The Home Service Expert Podcast - Creating Huge Demand For Your Business Using Direct Marketing

Episode Date: March 20, 2018

Gary is a proven business leader and marketing executive with more than 15 years of experience as CEO for many public and private companies. He is currently the Chairman and CEO of Money Mailer, a formidable leader in the U.S. direct marketing industry. In this episode, we talked about leadership, direct marketing, outsourcing, as well as embracing technology...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership, to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. All right, we're here with Gary Malloy. He's the first CEO of Maybelline, and then he worked at

Pilkington, Barnes-Hyde, and then Advo, and now Money Mailer. Gary, how's your morning going today? Going great. Nice sunny morning here. All right. Where are you at anyway? We're in California. We're in the L.A. area. Awesome. I'll be there next month. So you've been in all these different leadership roles. I'm just curious. You went from one of the biggest makeup providers in the world to now one of the biggest mailing distribution companies in the world.

How has that shaped who you are today as far as leadership goes? Well, I've always said since I began in my career, I actually began, believe it or not, at the age of eight, working more or less full-time in my family's hardware business, which was a business in those days, a small local hardware business. Also did an awful lot of home improvement projects like window replacements and landscaping work. And we would install sidewalks and reseal driveways. And we did a lot of all kinds of work, and I loved it. I worked in that business for about 10 years, 12 years, until I headed off to college.

I began my career that early in my life, and all I ever said to myself is that every single job I took, I never worried about money, and I never worried about recognition. All I ever cared about was whether I was going to learn something new that would make me a brighter, smarter, better leader. And, you know, I think all of those experiences did contribute to who I am today. I've been in a diverse set of industries, as you said, sold everything from some before even the makeup days. I sold hamburgers. I sold soap and then through medical devices and into the direct mail industry.

And all of them have contributed, I guess, to who I am today. And I think it's important to just be a learner every single day and enjoy each new position and enjoy what the challenges teach you. Don't worry about money or recognition and just be a leader of people and try to recognize the importance of people in your business. So yeah, that's great advice. I mean, to get started that early in life, and then to be where you're at today, I think a lot of the people on this podcast could definitely look up to someone like you. What's the advice that you gave yourself when you first started out as an executive? So once you had that first leadership role and you're walking in to something that you've never done before and you moved up the ranks quick. So I'm just curious to hear about that. Yeah, I think again, when I first began in the corporate world, when I became an executive, as you're saying, I'm not sure I knew 100% what I wanted to do, but I think what I did do was I began going to use my compassion and my ability to get people to talk to me and relate to me in a productive way that helps them succeed while I succeed as well.

And I found that worked incredibly well in terms of building quick relationships with people at the retail level up and down the street, as I said, in Detroit. And I just kind of kept reminding myself of those key points, I think, as I went through every single job after that. And I don't think you can possibly overvalue the power of people relationships, whether that's in a selling function or it's in a function internal to a company and how you get things done and how you work together and how you succeed together and how you enjoy and reap the benefits of success together. You know, the importance of people is something that I just always reminded myself of. I would just

encourage everybody to do that. It makes life more pleasant. It makes learning more pleasant. It makes success more pleasant. Yeah, I hear that a lot from CEOs, especially at bigger, larger companies, is just the importance of not only customers, but the employees there. And obviously, in your case, you guys have franchises. So I think that's amazing advice. When I started A1 Garage Door Service, it was 2007. The economy was just getting ready to collapse in Phoenix and Las Vegas. I mean, it was going through a lot of problems. And I started out with a couple large mailers and everybody refers to, I got the money mailer. So one of the problems that I always had when I first started was tracking what coupons were working. But money mailer was quite honestly, one of the biggest things that

grew me all the way back then. And when I first started, people told me mail does not work. They said, this is right when the Yellow Pages was dying too. But I disagree. A huge part of my business is thanks to Money Mailer. When I go into a new city, I focus on coupons and Money Mailer is one of the largest distributions that you could get. And it's a nice, huge envelope. It's bigger than everybody else's. It's got the front and back. It's a real nice stock.

You know, can you explain to the listeners why coupons are still effective for a marketing tactic, even in this digital age? Absolutely. I think I point out to all of our clients all the time, and they can be anyone from a small individual retailer up to, you know, a large business like yourself, is to remember that all elements of marketing integrate into a single outcome, which is hopefully a sale for you. again integrated and they should be part of an overall marketing plan in today's world the truth is that most of the digital applications are terrific as response mediums but not as demand creation mediums the power of what we do in direct mail is that we create demand and we drive traffic to websites and to mobile apps to the phone to retail visits and store visits. All kinds of responses today are created by direct mail and by the coupons and ads that we distribute every single month throughout the year.

It is an incredibly effective tool. The DMA 2016 response rate report really highlights the fact that response rates for direct mail can be 5.3% versus the 0.3% to 0.9% that is that the effectiveness of print advertising is, you know, the fact that the recall from print is like 70% higher than digital advertising. And that came from eMarketer. So I mean, the reality is that what we do creates that demand that then goes to all of the other integrated marketing solutions, including digital, that a client should in fact have in place. Everything I'm saying is supportive of digital, but I think understanding its role in the marketplace. We create demand. That's why coupons work and why people relate to it from a consumer standpoint.

Print is still incredibly effective. I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I think print is effective more in some areas than others. I can tell you we're going to be right now going into our ninth state. And I will tell you that some of them absolutely do amazing and some of them don't do as great and vice versa. Same thing. Some people don't use Google.

Some people don't use Yelp. You got to kind of try and figure out what works and you got to keep a good eye on your numbers. And I've literally measurable. You're absolutely right. You know, I've been doing this and right now I've got 750 tracking numbers for all my different marketing sources. And I got to tell you, yeah, absolutely. And I want you to talk a little bit about not only tracking but i've changed coupons i used to try to get everything i could in there aarp discount discount discount i used to put five coupons and do all this stuff and then i sat down with a pro and they were like they told me align your coupons on the right side there was all these little subtleties so

what makes a killer ad and talk to me a little bit more about tracking and what you think you've seen some of the best people you've worked with. Actually, you know, these are all home service experts here that are listening. Tell me how they can be more effective when they do do a mailer, especially money mailer. Terrific. I think the advice that I give to folks in your industry is that you need to have a very compelling call to action for the consumer. You need to be very clear in your visuals and in your words as to what you provide and why they should seek you out as opposed to others in a related business or industry that are competing for their attention every day. It's important to have that call to action and to have a meaningful economic driver, if you will, that stimulates that call to action in a timely way so that what you're

getting is not just they're going to take the action to see you, but they're going to do it as quickly as possible because you've made timeliness very important. Making fewer offers but more compelling offers to make them reach out to contact you is really important. Once they contact you, you then have the ability, whether that's by phone or on your website or on your mobile app or however they reach out to you, you have an opportunity to talk more to them and to broaden the discussion to take them into additional lines of business

or additional products, additional services, but allow that to be a personal communication as opposed to what you're trying to do in the printed ad. The printed ad is trying to create them to reach out to you and make the response. That's really what we do. We'll make them contact you and then from there, it's up to you. How do you move that contact and get to the ultimate sale? Tracking the response is critically important, Tommy, as you say. And we have people who have been excellent at tracking telephone response over the years and listening to their folks and how they interact with consumers and measuring the

source of those contact points. I'm also encouraging people, though, today in today's digital world to make sure that you are doing unique URLs so that you are tracking your digital response as well. Because, you know, we serve a very affluent audience in money mail by design. We go after the highest home ownership in a mailing zone. We go after the highest income households. And those folks are the most digitally savvy and are likely to respond in a digital way at 40% to 50% of the population as opposed to 10 years ago it was all telephone response.

So if you're not tracking digital response in the same way that you've historically tracked telephones, you're missing, again, a whole level of attribution and understanding the impact of the demand you're creating that you need to be aware of. And so I would encourage everybody to be doing all elements of tracking in that way. That's absolutely incredible advice. You know, I don't think most of the people know how easy it is to build a squeeze page. And all a squeeze page is designed to do is you put Google Analytics on there. You

can see how many people hit your page, unique visitors. And if you build a page on MoneyMailer or any other coupon source, just so you could track what came from there. You know, unfortunately, MoneyMailer and a lot of other sources from radio to TV to billboards, they kind of get the crappy end of the stick. They don't get the response rate that people want because Google gets the credit for a lot of stuff and Bing gets a little bit of the credit. But I think that's absolutely incredible advice because if you really don't know and you're pushing people to a website, that's really that you're missing. You just said it 50% of what MoneyMailer might be doing for you. Gary, the other day I was driving and this is just, you made me think of this. And I saw this billboard, huge billboard on the side

of the road. And it said, the mattress challenge bet.com. I'm not a hundred percent of it was exactly that, but it was a bet. And it said, win a free mattress. And I was like, that's but it was a bet and it said winner for free mattress and I was like that's all it was it was on a black and white screen so immediately I went to my phone and looked up what it was and it just had a couple little things that you know if you could get a cheaper mattress we guarantee you that we'll beat the price and comfortability or we'll pay you 200 bucks but I was talking to my buddy about it and he goes, I did that too. I saw the same thing. Then I talked to my girlfriend and she said, no, I did the same thing when I saw that. And it's amazing these different ways of thinking. Tell me a little bit about, you know, I really want to dive into a lot more things that Money

Mailer is doing, but have you seen anything really stand out or anybody do anything that's been a little bit different to get people to contact them? Because that's what you were just talking about. The main thing is that they contact you, then it's up to your call center representatives to close that deal. So is there anything that pops out that comes to mind that you think really is essential these days? Yeah, no, I think what you're raising is a very clever way to get people to respond in kind of an indirect way. Because, you know, obviously the mattress industry is hugely competitive. And that's a really unique way of getting at what one of the biggest consumer issues is in that industry, which is discomfort in your night's sleep.

And poor night's sleep is something that is in most consumers' minds all the time. So raising the notion that they can solve that problem will get the response just because consumers are interested in that issue. You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. I would say that cleverly using an issue or a problem and offering consumers the ability to hear a unique solution to that problem can be as compelling sometimes as, you know, $20 off or $100 off or 50% off. And so, you know, I've seen people use that kind of compelling creative to get response and create demand in a way that starts a conversation.

Because again, like I said earlier, the real point of what I do for people through MoneyMailer is to try to cause consumers to have a conversation with you as a business. And from there, you take it to a sale or completion. And, you know, there are many different ways to start that conversation and to cause them to reach out to you for advice and help. Absolutely. One of the things that I recommend to all the home service people on this podcast is become the expert. You know, on my website, I have 10 FAQs about what they need to know, how to fix your safety eyes, what to do if the remote's not working, and becoming an expert. And a lot of this stuff is about nurturing. With Mailer, I get a lot of direct response. And

if you could go into a little bit about what direct response mean and what it applies to for MoneyMailer, and then I want to dive into a lot of other things that MoneyMailer is doing. But I'd love to hear your take on direct response versus the different types of advertising that aren't quite direct response. Yeah, no, I think, you know, we are, in fact, I think one of the most incredibly effective direct response mediums in the country. And again, what we're trying to do is cause conversations between businesses like yours and the consumers that we serve every single week throughout the year. We view direct response as a conversation, as I said, and I think that the creative that we help our clients execute tries to be simple and direct to cause that initial conversation to take

place. And I think that remembering that direct response is at the heart of much of what's in our envelope, those conversations, you know, they rub off on one another as well, so that it becomes a trusted source, if you will. And so we try to, you know, make the environment that we put that direct response advertising into be the most consumer friendly and consumer interactive that we can. And so we focus a lot on a what we call local environment. So our envelopes, first and foremost, are a source for small local retail outlets that consumers use every single day. And so they read our envelope front to back through every single ad that's in the envelope because it has a restaurant around every corner or a dry cleaner or a car washer, things that they use every day or every week. But then interspersed in there are the things that they need to be aware of

and engage in conversations with providers who are offering them things they don't use as often. And one of the things that I get the biggest kick out of, Tommy, I have to be honest with you, when we do focus groups with people who receive our envelope regularly, they don't buy all of the home improvement service product categories every single year. But when they need them, they go to those sources that they know. And when you ask them, well, are you aware of a garage door replacement service in Chicago? And they will name the clients that have been in our package through the course of the year. Being there for the consumer and encouraging them to think about you throughout the year and then when they're ready to initiate that conversation, you are the trusted source because

they're familiar with you and you can't forget the importance of that. So the frequency and steadiness of your marketing effort and the constant communication with people when they need you, but also when they aren't sure they need you or even before they know they need you. I can't emphasize that enough as the role of what we do. Yeah, wholeheartedly agree again. I mean, you're the expert at this stuff, but I've been living and breathing it now for over 10 years. And I got to tell you that one day I got a call from a money mailer and the guy said, I tried two out of your three numbers and only one of them worked. Well, we didn't understand why we went back. It was six

years old. He had kept it in his, because I changed my, I actually own my own call tracking numbers now. And it's something that I like to do to have that stuff internally. But one of the things that you guys do a great job at is you focus on local content. And I think you were going down a direction there of people like to use local. That's why Google rolled out their local algorithm, the three-pack now.

But people love to use local restaurants. They love to use local businesses. They like to support their local community. And Money Mailer does a great job because you could buy one zone one zone equals 10 000 am i right exactly right yes so you got 10 000 homes you're gonna hit they're the most affluent homes are the people with supplemental income that usually what's the average median i guess it depends on the area but is there an overall median income for the 10,000 homes you're trying

to hit? Yeah, we're about 73% above the national average. Okay. So that's well over a hundred thousand. Okay. So obviously these people have money. We just got out of my meeting and one of the guys had a great sale yesterday and he said, Tommy, you know, obviously we're in Arizona. We get a lot of snowbirds. He said they had a mailer. And it's kind of funny because it was right before we're getting ready to interview you. But he said there was a landscaper. He said they were getting their vents clean for their air conditioning. I was the garage guy and there was a pool guy out there. So obviously they got everything out of the money mailer. They're not necessarily everybody's not a coupon shopper that goes through there. They might just want to know what is out there, you know, and you're

absolutely right. If I want to get my carpets cleaned, I know to open up a mailer. I don't normally do that. I don't go through every mailer, but I know that they're in there. I know that there's certain things. If I'm going to order a pizza, I'm probably going to keep that mailer. If I know there's a fight coming next week. So those are the things that I don't think most people realize. I've heard this a countless number of times, and I'm sure, Gary, you've heard this too, but I don't even open those things. And a lot of our listeners are probably saying, I don't open those things. But I promise you guys, people open these all the time.

And they might not open them every week, but they open them up when they need something. Exactly right. Exactly right. Yeah, that open rate is historically incredibly high and the retention of the offers and so forth. Tommy, I couldn't echo that more. Do not be quick to shut off your call tracking because you're going to find that we track calls for clients across the country 12 months out of the year, and we see calls come in routinely, not just a rare exception, but routinely three, four, five months after an ad is run. People retain the ads. They use them. They use them as an authority as to where they are going to go when they need the help or they need the product.

And I know you have a plan with MoneyMailer to double and triple the company's size. When I think about MoneyMailer, it's kind of like bookstores. There's some people that are going to make it, and there's some people that aren't. And you're embracing the digital age. But just as a CEO, tell me a little bit about how you're going to go into new markets across the U.S. Because this is huge for me. Because the more places you guys go, the more places i know i can go because you guys are kind of my rock i know exactly what to expect my biggest problem i have with money

mailers you guys aren't in enough places you guys are one of the largest mailer distributors in the united states but i want more so tell me a little bit about your plan to get to these other places well i appreciate those comments and I would share that. We're very successful at doing what we do on behalf of our clients in the markets we're in, but we have an opportunity as a company to probably double or triple the geographic coverage, definitely double or triple the geographic coverage that we provide to our clients. And thankfully, like you, we have clients who want more all the time and are very eager for us to open additional geographies. Doing that, you know, our business model operates as a

consultative marketing arm for our clients. So when we enter a market, we do it through an owner-operated franchise method that reaches out to small, independent, local businesses so that we have an owner-owner relationship. And that's truly unique in our industry. We do not sell through sales reps predominantly. We sell through owner-to-owner relationships. And that's why we have the local content we do, because we become the trusted, our owners become the trusted relationship marketing advisors, if you will, for small businesses.

And that's why we retain so much local content that, in effect, is kind of our editorial content within which we then distribute a whole host of large direct response clients who are looking for that relationship that the consumer has with our envelope. And that is a trusted environment to be in. And we use that trusted environment as a supporter of local businesses for consumers to then, you know, rubs off on all of the direct response clients we have, like home services and so forth, because, you know, the environment is a trusted local partner and consumers view it that way. And that's how we expand into a new market is we

train our owner-operator franchisees to build that local content, create the correct environment within which we then target the affluent households and homeowners and presence of children is much above average and multiple car ownership and all the things that go along with people that are ready to spend money and building and improving their homes and so forth. And that's how we expand. And that's our strategy for expansion as we go forward over the next 10 years or so is to do that exact kind of model in each of the markets we enter. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, a lot of these smaller communities that I'm starting to go into, they really have niche shops, restaurants. You're not going to find a ton of Applebee's and Chili's in some of these smaller areas. And it really takes somebody that knows that area to communicate with those local people. And that's why Money

Mailer works. I mean, that's why people open it is because they say, I know I'm going to find the places that I love to go in here. And that's how you guys do so well is if I could get a little coupon off where I already go, I'm going to be opening that up. And I believe it or not, we did 1.6 million last month and I'm the first one to use coupons. I mean, you know, when those girls come knocking from the Girl Scouts and they sell the coupon books, I buy one every year because I use these places all the time. So, and what is nice about it. And the reason I really enjoy the coupons is because maybe it's something I wouldn't have thought of. Maybe there's a new experience I could take my girlfriend or my niece and

nephews to that I've not done before. And it gives me new ideas. You know, we've got this butterfly park now in Scottsdale that I've been to with family and you got the Phoenix zoo and these different things that we could always find. And a lot of times people go through them just to say, what kind of entertainment could we get out of this? So I absolutely agree with the marketing plan to grow. And I think it's incredible. I want to dive into, I just talked about the bookstores and I think about Barnes and Noble versus Borders, or I think about Blockbuster versus Netflix. And the one thing that a lot of these companies didn't do is they did not embrace technology.

And you guys are really getting into technology. You're starting to do email marketing campaigns. You've got the mobile app. Tell me how you integrate the offline strategy, which is the direct mail, with some of your new strategies and how you make them work together? Yeah, no, I think that, again, we view all of our digital products as an integral part of the marketing effort that we offer to our clients. So we have a terrific mobile app that allows a consumer to access not just what runs in their local 10,000 household zone that they happen to be receiving the envelope in, but allows them to access offers from everyone in the entire

market area that they find themselves in. So, you know, it can be from a small market like Columbus, Ohio, to a large market like Los Angeles, is they're able to look at everything that's available across the broad span of the entire market. In addition, they can just punch in a zip code if they happen to be traveling to Chicago and pull up Chicago coupons so that they can access things when they happen to, if they have multiple homes, if they're on a vacation, whatever. And so we integrate it in a way that gives our advertisers even broader reach and frequency against our target audience. Because advertising, at the end of the day, and creating demand is related to reaching a consumer,

but then trying to repeatedly reach that consumer. And so we use our mobile app to do that. We use our website to do it because, again, consumers visit our website every day, looking at the coupons we have available, and they see it arranged by category in the same way that we do on our mobile app. We also do email blasts with an opt-in email system where consumers sign up to receive our offers, and we restrict the number of clients that we will advertise at any time, which is limited to one a day, that we will send out from a personalized message to the opt-in person from a person that we use here called Maddie. And Maddie sends out offers that are tailored to the people that opted in to receive them. But we view all of those things

as, again, an integral part of what we do every day on behalf of our clients. Not one of them is going to do it all by itself. It's important that we do all of them so that when you add up all the elements of the marketing campaign, we've reached the consumer and we've reached the consumer as often as we can on your behalf. And we try to get them again to engage in the conversation with the customer. Yeah, like you said, you said this several times now, but it's all about consistency. I know a lot of the people on here, they may have tried Money Mailer or some type of other mailer source. And my biggest problem is you're not going to see a huge difference of doing anything one month. You're not going to see if you run a radio ad or a TV ad one month,

you're going to notice the second month gets better. Billboards, everything you got to give a chance to. I mean, the one thing that I don't agree with that on, if you're doing to notice the second month gets better. Billboards, everything you got to give a chance to. I mean, the one thing that I don't agree with that on, if you're doing pay-per-click, you know, those don't work exactly the same. But consistency is the key element of traditional marketing. And, you know, when you joined Money Mailer, you decided I'm going to embrace technology smartly. And I've got a lot of people listening to this.

We've been in the home service industry. And my question for you is many home businesses, they struggle with the idea of embracing technology. I mean, it's almost like I see these people all the time and they've done very, very well because they've got stickers on the hot water heater and on the air conditioning unit. And they decided I'm not going to do that website stuff. Or they got a website, but they don't want to optimize it. And they don't do mobile optimization. And they don't want to do anything with Google. But I think you would at least tell me a little bit about how these home service experts should

embrace technology and some of the things they need to think about before they just jump into it. Well, I think embracing technology is absolutely critical in today's world. And I would add everything in that from social media to their own website and to, you know, using Google and so forth. However, I think what they also have to think about when they jump in is how are they going to measure what they're getting for the investment they're making. Too often, the digital world is allowed to offer its own measurements of its effectiveness. And I don't know if you or your listeners remember back a year ago when even Facebook

was called on the carpet because the advertising world reported last November that they were inaccurately inflating the reach of their marketing spots by 30 to 50 percent because they included as unique traffic repeat traffic so it wasn't unique traffic and reach it was it was in fact repeat and they they had to own up to that to the advertising world the point here is that i think your listeners should be aware that they can track their responses and activity themselves, and they should find ways to do that. Again, one of the consultative things we do for clients is to try to advise them on how to do that, and there are ways to do it directly and there are some ways to do it indirectly

so that we do what we call attribution, which is use some test means to actually look at areas where you do certain techniques versus areas where you don't to get a measurement of the effectiveness of the added feature, whether it's digital or it's direct mail or whatever. And you can measure things, and we encourage people to measure. So if you're going to use digital, I mean, don't use it blindly. Don't necessarily believe everything you hear. You know, measure it yourself.

That's the advice I would give you. That's what we do, is that we know what works and doesn't work. We know the traffic. We know the conversion rates. We know the response and the purchases that come off our mobile app and our websites. I would just encourage everyone to get in, but also figure out a way when you get in to measure the result and the return on your investment. You know, Gary, I know you got to get going here. I got a few more questions if you do have the time. I'm not sure how your schedule's looking. Sure, no, I'd love to answer a few more.

Okay. So listen, I've used things like CallSource, CallCap. I know exactly the ROI I get. And I have what, typically I don't like to go more than 20% of my revenue to spend on marketing. But the reason I know these numbers work is because I'm aggressive. I'm growing. If I was stagnant, I'd say 10% is a good number.

And you're absolutely right. What I teach people is to invest in a smart CRM. Make sure you're using voiceover internet protocol so you can have multiple numbers. I personally, and I'll tell you a quick story gary it's very very quick story but and i don't think you guys use it this way but one day i was in a yellow book ad and they provided the number and and fortunately i did really really well like something happened that i just did incredibly well and what ended up happening is I saw a garage door flood, basically

what happened. And I talked to the gal that worked under the main guy at this Yellow Page campaign, and she said, Tommy, we use you as a case study for all of Yellow Books across the United States. She goes, the first thing we did is went and sell more garage door companies because there was enough to go around. And that kind of made me upset. So I'm not saying that every company does that. I just think it's wise to be careful on who you're getting your call tracking numbers from because they own the data. And what is your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think that, again, you should have access to anything that anyone is tracking for you. Make sure that if someone like ourselves is doing the call tracking for you, because we will do it,

is that you have full access to all the data because that is very easily arranged and it isn't just that you're going to get the top line result. You should get all of the analytics and all of the recordings and everything else that goes with the service. But you can do it yourself

and you can set up your own system to do it. I would encourage you if you do, to share that with people like ourselves so that we understand what's working for you and what isn't working for you. It can be a creative execution difference. It can be an offer difference. You know, it can be the zones you're selecting or the messages you're selecting in those zones. And so the ability for us to jointly analyze the results along with the investment you're making, because it's in our best interest to get you the highest ROI you can get. And aggressive people like yourself, Tommy, are pushing that window with high spends against their revenue stream because they're building their business and they're growing. And that is

what we want to see happening for our clients. We want them to achieve those growth goals. And we don't want them overspending, though. We want them getting a good return on investment, because that's what we're in business to do. Yeah. And, you know, teaming up with the graphic designer, Money Mailer, I'll go through one thing, and I want to talk about two more questions. But what I did is I went into Sun City. Sun City is a big retirement home in Phoenix. It's 55 plus. And what I did was I talked to the graphic designer and I said, I just don't think this is working as well as it could. So here's what I like to do. I want to take the other two area codes off the 480 and the 602. Let's just do 623. And that just that's micro niche for that area all of them have 623 numbers

and then I said I want to put an older couple 55 plus and I wanted to say I want them to be standing right by the welcome to Sun City and then we're also a member of Pura which is only in Sun City so I want to have that on there and then I want to put a big thing that says senior discount. And I made sure to put free service call on really big. And we had a five times. I'm not even kidding. What I'm going to do is I'm recording this. I'm going to put both coupons, my before and after coupon. And I'm going to show the difference of a good coupon by getting it down to that micro level. So you're absolutely right. If you do not pay attention to the KPIs, and those are key performance indicators for the listeners out there of what works and what doesn't, you're never going to be able to grow your business. And things like money mailer will never work if you don't have the analytics to make it better. And don't think it's because, you know, Gary and his people aren't doing his job. It's because you're not tracking it. You're not trying

new things. And getting a good graphic designer and good ideas and micro-focusing is, I think, one of the biggest keys that make coupons work. Because they want to know that they're supporting their local community. So if they got this huge company and they call into a huge IVR and it says, enter your zip code, you're going to lose all those listeners or those callers, those customers. So, you know, the data is so important. I was at a huge seminar and the CEO of Domino's came on and he said, do you think we sell our revenue stream is most affected by, what do you think? Do you think it's pepperoni pizzas? Do you think it's soda? Do you think it's the chicken wings? And this is Domino's. And everybody was guessing. And he goes, it's data. He goes, we resell the data. He goes, data is the number one biggest enterprise business these days. And

I got to tell you, I'm obsessed with data. My girlfriend, this is crazy, Gary, and I think you'll enjoy this. My girlfriend yesterday, she filled out a form online. And it's just one of those online chat forms. And all of a sudden she gets a call because she was looking for lawyer leads. So she was looking at probate, different types of leads. And she got a call from a buddy we know. And she goes, how did you get my number? Well, it turns out the company that was selling lawyer leads was using a free online chat tool.

Well, guess what? The online chat tool owns the data of those forms. So they sold the data to this other company. So it's just crazy. You got to do your research. But you guys are huge data fans. I know you guys make calculated decisions. You're a huge company. Tell me how you guys use data and kind of bring it down to a smaller level of some of the beginning of your business cycle. So the initial

entry of a person in a conversation with you, or even earlier in terms of the number of people that you set out to contact with your advertising message and what that conversion rate is and what the conversations that are caused by that advertising and then the number of converted conversations to sale and all the way through the entire business process up to and including, you know, installation or execution of the product for the consumer and a measurement of satisfaction afterwards and a measurement of the referrals that might come from that transaction and from that customer that creates additional conversations. All of those are key touch points of possible data points. And I think what everyone should do, because we've done it as a business, is we measure what we call a weekly

scorecard. All of those key points, and I'm not measuring 500 key points, I'm measuring 10 or 20 that are the key ones that predict my business and measure its effectiveness. And I think everyone should do that for their business. What are the key points to you in how you do your business based on the product and service you provide, the consumers you contact, the outcome of the business and how important that is to you in terms of repeat business and referrals? And what those key points, if you just track them every single week, are going to tell you is what is the trend of your business and referrals and what those key points if you just track them every single week are going to tell you is what is the trend of your business is it healthy or unhealthy and are you is the marketing spend you're making and the investment you're making in service and training for your people

or services you provide to consumers are you are you driving your business up or is it flat or is it trending down? And data allows you to see that and therefore predict what the future is going to be and let you take corrective action before it becomes a chronic problem. And that's the importance of data. That's how we use it in our business. I love that. I preach that. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to put on this podcast too, is the top 15 things in my business. And it's, it goes from customer satisfaction levels to conversion rate, to average ticket, to booking rates. And I micro level this down to CSRs and that's how we manage our people.

They know we manage through data. You know, it reminds me, Steve Jobs, when he was alive and he was just an amazing man, what he used to do is he used to have these critical roles posted on a board. And what he would do is he'd tell everybody at Apple at the end of the year, if you're not in the top 80 percentile, basically we're gonna have to let you go. So he was always recycling people and top grading.

But the thing was is the people knew, they could change that. They knew what they had to do the fourth quarter to get above that bottom 20 percent. And data should dictate where you take your business. And unfortunately, most people don't use data in the right ways. But I'll tell you, we're going to post on here the key elements of my business. And you guys should start thinking about this stuff out there because it's so important.

If a company as big as Money Mailer is doing this, obviously we got to start thinking like a big company. We're never going to be a big company. So that's amazing advice. You know, I'm going to finish up. I got two more questions for you. So home service entrepreneurs struggle with outsourcing. You know, I know I've always wanted to do things in house and I know that you guys are a huge company and you've decided at one point that printing just didn't make sense. You guys don't have to be a jack of all trades. You need to be a master of direct mail and you need to know how to run your business. And at what point did you go through and tell me your process of deciding what's going to be outsourced and what should we do in-house. And how do you create the right systems and processes to do that?

Yeah, I think that over the many years and over the many industries and companies I've run, it is so easy as you run a business to say to yourself, I can do almost anything. So what do I mean by that? Well, you know, I could enter an entirely new industry if I created a new method for providing a service to a consumer. And if I set up a sales organization and, you know, a service organization and so forth. And on paper and in concept, that sounds really easy. The truth is that every single business, every single notion of a business model requires certain core strengths in a business. And the reality is that if you are truly honest about the business you currently run, you

already have a series of core strengths that make your business successful. You should identify those and know those. Then if you're thinking about bringing something in-house, make sure that your core strengths play to those same new functions, new businesses, whatever. And if they don't, don't kid yourself to say that you're going to create this new core strength. So many businesses say they're going to, and they end up failing miserably. And you really have to just do the things you do and do the things that you do well and focus on those.

Don't allow yourself to think that you're going to be a jack-of-all-trades or that you're capable of doing any business of any kind. The reality is businesses, that's not what makes businesses succeed. All of you, your listeners have a successful business. They have a successful business because of their people or their knowledge or their skills or their equipment or their particular experience. And use those experiences on the things that you can execute well. I would just give people advice that says, don't think that you're going to create a new core strength and value in your business that is much longer term and much, much harder than you

think. And the world of CEOs that I've lived in for all these years is littered with CEOs that bought a business because they said they could become good at providing some new business. And in reality, they found out it didn't. And those acquisitions end up being sold off again or shut down or whatever. And that's just my advice is make the decisions on who you are and what you're good at. And then let that be your guide as to what you do and don't do. That really is well said. I mean, it hits home.

I thought I could be a jack of all trades. I started investing in real estate and I realized that's a full-time job and it takes experience. And I started, I've done everything. I've tried all these different things and this is an earlier in my career. And guess what? At the end of the day, when people ask me, Tommy, I want to plan, hope for the best plan for the worst. What's a safe investment? And I said, what's a safer investment than you? You can control your own destiny. And if you're not good at something

like me, I struggle with time management organization. So I have an amazing secretary that keeps me on track on everything. She makes my calendar. She builds time. She builds buffer time because she knows, obviously, I always enjoy socializing. So I go late on a lot of things. So she builds that buffer and allows me to be me. But what I've learned is focus on my strengths. A lot of people say I'm working on my weaknesses. I want to get better at this. But I'm like in business, focus on what you do really, really well. I'm not a big numbers guy. So I have one of the best controllers that I think in the state of Arizona. He's loyal. He's honest. He reads every contract for me. And then I do the signing and he tells me if the loan doesn't look right that we're using to grow or whatnot. But that's excellent advice, Gary. Listen, I want to close up with one last

thing because I always ask the people that I have on the podcast is, you know, it's home service entrepreneurs on here. If you had to give them one last piece of advice, what would it be? And give me a good book that you would really like a lot and tell me why you like it and why our readers should pick it up. Well, I guess my advice would be, you know, again, identify what you do best and just do it the best you can. Remember the value of your people and your team, and that team should enjoy the success. They should understand the journey they're on and involve them in understanding that journey. Involve them in understanding the success or failures. Don't be afraid to admit something has not worked and share it with your people.

They can be the best solution as to not worked and share it with your people. It can be the best solution as to how you overcome an issue or a problem. I advise people to just be sure to use their people and view what they do every single day as a people business. I have a whole host of books. I think I just read one that was called The Five Myths of Team Effectiveness. I would advise that as a book that I would read. And I think business is a fun venture, and I would advise people to, last and foremost, always have a sense of humor and enjoy what you do. You know, Gary, I really, really appreciate you being on.

I know you're a really, really busy man, and I can't tell you enough how much this means to me and the listeners. And I've learned a lot, and hopefully we can get you back on in six months. We're going to work on at least giving people a portal on thehomeserviceexpert.com to learn more about Money Mailer, find out how to get involved. And I promise you guys, this stuff really works. If you build the ad correctly, and you really take the time to learn how the process works, which we're going to give you all the details and insight, it will work for you. So thanks again, Gary.

We really appreciate it. I hope you have a great day and I hope you have a great weekend coming up. Thanks, Tommy. Same to you. And I've enjoyed it. Thanks a lot. All right, Gary. Take it easy.

Take care. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. This was the Home Service Expert podcast. Remember to subscribe to my show so that you're the first one to know when there's a new episode. If you're a subscriber, awesome. Leave us a review and tell us what you like and, most importantly, what you don't like so we can continue to improve the show. And if you're ready to scale your business like I did, check out my free mini course right now at homeserviceexpert.com

forward slash mini course. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week.