The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Market During Times Of Crisis

Episode Date: April 17, 2020

Four world-class marketing experts discussed how home service businesses can approach their marketing to not only survive but also thrive during these challenging times. Lorne Sederoff is the director of channel development at Search Kings. He is a certified expert at anything and everything there is to do about Google for marketing and lead generation, from its algorithms to its features. Dennis Yu is a world-renowned expert and speaker on Facebook marketing. He is the founder and CEO of BlitzMetrics, a social media analytics firm in Portland that provides clients such as MTV, Nickelodeon, and Dominos Pizza with analytics and strategy. Brian Slutsky is the owner and founder of ThinkTank Media & Marketing. He is a seasoned media and marketing specialist who, with decades of industry experience, provides clients with strategic planning, inspirational creative and measurable results. Allan Dib is the bestselling author of “The 1-Page Marketing Plan.” A seasoned entrepreneur, he reaches out and works with people across the globe as a business coach and consultant, applying years of experience in helping businesses grow with technology and strategic action.  In this episode, we talked about marketing strategy, customer relationships, digital marketing...

One of the examples that came up was in the depression when Post and Kellogg were the two big companies for cereal and home packaging. And Post decided to hunker down. They were the big name in town. They hunkered down and said, let's stop our advertising. Kellogg's went with a different approach and they pushed. And Post has never caught Kellogg's sense. We take that type of messaging of be visible because when things go back to normal, you're going to want to be recognized as the community solution. 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. I got Mr. Lorne with me and we're ready to kick some butt here. So I got some questions for you, Lorne, please just introduce yourself, talk about what your company does, everything you do with Google. Sure. Thanks for having me, Tommy. I'm Lauren Setterhoff. I am director of channel development at Search Kings. Search Kings is a digital marketing company,

primarily small medium sized businesses and about 70% home services. So most of our, we have about 3,200 customers. The majority of them are living in the home services space. So your garage door, your pest control, roofers, HVAC plumbing, those guys. Small businesses, usually one to 20 trucks for the most part. And we work with them on their digital marketing, whether it's leads or branding in that space. So right now, you know, what's going on. We've got this pandemic, obviously it's affecting a lot of businesses. The government's coming in and throwing a couple trillion dollars at it.

You called me up the other day and you had a lot to say about Google Local Services. Can you dive into that a little bit? Sure. So based on our customer base is where we pull our data from. 40% increase in lead volume over a two week period that basically coincided with the first, you know, couple weeks of COVID-19 outbreak across the US. So we started crunching at those numbers because we had to make sure we were right, talking to a lot of our clients to see what's going on and a lot of repair work, a lot of service work that, you know, people have been putting off for a little while. Now everyone's in their homes. So that's what

we're seeing. And we're working with, you know, our clients and just to kind of get a sense of can they handle the volume? And if not, let's turn off, let's slow down. But if they can handle it, there's an opportunity here to increase a little bit of share of market because obviously a lot of advertisers are not still advertising. So, you know, there's a window here. We're seeing cost per clicks go down in the Google PPC space and in the Google local space, leads are up. So if they can take the leads, we're telling them, we're giving them the insight to, you know, go full throttle if they can. So, you know, I know a lot of areas. I just talked to my cousin in Michigan. He's on really tight lockdown. And I guess the question

I have is there's essential versus non-essential that I'm sure you're familiar with. What's going on with some of those non-essential businesses at this point? So there's niche opportunities there. You know, an example would be indoor air quality. So do you fall into an essential? Does a home need to really get their ducts cleaned right now or to have a humidifier installed? The companies are doing it from what we've seen. So they're doing well. You know, that's an example. The non-essentials that are in a completely different vein, your chiropractor, your kitchen renovator, a lot of them are, I would say, pausing their PPC ads, but picking up their remarketing and their display marketing across the network just to move their advertising

dollars into branding instead of leads right now if they can't serve homes. Give me some good examples of marketing messages for right now. One of the things we're doing is we're saying all over TV and on our website that we're practicing social distancing and all that. But you work with hundreds of companies. Tell me what you see working well out there. So first of all, everyone's website that we're working with, we really encourage them to promote

a relevant current COVID-19 message right on their website. So it's very clear that the company has protocols in place. So we see those with a lot of our clients. And then there's also the messaging around those banners that are following people around and letting people know you're open, you're clean, and that you're ensuring safety. And in the past, most of the marketing messages would be about price value or about Google reviews or the fact that there's a financing deal available. Right now, the message that a lot of our clients are going with and we're whipping up banners for them as we go is safe, open, clean.

And so that's a big area of marketing that we're pushing right now based on our customers' feedback to us. Because the reality, Tommy, is no one's commuting to work right now. So radio advertising is, for a lot of guys, they're pausing those accounts. And for billboards on the side of the highway, what are you going to do? I mean, who's driving down the side of the highway right now? Everyone's sitting on their couch, right?

So TV makes sense as well does, you know, display through YouTube and Google. So social media is working well right now and TV is working really well. I've seen a little downturn, about 20% for my PPC, but I'm still staying busy as a garage door company. Whereas the gutter company, my buddy in Minnesota called me, said he's dead right now. Obviously he can't go out. So these non-essential versus essential, why is it important right now to do marketing? The example that I've been told, we had a webinar earlier today, and I'll give you a quick example of what I was told on that. We had a panel of home service

business owners that were talking about protective equipment, financing they're getting from their suppliers, the banks, and the loans that they're getting. And we could talk about all that. But one of the examples that came up was in the Depression, when Post and Kellogg were the two big companies for cereal and home packaging. And Post decided to hunker down. They were the big name in town. They hunkered down and said, let's stop our advertising. Kellogg's went with a different approach and they pushed and post has never caught Kellogg's sense. We take that type of messaging of be visible because when things go back to normal, you're going to want to be recognized as the community solution. And it's, it's inexpensive, right? So, you know, banners, if you, I mean, Tommy,

you must see our banners follow you around all over the place. And the idea there is not a lot of people are clicking on them. So if they don't click on the banner, you're getting free eyeballs. And at this point, free or inexpensive is, is what most of our clients need right now. So that's why I would say that the display network makes sense. So give me some examples that you've seen lately of bad, of not good examples of marketing that you might network makes sense. So give me some examples that you've seen lately of bad, of not good examples of marketing that you might see out there. I would say not changing their plan, right? Like if you still have your banner out there that says, you know, an example I'll give you that we work with, we have a lot of clients who

are constantly hiring. Okay. They're always hiring and they need to hire. Well, right now really isn't a time to hire. They may be down on their service appointments because if it's non-essential, customers are saying, we don't need maintenance right now or service. So you probably aren't in a position where you're hiring. That would be one of those messages that you want to pull back, save those dollars that you would put into a hiring campaign until you're back to full throttle or, you know, warranty work. I would say financing is super important if it's available and the clean, clean, open, healthy.

Okay. So what I've noticed is a lot of people, they cut their marketing before they cut their staff, before they trim the fat. Sure. And I think that that's a huge mistake. I think that now is the best time ever, but the government's come up with a stimulus for us to keep employees, but there's a little bit of trick behind that. And I'm not saying, look, there's great people that I had to lay off. I'm not saying, look, there's great people that I had to lay off. I'm not saying that every single person or that people are bad because that's just not true. But I'm saying that you kind of got to calibrate and rate everybody one out of 10.

And can you live without them right now? Then you've got till June to hire them back or possibly if you had a few misfits, replace them with better people. How much have you done other research of the U.S. stimulus? Only anecdotally, only talking to our clients. What we do is we ask them, have they applied yet? And what the delay has been. Pretty much what we've heard, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Florida, comes to mind. We've applied.

We've been confirmed that we are in queue, that it's been accepted, but the money hasn't come yet. So you move into, well, do you furlough your staff? Do you drop to four day work weeks? You know, do you trim the fat as you said? So we're hearing all different approaches and we're just trying to share ideas and that's, you know, being on here is great. Sharing ideas is what we need right now. You know, build a community of people supporting each other. It's not a time of knock your competition down. It's more, how can you help the people that you work with? Yeah. So I, I remember one time we had a guy had a real problem with one of his kids and everybody donated their PTO. They each donated like two days.

So we paid them out that and it was really a cumulative effort altogether. So I think that that goes a long way. I remember when Google local services kind of just first came out, they started out in San Francisco. You guys were on the leading edge of that over at search Kings. How much does Google local services and go into Pinkerton and how you get through that and how you add it to your GMB. Can you just talk about the fundamentals of Google Local Services and how it affects everything in the background checks and all that?

Sure. So real quick, Google created this Google verified directory called Google Guaranteed Companies, 2016 or so. We jumped in in 2017 and have worked really closely with Google and with our clients. So essentially, a home service company needs to get approved in order to earn the top of page. Top of page is earned by proving you have a license, you have insurance, and that your business owner, and in some business categories, your field workers, including garage, you have your field workers, but in roofing, for example, you don't. So the business owner and the field workers have to get checked by Pinkerton or Evident, which is our third-party companies that complete the checks. They basically just give Google a thumbs up or a thumbs down on the company to let them know if the company failed or passed. So business owners are not sharing their social

security numbers and their home addresses and dates of birth with Google. They're sharing with these background check companies. So once companies get approved, if you do it yourself and you go through the front door, for the most part, we hear of some companies who get it done within a month, but most a lot, lot longer. So we've created a process of streamlining that with our staff. We have a staff of 12 dedicated just to Google local services, onboarding clients, getting them approved. And then you're essentially have the opportunity for top ofpage placement with this flat lead price in every city. And Tommy, you were on as early as possible. The lead price in Google Local Services is typically significantly better, even 50% the cost of a PPC lead.

The challenge in Google Local Services is in mid-size markets and large markets, there's a lot of competition. So ranking in Google Local Services has been our work for the last year. It's really trying to mine the data and figure out how can our clients rank higher. Basically, in a nutshell, there's a few factors. One is location. The closest company has the best shot, closest company to the searcher, which brings us to Google My Business. So every Google My Business location that you have can be approved for a Google Local Services account. So if you're in Tempe, you can have a Tempe GMB, and then a Tempe GMB or Google My Business can then be approved for Google local services. So location is a huge factor.

Then frequency of reviews, which we can get to what Google is up to right now, but review frequency and responsiveness to phone calls. So the way you can think of it is if Google is going to give you a lead, are you going to answer the phone? And then are you going to make the customer happy? And they're basically rewarding companies for getting into the program early and then for staying on top of the account and answering calls. So in mid-markets, there might be five companies in your individual home service vertical. And in a place like Phoenix, as you know, there could be 50, 75 Google guaranteed companies. So as far as Google local services in comparison to Google My Business leads, obviously that depends on citation sites, reviews, all kinds of custom mapping,

depending on the city. But what have you seen as far as where's the volume or a little bit of both, or are they tied or what would you say overall? Well, Google My Business is its own entity, right? Those are free leads. The challenge there, and I have no metrics for you on frequency of leads coming in. I would say for all your listeners that the text functionality that's available in Google My Business should be turned on. They should manage their hours of operations and make sure it's set up. But Google My Business is really like the white pages of the phone book, right? It's just a listing. You're available. If someone's in close proximity, you have a chance of showing up in the GMB

listing. You're not going to be able to outrank someone there. Google's not giving away map space for free. They're giving the space to people who pay. So the difference, Google My Business, you shouldn't pay anyone. And listen, this is just my opinion, and we're just trying to give best advice. Google My Business is something that a home service company can manage themselves. They can go in. They can turn on their texting. As long as they have access to it, it's a pretty easy dashboard to use.

And those leads are free. So hands down, that's your best lead possible. But that means the company is either within a few miles of you or they've looked for you by company name, in which case your branding has worked. And when Google Log Local Services came out, I was shocked at how affordable it is. It's way cheaper than pay-per-click. It's pretty much a guaranteed lead.

What is your take on that? They're just trying to get everybody in and then they're going to raise prices? Or what's your thought process on the Google Local Services? Yeah, for starters, I think that they're trying to keep people on the Google page as opposed to, for starters, I think that they're trying to keep people on the Google page as opposed to sending people through aggregators or even to websites, right? This is a way to keep customers on Google because they're trusted. So that's one. Two, will the prices go up?

You know, you've got to believe they would. And I don't have any information on that currently. Pay-per-click is an auction. So that technology is already built, right? Does Google Local Services go in that direction? Some people would say, sure. Others would say, is $25 on Google Local Services. It's, depending on the season, it could be $300 in pay-per-click. How long is Google going to put themselves in that position? I don't know. But I think the idea here is Angie's List, HomeAdvisor, Yelps, we're starting to earn some home services traffic, and now Google can't monetize that. So here's a way for them to stay in top of page and be the directory of choice.

We have not seen a cap in any city, which is noteworthy. Like in Dallas, you might have 80 Google guaranteed plumbing companies and they have not capped it. So Google has let us know they have not capped any city. But we do have visibility as an aside, and this is for your clients, into which cities have fewer contractors than others, actually, like a heat map. And on that heat map, we can show our clients, this is a city. If you have a GMB and a location there, this is a good city for you to target. Ooh, I didn't know that you could do heat maps for GLS. I got a heat map for you, my man. Oh, that's amazing. Yes. It's super powerful because my company is expanding and what cities, what I want to make my headquarters and my Google, my business page. So I know these acronyms sometimes lose people, PPC, GMB, DLS. But as we go through it, people start catching on. And a lot of people

already know about this stuff. So it sounds like to me, you're managing our Google Local Services. You guys are amazing at everything you do. I love your business model too, because on the PPC, you don't charge a percentage of the spend, which I've always thought was crazy. Wait a minute. The more money you spend, the more you get paid. So you're incentivized. Yeah. Much of my money is possible. Yeah. That's a broken system, right? There's a conflict of interest there fundamentally in a PPC campaign. It has to be, how do we spend less? Oh yeah. How do I get my quality score up?

Let's take a deep dive because you're the Google expert. I want to spend as much time on Google. I've got three other guests. I've got the social media, the local advertiser who's amazing, and Alan Dibb who's awesome that wrote the one-page marketing plan. Let me ask you a little bit. I'm pretty familiar with quality score, click-through rates, time on page, activity on your page. Talk to me a little bit about how you could save people money on their pay-per-click. So first of all, your ad copy has got to be relevant.

It's got to be changing, right? You've got to be talking about something that your audience wants. Yesterday, talking to a client, he's in the pest control industry. And it's time for him to modify his message in his ad copy because it's about to be tick season. So what's his price, right? What's he willing to come out to a house for and broadcast that. Broadcast it on your ad copy, broadcast it in your display banners, right? For your remarketing and your display and get your message clarified. Once a business owner gets their message clarified, now our work is can the landing page or their website speak to that exact message, right? So if you're, you know, the example,

it's okay to use a pest example maybe, and that his price for ticks service is 50 bucks. Well, that's very competitive. So if you then click on his ad and you go to his website, and his website is talking about all his different services, not a great experience. Direct that ad copy and then, therefore, the click through to a landing page within the website that speaks to exactly what the person was searching for, and then a very tight call to action. Chat, web form, phone call, right? Because now we're going to see a higher

conversion rate. And if you have a good website, you should convert in that 10 to 15% range rather than in the three to 2% range. That's, you know, just if you use a standard numbers. Okay. So the better the website experience for the customer, the better chance you have to bring your cost per conversion down. And then lastly is what happens when that phone rings? Make sure it's recorded. If you're going to advertise and you want the phone to ring, you really should find the time to have someone listen to those calls. Because we can put great ad copy, you can have a great landing page that speaks to exactly what the customer is looking for, and then it goes to voicemail. And the whole system breaks down, right?

So one of the key things we do when we work with someone is say, okay, what happens after we've done our job? Because if we can't produce a profitable ROI, then this doesn't work because we don't have contracts, right? So it's got to be that you can make money on these good leads. And Tommy, I've listened to your guys' calls. It's a perfect example. It takes about four seconds before your CSRs are saying, what is your zip code? Right. So that we know that we can serve you. That's gold. Right. I will tell you that that's not the standard. So that's that's how we see the journey is it's really a partnership. We got to do our part at those conversion rates and add copy.

And then you guys got to do your part answering those phones and be hungry for the clothes. Right. Which your guys on the phone are in that top 5%. I'll tell you out of our 3,200 customers, you're right there. Yeah. You know, I'll tell you this is we've, we're working from home now, my, all my CSRs and because of our performance pay and because we use service Titan, which uses dial pad, which makes it so easy to use, we're absolutely murdering it. It's fun. It's fun to know everybody can work from home. I was like, man, everybody's going to work from home. What's this going to look like? I wasn't pissed about it. It was uncertainty. And now I'm like, this is awesome because this is another notch in my belt I could put out there to say, look, if you want to work from home,

if you're this great person, and what's cool about that to me is we can work anywhere in the world and still have a great call center. Before I thought we need to have them together, we need to have the meetings, but the Zoom meeting right now, we're learning how to be very, very resourceful

through this whole pandemic. So there's one other thing that I want to go back to on the GLS, because I think you told me originally to cap out. It might be, I'll spend $100,000 a day, but you'll never get that budget eaten up. Does that go into the algorithm at all of your budget? Yeah, we don't have proof of that at all. We talk in things we can prove. I'll tell you this. The responsiveness rating from what we see in our data is the most, and we get 100,000 leads or so, maybe even more every week.

So what we see is responsiveness data is the number one ranking factor from what we can see. Reviews is second. Budget does not have a correlation from what we can see. Reviews is second. Budget does not have a correlation from what we can see. And we've mined the data to see. So budget, I wouldn't get hung up on. Obviously, you want to be north of $1,000 because you want to give Google a message that you want to play and the chance that your ad does turn off if you hit your budget. So some clients call us and say, why did my ad turn off? Well, because you had a $300 budget and you got your eight leads and you're done. So the only factor that I don't have the data on, but that I believe is huge is the location.

Because we just see that anecdotally, but I can't prove it with data yet. We are working on, and you know, just so you know where we're at, we're a few months away from having technology to take GLS to the next level with ranking calls and helping the advertiser with that. Because some of those calls are nonsense, not a large volume compared to other lead sources, but there are some that you could dispute if you had the time. So we're working with some technology right now and developing it that we'll share with you, Tommy, that it's going to continue to put us as the GLS expert in North America, hands down. And so that's what we're working on next. The only thing I'll

say going back, because I think you brought up the work from home and how your office has changed. I just want to bring up another example of that. Today on our call, we were talking about what activity or change that you introduced during COVID-19 is going to stay with you after and personal protective equipment is through the roof, right? It just helps or the virtual ride along for managers to support their technicians instead of going with them now to be on Zoom or on FaceTime. So there's a silver lining here. We're trying to find it.

We're trying to help our clients stay afloat, keep their guys employed, but we're also gathering a ton of best practice so that people learn from this, that there's some things here that we can do. That's super cool. There's a lot of stuff going on out there right now and a lot of uncertainty. I got to tell you, from my experience, what I could control has been amazing.

Obviously, this is horrible for the economy, for Americans, but I can't control what's out of my control. So what I could do is run my business and not go hide under a tree and become a leader and communicate. Listen, I got to finish up. So I want to give you the last minute or two to go ahead and tell us just some closing thoughts. Yeah. I'm sending you a link to a webinar that we ran. We are seeing this as time to build community straight up. This isn't a time to talk to a guy about, can you increase your budget, your strategy? This is a time about saying, here's some ideas that we heard from colleagues.

I can put you in touch with someone. We can help each other. So that's number one. This is a time for home service industry to learn from each other. And because we have 3,000 plus customers, we're seeing ourselves as an important part of that. And not just saying good luck and call us back, but rather, you know, like today we had a panel of four experts. So we want to share that with over 500 people watching

saying like, what are you doing about protective equipment? What are you doing about furloughing? So that's one. Number two is if you're going to advertise, make sure that it makes sense and that you have a program that you can shift seasonally, weekly, change your message, be active. And our model is every single business owner needs to make money because they've got to feed their family. We don't deal with large corporations. That's not our client. Our client is the guy who's going home to his dinner table. So we need to know that if he's spending $500, $300, or $3,000, that it makes sense. So that's what we got. And we're thrilled to always work with you, Tommy, and watch you grow and evolve. Lauren, I got to tell you, you're a stand-up guy, great company, Search Kings. And I love that you guys are cutting edge.

And you've got a lot of insight. How many clients do you have? About 3,200. Yes. Well, congratulations. We're going to get through this thing. I see we're on the downhill slope of this thing. And I hope what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

That's what I say. So I appreciate you coming on. And I got a lot of great notes makes you stronger. That's what I say. So I appreciate you coming on. And I got a lot of great notes out of this. Stay safe, Tommy. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Okay, bye.

Dennis, you there? Hey, what's up, Tommy? Hey, brother. All right. All right. Dennis is an amazing guy. He's already been on the podcast. And I think you guys will get a lot out of this.

We got four people coming on. This will be two out of the four. How is this pandemic treating you? You're always giving great advice all over the internet. You're a world-renowned speaker. You're the king of social media. Name five of the big companies you've done social media for. Nike, Golden State Warriors, Rosetta Stone, Red Bull, and A1 Garage.

All right. So let's talk a little bit right now. I want to dive into a few things. So first of all, you've been giving great advice. You know, you said you booked a lot of tickets recently through Southwest. Let's go through your top three pieces of advice right now during these times. Number one, if you do this, it'll be incredible for you. Reply with video. So you've got my phone here and pull out your phone. I want to see your home screen. And you'll see that I'll go to my Gmail app. And this is something that's right here. You might've never noticed it. Go to your mail and you can see that I'll go to my Gmail app. And this is something that's right here. You might've never noticed it. Go to your mail.

And you can see that people are sending me emails. And instead of having people go to landing pages, you can see literally this message came in just now, one minute ago. And this says, this guy wants to learn how to do digital marketing, right? He wants our training because we're giving out our training right now.

His name is Jonathan Gaimon. So I'm going to hit reply. And you should do this too. Once you see me do this, I hit reply. I hit attachment. I'm replying to this guy. Now I'd normally text a little reply and text, but instead I'm going to hit the camera here. And now it's on the camera. I'm flipping it. So it's on me on video. And I'll say, Jonathan, man, I would love to see you take this time to be able to grow your business and beef up your digital marketing skills. Tell me, how did you hear about us? And then I've just made a video and I've used video. Now it's attaching it in the bottom there. You see in the bottom, it's attaching. And now I can press send. And now I've just replied with the video.

Okay. See how easy that is. Now I'll go to my LinkedIn and I've got these messages. Now people have been sending me messages, right? And here's somebody, Ben. He says, Dennis, I followed your three-part foundational funnel on digital marketing. It was super so simple. Look, this just came in. Came in a few minutes ago.

I can't make this up. And he's not using Facebook ads. Wish I had that knowledge. And then I'm going to reply. I could reply. If I hit this with the message, I got the keyboard. I can reply. That's what 99% of you guys would do.

Anyone who is trying to drive more business, whatever kind of company you have, hit this thing here. And now I'm going to use video. I'm going to reply with video. Now I'm back to the video camera. And then I'll say, Ben, thank you so much. We're here with my buddy, Tommy Mello. You see him on the screen and our other folks. And we're teaching folks how to reply with video. And I'm glad that you've enjoyed our digital marketing classes. And I'm flipping the camera. So now you can see me. And I think when you make these videos, you'll find how powerful Facebook is. But you got to put in the right ingredients. It's not the recipe so much as having the right ingredients. You got to start with good meat, good quality ingredients, which

is video. So I made this video here just now. and I'm pressing send. And now I've replied to this guy in a video. I can do the same thing here on Facebook. So Tommy, you want to tell a story of something that happened, something interesting or something you're grateful for? Just one little moment, one specific thing. You know, right now I'm very, very grateful that every single person I work with has stepped up to the table more than you can ever imagine. This is the time of the strongest week, the cream rise to the top, you sink or swim. And I'm telling you, I've got the best group in the world that I work with that are rising to the top and making it. We're continuing to work. Even a lot of us from home,

I'm at work right now, but it's been amazing. And I'm grateful for every person I work with. So there it is. So I just captured you saying that, how grateful you are and how this is a time to basically double down. And this is where, unfortunately, the rich get richer because they realize that the cost of the traffic on digital is half of what it was before because everyone's online and there's not as many people advertising. So now I'm tagging you in this story. So now I've tagged you in the story. Here it is. It's a Facebook story. And now I'm sharing it to my story. Now I can boost that as well. I can share it to my page. I've got my page and I have my profile here, right? Now I'm going to go to Instagram. And what's a piece of hope that you can give people? A piece of hope. Here we go. A piece of advice.

You know, I was very, very worried about the uncertainty coming out of this virus, but I will say that the government has stepped up with $2.2 trillion and they've given us an opportunity to not only keep our employees, but accelerate some of their development. And we found out that we could work from home, which I never thought possible. It's another carrot that I could give them, which is amazing. So now we can do PTO insurance and work from home. And I'm so excited about that. Fantastic. 24 seconds. And there it is. I've got your video and I'm hitting next. I'm taking the video that you just made. We were talking about working from home and what the opportunity is and how awesome your team is. I could choose a filter. I'm on. I'm just going to hit next. Now here's the post. Now watch what I'm going to do here. I'm going to say, Tommy, actually, I'm going to tag you, say Tommy Mello is a leader we all need to hear from. And then I'll say something that's inspirational, stepping up in a crisis.

Okay. So there it is. There's the post. Watch this. I hit okay. Now, when I hit share, I'm sharing to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at the same time because I've connected these other accounts. So now I've shared it. There it is.

It's posting. So now I can go to Facebook and I go to my page and I could see that that post is there. And I can go to Twitter and see that that's there. But not only is it there, but I can boost that post because I've converted my Instagram personal profile to a business profile. So I can boost that post. I can boost it to anyone who is a home services contractor. I can boost it to anyone who's been to my website. I can boost it to anyone who works at CNN or the New York Times or whoever. I can boost it to anyone in any kind of targeting that is. Yeah. Number one, that's what you need to do. Create content and reply with video. Share that across different channels and watch what happens when people resonate with that. Okay. You want to see my LinkedIn just to show you, I'll show you my Facebook, LinkedIn. I'm going to share my screen because I'm a show don't tell kind of guy. I hear all these people

that have come out of the woodwork, these get rich quick people that are just saying all kinds of nonsense. Now I'm on my LinkedIn. So I think I've gotten like 60 connection requests just in the last two hours because I just did a webinar prior to this one. And I'll accept them as long as they're not obviously going to be spammy. And now I'm going to go to my notifications. Now look at these notifications. So I'm making these posts just like you saw that I made one with Tommy. In fact, let's go to Instagram. Let's see if I can find that post I just made. There it is. See that? Here's the post. See?

I literally should, you can't tell me you're too busy. This is easy to do. Okay. So anyway, let's look at these notifications on LinkedIn. So here, I made a post last night, and I posted a screenshot of how I made $6.50 yesterday. And that's because we're giving away all our courses for free to anyone who asks for them. And I said, the stimulus money, that's great, but it's not going to solve the problem. The way we solve it for local businesses is that we train up people fundamentally in how to use digital because the shift we have is a permanent change. So the fact that you're working from home now, Tommy, is something we're going to do more of. Even when things, maybe they come back to normal in three months or however long, when there's a cure, what have you, the shift to digital is not a

shift back. It is a permanent shift, right? So now all these people are liking, commenting, and sharing. Like this one's a nurse. And these other people are like, I need a job. These other people are like, my business has got hammered. And here they're all resonating with this and I'm replying back to them. And I can take the same post. I'm going to copy this, this post that I made yesterday, and it's resonated well on LinkedIn. Now I'm coming to Facebook. By the way, you're never going to see people do this. Oh, look, there's my buddy Grant Cardone. Oh, okay.

Let's see here. I'm just pasting this here. There it is, right? I literally took something that worked on LinkedIn, and now I'm pasting it to Facebook. And just to make it more fun, I'll say feeling. What's a feeling I might choose here, Tommy? Feeling excited. Excited. Okay. And by the way, if you do a post on the page, you want to do the same thing.

So feeling excited, there it is. Now it's uploading that story. Now let's go search for Dennis Yu and we'll see that I have a profile. This is the one, the blue check mark, if you can see that, right? 5,000 friends is the limit. Most of us, we have a profile, but I also have a public figure page, which is a company page, a business page. It's called Dennis Yu. And with that Instagram post we just made, that's going to show up here now. I'd love to talk to you about doing this whole thing for my employees. And right now I'm building, I should have called you on this, but I'm building some stuff into Hootsuite. So I'm having to pull out of service, tighten an auto post, the before and afters on Hootsuite. But I don't want to take up much time right now

because there's all this advice. We'll talk about that on a side note. Yeah I don't want to take up much time right now because there's all this advice. We'll talk about that on a side note. Yeah, I want you to finish your thoughts and then talk to me about the airline stuff and give me more ideas. Yeah, yeah. So it's literally this simple. The more employees and customers

and cheerleaders you have, have them be making 15-second videos and cross-posting. Collect that into your content library, however you store it. We use Google Sheets and have virtual assistants manage that. And then we share it and cross-post it. So notice what I did, what I was just starting to do was that little snippet of advice that you gave us that I posted across multiple channels, I was just starting to boost it. So I was going

to Instagram and I was hitting the boost post or promote post button. And I was doing it on Facebook too. So I can promote it to anyone that I want to be able to target. That way, any message, I can live on any channel and I can then boost it to any other network. And thus, any small business owner, their biggest issue right now is that they're just not even being seen. Their customers don't even know that they're open or how to reach them or that they deliver the food curbside

or that you can still call them on the phone for a consultation or that they can still send a tech out even though we're on lockdown. It's simply that. It's not about crazy software and engineering. It's literally point the phone at your face if you're the business owner

and tell people we are open and do it every day. Don't do it just, oh, I did it three weeks ago. You don't take a poop only once every three weeks. You poop every day, right? If you're normal. So do that and teach your people to do that. And then the digital marketing techniques that we've known before work even better. Like the dollar a day technique on Facebook works even better because of the short vertical videos. The cost of traffic is half of what it was a month ago. So if you're able to, double down because this is how you get ahead when everyone else is struggling. I feel bad for everyone hurting, but we work with some folks who are doing pretty well and they are mopping up. Their business is growing.

Not that we want to boast about that because it sounds tone deaf, but with every problem is an opportunity, right? Entrepreneurs know that. This is when you start your business. This is when you grow your business. Right now, it's the best time. Oh, I'm taking market share right now, brother. And you know what? We're doing it together. You've got this whole thing. Tell me a little bit real quick about what Andrew's been working on in this Plumbing Now that you talk about pooping every day, you might as well talk about plumbing Well, there's different kinds of plumbing, if you will

And I guess you can't see my face But behind me, I have stacks and stacks Of toilet paper that I use As a prop, which I've gotten Some hate on Because they say I'm adding to the shortage Or whatever it is, or the fear I'm hoarding toilet paper, because I legitimately was afraid that people were going to buy all the

toilet paper and then I'd have to use a bidet or whatever. But anyway, plumbing is the first of six phases that you need to have no matter what kind of business you have, what's called the social amplification engine. It's social because we're collecting other people's feedback on what they're saying about us. It's amplification because we're doing what I just showed you. And it's an engine because it's repeatable and lives forever. So plumbing is the first of the six stages, which you cannot skip because it's the tracking. So how often has your business hit a home run, but you just didn't track it? Someone left you a good review and you didn't notice it. Or you had a certain campaign that worked on email or

LinkedIn and you weren't tuning it, or you weren't tracking how many calls were coming in, or your Google Analytics or tag manager wasn't firing properly with the remarketing pixels. You weren't using a universal pixel to fire your Google, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Quora pixels at the same time. If your data, your plumbing, your UTM parameters and Google Analytics aren't all being tracked together in the same time, right? If your data, you know, your plumbing, your UTM parameters and Google Analytics aren't all being tracked together in the same place, and this can include like your call tracking service, your point of sale, or any systems that you have.

If you're not tying together the data on all your systems, do you really have any idea of what's going on in your business? You could say that your goal is, I'm trying to drive a 7X ROAS. I need to get new leads at less than $23 or whatever you could have those numbers but if your tracking is not proper

then you might as well just I'd rather have no data than bad data and the fact that with Andrew and the other folks on our team we finally got this plumbing in place now when we look at the data and we start to the data and we start to make decisions and we tune campaigns, we're doing it against the overall picture. Because if our plumbing isn't correct, then we're just making bad decisions on bad data.

Or maybe we run some Facebook campaigns because we do like the, you had the mascot thing with the mouse and the scorpion sneaking under the garage. Let's just say that on Facebook by itself, it didn't work very well, but it caused more people to search on A1 or caused more people to come to YouTube or caused an effect outside of Facebook. Maybe we use Facebook as a place to distribute the content initially, but then we see it come back to us because the Facebook stuff being top of funnel then creates an assist where then more people search. It improves our search results because they saw that

our click-through rate's higher on our search ads, right? Well, if our plumbing's not in place, then we're not going to be able to track that follow-on and then we may just declare that something was a failure when actually it was positive ROI. So you kill a good child. You wouldn't want to do that, right? So plumbing is having that kind of visibility.

And most people are so eager to running campaigns and using tools, they forget that without getting fundamentals like plumbing in place, everything after that is just a domino if you don't do it correctly. So, you know, I'm super excited because a lot of people say social media doesn't work. It's just not an on-demand type thing. It's not the end of the funnel. But I think you've got some ways that we're going to get there. So I think I'm going to be your case study to the home service space. But in the process of that, I'm training my staff, especially my technicians, how to get before and afters, how to get testimonials, quick things, how to tag customers and stuff. So they share it on their wall. And I'm going to have you do is pay you to come build a crash course for all of my employees within my LMS, which is the learning management system.

But yeah, this stuff is golden. Then what I do on the bottom of everything is they get a call tracking number that they could simply put quick. Yeah. They get paid for every time that phone rings to that number. And it comes into my CSRs and my office staff, which are home now. Yeah. Now your employees are your marketing and your customers are your marketing and you're the figurehead. And then you're the figurehead for all

the other home service businesses that can follow the same process. No, it's genius. I think this is going to revolutionize our business because social media is just blowing up. I was just thinking about TikTok. But you got to hit your right demo. I don't need to hit 12-year-olds or 19-year-olds. Right. It's too early for you. I don't care about being on Instagram to get more likes for the heck of it. I want to drive sales. But I want to drive in a smart way where if I'm using Facebook at the top of the funnel, I want to see how it influences my email and Google and YouTube and other things. So if people are typing in Tommy Mello or typing in A1 or typing in Fix My Garage or whatever it is, my fixed bottom rubber, then I should be able to track if them seeing my stuff on social media has influenced my bottom of funnel activity. And I understand this stuff. Social media is, I can't wait because we're going to kill it. You said you think we can compete with Google. And do you think we can get more leads than Google gives us?

And I mean, more than, well, over half of my business comes from Google. It's going to be a matter of great taste, less filling. It's not that one is better than the other. It's that Facebook tends to be more top of funnel, and it will cause you to get more leads from Google at a lower cost per. Because Google, as you know, on the Google Ads side, uses something called quality score. Quality score is a measure of engagement, click-through rate, and negative feedback,

which is the same thing that Facebook has, which is what they call the relevance score. So if we can get a higher engagement rate because people have seen us before, in other words, by the time people come to Google us, it's a warm audience because they've seen us before somewhere, just vaguely like they remember seeing us somewhere, that's going to impact your quality score. Quality score is directly arithmetically calculated to influence your cost. So your quality index is your quality score times your bid. If you can double your quality score, the cost of your traffic is half. If you can triple your quality score, the cost of your

traffic is a third. So we have to do everything possible on the Google side to increase our quality score. And using social media so that we're not driving a cold touch straight to a call or a landing page visit is how we do that. And this is something we'll be able to measure by split testing. Half the people who are going to randomly are going to see our Facebook stuff, and half the people are not, and we're going to measure the difference, right? Because it's random selection, just like drug trials. Half the people get the sugar pill and half the people get the actual thing, right? Yeah, placebo. Okay.

Yeah, placebo effect, double blind. So kind of give us the synopsis of what we need to be doing today to take advantage of the current climate and what small businesses need to be thinking about. Number one, make tons of video. Reply with video, not with text. Any opportunity, reply with an email or words. Reply with video. Get all your people to reply with video. Gather all that video and share it. Put it in the library.

Highlight your wins. Highlight your customers. Highlight what's going on. Share what you're having for dinner. Help people know that you're still in business. Update your Google My Business with that information. Put videos in there. Allow people to set appointments, which is inside your Google My Business. Do that and you will be ahead of 99% of the other businesses out there. Allow people to set appointments, which is inside your Google My Business. Do that, and you will be ahead of 99% of the other businesses out there. If you want to be even further than that, like Tommy, start boosting these posts. You can hit that blue boost button on Instagram, on Facebook. You can boost on LinkedIn. And that way, people know that you're open for business. And this is where you're building market share when everyone else is crying and screaming. All right. Thank you for everything. Thanks for coming on today.

Thank you, Tommy. And everyone else, make your 15-second videos. Tag me or Tommy. Awesome. Thank you. Hey. You're three of four here. We had a really good panelist on before.

Brian, if you just want to explain our relationship, what you do, how we met, golf. Best place to meet and just then we'll dive into some questions. Sure, sure. So my name is Brian Spletsky and I am the owner and founder of Think Tank Media and Marketing. We're a what I like to call a boutique ad shop, meaning we've got under 10 full-time employees. We predominantly work in the three services that we really provide. One is creative. The other is advertising strategy, placement, media buying services. And the third part is sort of like semi-business consultant. And that's just by being around so many local, regional, small businesses, you end up doing more things than just pure advertising.

And that allows us to provide better recommendations for all of our clients. Tommy and I have been working together for probably about five-ish years. We met playing golf with another client of mine. So things just sort of happen. But our business focuses around the industries that we typically serve. We have a lot of events within our hopper, 16 different events every year. Events are in right now. So we've got a lot of home shows in California and Arizona. And through those relationships, we have a lot of home improvement companies

that we represent. And then a few nonprofits as well that take care of, which we can get into later, but that's right now with some of the ones that we serve. But you have a myriad of obstacles that we're all facing right now.

And every single client we have has both similar challenges that they're dealing with right now. And every single client we have has both similar challenges that they're dealing with, but there's also some nuances within different categories. So, you know, I think it's important to understand, and I love the title of your, of this chat today, you know, marketing during a crisis, because there's a big difference between during the crisis and just after the crisis. So for everybody that's going to be exposed to this, make sure that they understand that when you're going through it,

when the actions are actually happening, it's very different than when sort of the shock wears off a little bit. And then you have time to, all right, I already processed what's going on. Now I have time to think about it in a different way. And that opens up other opportunities for businesses like yourself to start moving forward. Yeah. So I gave you a call, I don't know,

maybe a month ago now and just said, we need to get on TV right away. Yeah. It was about two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. Yeah. We were doing some stuff in Moana. And I said, look, radio is not working. We know that during this time because no one's driving. And then you've got the billboards, which aren't getting much attention because no one's driving. And TV and social media seem to be the go-to right now. Yeah. All the, you know, when you look at the traditional mediums, television being one of them, ratings are up. I mean, there isn't a single local news station in any market that I work in that the

ratings aren't up right now. Cable news, everything is up right now from a video perspective. That content and local news, believe it or not, is just as popular as national news. A lot of people are fixed on the CNNs and the Fox News channels and things like that. But in addition to that, where are you getting the local news? Where are you finding out about the restrictions in your area, your town, your city, your state? So local news ratings have absolutely spiked and coincided with that. Advertising is soft right now. We have a number of clients that have been forced to pull off of March campaigns and April campaigns because of certain restrictions based on their categories or limitations in how they're able to conduct business.

While other businesses were still able to provide products and services, but maybe under new conditions and new terms, they're able to pick up the stock, pick up market share, pick up new audience. And even if they're not doing the same volume as before, they are doing a phenomenal job right now of branding themselves to a very captive audience. One of the reasons why we do news is typically the news viewer, news listener, same scenario, they're already in a mindset where they're open to receiving information.

So when you transition out of that newscast into that commercial break, you have an increased opportunity, your message having a better chance of resonating than if you were watching something else. So it's a good format for us. And you always want to try to find a silver lining. And we've all been making lemonade out of lemons for the last three, four weeks. You know, our glass is typically half full. So, you know, truthfully, this is an opportunity for a lot of businesses, especially small home improvement, home service industries, to make an impact for themselves and keep their crew going. And the hop hoppers full. And especially if you have businesses that are starting to receive, you probably covered this earlier, starting to receive payroll relief funds,

some of those loans, that really does open up the coffers for a lot of businesses to reinvest in the economy. And one of those ways to reinvest in the economy is to reinvest in yourself, pushing forward more additional advertising. Even if your cost of marketing dips for so slightly, as far as that percentage, you're going to get that back in the long run. So that's pretty much the way we're working right now. So, you know, me and you have talked quite a bit over the last week about one of our partners. I won't go into detail, but one of the largest mailers in the United States is not doing so well. And I don't think a lot of the mailers are because the way these programs work, if you're a national mailer, and I'll use Valpak, for example, because they're still doing good. But I know a lot of their clients are local restaurants buying three or four zones and the zones are 10,000 a piece. So you think about

a skating rink. They're not going to advertise if they're in, let's say, Tempe to Glendale, or they may have their certain seasonality. But my point is all these local, all these profits where they make their profit are dropped out. So right now the mailers are not, especially the conglomerate mailers that put in 15, 20, 30, 40 at a time. I don't know the future depending on how we come out of this. So we got to get resourceful, different types of campaigns. Sure. Yeah. And print medium has traditionally been a pretty direct response medium.

Right. You can use tracking numbers, vanity URLs, and it's paper, it's printed, it's got a little bit of lifespan there. So there's no doubt that it has its place, even in a digital landscape. Print still has its place. To your point about the direct mail pieces and a lot of the advertisers slipping out of that, that is extremely challenging for different publications. The national ones are a little bit different than the small mom-and-pop publications and the regional ones that literally have to pull the plug. Their April issue is gone. May is up in the air.

They're just trying to take the pulse and see where it is as things get closer, as they get closer to their deadlines. The national pubs were kind of forced to, some of them, continue with their mailers just because they already went to print before the sky started to fall. So of those ones that came out in early April, there was really no choice. Now it's debated right now whether some of those patients will be able to come back with some kind of a credit discount on the next run if you were one of those businesses that was affected and you literally physically couldn't be open to operate. So it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. But to your point, this is truly an opportunity to, all right, I can't do this right now. Now is an opportunity and make no mistake. Every

week, every day is a little bit different. But during this whole scenario, we've had opportunities to purchase at 15 cents on the dollar. No joke. So I mean, that's just really the situation when you have to keep in mind that a lot of the businesses that have advertised that have canceled, they didn't cancel with a two-week notice. They canceled as in, I got to be off the air tomorrow. This notification just came down from our governor. We got to be off air now because we can't conduct business the way we normally do. So there was a lot of empty holes within the television world, which created an opportunity for some, you know,

random discount pricing. Where's the market at today versus a couple of weeks ago? What we're seeing across several, several different markets, and currently we've been pricing about 15 to 20 different markets, we're seeing are at somewhere between 3030 on the dollar to about $0.55 on the dollar is what we're seeing right now. So it's still a pretty good opportunity. And when I'm referring to those pricing, I'm referring to the rest of the broadcast calendar month is byproduct of what the federal government is already doing with the SBA loans and some of the dollars that are already coming in. Some businesses have already been funded as of yesterday. some are starting to receive those funds, which is interesting because this year is a huge political year. Nobody would debate that. Typically, during a political year, television is an extremely challenging medium to be interacting with. You have tech money, candidate money, and it just blows everything up. I'll give you a quick example. Bloomberg, when he was relevant, which was,

I don't know, feels like two years ago, it was probably like a month ago. He was spending so much in every medium, even local radio, local spot radio on just a regular music station, which would normally sell, let's say, an afternoon drive spot for, say, $150, $200. He was paying $1,500 for that spot because the market was so tight. So putting that in perspective, all that went away. The candidates for the most part pulled off. They've all kind of gotten quiet right now, even local, local Senate races, things of that nature. For the most part, they've gotten very quiet.

You've seen a little bit of money here and there. I know in the state of Arizona here, there's been a couple of senators that have been, that way through mid-March. It started to fade away towards the end of March. So they've all kind of said, again, now is not the time. Realistically of investors that have already said, quoted literally millions of dollars just for their one station for the month of September and October. So by no means is this ad market going to dissolve for the rest of the foreseeable future. It's going to slowly start to tighten up, but we still have anywhere from two to four, maybe two to six weeks of what I would consider to be opportunities to take advantage of a soft advertising. Not only the rates down, the ratings are up. It's almost the perfect storm right there.

It's huge right now, what it's doing for us. I mean, I look at it right now and I'm like, we're getting really, really good results. I mean, I gotta tell you, just I'm not getting a million phone calls like I usually do, but the fact is we're getting the phone calls now to the business, not to my cell phone. Cause a lot of people do advertising. They're like, everybody must've seen it. I'm getting 10 phone calls. Sure. And I like that till you buy the car, you don't recognize everybody else owns it.

So a lot of people are going to call you when they see you on a billboard, but people, it's still not might be increasing your business per se, right? Absolutely. You know, and I think one of the things, and you did a good job of recognizing this, it's let's not have the same message. You know, let's talk about the message here for a moment. And the message that we put out before, you know, the plague happened was very different. And then during motions, it's an opportunity to promote business and to promote what we can do for our customers in this particular situation. So whereas before we would want to demonstrate our openness and our friendliness with customer handshake and those types of things, which typically would resonate really well, well,

we're not doing that. Now we're showing B-roll and visuals of the types of practicing safe social distancing and people wearing gloves and people wiping down their products before and after. So whatever we can do from that standpoint to let people know that we are adapting to the situation, but we're still open. We're still employing local people here. And that seems to be resonating really well. You know, the one thing you don't want to do is come across as desperate. You know, Tommy, you just said, well, hey, our calls aren't as, the volume isn't there as much as it was before, but you're still doing business. Well, the last thing you want to do is come across like the sky is falling and we're having a sale of pandemic proportions. You're not doing that because that's just reeks of desperation and nobody wants to respond to that.

Maybe a couple of predators you'll get from that standpoint, but that's not the message you want to put out there. But if you are letting people know that you are willing to work with them on their terms, that's a totally different play. And that seems to be resonating well with all the advertisers that we're working with right now that are still out there in front of the public. You know, I've been hearing that a lot lately. And I think that that's something that the audience needs to take from this is don't seem desperate. You know,

we were going to do a huge fire sale of just stuff we got to get rid of. But the fact is, it's like, if anything, I've been more desperate than my employee. And what I mean by that is you need to close every job you go out to. If you knock their door, you better get their business. On the phones, same thing. You better book that phone call. Right now, we need to work more than ever. Let's focus on closing.

I have a lady in Detroit. I've texted eight. I mean, I'm fighting for her. Just more importantly, to prove my team, I'm not letting it go. I'm going to screenshot that and put it on my next meeting. I'm bugging her. I'm like, look, I want your business. Right now, we want to keep our workers busy.

And that's the truth. But it's not like, please, we won't eat if you don't do this. But there's a difference. Like right now, we really want to earn your business. We think we've got a good company. We can provide you fast service, quality products at a price that you can afford. Let's do some business. Yeah.

I mean, and think in terms, there's a window and door company that we work with. And the reality is, if you're in that space, they're not doing multiple appointments right now. If you've got a quality product, and you've got a good team from the service installation standpoint, and you have a very fair price, they're not going to go somewhere else and shop around. They're pretty much only willing to work with one company in this particular moment in time. You're correct. You have that opportunity to increase your closing percentages if you do the right things and you make sure that you're listening to those customers and you're adhering to their needs but still adapting it so it still works for you on your end too.

It can't just be 100% just the customer. It still has to work for you. And most customers realize that you're not A1 Garage, the nonprofit company. You're not the food bank here to give things out with nothing in return. You're still a business. You're employing people. You're keeping the economy going. People realize that. They're not ignorant to that. So you should be okay. Don't tell anybody this, because this is kind of a secret, but yesterday we had one of our best days of the year.

It just shows more importantly that a team comes together and they work hard for each other. And it reminds me of the time I talked about this earlier, but we had one of our employees' sons had some major surgery and everybody chipped in a couple hours, sometimes people days of PTO. Well, that meant a lot. And it's nice to see when you can build a foundation from a leader perspective that everybody wants to follow and be part of. And when I had to lay off a few people around 15, actually, it was the hardest thing that I had to

do in a long time. And I said, you know, I cut my pay completely, but regardless of that, everybody called me afterwards and said, listen, we got your back, dude. This is something you communicated with us the whole time. You haven't like cut us in the dark. And a couple of people are like, is my job safe? I'm like, dude, you guys are fine. But literally if we did go straight up, close down the roads, we would have to make a lot more laughs. I'm sorry. But literally, if we did go straight up closed down the roads, we would have to make a lot more layoffs. I'm sorry. I mean, but they came in with a $2.2 trillion, which...

And another 2.3 today or something, but yeah. Well, another 2.3? Yeah, something like that. I don't know. I didn't get the gist of it. I've been moving around too much. And you're 100% correct. Not so much to get a little off subject on the advertising standpoint, but you're right. Having transparency with your customers works just as well as having transparency with your employees too. Yeah. it goes a long way and you're correct it kind of it gives you the opportunity and other business owners the opportunity to really see you know the cream of the crop rise at the top you know who's really built for pressure who's really built to handle situations like this in a reasonable way

i mean certainly i think we we'd all be remiss if we didn't say we want every single one of our employees to make sure that they're safe and they're healthy and they feel comfortable on a personal level. And if they are, that's going to allow them to feel safe, comfortable, and deliver more on a professional level too. So as long as those two things are matching up, pretty good stuff can happen. I mean, here's the deal.

My mom worked three jobs after my mom and dad got a divorce. She wasn't around much. Listen, I made it through 2007. That's when I started my business. This is not something I can control. So I won't say it's for me, but you throw me in this position. This is where I'm my best. And when the economy is great, everybody does great. But you throw me in this, this is where they sink or swim. I'm like a Phelps during this time. Yeah. Yeah. time. You and I joked about this the other day. I don't even know what a weekend is anymore. Every day

is the same. Every day is a 12-14 hour day or more. It is what it is. You're getting more stuff done now in one day than you probably did in a full week a couple months ago. It's crazy. There's so much more done right now.

There's other people just drinking themselves to sleep every night, saying they're victims. And that's the mentality. You know what I mean? Yeah. So a couple of quick things. The PPP program, the SBA, I didn't really go into that, but I found out a few things today.

The PPP program will not pay people back if they make over 100 grand. Yeah. They said that from the beginning. Yeah. Well, I qualify for a lot of money. You got to lower your salary to a hundred. I'm figuring out how to make sure I only make 99,000. I'm kidding. I'm literally thinking though, like I'm not trying to go against uncle Sam,

but I'm trying to make every opportunity we can, because here's the deal. Any extra money is going to go into hiring. It's going to go into nicer facilities, nicer vehicles. It's going to go into better computers, colder air conditioning, but more importantly, advertising. That's what this is all about. So, you know, we might not think the SBA or the PPP program really is a conversation piece for marketing, but as we come out of this and you receive that money yeah how much of it see i'm a big fan i had um scott owens harkey scott owens on yesterday in the podcast and he said his prediction is third quarter you're gonna see tv be the most expensive it's ever been by far like because

where's the end of q3 he's absolutely correct i. I couldn't disagree. So I'm not going to be doing a lot of TV and you, you would tell me not to do TV. Oh yeah. You know, this just brought me to another thing. Why the hell do people do TV radio billboards when they're not even, they can't get found on Google. They don't know what pay-per-click is. They don't have a good website. It doesn't load up in mobile. Can you explain that to me? You have to understand your mediums and how they function and what they're good for and how they work together. Because if you're doing it right, one plus one equals three. So if you're going to have them compete against each other, it's not going to do anything for you. And having a good direct response mechanism, in this case, it's a

digital presence. It's your PPC. And then you combine that with large reach branding oh it's the gold mine right there so if you've got those two things in play you're going to do extremely well if you're doing billboards but you don't have a direct response mechanism to go along with it you're basically wasting your money and everyone's like oh yeah you know you can do some surveys for for ad recall or brand recall. Yeah, I've heard of them, but you don't have the other piece in place to capture those leads, to capture those appointments. So doing one without the other just doesn't make a lot of sense. You know, and television is probably the largest reach medium that's available out there

that allows you to tell a full story. Outdoor is fantastic for just pure reach, but you're pretty limited on the amount of story that you can tell. Obviously, you're limited in physical space too. Radio is good for extended storytelling to a smaller reach, more targeted listening audience. So if you understand what you're working with, it works well. You understand your print, you were talking about marriage mail earlier in the call. And marriage mail absolutely has its place for certain products and services. Certainly, home-sum services are one of those. And it is a direct response medium.

You're not going to waste a marriage mail piece of creative, long paragraphs of storytelling. You're not going to do that. You're going to do a little bit of branding so people understand who you are and your credibility, and you're going to provide a meaningful offer because that's what that medium calls for. So to your point, understanding how things work and how they can work together, if you got the right mix, you will benefit from it. If you don't and you try, well, I'll just do PPC for this month, and then the next month I'll do a billboard, and then the next month I'll do this, it doesn't work that way. You got to let things work together. So this is something that I'm really interested in. I think the audience will be interested in too. But when you're going to

do media buys, you've got the big guys, the small guys. I don't know exactly how it works. I know that usually they'll give you back as an agency, if you're an agency, some money back of what you pay. But when you go to do a media buy, obviously you do a lot of media buys in Phoenix. This is your home area. But when you buy something for me in, let's say, Oklahoma, how does that process look? What's the advantages of getting someone local versus not? How do you know you're not being swindled? How do you know if someone's buying way more than you?

Like for outdoor, we buy ugly houses. I just don't understand some of the dynamic of media buys. Maybe you could enlighten me. I'll give you the overview on unlimited time. We could spend another 30 minutes talking about media buying strategy. but essentially as an agency, I placed millions and millions and millions of dollars of advertising in Phoenix and other markets as well. And because of that, that gives me buying power. So I'm able to play different mediums against each other,

different stations against each other, different vendors against each other, six different outdoor vendors. I can play them against each other, different vendors against each other, six different outdoor vendors, I can play them against each other. And because of my combined budgets of all my accounts combined, that gives me the leverage of, well, this is an important piece of business. All right, I'll give them the lower rate because I know I'm going to get more volume out of that. So that's one strategy right there. The other part about, okay, going into another market, you know, in my case, we're already in a lot of other markets. But if you give me a new market, which you give me a couple of new markets, we use our

knowledge from the other markets that are a similar demographic size. So what that means is Nielsen ranks every market based on a DMA population. Radio, it's a metro size population so you can have a rough comparison of a market size 50 to a market size 48 different parts of the country but you kind of know where they should be priced at and you've been in the business long enough and in my case 15 years as an agency another six years on the advertising side from a management sales standpoint, you know where things should be priced and you know how to take advantage of that. As far as making sure you're paying a lower rate, Simon, you love deals. Make no mistake about it. I want to pay the lowest rate.

We all want to pay the lowest rate, but we also want it to clear. So how do we figure that out? I'll tell you really quickly. We try to set the bar with every single station that we work with. We don't set the bar high, we set the bar low. We want what's called the LUR, lowest unit rate. So in order to get the managers to sign off on that rate, first, you got to make it worth their while. But more importantly, they'll push back and they'll say, well, I can give it to you at this rate. Okay, great. I put my order together at a lower rate than that and just put it in there. Basically, I'm putting money in their hand and saying, you know what? If it runs, it runs. If it doesn't, it doesn't. We'll let the market dictate. And typically, that's what we've been doing in these types of scenarios because

these are very fast moving remnant scenarios. That allows us to feel the market and understand where everything is at. We know if it's clearing, we're paying the right rate. If it's clearing too much, we're paying too high. If we get a little bit bumped, we're doing okay. If everything's getting bumped,

we may need to raise our rate a little bit. So in a nutshell, that's a little bit of a commodity-type scenario there. And we didn't even talk about ratings and anything else like that. That's for a whole nother day. Well, Brian, you're the man. Do you want to just tell people how to get ahold of you?

Yeah. You can go to thinktankmm.com. Think Tank Media and Marketing is our agency. We're updating our site. So what you see there is, it's okay. But we're the shoemaker's kid who has no shoes. That's the world we live in these days. So it's all about the clients,

but think tank mm.com. Be happy to, you can just fill out a little form there and be happy to help you out. Thanks, Brian. Appreciate it. That's for tomorrow. Take care.

Ellen, my man, you're finished. Hey, Thomas. How are you buddy? I'm great. How are you?

Excellent. Excellent. I'm really great considering the circumstances. I got How are you, buddy? I'm great. How are you? Excellent. Excellent. I'm really great considering the circumstances. I got to tell you, things couldn't be better considering this. We went in with a plan and you are the marketing guru. And this is all about marketing. So I'm very, very excited that you can make time for this. Most people that are listening know who you are.

But if you want to do a quick introduction, talk about your book, and then we'll jump right into this Corona time. Yeah. I wish it was a beer time around here, but I mean, Corona, the bad way, the virus way. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say there's the good Corona and there's the bad Corona, right? So my name's Alan Dibb. I'm the author of the book, The One-Page Marketing Plan. That's the one there, right there. And yeah, so it's been a book that's done very, very well. In fact, I think I had a look. I don't know what's going on. Maybe it's related to the corona thing. But currently, if I have a look on Amazon, we're the 69th top book across all of Amazon,

not just in the marketing category, but across all of Amazon. So something's going on there. But in terms of what I do, I basically help businesses clarify their marketing, get clarity around their marketing and build their own marketing capability. So that's really what it's about. I'm here for you and your audience, Thomas. So I'm here to help in any way. And I've got a few thoughts on what's going on at the moment. And I don't know, maybe it's a different or similar perspective to what's been discussed previously, but I'm happy to share those with you. Yeah.

So I guess there's two different mindsets because the audiences that are listening right now, some of them are essential. Some of them are still able to fulfill orders. Some of them are not essential. Some of them aren't open. You don't need right now aluminum siding on your house. You don't have to paint right now. They're not going to consider those essential.

So we're talking to two audiences that used to be one, in my opinion. This damn virus has kind of split it up. But we all know they just released, I guess, another $2 trillion. So all of us are getting quite the stimulus to rehire our employees. Yes. And I hate to say this because there are people that have died and it's, I'm not taking that lightly, but this is a huge opportunity for people. If you look at it, if you're a type of person that turns lemons into lemonade, tell me your perspective on this and let's hear some of your thoughts and ideas. So here's my take on this. So there's been just a tsunami of negativity and doom and gloom and

everything like that in the media and in what we're hearing from people. And yes, it is absolutely a serious situation. Yes, it's a health issue. But here's the few things that I know for sure, right? This is going to pass. The stock market will regain its gains and it will go on to new highs. And some people will survive this and some people will really get past this and grow through this and come out of it better than they have ever before. And so it kind of goes to a principle called anti-fragility.

I don't know if you've ever read the book by Nassim Taleb called Anti-Fragile, but basically he talks about things can be fragile, they can be robust, or they can be anti-fragile. So fragile means a shock will hurt you. Being robust means a shock will do nothing to you. You'll stay the same. And being anti-fragile means a shock can actually help you, right? So some of the examples it gives, for example, if you do weightlifting, if you're weightlifting with 20 pounds, your body gets ready to kind of lift 25 pounds. And when you're lifting 25 pounds, your body gets ready for lifting 30

pounds. That's how you get stronger, more muscle, all of that sort of thing. So your body is an example of something that's anti-fragile. So something that's giving it stress, giving it shocks, makes it more powerful and more able to withstand bigger shocks and things like that. And so our financial system is fragile because of the way it's been manipulated, of the way it's being managed by economists and things like that. That's why we have these massive shocks that affect people so badly. And so a lot of businesses now are finding that they've been fragile, so that they've not been exposing their businesses to enough shocks naturally. And so when one of these shocks comes, it really hurts them very, very badly. Other businesses are really anti-fragile. Right now, a lot of my clients,

they're doing way better than they've ever done before, myself included as well. And like I said, we don't want to take advantage of what's going on, but we want to be able to be anti-fragile, help our employees, help our clients, help our communities be that positive voice of leadership in the company and not kind of be freaking out, scared and running and hiding under a rock. So I think there's going to be a lot of positivity that comes out of this. There's going to be a lot of creativity and you really need to decide which side of the fence you're going to be on and then

execute on that plan. So that's the summary of my thoughts at the moment. Happy to expand on any and all of that, but that's basically what I'm seeing at the moment. So I find that the companies that I see doing really, really well, I'll give you guys a little snapshot of what I did. First, what I did is I reached out to every single expense on my balance sheet. Every single software, we decided if we needed it or not, boom, gone, or renegotiated. Every advertiser, I called them and said, listen, I've had to lay off employees. A lot of my vendors are closed or their employees are quitting or laid off. So my advertising, my mailers are closing

down. We've laid off workers internally. Right now, before the stimulus came out, it's hard to make leases, right? So a lot of people are like, fine, we'll go ahead and give you half off leases for the next three months. And that's without repayment. And then you kind of got to top grade your employees. So you take a list and you decide who's needed, who's not, who you're not to go with. But the stimulus is making them hire them back. But right now was a great time to make hard decisions. And people will understand those decisions. So we went through, we made a lot of tough decisions.

We cut expenses. And then we focused on what we can control. Booking rates, average control, booking rates, average tickets, conversion rates, acquisition costs. And then we said, where's everybody going to be right now? They're all at home. They're on social media. They're on TV. Let's crank on those bad boys. But in your expert opinion, as we start to weather this thing and come out of it, which I think we're starting slowly to now, where should your marketing dollars be going? And I know they could be going anywhere as long as you commit to it and you just don't go in for the short term, but where's the best investment right now with marketing dollars? So the best investment right now, so I'm seeing a

lot of people have pulled their ads, Facebook ads, Google ads, and things like that. So that's made ad rates go down. So there's a lot of good ad buying right now. And now, particularly if you can't deliver because you're not an essential service or whatever, this is a great time to be building your audience, right? Because we know this is going to blow over. So we want to build that audience. We want to have people who we can market to and deliver on later on. Now, you can still be taking bookings and booking in for down the track, right, in a few weeks' time or a month's time or whatever it is. So, it's not a time to necessarily stop selling. I had a lot of people reach out to me and say, hey, is it okay to be selling right now? Am I going to

come off as a jerk or whatever? So yes, you can't be tone deaf, right? So you need to understand what's going on. You need to adjust your messaging for sure. But absolutely, this is not a time to be pulling back on selling. It is okay to be selling right now. Just don't be tone deaf. Change up your messaging. So if you had more aggressive fear based campaigns in the past, so you need to change them. Right now is not a good time to use fear based marketing and takeaway selling and all of that sort of thing. So you need to adjust your messaging, but absolutely like the stuff that you're doing is stuff that's valuable to people that helps people's lives. And so it's incumbent on you that if you have something of value, that you're selling it.

So absolutely, it's a good time to be selling. And so take bookings, build your audience as well, because that's basically... Right now, there are some people who are kind of saying, awesome, I'm going to be building my audience and increasing my market share. Even if they're not banking that right now, they're thinking of that for the future because so many people have gone and ran and hid. And so they're pulling back ads. People are pulling back ads that are profitable, that are converting and are profitable and that they pull those out. So we've seen a lot

of bizarre behavior, but it is what it is. And so there's opportunity to really go and build that audience and create that connection. Yeah, I agree. I think right now is the best time to learn how to do social media. It's the best time to organize your shop. It's the best time to focus on a company newsletter, to let people know what's going on. All these projects, I don't think people understand the power of follow-up. I mean, I could make more money following up with my clients from three years ago that are ready for a new door that we fixed than I could in any other media source. And the difference is the system to do that. So let's talk about right now what we could be working on if we're not staying busy at work. So if you're not able to deliver what you do, this is the best time to be kind of adding

new pillars in your business. So sometimes we're single source dependent and that's a big risk in your business. So if you have only one line of business, one product, like I'm seeing people who are very much in a physical style of business now starting to bring forward digital programs, digital virtual delivery. So for example, my local martial arts studio that I belong to, right? They're now streaming classes over Zoom. I've got yoga studio, people doing the same, fitness as well. Now, obviously fitting a garage door, different story, right? But what are some of the digital and online programs that you had on your to-do list that you've never got to just because you've been just busy doing what you're

doing, right? So even if it's selling online, so do you have a way that people can buy your product or service online? If that's been on your to-do list, then bring that forward, get it done. But I think that's important to make your business more robust or more anti-fragile. But really, what I'm saying is help your people focus on something different other than this whole virus thing, other than the whole doom and gloom, because you are a leader in your business. You are a leader among your employees in your community. It's kind of like when I'm on a flight and there's severe turbulence, I'm looking at what the stewardess,

you know, is she freaking out or is she like calm, right? And so people are looking at you and this as a leader, they're saying, you know, is Thomas calm or is Thomas freaking out, right? Because that's kind of an indication of what should I be doing? Should I be freaking out or should I be calm? And so as a leader, get your people to focus on something different, something positive. So bring forward a project that you would have been working on maybe later, but bring that forward now and do it now. So start building those extra pillars in your business. So if you've only got one pillar, which is like just, hey, all we do is fit garage doors, well, now might be another time to add other pillars. So maybe you're selling parts online, maybe you've got other products and services that you can add and make your business more robust.

So if you can't deliver, you can do other things as well. You know, I love that example because of the flight attendant. You know, what I think about is I'm not like, hey, no big deal. Everything's good. I don't like that mentality of what I do is say, listen, we're okay. We're playing for this scenario. We're not failing. We're continuing to market. We've had some of the best days we've had as a company, but right now is the time you need to pitch in. You need to book every call. You need to start thinking, how can you be a better employee by posting on social media and i'm not a fear mongrel by any but look i was a little bit concerned because i wasn't concerned that we were going to fail as a company

but i was concerned more of the uncertainty of knowing when of not knowing yes the scariest thing is man this thing goes into 2021 if it it gets worse, what's going to happen? So, you know, I think that it's important to be firm and explain to people, we are definitely worried about this, but we've got a plan and we're going to communicate. We're going to get through this. Yeah. And communication is key. Over-communicate with your family, your employees, your community, your suppliers, your vendors, and you're absolutely right. Some of the things that you did is cut costs,

see where things have been accumulating, where you've gotten a little bit fat and happy kind of thing. And these are things we should be doing anyway as business owners, but this is now a really good time to really kind of reassess that. Any subscriptions you've got, any vendors who are maybe charging too much, all of those sorts of things. So, this is a good time to be renegotiating some of those things. But also from a marketing perspective, in copywriting, there's a device called reason why. So, if you're discounting or offering a special offer or whatever, you always want to have a reason why this is why we're doing it. Now, this situation right now is a great reason why. So if you're bringing forward a program, if you're offering a discount, if you're doing something, this is a great reason why it's very legitimate and it's very authentic. So it's a good reason why to be bringing things

forward and to be offering it something different, a different style of package or whatever else. Yeah, I think right now is a huge opportunity and you're affiliated with thousands of businesses. So let me ask you this, if you were to give a percentile of the winners and losers, is it 50-50? Half of them are going to come out killing it. Is it more like 90 going to fail or be worse off? And I know this is depending on the industry, essential versus non-essential, lots of factors where you're located demographically versus New York versus me in Arizona. In your overall opinion, what does something like this do? It's definitely going to help some. Oh, definitely. definitely. I'm seeing

heaps of people doing really, really, like people in e-commerce right now are crushing it. People in information delivery, in coaching and things like that, they're really doing well. Others have kind of stayed the same. The people who've been obviously hit hard, you know, people in travel, in accommodation, who've got very large overheads and physical presence, a lot of physical staff, so that they've been hurt. But people are going to come out of this either hurt or doing a lot better. And like I came across a phrase the other day, you know, people talk a lot about post-traumatic stress. There's also a phenomenon called post-traumatic growth, you know, where people grow from a traumatic event. There's also a phenomenon called post-traumatic growth, where people grow

from a traumatic event. And this is a traumatic event for many, many, many people. And even if you haven't been hit financially, like being just stuck in your house, it's hard, right? Like I live here in a small beachside community and it's depressing going for a drive, seeing all my favorite cafes closed. Normally people would be out walking their dogs on the beach, beaches are closed and all of that sort of thing. It is depressing, right? But I know this is going to be a temporary situation. And I know, you know, some people are going to come out of this much stronger and use

this as an opportunity for massive, massive action and massive, massive growth. And that's what I'm really looking forward to is seeing what the post-traumatic growth will be from this. There's definitely opportunities there. Like I said, ad rates have plummeted. So you've got an opportunity to really grab market share, grab audience right now

and do the opposite of what the crowd is doing, which is kind of freaking out. You know, I think that a lot of companies fail, especially in the home service spot, to even understand their marketing message, to understand where their avatars live and how they all work together from social, from the digital aspect to the TV, radio, billboard,

slash mailer direct response. I mean, it's not a small book, but there's a lot of stuff in here. Do you want to talk a little bit about how to get a plan and understand the plan and what you should be working towards during this downtime? Yeah. Yeah. So where you are, are you allowed to be fitting garage doors at the moment or not? Yeah.

So we're considered an essential business. So yeah, we're able to do that. Okay. Perfect. If you have downtime at the moment, I would be using that absolutely to put together what is your plan? Because here's the thing, we know that this is not going to be the last shock that the economy has. Who knows what the next thing is? Maybe there'll be a follow-on recession. Maybe there'll be whatever, right? So from time to time, there's going to be shocks in the economy and you want to be last and least affected. Now, the people who

are last and least affected are people who have a good plan and people who have diversity in terms of streams of income, in terms of what they're doing. So here's what I would be doing, right? So what a lot of people do, and this is kind of typical investment advice from people who generally don't invest their own money, right? So people say, hey, have a diversified portfolio and all of that sort of thing. I think that's terrible advice. I like the advice where you have 90% of your stuff in safe investments, right? I'm not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. And I'm not necessarily even talking about financial. I'm talking from a business perspective. So I'm saying is 90% of your stuff, just do the safe stuff that you're doing. Now, take 10%

and put that into flyers, like projects where they may or may not succeed, but there's massive, massive upside. And that's where you've got the possibility of really winning, but your downside is really limited. So I'll give you an example. Like, for example, Google and a lot of the tech companies, they allow their engineers have 20% time, which is basically work on projects that interest you that maybe go nowhere, but they produce products like Gmail, they produce products like AdWords. They've been worth billions of dollars. So what I'm saying is, you know, if you've had that kind of crazy project

on the side sitting, now's the time to revive that because that can have very little bit of downside but a lot of upside. So it's kind of like a skunkworks project in your business. So always have something where you're innovating. It's kind of like when there was, anyone remember Blockbuster video, right? They had the whole market share. They had everyone who wanted to watch videos and movies and things like that. And so now there's one Blockbuster left in the world. It's in Oregon. It's now become a tourist attraction. People go in front of it and just take selfies and post on Instagram and all of that. Why did that happen? Did they not see that video streaming was coming? Did they not

know about the internet, all of this sort of thing that was going to disrupt their business? Well, they were kind of fat and happy and wanted to charge late fees and all of that sort of thing. Instead, they should have invested a little bit of money in what was potentially coming, streaming services, internet services. They could have been the Netflix. Yeah, exactly. Netflix was like, they send you the movie, you mail it to them back. And that was the old school Netflix.

Exactly. But they were stuck on kind of late fees, right? They wanted to continue charging late fees. And that was it. So what is coming next in your industry? And so, you've probably got a good pulse for where your industry is going and what's coming. So, whether it's more stuff that's going to happen online, whether it's online sales. I've got clients who where their online division is now making up for their offline division. So, they've had to close up their physical store, but now their online division is now making up for their offline division. So, they've had to close up their physical store, but now their online sales are booming and pretty much making up for the lost

revenue. So, if you've had something where you've been thinking about doing it, continue those skunk work projects. And this is a good time to really refocus your staff. So, say, look, guys, we can't do business as usual, but hey, we've had this project on the sidelines. Let's bring this forward. It gives your people something else to focus on, but it also gives you massive upside. I love investing in things where my downside is limited, but my upside is really, really high. And that's something that I want everyone who's listening in to be doing, to really be thinking about. What's something that you've had kind of on the side where you've been thinking about. What's something that you've had kind of

on the side where you've been thinking about doing it, but you haven't done it and it's got potentially very, very high upside? Yeah. And those are projects. Like for me, we're building a whole automated system to text the customers when we don't get a closed deal. So it's a follow-up sequence. And it does a voicemail blast, it does a text message, it does an email, and then it does another one based on the way they respond. So it's a follow-up sequence and it does a voicemail blast. It does a text message. It does an email and then it does another one based on the way they respond. So it's, it's dynamic. And then another project is I've got these mailers, the custom mailer with a hand.

I love it. But the cool thing is it's going to have a picture instead of my cartoon. It's going to have a picture of the staff member. So a technician, then it's going to say you've of the staff member. So a technician, then it's going to say, you've probably seen my truck in your neighborhood with a picture of them by their truck with their family and their dog and say, I work in your neighborhood right now. We're a little slow due to this. I'm practicing social distancing, but I'm ready to give you a great

price on certain things. You probably need like a bottom rubber to keep all those nasty bugs out. So that's the reason why we're doing it because you're my neighbor you've probably seen my truck and we mail it out to 2,000 homes and it comes on a call tracking number that they'll get credit for that it's just the coolest thing and i said if i try it out with five techs and i lose okay i probably spend a couple grand if i win the upside is huge. Huge, huge. I mean, this is something you could deploy for the next five to 10 years, right? If it's working well. So this is what I want people to be looking at.

Opportunities, projects, products that have a limited downside, but very big upside. So that's a perfect example. I think that's amazing advice. Alan, you're in Australia, right? I am. I know Australia has got a great garage door market. I'm planning on being there by 2025 for business, for business. But I'll tell you what, we got a couple more minutes. You've got a great message in your book. You've been on the podcast. You're a wealth of knowledge and talent. Can you just kind of close us out?

There was four speakers on. I learned a lot today. You've always got great stuff to add to this pandemic right now. Just close us out with something very optimistic and just words of wisdom here. Yeah. So I am optimistic and I'm optimistic because I know what's going to come out of this. There's going to be creativity that comes out of it. There's going to be, like I said, the stock market and business is going to go to new highs. We don't know exactly when,

but we know that it will. And so we want you to be on the right side of that equation. We want you to be the person who has the post-traumatic growth. And so now is the time to be investing in yourself, in your business, to be working on those projects that have massive upside. And so really, the message I would leave you with is what I often leave with is the best marketer wins every time. So become the best marketer, right? So you've done really well, Thomas, because you've been an excellent marketer. You're doing those things. You're doing the voicemail blast. You're doing the handwritten notes. You're doing all of those things. And here's the thing.

Those things are small things. And that's why a lot of people discount the small things because they're easy not to do, right? They're easy to do, but they're also easy not to do. And especially when times are good, you know, the leads are coming in, things are okay, you're paying the bills. And so it's easy not to do those things. So get those practices in place now because not only will they get you through this hump, but they're going to put exponential growth on

your business in the future. So they're the things that are going to have massive upside. So I'm sure that campaign that you're working on now, Thomas, that's going to pay dividends for many years over and over. And so implementing that now will have massive impact in the future. So really, the best marketer wins every time. Be the best marketer either in your geography or demographics or your niche, wherever you're operating in right now. And so do that. Be that leader in your team who's the positive voice. Be that positive voice in the community and yeah, really go forth and just build a robust and anti-fragile business. That is great advice. You guys heard the book there, Anti-Fragile, and you got to pick up the one-page marketing plan. It's a great book.

I've also got it on Audible. Really appreciate you coming on and visiting us from Australia. It's a pleasure, Thomas, as always. All right. I'll keep in touch. Thank you so much, brother. Thanks, Thomas. Bye. See you later.

So guys, I'm going to close this out with some of the stuff we're doing here at A1. Number one, you should be negotiating with your advertising. You should be negotiating with your vendors. You should be talking to your vendors, talking to your employees, working on how you're going to be hiring as you come out of this thing. You should be thinking about a lot of things that most companies are not right now. You should be thinking about taking market share. You should be identifying employees that you want. You should be thinking about companies you want to buy and how you're going to market to them. I'm just going to look at my whiteboard right here at some of the

projects I got going up. So service agreements are more important than you'll ever know. Service agreements are what give you that multiple of EBITDA when you go to sell. It could be two to three times more. Let's just say you're worth $20 million and let's say you're doing 10%. So $20 million company doing 10% is $2 million. Let's say at that point, you're worth maybe six times multiple. So six times two is 12. Now you're worth 10 times multiple if you've got enough service agreements, say 10,000 service agreements. So get good at service agreements. Schedule engine. Schedule engine is something we're working on. It's an amazing program where I can have people refer me. They can literally go onto our website, book a time for, let's say, a painter books an opportunity for my garage door company.

So the painter is painting the house. They say, your garage door's got a crack on it. We don't want to paint this old piece of crap. We work with Haywell and garages. They'll be out here in 48 hours. They go and they book the time. We sell the door. They get paid 10% on it.

It's automatic. Amazing stuff. So I created our own affiliate programs through this tool called Schedule Engine. Tell them I sent you if you look them up. Number three, four here. We're using Scipio. We're building service time so it talks to Scipio. Scipio sends out literally video messages of upsells or follow-up or one-year anniversary date tune-ups.

We're working on an automatic way to post on social media through Hootsuite. We're working on this PPP program and the SBA loan. I'll also be getting a much bigger line of credit to grow really fast and buy people out when this thing starts to head off. Some people are going to want to walk away from this stuff, and it's up to you as a business owner to take advantage of this. I'm actually getting sticky notes made. You guys know the little sticky notes, but this actually looks like a pen wrote it. And it says, hey, I'm in your neighborhood. So my guys are going to pass these out to the neighbors and put them on their front door. Hey, I'm in your

neighborhood. My name's Tommy. Just replaced the neighbor's bottom rubber to keep the nasty bugs out because we're in the neighborhood. We're doing a tune-up and a bottom rubber for $99. If you're interested, give me a call. Here's my number. You know why we're in the neighborhood. I don't want to go into it. There's about 10 more things on my whiteboard. You can look right here. Let's see here. It's always full. So take this time, work on yourself, work on your habits, start working out a little bit, even if it's just pushups. There's a lot of opportunities right now. Make yourself better, your relationships better. Start communicating with your old friends and family a little bit more.

I think this is a great time to get ahead. I hope you were there for the two hours. I learned a lot. I've got more notes that I know what to do with. So now I got to make a bunch of phone calls because I got a ton of ideas and I'm very, very excited. I hope you guys got something out of this.

I'm going to be doing this stuff more. You heard it from Dennis Yu. Dennis Yu is the master of social media. Really looking forward to talking to him right now. So I will let you guys go. I hope you guys got something out of this. Let me know in the comments if you did. Let me know if you have any questions. Also, you guys, most of you have my email or Facebook me or

LinkedIn me, and I'll get back to you. Appreciate it. Hey, I just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, Wyatt's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that

next person coming on. All the pros I have on here. I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day and thanks again.