Next Level Pros - How to Make Your Company Impossible to Forget

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

Most companies don’t have a service problem… they have a perception problem.In this episode, Chris Lee sits down with Dan Antonelli, founder of KickCharge, to break down what actually makes a brand unforgettable—and why most home service companies get it wrong from day one.From naming your business to designing your trucks, website, and overall customer experience… every piece of your brand is either building trust or costing you opportunities.Dan shares what he’s learned from building over 3,000 brands, including:The #1 mistake owners make when naming their companyWhy “looking average” is silently killing your growthHow branding lowers your cost to acquire customersThe real reason customers are willing to pay a premiumWhy weak brands rely on Google… and strong brands don’tHow branding impacts recruiting, close rates, and even your exit valuationIf you want your company to stand out, charge more, and become the obvious choice in your market… this conversation will change how you think about branding.Connect with Dan Antonelli:Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dan.antonelliBranded Not Blanded: https://www.kickcharge.com/tips-tools/our-books-on-branding/Website: https://www.kickcharge.com/

Most home service companies think branding is just a logo, a truck wrap, or picking colors. But here's the truth. Your brand may be the reason customers trust you or the reason they keep scrolling. Because before your technician ever knocks on the door, before your CSR ever picks up the phone, before anyone compares prices, people have already made a judgment. And in today's market, being a great service is no longer enough if you look average. Today I'm joined by Dan Antonelli, founder of Kickcharge and one of the first. of the top branding experts in the home service space.

Dan has helped thousands of companies build brands that stand out, become memorable, lower customer acquisition costs, and position themselves as premium providers in their markets. In this conversation, we talk about what makes a brand actually work. The biggest mistakes owners make when naming and designing their companies, how branding impacts revenue and valuation, and why weak brands make Google rich. If you're trying to grow, charge more, recruit better people, or build a company.

People remember this is an episode you need to hear. Branding, it could be the thing that makes or breaks a great home service company. Today we have the Brandfather. Or some people know him as Mr. Five Mile Famous and other people know him as the Michael Jordan of branding. So Dan Antonelli is here joining us today and we're going to be talking about branding. It's one of my favorite subjects. I consider myself a marketer and an artist at heart. And I just love the look and feel of anything luxurious or memorable or whatnot.

And so you've been about this for a long time. What, 30 years? 30 years, kick charge has been around and probably 41 years that I've been doing this stuff. And so how did that all get going? Because, I mean, 41 years ago, you're in the backyard. as a teenager, like, you know, hand painting on decals and fast forward, now you're creating some of the greatest brands in the home industry. In fact, whenever, whenever somebody looks at a, is a rap van or whatnot, a lot of times people who are like, oh, that's a, that's a kick charge

product, which is a, definitely a compliment because you've become very well known in the space. So, like, how did that all come to be? You know, when I was a kid, I was just obsessed with lettering and I really loved looking at lettering and I didn't know at the time that that was and when you say lettering like are you talking about like stencils on paper or lettering no lettering on a truck and actually race cars I was really interested in the cool graphics on race cars and my brother was into hot rods so I would see these hot rod magazines and I'm like I want to do stuff like that I want to do airbrushing I want to do hand lettering and so I started becoming really obsessed with with lettering and then later on you would see people it would say hey well I have a business can you do the sign for my truck

can you do lettering for my storefront and stuff like that. So I was one of these weird kids that in high school, my friends were going to hang out after school. And I was like, I'm going to go home and I'm going to hand paint some alphabets and practice lettering. And they're like, okay, you know, you have fun with that. Did you spray paint too or no? I actually never did spray painting, but again, being from the New York City area,

I grew up in Staten Island, New York, and there was a lot of graffiti. So I had a very deep appreciation for graffiti as well, because, again, just being obsessed with lettering. He doesn't want to admit any of the graffiti that he did. I got into it mainly in books and I learned sort of how to do it, but I actually didn't really do much tagging. What age is this? 15. So you're coming home from school, your friend's soccer, baseball, and you're drawing.

What got you interested in it to begin with? I wish I could identify why I was fascinated just with the construction of letters and how they formed and then what they communicated at the same time. And so, you know, even going to the supermarket as a kid, I would love going down the aisles and just looking at the brands that were on the shelf. Like, why did that one catch my eye? Why was that one interesting? How did they form those letters? So that obsession, I think, was, you know, just something that I feel incredibly blessed to have that obsession and to know at 15, like, this is where my heart is. This is where my passion is.

And I happened to get a job in a sign shop. And that was like the dream job. That was like, you know, getting a job for Disney. Like I would go to this sign shop and we would do lettering for contractors for their vans and their trucks. And I worked under a sign painter who is the most gifted sign painter ever. And he taught me so much about layout. And this was all painting. This was all paint.

Yeah. No computers at all at that point. So he taught me about layout and composition and legibility. And a lot of the principles that I learned from him are still evident in the work today. And I'm actually still good friends with him. So I'll send him, you know, pictures of a van that I did and he'll comment back to me and give me feedback on it. And such a good guy that inspired me. But at the time, I said to my parents like, hey, I just want to be a sign painter.

That's what I want to do. And I'm like, no, you know, we think you should go to college and, you know, learn about advertising and stuff like that. So in my mind, I'm like, okay, well, if I go to college and I get a degree in advertising, like, that probably can help me be a better sign painter. So if I did that and learn how to communicate, learn about the advertising industry, learn about the psychology of advertising, and that's really what college did for me. Now, of course, while I'm in college, I'm still lettering, I'm still painting signs, I'm still doing trucks. And then I graduated and I got a job in New York City as a graphic designer. And then I started the business while I was working full-time like a lot of entrepreneurs do. And, you know, I remember when I was doing it, I was commuting it to New York City, coming home at 6 o'clock.

I'd have dinner with my wife and then I'd go to work till one, two in the morning. And I did that for like nine months. Did you live in Manhattan? No, I lived in New Jersey at that point. So finally- In Wehawk and where? In Union, New Jersey. Oh, Union.

Yeah. Yeah. So my wife is like, you can't quit your day job until you have enough business to equal what you're making at your day job. Because no one in our family had ever started a business. There was no entrepreneurs. They worked for the government, all that stuff. So that's what I did, you know?

And, you know, I think it was good to do that. I think it was important to go through those steps of hustling and working your ass off for something that you wanted so badly. And, you know, the day that I quit my job, like, it was like, didn't miss a beat, you know. Never, never after that point did I worry about, you know, how we were going to provide for my family or a paycheck or anything like that. So that, the launch of that was 30 years ago? It was in 1995. Yeah, so 31 years ago. Wow.

So 31 years ago, you'd take the leap, you go and start the business. At what point did you hire your first employee? It was probably maybe three or four years later. And believe it or not, they would come and work in my basement. Okay. Yeah. So I had my first employee, she came, she worked in the basement, and then she actually moved to San Francisco.

And we figured out, hey, maybe we could do this remote. And it actually was my first remote employee. She moved out there and it worked out. And then eventually it just started getting a little warm. weird having people come to my basement. And I'm in a residential neighborhood. My name is like, what the hell is going on here? So I got my first office, which I shared with another company, because I couldn't afford to get this space myself. And then we outgrew that space. And we had about 15 people. And then I built the current office that were in, a 5,000 square foot office. And

today we have 70, I think we have 72 employees right now. How many, how many worked there in the location? So we have about 30, I think about 32 in the New Jersey office and in the rest of the remote. Was the focus always on trades? You were talking about a lot of vans. It wasn't in the beginning. No, it actually wasn't. Did you get to consumer goods and packaging? We did everything.

We did. So, you know, and we still have some legacy clients. Like I have an orthopedic surgeon who will not go anywhere else for any of his marketing. But, you know, I started really seeing that the trades, first of all, I was just really interested in doing branding for the trades because I'm like, you know, this is a really good group of people. I love working with entrepreneurs like that. And, you know, we grew organically on.

almost in the beginning because I started getting known. It started having things in magazines, HVACR business. You probably remember that magazine. And we won a few awards and we just became, you know, really known for it. And then at a certain point, we just said, why don't we just do this? And instead of trying to do all these other things, you know, and focus on it. So I'd say probably about 15 years ago we made a conscious decision just to focus on the trades. And the thing is that like Chris mentioned this, your brands are iconic.

and a lot of it has to do with this like cartoonizing things, which I love. I know that's not all the vip, but the ones that I love are cartoon versions of shops. Was that like always your schick? You know, I would say in the beginning we were especially known for nostalgia-based branding. Okay. So nostalgia-based branding deploys mascots often.

You know, if you go back and you look at brands from the 50s, a lot of them used, you know, these kind of cute characters and they were illustrated in a specific style. So it became really good at that genre. But, you know, I always say, you know, even about mascots, to me, like when you think about mascots, it's, it depends, you know, like, it's not the right answer for every single solution. Like, I compare it to, like, what we did for Tommy.

Like, when we did Tommy Mello's brand at A1, there was a reason why he became the face of the brand. And it was because at that point, he had his face on every single ad. and it was on his trucks for years. So I'm not going to just throw away that equity. But, you know, I think it's not always the right answer by default, but it can work really well when it's executed really well. Hey guys, it's Chris.

If you're finding value in what you're hearing, go ahead and like and subscribe. That way people just like you can find this content for free here on YouTube. Now let's that back in the show. The thing that I always hear about branding is like, this is an expensive endeavor. And, I mean, you're spending 20,000, you're spending 50,000. And it's not like there's a direct correlation on ROI in the traditional way where you could measure it like LSA, PPC, like a proper marketing campaign.

Because, like, how would you track it? Some of it you can track, though. You absolutely can track some of it. Like they would say, I saw your van driving down the road. Not only that, though, but what you can track is you can track acquisition costs. You can track average tickets. You can track those KPIs and those metrics. And that's what we've really tried to focus on.

I want to hear about that piece because that is true. Like if you have an established brand or if you have a brand that looks good, people are willing to pay the premium. And that has to do with the brand and the trucks that you show up in. But to get into the house, the customers, the business owners, like, I'm just trying to get the phone to ring. Right. So to those people that are scared about investing in the brand,

obviously I'm a huge fan of yours. Yeah. What would you tell them about investing in specific branding for the purpose of, customer acquisition. Well, I always like to flip that question and just say, if you think investing in branding is expensive, how much is not investing in branding costing your business, right? So again, when you look at those metrics and you look at their marketing spend, people like, oh, well, I don't want to spend 10% or 12% on my revenue on advertising. Sometimes it's, you need to spend that because no one knows you exist. And that's where the whole notion of

Five Mile Famous really comes from. It's like, well, what if you could have a brand that, within five miles of your office, everybody knew you existed. And instead of them going on Google and typing in AC company near me, they type in the name of your company. How much cheaper is it going to be for you to acquire a customer then if they already know you exist? But we've done so much studying of the data. And what I love is there's so much data now, right? You look at service tight and you look at things like searchlight, which gives you a ton of information. And you could just really benchmark those things out.

You could look at six months before the rebrand and six months after. there. What was the effect on the KPIs that we care most about? Right. And look at the acquisition cost is another huge thing, right? With some of these, you know, look at how much you're paying for a click sometimes and how much all that is costing. And again, if you're invisible in the community you're trying to serve, yeah, shit gets expensive. It's really expensive. So that invisibility is the, the hidden cost of not branding. So let's talk a little bit more detail on a brand. What are the absolute dues and the absolute don'ts. Whenever anybody's coming up with a, I want to do a rebrand or I'm starting a new business

and we want to create a brand. Like, what are the things they should be thinking about? What are the absolute dues? What are the absolute don'ts? Obviously, it would be great. Like, hey, I'm just going to hire Kickcharge. They're going to take care of it. But what is Kickcharge thinking through for this particular person?

Like, what are the principles that Kickcharge builds any brand based on? Yeah. So it's funny that you talk about, hey, I'm thinking about, starting a business and it would be great if you could invest in day one. And part of why I wrote this book is because the mistakes that are made on day one, there's a lot of them. But one of the biggest mistakes that's made on day one is the name of your company. Literally, number one thing that we see all the time. And we've renamed, like last year alone, we probably renamed 60 home service companies because they started with that wrong foundation. Bill Smith's mechanical. Mechanical.

Mechanical. The worst. Yeah. Yeah. Even HVAC you don't like either. HVAC you don't like either. Mechanical's the absolute worst. You know, or, you know, C.L. heating and air.

I'm going to name it after my kid's initials. Oh, super. Great. That means something to you. It means nothing to anyone else. And there's no chance anyone will ever remember it. So naming is something that is truly one of the first things people get wrong. And I think thinking about names that exhibit a promise, right?

So let's imagine you're on an elevator. and somebody says, hey, which company you with? And you say the name of your company. And immediately, just by hearing the name of the company, they think something positive about what they might get. Because people think branding is complicated. It's not complicated in the sense that all we're trying to do is control what someone believes they might get if they hired you.

Right? We're trying to build trust before the tech gets to ring the doorbell. Or your CSR answers the phone, right? So a lot of mistakes are made very early on because they're not thinking about things like that. They're not thinking about a name that maybe would live in someone's mind so that they can recall it easier later on. They're not thinking about how to build visuals around the name that also makes it easier for people to recall that particular name. So certain names are stickier, and the stickier the name, generally speaking, the better.

So speaking of names, is Kickcharge always been named Kickcharge? No. All right. No. What was it before kick charge? And we spoke earlier about, you know, my start in the sign industry and how that's, we kind of evolved. But we were called graphic designs. And it was graphic D dash signs.

Okay. And I thought that that was clever when I was 25 years old. And I was like, hey, we do graphic design and then we also do signs. It's great. And then like, you know, years go by. And then this is the question where I was safe for people to also ask themselves, right? So years ago by and then I started hating the name. But I had it in my mind.

I'm like, well, I can't change. Everybody knows me by this name. And I'm like, dude, like, that's what you tell all these other people, like, that that's bullshit. Like, you got to change the name if it doesn't reflect who you. are. So I would say like anyone that's thinking about their own name, like ask yourself, does it truly represent who you are today, whether it's the name or the logo or the combination of the two? And for us, it stopped representing who we were. And so when I built my new office, I said, I'm not going into this new office with this name. And we came up with kick charge because

we thought it really represented what we do. Like we energize companies. We power companies. Right. So like we thought it was a great name. It was a name. It was a name. name I can own. It was a name that no one else would be confused with, a name I could trademark, which is also a great attribute that you want to think about anytime you're thinking about naming your company, especially if you have aspirations about going in other markets. So, you know, yeah, I had to kind of live through it myself. And I think it was actually a really great exercise. So we did that in 19, sorry, in 2017. And I come to the table, I think now with a deeper appreciation of the emotional, the emotions involved in rebranding and renaming. Right. So I

understand like I know how hard it is I know and and even when I did it my own family like this is a terrible idea like you should never do it I had employees telling me it was a terrible idea you should never do yeah and of course looking back like we would never have achieved what we haven't achieved if I had stayed the same name no way so when you rebranded at what point or how much how much was your revenue at that point oh my god um a million and a half maybe which is it's hilarious to think about right yeah because like a million a half although a respectable business. Right. It's not like this big established, incredible thing that nobody, that everyone's heard of, right? But in our own minds, it's like everybody knows. Like everybody knows and they're all

going to, they're going to question why or whatever. It's just funny to, and trying to remove yourself from that situation. Right. I think it's like one of the most important reasons why even you should have a mentor or a coach in the business, right? Another set of eyes that can take your personal bias. That's objective. Right. I'll tell you a funny story. This is true. I was a vegan for seven years. No way. Yeah,

for seven years. Okay. And I, that was part of my identity and like most vegans, vegetarians and even people that do CrossFit, I was like, I have to tell everybody, right? Anybody, any restaurant, I'd be like, just want to let you know I'm vegetarian. I just want to let you know I'm vegan. And that became like a part of my identity.

And then sometime off, I was like, yeah, I don't want to do this anymore. I want to go back to eating meat. And I just went to a restaurant and, didn't say I was a vegetarian and you ordered steak and nobody said anything and I was like instantly feel like a man I didn't oh I I don't want to get you graphic but the steak was gone

okay and the point the point is like I made up this entire identity in my mind about this is who I am and this is what I say when I go to restaurants and then I just went to a restaurant nobody knew nothing or to steak and it was and my life's been look at me you know it is

It is remarkable the level of self-imposed prisons that we put ourselves in. Yeah. Right? Around our brand, our business, the way we eat. I mean, and we think, like, I have no other choice. Right. I chose, like, I live here. I can't get out, right?

I can't expand. But we are all malleable. Right. Yeah. It's another word. It's, uh, that one means. Okay, so rule number one, creating a great brand is make sure that the company is memorable, that it's going to speak the message, that it's not,

tied to just personal identity. Especially, I mean, names for the most part, right? Like personal names should be thrown out the door. Last name brands, initial base brands are the two hardest things to get sticky in someone's mind. And they just require a ton of money to get it to become sticky. So if you can avoid that and have something right off the bat that is sticky, and especially names that evoke a very deliberate visual, like we did the branding for grasshopper heating and air. So even if you never seen the logo for Grasshopper,

I bet you have an idea of what it might look like just because I told you the name. So now imagine that truck drives by once and you see Grasshopper and you see the visual that goes with it. 100%. A thousand times easier to remember that than CL HVAC or CL Mechanical. And they actually used to be called PMA Mechanical, was their original name actually before they rebranded.

And now they're at, I think, $30 million in revenue. And that's four years post rebrand, which is insane. Are you doing the branding for the Billboard? too, or is that something? Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, we're full service. So we do the brand development.

We do the print collateral. We do billboards. And we also do digital marketing. So obviously one of the most unique ones was Tommy and the ladder. Oh, Tommy in the ladder. Looking back and his tushes hanging out. That was you guys? That was us.

Yeah, that was actually my idea. I personally designed that billboard. And it started out originally as a joke. But what happened was we were given photos from Tommy from a photo shoot. And there was one picture of him on this ladder. and he was like kind of pointing out his butt. And I thought to myself, I said, you know, this would make for a really interesting billboard. And I said, nobody asked me to do this.

I said, I'm just going to make this billboard. And I sent it to Bree, which is his fiance. And she was like, oh, my God, I love this. This is so good. So then I sent it to Tommy. And he's like, we're doing this. We got to do this. Like, he was all into it.

And then I sent it to him. And he's like, here's my guy in house. And this guy in house was not. having it. He was like, I don't want it. It's too risky. And it's not on brand. And I wrote back to time, I'm like, he doesn't want to do it, man. And Tommy squashed that and we wound up doing it. I think we put like a dozen of them up in Phoenix. And it was just fun. You know, it was just different. I think that's the other thing too is, you know, the idea of disruption is anchored in what we truly believe brand should do. Okay. So that's a question for you. This pattern disrupt. Is there a way,

like, is there a line on too risky before people are like turned off to it? There's a definite line. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Well, like, anything that will make you remember it, it's fine. It's not really like that because, like, you could have your truck be pink with purple polka dots. And people would say, I see your truck all the time.

And I remember it. The problem is, is it doesn't deliver promise of the expectation of the service, right? So you have to be careful in what you're doing. We love the notion of disruption, but I do disruption with the mindset that it still has. to deliver promise at the same time. It can't be one or the other. Something could look beautiful and well designed, but doesn't offer like the,

we do high quality service costs or memorable. Exactly. Interesting. So what do you, how do you like, okay, so what is the process of building that? So how do you do it? Are you doing market research? Yeah, we definitely do market research,

but a lot of what we do is just based on building the brand for its intended audience, which is a woman. Women make up over 80 to 85% of the home purchase decision-making process. They initiate the process. So a lot of people get caught up in building brands that not only like they're thinking about themselves like they want, you know, my buddy's going to think this is cool and I think it's badass and they want a badass truck wrap and all this other stuff. And I'm like, Mrs. Jones isn't into badass. Right.

Or badassery, if that's even a word. Right. She's into someone that I feel comfortable and safe having this person in my home. Right. And so making sure that the brand speaks to the people you are selling to is. Most important, and I say this to clients all the time, like, listen, especially if it's a male owner, I say, listen, I want you to love your brand. But I'm not designing the brand for you as my first priority. I'm designing it for Mrs. Jones. She's 45 years old. She's got two kids. Her husband is out of the house a lot, and she takes care of all the shit in the house.

So how do we make her feel confident that when you come to the house, she's not going to get ripped off? She's not going to get sold stuff that she doesn't need and that she can trust. And again, we talked earlier, the idea of the brand building trust before you ring the doorbell. Right. So just making sure the brand speaks to that audience is the most critical thing and where a lot of guys get it wrong because they want to build it for their own egos, but they forget that it's not built for them. Right. That's the least important. Not least important, but it's not.

So what are the things that build trust with the 45-year-old? Give us the secrets, Dan. Yeah. Hold it out here. First off, just understanding, too, it's not just the logo. It's not the truck wrap. Like, that's just part of the. overall brand. So you have all the pieces of the brand that are speaking a language to someone

and communicating something. Often it's subliminal, right? But the words on your website, what do they say? Like, what do they communicate about the story of your company and why I should be invested in this particular story? You know, you think about the branding that we did for Ken Goodrich at Gettle and the boy holding the flashlight and the story behind that. And what that meant to people, that wasn't just a logo. That was a story about why you should trust this company. Did you guys do Kennerac? We did not do that particular brand, but we did Gettel, like, when Gettel was $5 million in revenue. And I think when they sold, they were over $3 or $400.

Kenerator. Kenerator. Yeah. So, you know, I think just keeping in mind again, if you were to judge the brand on the visuals that are presented to you on the website, the guy's uniform, the business card that gets handed out, their social media channels, what do you think about this particular company? And if it's generic, then why am I choosing you? Why am I okay paying a premium for your service as well? So when you think about poor close rates, a lot of that is, I mean, there's so much sales trading that goes into that, right?

But you take somebody that's got a killer brand that also is a killer salesperson versus somebody that's trying to sell something that on the surface doesn't look like I should pay a premium for this. It's like going to IKEA dealership and then trying to. to tell you that the car costs Mercedes dollars. And you're like, I don't, I don't get it. There's a disconnect here. Like, why would this car be this much money?

It's a key. It's a key. I got a key. I have a key. I love my key. Stinger. But that's, again, controlling the impression before the doorbell is rang, before they hit the website.

You know, I'm doing a bathroom remodel. I don't know if you saw it on my stories. And I am using some kind of like handyman, a friend of mine, and he's got white van syndrome. And he just gave me a price that was like on par with everybody else because he's been listening next level pros. He's a buddy of mine. I'm like, dude, increase your prices.

So he came at me like that. And I'm like looking at his truck and I'm seeing the rust. And like he's always got car problems. And smoking. Yeah, he smokes outside. And I'm, and I really like, it's not the money because I'm going to pay the money no matter what. But it is like.

It has to be on par. It has to be on par. Like, hey, look, I would pay this. If you came in this beautiful truck, you didn't smoke, you know, you didn't park right in my driveway with the oil leaking thing. You put the goodies on. Yeah. Okay.

But it's very interesting. And you're right. And I'm living it right now, which is once you have something that you can anchor yourself to, like, I'm anchoring myself to this brand. And this is how they look and this is how they present themselves. You can justify the price. Yeah. But if not, it's like, hey, what am I paying for really?

But if he was a stranger. and you didn't know. No, I wouldn't. You know, are you going to go with him then? No, at that point? No, no, no, probably not. And maybe he does amazing work. And I think that's the other thing, too, is you have so many contractors.

They kill it. Like, they do a freaking amazing job. Right. But if you would have judged them on what you've been presented, you can't get there. And if I can't get there, then I'm not buying it. Yeah. You know, so really just trying to marry up. And I think that's what we do well is the people will come to us have a great service. That just don't look like they have a great service.

That's right. And that makes my job easier because now I can. marry up the reality with the perception. Right contractor, wrong company then. So I got a haircut yesterday. Okay, then we'll get back to you, but I got a haircut yesterday. And I went to this barber shop. And this guy spent like over an hour on my hair.

Like really, it was really phenomenal. And he charged me 30 bucks. And I'm like, and I was going to his guy who's 60 bucks for like a 30 minute haircut. And so now I'm telling this guy like, hey, look, you're spending, you're an artist. You're spending so much time here. but I'm in this strip mall with bars on the windows and I would never pay $60 here, but if you were somewhere else that just looked better,

I would pay that. And that's kind of what you bring, except you bring the van to the house to say like, does that look like we're going to do, you know, $2.99 tune up for you? Right, right. You know? I mean, another similar instance is like you go into Marshals, right?

Marshals is notorious for selling some high-level brands like a discounted price or whatnot. I go in there, I will never expect to pay over $25 for anything, right? And no matter how good the product is or whatnot, because I know I'm in there, I'm Easter egg hunting, I'm getting zero service. I'm lining up behind 30 people to be able to check out. It takes me 20 minutes versus I go into Louis Vuitton, right? Like, everything is nicely displayed.

I don't shop at Louis, but, you know, if I did, right, like I'm going in there, I'm getting the drink, I'm getting the, you know, they're sitting down. they're measuring me. They're bringing it up, right? And it's like, oh, $600 T-shirt. Okay, you know. And so, yeah, you just have a certain level of expectation based off of that initial impression.

Yeah. And I think the other thing, too, that we didn't really talk about, but people also, in the trades, they struggle with recruiting the top tier talent. Right. Right. So a lot of times when I see people posting on Facebook and they're, you know, on a Facebook group and they're talking about how hard it is to find the right talent and no one wants to work for me. And then, you know, I'll click on their profile and then I'll go see which

company that they, that they own. And then I look at their branding. And I'm just like, yeah, I know what you got, you got a recruitment problem. Because I wouldn't want to work here. Like, look at the truck they're going to be driving. Look at the brand. You're going to ask them to represent. So recruitment becomes so much easier with a better brand as well. But it's not something that people initially even understand about branding. Like they don't come to me usually and say, Dan, I want you to rebrand us because I'm trying to solve my recruitment problem. But it is, it is an effect of the brand that they experience later on. It's so interesting to me when somebody has it like 90% the right way and then off by like 10%.

There's this group I follow on Instagram. I forget the name of it, but it's a mechanical. You know, it's like Joe Blow's mechanical, but the outside of the name, they do everything right. I mean, and they have these reels on Instagram to get shared hundreds of thousands of times. It's their onboarding process. I don't know if you've ever seen any of these. they'll show whenever they onboard a new plumber or new hback tech or whatnot and they'll bring them in they'll have like the whole like all their clothes and the treats and the snacks and what they go through for the training and they take them to lunch and they video and record this and like dude everything about it they got the brand new van the van looks good but it's still like Joe blows mechanical and uh like that one just baffles me it's like dude if you could just get that one more thing you guys are so close so on almost there. It happens frequently.

Like even, you know, we, we rebranded Aaron Gainer from Eagle Plumbers and he was out 40 million in revenue. And not too many guys at 40 million at revenue are saying this shit ain't working. I need to make a change because at that revenue, it's an expensive proposition to rebrand hundreds of trucks and everything that goes along with it. But it was two and a half years later and he's out 100. You know, I just interviewed him a couple weeks ago and we talked about. about that. And to me, it just blows by mind what they've been able to accomplish. But again, getting to that point and saying, was the name Aaron Gainer before? No, it was eco-plumbers. It was eco-plumbers. But, you know, again, he got to the point where he was like, it got me to hear.

It's not going to take me to where I want to go. It's not going to be a $250 million brand in the future. And so, you know, we went through that process of rebranding and I think just developing something that really represents who they had become and where they want to go in the future. but that's actually probably the biggest company that we rebranded at that revenue. Tommy, Tommy, Tommy was second. Tommy was 30 million at A1 Garage when we rebranded him. But Aaron is actually the largest company revenue-wise that we rebranded. And a lot of people will say when they get to a certain revenue, it's, we can't, we can't change now.

We can't pivot. We're too big to pivot. I'm just like, no one's too big ever to really pivot. You bring up such a strong point that doesn't just apply to branding. right like what gets you to one place doesn't get you to another right like i cannot do the same thing that got me to 10 million to get me to 40 right and 40 to get me to 100 right like there are ceilings at every level of revenue whether it's lack of management team lack of like national branding it's also ego right ego like there's there's there's so much that that goes into there

and i think just so so important the fact that this guy was willing to go i mean i can't imagine i mean you got hundreds of vehicles at, you know, $4 to $5,000 a wrap, plus the cost of, you know, just everything else. I mean, yeah, I mean, that's a significant multimillion dollar. Yeah. So if you're like a $2 million shop,

let's say like two or $3 million shop, and like you have to, you can't, these guys don't have money like on day one to build. Some of the do. I mean, if you're, if you're, but if you don't, yeah. Say you don't. You don't have 50 grand sitting in the bank that I can go and

an investment that's going to build this beautiful brand. Yeah. Then what at what period of time do you say like this is this is the worth it's spent? I mean, honestly, as soon as it's fiscally responsible to do so. I always say the best time the rebrand was yesterday. The next best time the rebrand is today and the worst time is tomorrow. And I think this goes back to your initial argument, the opportunity costs. Like I'm 100%.

Yeah. If you got to throw this sucker on a credit card, right? and pay high interest, that high interest is going to be cheaper than the opportunity that you're missing out on by not having a reputable brand. Yeah, I mean, we do financing, and I started financing, like, basically 18 months ago,

because there were those guys at a million in revenue that couldn't swing the initial payment. And I said to myself, like, first of all, we tried to do it through a bank, and no bank would do it. So I said, you know what, I'm going to do it. I'm going to put my money on the line. I will self-finance it because I believe...

Is that what you currently do? That's what we do. Wow. Yeah. So it's my money. I'm putting on the line. And I think we did like 100 finance deals last year and we only had one default. Wow.

So I'm okay, you know, putting my... I mean, that's great. That's great. Yeah, because I know what it's going to do for your business, right? And if I can help more people do it and deploy it earlier, that's great. But, you know, you think about not doing it, right? And, you know, you say, well, some people say, well, I don't have the money to do it right now. But then it's the same people every month that Google is whacking them on PPC

cost and LSA cost and digital marketing costs. And it's just like a death by a thousand cuts that way. So you want to do that way and keep overspending on your marketing or do you want to try to fix it once? And if it's done right, you should never need to touch it. One of them is like you have to be a drug addict to Google and keep paying them more money as they continue to up their prices. And in your way, you're taking charge of the brand and saying, no.

Yeah. You know who loves weak brands? Google. They make a ton of money on weak brands. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, there's nothing more. You essentially own your own your own a real brand. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it. So what are the absolute don'ts when it comes to branding and making a name for yourself? So we talked a little bit about the do's. What are the don'ts that guys need to avoid? Like, don't do this. Don't. This is a huge mistake.

Yeah. Well, like we said, make sure you're designing for the audience, right? Make sure you research the market that you're in and even brand colors. Make sure you're picking colors that you can own. You know, people think I'm not American or anti-American because I say avoid red, white, and blue. Well, why do I say avoid red, white, and blue? It's not because I love this country. It's because you can't own it.

So think about colors. Think about no one else in your market using these colors. I want to own this color scheme, whether it's apple green and blue. Like Aaron Gaynor's Apple Green and Blue. There's no one in that market using Apple Green and Blue. He owns Apple Green and Blue in that market. Right? So look at what you can do to own your particular space.

think about avoiding very common types of brand styles that you may be seeing like if there's too many in your market like look at what you see in your market and if there's already a couple of mascots don't add another mascot to the to the market right so think about what will again be uniquely identified to yourself and not confused with someone else yeah we already talked about naming i mean those are all key aspects to really be considering and again just even if you can't afford like a brand ending company initially. Just keep it clean, keep it legible, and make sure it's not too busy your truck wrap as a thing. You know, like you see some of these truck wraps and you can't even tell what the company does. So I would just say opt for something simple and clean and functional,

at least initially, if that's all you can do, and we can fix it later on. Does it bother you to see other people kind of like ripping off kick charges characters? You know, listen, you know, we, we, We've got 3,000 brands under our belt at this point. I know we inspire a lot of people. I think would bother you. That's a nice way to say it. What bothers me more is when the inspiration is exact.

Is exact. And then trends into the trademark infringement piece of it. So I'm very abundance mindset oriented. And I understand there's other companies that want to do branding. And that's totally cool. And I love to see some of the work that some of these other companies do. Just be respectful of the intellectual property of others. as you're creating art for people.

And, you know, we're so careful and, you know, really just making sure we're doing things that are original. But, yeah, it's sad to see when things... And we talk about things not to do, you know, Chris, like, honestly, like, don't rip off someone's brand. It's going to be a really expensive lesson to learn. And it's a hard lesson to learn.

Like, we see it happen frequently. And sometimes it's even other branding companies that are selling ripped off trademarks. And then you wrap five trucks, And then you get a cease and desist. And that's a really expensive mistake. Do you ever see the movie? It's a cheerleading movie?

Oh, I just lost it. It was like the most popular cheerleading movie in the 90s. Cheerleading movie? Yeah, yeah. What is it? It's Bring It On. Do you ever see Bring It On?

I have not seen any cheerleading movies. You've never seen Bring It On? Oh, my God. Man, maybe I saw it. Now I have to just say it. Otherwise, it's going to seem weird. Like, I'm not just watching cheerleading movies. But Bring It on is like a famous.

It already feels a little weird. It's a famous movie. And this one choreographer sold the dances to multiple people, and they all ended up in the finals. Oh, my God. And so they had this. Anyways, that's what that reminded me of,

which now that in retrospect on the podcast doesn't seem like such a good example, but no, but I get it. I get it. Like, you know, especially if things are showing up in the same market, like that's obviously not a smart move.

At what point does it make sense to trademark your brand, whether it's a logo or the actual words? You should trademark both, and you should do it as soon as they're created. Okay. You know, and again, as you're thinking about picking a name for yourself, one of the things, the biggest chapter in the book is actually on naming, where we talk about, again, the best practices with that and just making sure you're thinking about not just what's available in your state. Like, people make the mistake as they go in their state database to search for an LLC,

and it'll come back clean. It'll say, oh, well, no one in the state's using this LLC, so I can use this name. And they never bother to check federal. supersedes state. So you may think that you're able to use this name in your state, but there may be a federal trademark on that particular name, and then you're going to get that cease and desist down the road. So definitely making sure that you're checking both federal and state as you name your company. I had one question before you, before we wrap this up, which is private equity groups, like every single shop that we work with wants to have an exit. Like that's pretty much their goal. Some legacy

passed down, but mainly people want to sell. Is there any correlation between owning a brand and having an established brand and the multiple that you get in private equity? Yeah, it's funny. I spoke to Brian Cohen from SF&P. Two weeks ago, we did an interview with him, and we were talking about that, and we were talking about the effect of that, and even Guild Garage that also just recently sold to Oak Hill Capital. For a small number. Yeah.

For, you know. I mean, it was under a bill. And out of the, I think they had 24 brands. under their umbrella. I think we have 14 of them that were kick-charged brands. And he'll tell you flat out that it's a huge multiplier. Yeah. You know, like they understand at that point that, first of all,

they don't have to fix anything. You have to go in and rebrand and redo trucks and things like that. Right. So absolutely is something to put a definitive number on what it's going to, you know, what you're going to do on an earn out later on is harder. But certainly as you go to exit and you, you're presenting this company to investors and they see how well the marketing is dialed in. Of course, that's going to affect the multiple.

And I think the biggest thing, though, is the way that it impacts those actual KPIs along the way. I mean, if you doubled your revenue, then it clearly, you know, you drove down your cost of acquisition. You did all these different things. Exactly. And that could be directly tied to a rebrand. Then it really doesn't matter whether or not P.E. pays for the brand. They paid for the multiple, which the brand created. And to your point, you know, Trent, like a lot of them, like you said, they're looking to go out sooner.

So the interesting thing on a lot of P.E. acquisitions for poorly branded companies is that P.E. doesn't want to put money back into the brand. They actually don't want to spend money because now they get a wrapped truck. So it's going to hit their EBITA. Right. So I think that that's when you see opportunity for the family owned businesses to actually really invest in branding because you, you know, people think that, oh my God, it's private equity. It's investing in branding all the time. And honestly, it's not. Like we do a lot of work for private equity, but you look at the portfolio of most private equity companies, and most of them have awful brands.

Seriously, like it's bizarre to me. Like sometimes I look at this, I'm like, because they're buying spreadsheets. Yeah. I mean, that's the reality. Yeah. And so I always say, what is the thing that you can be doing

as a privately owned company in your community to become visible? And investing in branding is one part, and then doing the things that PE is not doing, like going to the home show, going to the 4th of July parade sponsoring all the soccer teams So that's actually something we talked about

when you hosted our Tuesday call which is outside of the branding piece like you have to get do the work You got to do the work Go grassroots Because that

that totally offsets your customer acquisition cost Give us our top 10 actions for the community involvement So you just named a few So you got the home shows You got the parades The baseball teams

All the soccer team is baseball team is baseball teams, that type of engagement. Make sure you're putting sight signs up for every job that you're on. I love it when you're able to go, you know, five houses up, five houses down and five houses across the street with door hangers. Things like that, I think, are so much better for that visibility. And because that visibility within the community, and again, within the neighborhood, is trust, right?

If my neighbor across the street used you for their heating and air, well, that already makes you better than just some. random listing on the top of Google. Another thing that we would do would be like customer appreciation and even like barbecue type things, right? So we would, we would host customer appreciation community barbecues. Yeah. Right.

Where, hey, if you come, if you're a customer, you get to come eat free. If you're not a customer, bring your electric bill, bring this out of the other. You get, you get to eat free, right? And then you're doubling down on like the home show type of material that you already have in place, right? The tents, the tables, those type of things. another thing that we would run is like on weekends whenever we're doing installs or whatnot is we do pop-ups in a neighborhood where like literally like free hot dogs hamburgers

over here at the Smith's house like I mean and like just hey come come see what you know such and such company's all about yeah and another thing you could be doing too is just doing stuff that has PR value so you know you have the technician in the house for this this elderly woman, she's disabled, and her hot water heater is broken. She's on fixed income. Yeah. Can't we just do something for this person here? Let's get this one back. Yeah. And you see Tommy do it a lot also and they embrace the PR value of it. And I'm not saying that that's the sole reason why you do it. But certainly if the community sees that you're investing back into the community and doing things like that, there's a lot of value.

It's a double win. You're doing something great and you get the PR value. Yeah, 100%. So, you know, the, the, Turkey, you know, Thanksgiving donations, doing things like that, donating toys for tots. Like, again, making sure you're active with that. And then again, too, making sure your social media channels is reflecting those activities. And so Kig Charge has branding. They have traditional marketing, digital, PPCLSA, website building.

Yep. And then you also do social? Yes, we do. And you do the traditional billboards. Yes. Okay. So you're, once you develop the brand, they can essentially put you in the pipeline. and push you all the way through.

100%. One-stop shop. Yeah. And I think also like, and it's not, you know, certainly one thing of that I think is unique about us is that we can handle all the channels. But regardless, I want everyone to just consider the fact that every integration of your brand needs to be consistent. So if you do have multiple vendors managing that,

just making sure that there's a guide for them to follow on how your stuff should look, no matter where that customer journey is happening. I think that that's a part. drives me crazy sometimes if we do a brand for someone and then they go somewhere else and get some of this other work done and I see something posted and I'm like oh my god it's the wrong font it's the wrong color yeah where did this color come from right this font come from I love that you brand integrity yeah and sometimes I'll shoot the client a screenshot I'm like dude what would what happened here you know yeah it's like oh I didn't have time to call you

guys so I just had my guy do it and I'm just like I'm like I'm like you're killing me bro what was your favorite one that you designed Favorite brand? Yeah. Ooh, all time. You got 3,000 of them to pick from. And don't choose your investor. Yeah, you can.

Well. Or you can. You know, listen, I love the brand that we did for Amanda August at Grasshopper. And I love it for a number of reasons, not just what it created afterwards, but the impact. And I think for me, as you think about, you know, legacy and you think about, well, what is the most important thing for me? And to me, I sort of judge that by impact. Like, what is the impact that our work has had? And you look at what's grown out of grasshopper and how many lives have been affected,

how many jobs have been created and the vision that she has on what she's building there. And so for me, that's probably one of my most proud brands because that came from nothing. Like, she gave me her last $20,000. And I actually didn't know it at the time. And from her last $20,000 to $30,000 to $30,000. 30 million in revenue and it's four or five years later. Incredible. And she's HVAC and plumbing.

Yeah. And she's investing with other companies. And actually in her investment group, nine out of the 10 brands or kick charge brands that she's invested in, which is pretty wild for me to just see. Like I'm like, I'm like, okay, am I just the incubator here? Like, do you just go pick out all my people? Dan, that's what I think about you. I think that you're like a catalyst for people.

people's brands and you are an actual artist like you came into this space and I know there were people that are doing something similar but you like just like you would see bengzi like artwork in New York you'd be like that's a Dan Antonelli I mean people say that about you and you are like a harbinger of greatness and I'm glad we're friends and like I love seeing your work everywhere and you give just like somebody's investing in your company when you're a little 15 year old kid trying to make it work. Like the life that you bring to other companies uplifts this whole industry. Yeah.

And you are truly one of a kind. Thank you. Yeah. I love it. I love it. So last piece of advice. $2 million shop struggling to pay the bills. Maxing it out.

What are the next three steps that this guy needs to do? He's driving white vans. Rusted old white vans. No brand. You know, undercharging customers. what are three pieces of advice you're given to that person? Yeah, definitely. First of all, read my book, if nothing else, right?

Hold that book up. Yeah, sure. You know, read this book. I wrote it for that person. Branded, not blended. And Antenelli Richel. And it'll give you so much advice and insights. And it's an eye-opener.

It's funny because people have to have messaged me after they've read it. And they said to me, I wanted to vomit after I read your book. And I'm like, I don't know if that's the endorsement I was looking for, but they realized all the things that they were doing wrong and how it was affecting all those metrics. So I would say, think about ways that you can invest in your own brand. Think about ways that you can become active in your community that you're serving, right? Don't just throw money at Google every time the phone's not ringing. And I know sometimes investing in community stuff feels long term, right? It's not something where right away I'm going to get a million leads for them.

Sometimes you do. But think about ways that you can connect. with people and just make sure you're doing everything you possibly can to create raving fans. You know, that's the whole, that's the whole thing. Because you know, as well as anyone, the referral is gold, right? And that person is going to hire you because they're friended. So just make sure you're doing all the right things. And think about building a brand that people would care about, that they would connect with,

that they might remember later on if you can. Love it. Thanks so much, Dan. It was a pleasure talking about branding. Again, one of my favorite subjects there is. You can find you on social media we're at. You could just hit me up on Facebook. You know, just Google my name, Dan Antonelli, or kickcharge.com.

Or Dan at kickcharge.com if you want to shoot me a message. And listen, for guys that have a brand, then maybe you're not sure if it's good. Like, I'm happy to give feedback to anyone that just wants me to take a look at it. Like, that's my way of giving back. I'm not going to sell you anything. if you have a truck and you want, hey, is this good? What can I do to make it better? Just hit me up and I'll just give you as much advice as I can.

Sometimes it's just a matter of changing a few things and it'll prove it like so much. You know, so if I can help anybody, just, you know, hit me up. It's fine. Love it. Thanks so much, Dan. All right, brother.