two years later, you go to leave that company, and now you don't realize that you didn't own the website this entire time. Make it even worse, like the domain. Make sure you own your domain. Like if you're gonna work with a marketing company and you're a new company, buy your domain from GoDaddy, right?

own your domain and give them access because any type of work if you buy a website, it's going to be associated with that domain. Because otherwise the marketing company can hold you hostage, right? Oh, you want to leave you've been with us for three years, I'd hate to see all this go away because we actually own your domain. Now they may not word it that way. But essentially, a lot of the time is that's kind of the standoff that you end up in. And it's you're not like if I'm negotiating, I want to be in a position of leverage and strength and you're definitely not in a position of strength there. So don't let that happen to you.

Drew Paetow (56:23.306) No.

Michael Stearns (56:25.423) Do you own your ad account? That's another big one. A lot of agencies, and there's not necessarily anything wrong with this, but just knowing is what's important. A lot of agencies have like an agency ad account where they run all their stuff through and they bill it to their card and their customers pay them for their ad account or their ad spend and the management. And then there's some agencies that'll just say, hey, give us access to your ad account. We'll build out your campaigns.

And one's more transparent than the other, right? If I tell you, Drew, hey, we're gonna spend $10,000 a month, 120K a year, this is your management fee. You just pay us our management fee and you're gonna see Google actually charging your credit card. You know exactly what's being spent. There's never any question if there's any tricks or smoke and mirrors that are at play. I hate to say it, but I've seen it happen, right? Like there's literally softwares where you can say, hey, 10.

Drew Paetow (57:08.374) funny business. Yeah, it happens. It happens a lot.

Michael Stearns (57:14.731) You can literally link up an ad account and be like, hey, mark this up 10%. So it makes everything inflated by 10%. Your spend, your conversion, everything, right? And it's crazy that shit like that exists, but it does. So transparency is super important. Make sure you like talking to the fucking people, right? Like, you know, I'm not going to lie.

And I'm gonna put it on the roofers right now that are listening, like you have a responsibility to your company and the people within it to make sure that you take this shit seriously, right? You can't just say, hey, Mike, I'm gonna give you this handful of money and like make my problems go away. That's not how it fucking works. And it's not gonna work like that with me, with Tim, with any other like reputable marketing company. It's a two way street. You have to be invested in it. So make sure that if you're forging a relationship that's gonna be longterm, make sure you can tolerate talking to the person because there's plenty of places that have good food

I won't go back to because the experience sucked or the people suck there and I'm like, look at how good the steak was I can't fucking stand those people Sorry, and I love steak, right? Big steak guy. Give me give me a ribeye medium rare Alright, maybe a little charred seasoning on it like Pittsburgh style or something. I mean, I'm a sucker for it. But if I don't Yeah, yeah, that's maybe one time when we're in Columbus. We'll grab a steak if you got a good spot we can go to

Drew Paetow (58:10.958) Mm-hmm.

Drew Paetow (58:22.58) I like that too.

Drew Paetow (58:29.514) Hey dude, I'm from upstate New York. I'll get back to Buffalo, I'll take you.

Michael Stearns (58:33.575) I'll bring you to Buffalo Chop House. For me, it's the best ribeye in town.

Drew Paetow (58:37.262) Dude, I used to stay, so back in my GAF days, when I first, first started, Buffalo is part of my territory. I used to go to a place in Chituaga called the Friar's Table. The place was awesome. Dude, it was so great, but now I guess it's out of business, so.

Michael Stearns (58:46.7) Oh yeah, it was my dad's favorite restaurant.

Michael Stearns (58:52.163) Yeah, I never got to experience it, but I heard many stories. Yeah.

Drew Paetow (58:55.482) Yeah, that was a good spot. That was a good, good spot. That was a good spot. I have not. I have not. But I will... Don't tempt me with a good time. I will get myself up there and get that taken care of. A couple shackles. Hey, that way it's a business meal.

Michael Stearns (58:59.899) Have you had the shop house or a buy?

Oh, buddy.

Michael Stearns (59:10.159) Listen, fuck around and find out. I'll scround together a couple coins and figure out how I can... And maybe we do a live broadcast. Yeah, get some shackles together.

Exactly. Get audited. They're like, sir, a $500 meal. It was for business. I actually have a podcast about it. Go check it out. Yeah, exactly.

Drew Paetow (59:24.956) Um

Drew Paetow (59:29.686) Here's the video, pal. Can I just say one thing based on what you said earlier? My first year in business, I built my own website because I got quoted like astronomical numbers. And I was like, holy crap, I can't believe how much this stuff costs. So I built my own website. But I partnered with a company for six-ish months-ish. And I found out like what you said, I did not own my Google app.

Michael Stearns (59:36.924) For sure.

Drew Paetow (59:59.522) Thankfully, thankfully I held onto my page even though they were trying to get that from me as well I just never did for whatever reason Call it, you know being smart for once but they You know, there was no data with that there was no hey I need this back and it was like mush basically like all gone so, you know

I've made those mistakes. I've paid the people and said, hey, we're gonna get you, you know, however many you know, can you handle? Can you handle an extra, you know, you know 15 jobs a month? I'm like, I'm a new company. Fuck. Yeah I got nothing else to do the phone ain't ringing otherwise like fuck. Yeah, what can we do? And there's these face No, it was just like the work I will never forget calling these people who put their names in these forms on Facebook

Michael Stearns (01:00:38.147) Yeah. Let's get it. Game time.

Drew Paetow (01:00:53.322) Yeah, my name is Drew with Best Exterior Zinc. I don't know, you filled out some information on the site. I didn't do that. It's like, oh yeah, are you the guy giving away the free roof or the showcase roof in my area? I'm like, uh, am I? And it was, yeah, it's like, we're giving away free roofs. This motherfucker's like, the stuff that they, these forms, it's like, and you're not consulted at all on any of this. It's just like, hey, you know.

Michael Stearns (01:01:08.156) Do what now?

Michael Stearns (01:01:15.288) Hot lead.

Michael Stearns (01:01:20.251) Yeah.

Drew Paetow (01:01:22.234) Click here for a free roof. Who wouldn't put in their information? It's like, oh my god. Yeah, so I've made all those mistakes. So what Mike was saying earlier is definitely extraordinarily valid.

Michael Stearns (01:01:37.059) Yeah, and I would say that like, it's not always malicious intent either. Like a lot of the times like the sales rep for these companies, they don't even know like what Google Analytics are they like their corporate trained sales reps are like, yeah, here's a 10 page script. Here's the situations you're going to come across. Here's your objections. Here's how you're going to overcome those objections. These are trial closes. Like this is like a day in your life of a sales pitch. And they just don't have access to the information. But at the end of the day, whether it's malicious intent, intent.

Drew Paetow (01:01:41.354) No.

Drew Paetow (01:01:45.554) No. They're just there to sail.

Drew Paetow (01:01:57.822) you. Yup.

Michael Stearns (01:02:04.943) Or, um, it's ignorance, right? It's like, it's like murder versus manslaughter. Like, you're still going to fucking jail. Like, there's still going to be a shitty outcome. It is, right? It's the only difference.

Drew Paetow (01:02:14.202) Yeah, exactly. No, that's very true. That's very true. It's uh, yeah, somehow, someway, something didn't go right for someone. But yeah, it's all those guys, it's like boiler room. Those dudes are in cubicles. And they're just calling, calling. It's like, damn, like, it's a great movie. Haven't seen, haven't seen, yeah, two minutes. Carve out a couple hours, that's a good one. All those actors in there were so young.

Michael Stearns (01:02:30.459) Fucking Boiler Room. That's a great movie by the way. If you're tuning into this and you haven't seen Boiler Room, go take a-

Michael Stearns (01:02:39.847) Yeah. Who's past their series seven here? Alright, get the fuck out. Hahahaha

Drew Paetow (01:02:43.214) HAHA

Michael Stearns (01:02:47.899) No, I'm serious, leave. Yeah, so good.

Drew Paetow (01:02:52.238) I haven't seen that in a long time.

Michael Stearns (01:02:54.743) And you made a really good point too, right? Like not all leads are created equally. And if something's too good, sounds too good to be true, it probably is like investigate like outrageous claims that people are making to you in order to make you try to feel compelled to buy their product or their service. Because there are plenty of like, I can put together any type of like Google data, studio report or analytics to overly inflate and make you fucking buy anything I want you to buy for me. But at the end of the day, like that's not the type of company that we are, but there are a lot of unfortunately nefarious actors.

Drew Paetow (01:03:04.365) Yes.

Drew Paetow (01:03:24.11) There's a ton of those people, yes.

Michael Stearns (01:03:24.797) in the marketing space, you know, so just, or call me, give me a shout. You know, if you've got questions, slide in the DMs, hit me up. I'll give you objective feedback if nothing else. After I answer your questions, I'll probably tell you should pay me, you know, 1500 bucks to spend a couple hours with me and then I can give you like a lot of information that'll really help you. But first one's free, you got it here, it's being recorded, so there you go. On the house, lead with value.

Drew Paetow (01:03:48.366) It's on my house.

Michael Stearns (01:03:52.779) Dude, this was amazing. I had such a good time and I think there was so much in here that's gonna help all the folks listening. Hopefully there's more than like one or two people listening. Good looking guy like yourself, I think will attract a big crowd, so yeah.

Drew Paetow (01:04:01.03) I hope so. I hope so too. You're the one with the good beard and the good hair, man. I'm noticing that the gray is being overshadowed here and really kind of losing ground. Business must be going well with the gray. The grays are outnumbering the dark browns and blacks. But no, like Mike was saying.

Michael Stearns (01:04:07.411) Listen, dude.

Michael Stearns (01:04:16.259) I'm just, uh... ..haha!

Michael Stearns (01:04:21.85) Hmm

Drew Paetow (01:04:31.534) If someone has a question, I'm far from an expert. Uh, you know, I made a hundred thousand mistakes. Maybe a shitload more. If you're a brand new and you have questions or something I can help you with or anything like that, you know, feel free, you know, again, message me. Uh, I'm out there. I'm more than happy to help again. And if I can't, I can't help you. I will tell you what to call to maybe find some help because some stuff, I'm just not an expert.

later now.

Michael Stearns (01:05:02.759) And that's why you're my guy. One big ecosystem of people trying to help others. That's what we're about here. So thank you, Drew. Thank you to all the listeners. Thank you to Rufr for help making this possible. And we gone.

Drew Paetow (01:05:05.462) Hehehe

Drew Paetow (01:05:11.446) Definitely. Thank you.

In this episode, expert content coach Jonathan Cater takes on the host seat and delves into Mike's journey in the contracting industry, tracing it from its beginnings to the present state of Ascend Digital Agency.

The guys talk everything in the contracting industry from understanding the psychology of people, cold-calling strategies, Chat GPT, all the way to managing negative reviews.

Mike shares on what you should be looking for when working with an agency and the standard that contractors should hold for themselves when working with one.

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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In today's episode, we revisit some of Mike's most memorable interviews, bringing you the top highlights from each.

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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Dive deep into the entrepreneurial journey of Brock McClelland, who remarkably scaled his business to 7 figures in just 3 years! 🚀 In this exclusive interview with Ascend Digital Agency, Brock reveals the secrets, strategies, and mindsets that propelled him to the elite league of 7-figure contractors.

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a seasoned business owner, or someone looking for actionable insights into rapid business growth, this is a must-watch. 🔥

✅ Key Takeaways:

• Brock's proven strategies to fast-track business growth.
• The mindset shifts crucial for scaling to 7 figures.
• Real-world challenges faced & how Brock overcame them.

🔔 Subscribe to our channel for more invaluable insights into business, entrepreneurship, and success stories.

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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