The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Track Your Metrics Right to Create Predictable Growth

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Spencer Powell is the President at Builder Funnel, and the host of Builder Funnel Radio. He helps companies improve their websites and drive more qualified traffic to their businesses. He has been a featured speaker on inbound marketing at various events, including the Builder 20 Group in Austin, Texas, the Builder 20 Group in Orlando, Florida and the Inbound Conference 2012 in Boston. In this episode, we talked about marketing strategy, digital marketing, inbound marketing, SEO, lead generation...

It's so important because as you start trying to figure out your metrics of your business, conversion rates and how many people you need in the door, that's what gives you the predictability to grow. So if you know for every X number of leads, you get Y sales, then you know from a marketing perspective that you need to turn those levers up. And if you're trying to hire another salesperson or another technician, how much work you need to support that levers up. And if you're trying to hire another salesperson or another technician, how much work you need to support that salary and all the costs that go along with that. So yeah, you got to have the tracking in place. And most people are still tracking leads on sticky notes or random pieces of paper or maybe Excel. And having the technology in place, the costs have come down so much. Even the one-man band can have a CRM and can use technology to track.

And then from a service standpoint, yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're seeing the front end of the latest trends in terms of dispatching and all that kind of stuff. When you're one person, that's not as critical. But as you move forward, it gets more and more important. And those things can have huge cost implications just from travel time. 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. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello, and today we have a guest visiting us from Colorado Springs, Colorado. He's an expert in home builder marketing, marketing strategy, digital marketing, Inbound Marketing, SEO, and Lead Generation. He's the president of Builder Funnel from 2018 to now, Inbound Marketing Director from 2010 to present, TMR Inbound Marketing Director from 2010 to 2017, Powell Social Media CEO from 2010 to 2011, and Huntington Park Builders Financial Analyst in 2010. He's the president of Builder Funnel and the host of Builder Funnel Radio. He helps companies make their websites more effective at driving potential customers, meaning qualified traffic, to their business. He has been in inbound marketing at various events, including the Builder 20 Group in Austin,

Texas, the Builder 20 Group in Orlando, Florida, and the Inbound Conference in 2012 in Boston. Spencer Powell, it's awesome to have you on, brother. Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Glad to be here. So you sound like you got it nailed down. Post-COVID, it sounds like you're doing what we're doing. We just got inundated. Like you said, we're very fortunate. We thank God every day. You want to tell us a little bit about your story. Sounds like your family's been in the builder business a long time and just kind of what your plans are. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, I kind of fell into the construction world through the digital marketing side. My family's been in the home building business,

kind of property management business for 110 years now in the Seattle area. And they started with spec building, built a bunch of apartment buildings, built some senior housing facilities, and it's branched out. And so I got involved in the business in the Great Recession timeframe and was working on helping grow the remodeling division of that business and help them scale that up from about two and a half to five or six million over a couple of years. And we said, Hey, maybe we should go help some other builders, remodelers do the same thing, leverage the power of the web and take control of their own lead generation efforts.

So you specialize in lead gen. I do a lot of stuff with lead generation, mostly website, online. But lead gen is a pretty vague term. Do you want to just go into what you found to be the most effective to generate leads? Yeah. So our whole approach is that what we've recognized is the way people shop and buy is super different than it used to be. The old model was, hey, if you want to buy something, whether that was a car or a TV or a remodel, it didn't matter. You had to go talk to somebody. You had to go talk to that salesperson and get the information, pricing, models, how it works, all that information. The salesperson really was in full control.

They had all the cards. And Google really flipped the script on that with all the content that's available. Now the power is in the consumer's hands. So what we do is we basically create content for those companies. So if you're a kitchen and bath remodeler or a roofer, we're going to help you create the content that matches the way people are actually searching for your type of service. They're doing research, and then you're going to pull them into your website. So when we talk about lead gen, back to your question, We're really trying to drive leads through the company website and

intercept those people that are researching the service that they're looking to find. So it's mostly website, like lead gen, and do you do a lot on social as well? We do a lot on social, but I would say what we found just looking at the data, Google is going to drive most of the leads. Social can be a lead driver. I find that it's a little bit more of a nurturing tool and a branding tool. So as an example, let's say somebody is wanting to redo their kitchen. They're going to start by looking up design ideas, design trends. They're going to be looking for inspiration.

So they're going to be a mix of spending time on Google, typing in those questions. What are the current design trends for 2020? What are some color palettes? They're trying to figure out their design style. They might go to Pinterest. They might go to Houzz. They're going to go look around. That process could be months or even years. And then they're finally going to get to a point where they start trying to actually find a solution for this. How do I make this a reality? So then they're going to look up kitchen remodeling companies in Colorado Springs or wherever they're located. And they're going to start looking for specific companies. But if you intercept them in the

marketing process early on, and you get them to your website, maybe through a blog post that you write on kitchen design trends. And then there's a kitchen pricing guide or a kitchen design guide that they can download and fill out some information. Now you've generated that lead. You can now stay in front of this person, be present with them through the marketing process, and then you're top of mind when they actually get ready to reach out and start a sales conversation. And how long does it take to nurture a lead from social media typically? Gosh, I've seen it all over the board.

It could be weeks all the way up to years. Because the way we look at it is you're just trying to gain more attention and awareness around your company within your target market. But you're never going to force somebody to remodel their kitchen if they're not ready to do that. So if they're thinking about it, then you just want to be there while they're thinking about it. So as you extend that, what we call the top of the funnel, which is all these people thinking about redoing their kitchen, you also extend the bottom of the funnel, the number of people that are actually ready to buy today. So it's a wide range, but I would say

with remodels, it's a considered buying process. So you're typically looking at months. And what's the average margin on a remodel job? I mean, that's a different ballgame than most home service business. Yeah. I think a lot of our remodelers shoot to be somewhere in the like 30 to 40% range. But I know depending on the size of those projects, they can be lower than that. So what is the 30 to 40% range? But is it like $80,000? What's the total?

Yeah. I mean, most of our clients, I would say their remodels are anywhere from 40 to 50 grand up to 500, 600,000, depending on the project. Did you know that the garage door remodel magazine said the garage door is the best thing on the house ROI? Is it interesting? 102%, over 100% on the garage. That's awesome. So I've learned this through 15 years in the home service businesses. Lead generation is great, but there's two types of lead generation. Lead generation for my brand and then non-branded. And when it's my brand, I get way more money, way more higher conversion, way happier customers. So talk to me a little bit about how important a brand is.

Like Wayne Taylor, I think is a big, or what is it called? Taylor Homes. And then you just got these different builders and they almost build, some of them are huge. KB Homes, Shea Homes, Pulte Homes. Talk to me a little bit about how important is the brand and how do you elevate the level of the brand? Yeah. I think branding is super important. And just like you said, if people recognize the brand, there's just that element of trust there. And so the way we look at the process is when somebody's starting that initial journey,

they're saying, okay, I'm aware of something I need. So that's a home, a remodel, a garage door, but they have the awareness. And then that starts the research. And the research for a garage door is a lot different than it is for a remodel and a new home. But that's when they start going to Google. And so once they've landed on your website, now they're introduced to your brand and your content and what you're producing. And so if you can insert yourself into that process, and now you can educate them, you can help them do their own research and make a good decision. That's where

that brand component comes in. And you're going to develop trust through the quality of the content and the helpfulness of the content. How much value are you adding to them? But then you're also going to do it through repetition. So you think about why you see so many commercials for Coke and they've done a lot through repetition. And you can do that in a very small way for your company too, which is once somebody knows about you, now you want them to remember you. And so you actually get to the sales process where they're talking to a human, there's trust that carries you a little bit further and you're going to close a higher percentage of those deals. So when you're branding, I always think about TV, radio, billboards. And I was not as big a fan as I am today. I think it's got to be, you got to have a brand story. There's certain things you want to really define who your client is, your perfect avatar.

Like for example, if I was doing remodels, there's no way I'd pick either high end, low end or medium. And I really define who my client is. Am I going to go to Ikea or solid, or am I going to be a way higher elevator? And I find that a lot of people, most business owners take whatever they can get. They say, whoever owns an air conditioning unit or whoever has windows to wash. But they're just not the same. What's your take on that? Oh, man. Yeah, we see it every day. It's funny you mentioned that because I'll pull up a remodeling website and I could almost just

script it off like what I find on the website. They're family-owned. They've been in business for 20 years. They focus on quality. Just all these general things. And yeah, if you don't focus, then you can't become known for anything. And there's the old saying, if you try to market to everybody, you're marketing to nobody. And it really does shake out like that in reality. If you're going to be in remodeling, be in kitchens and baths only and carve that niche out. And then within that, pick a price range, pick a household value range that you operate in, where you know that's your best client, that's where you get your best projects.

You're going to pick up other work along the way. But if you try to market to everything, it's just too much and you don't become known for anything. So I see that often where people make that mistake because they think it's going to be limiting. Basically, if I narrow the scope of my clientele, they think it will cap them for revenue. And really what it does is it starts to extend your opportunities. You know what it does is it starts to extend your opportunities. You know, what's interesting is a lot of people, they tend to tell you, go high end, go to the rich people. And I was talking to Ken Goodrich.

He owns Gatlin. He's big in the HVAC industry. And he said, Tommy, my perfect customer is a dual income, about $100,000, $120,000 with the husband and the wife or the two significant others. He said, it's not those multi-million dollar houses because those people have a property manager. They're not making the decisions. And it's just, they're not as likely to spend the money. The quantity versus quality is just not there for air conditioning. And I talked to another guy that does walk through hideaway bookshelf safe type things. And

his clientele, I mean, the cheapest one he's got is 10 grand. So all of his clients are super high end. So you really got to decide on that piece. I think that's huge. And then I will tell you that SEO is great, but when you start doing the right things, you got to get found. You got to have your Google My Business page. You got to have your local service ads, the Google guarantee. You got to have your organic and you got to have some PPC. Those are the four things on Google, but you got to be up top. You got to have reviews. I mean, all that stuff's important, but it's just so nice when you can look at the Google AdWord council and you're getting a ton of searches for your brand, right? I mean, it's just like, it's amazing. Ken only buys his own keywords. He only buys his own keywords. He doesn't have to go out and buy air conditioning,

repair air conditioning, replacement Phoenix or Las Vegas or where he's in a bunch of markets. And the power of that means people are seeking you out. So I don't know if that's big in home builders, but what's your take on when people are actually searching your own search words? Yeah, it's interesting because I would agree with you that that's always the best spot to be in. That means they already know about you from somewhere else. And so you do want that traffic. And I would argue that that brand equity, that's built over time.

That doesn't just happen all of a sudden. That happens through word of mouth. It happens through your customers. It happens through signage and being in neighborhoods and having your trucks wrapped and branded and people start to get familiar. They go, Oh yeah, I should Google those guys and they know your name. I think there is a giant opportunity in, okay, but how do I get found by the people that don't know my name? And those are going to be a different kind of lead. It's going to be a different

qualification process, probably a different closing rate. But I think what you're talking about, that isn't developed in year one, year two. You start to develop that over time as you acquire a customer base and as you get just more visibility in terms of signage and tracks. Is that what you're seeing? Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's that's true and I do think I look at social media kind of in a upside down pyramid and You could catch them way higher because you're catching people that might not be interested So you create interest and you might say how would you create demand?

Well, what have I told you the number one entryway for all the roaches and bugs in your house is your garage door Have you ever looked at the bottom still? No, I haven't. Oh, wow. That's a good idea. Or, you know, 40% of your garage is a curb appeal. You can save 500 bucks in a summer. If you get the right garage door in the right climate, if you keep your garage door shut, I mean, educating people. And then there's the people that say, I just want that because it's bad-ass, right? You know, have you ever been on Facebook and you see see something cool because they follow your interest? A lot of times I'll click on it and then I'll go buy it on Amazon. Exactly. I like social media and I'm kind of all over here because I'm just thinking about a lot of things when it comes to digital marketing. There's some pieces,

yeah. So I mentioned four types on Google. You got organic, the Google local services, which is the guarantee. You got the Google My Business page, and then you got the PPC. What is your take on those four different... Because they're all different algorithms. They are. Yeah. And I would say, it seems like there's some synergy, at least between organic and paid. If you're doing some paid, it seems to help your organic. I think the ultimate goal is... If you can figure out the paid model and you figure out how many dollars in you put and how many dollars you get out, and if that model is working, you can scale that up. Organic is nice because then you stop paying for each individual click. And so we typically recommend like,

hey, you want to build that organic strategy. And that's going to be a longer term, more sustainable approach. And then you're going to supplement with paid depending on what your goals are. So if you're trying to grow pretty fast, you're going to dump more in paid initially, because maybe your site is pretty weak and you need to just pay to get some traffic there. But then over time, that organic can be the self-sustaining beast that is driving more of the leads than the paid channel. And then obviously, the other components in terms of Google My Business and that sort of thing, you've got to be operating in those areas too, because people are going to type in something that's location-based and you're going to find them.

Whereas a general article on some of the things you just talked about, like the garage being 40% of curb appeal, that could be a nice blog article that somebody that's maybe trying to sell their home, they're looking for ways to improve curb appeal and they bump into your article and they're, oh, I should hire these guys to put in a new garage door so I can sell my house. So I think it just depends. For me, it always comes back to goals. What are the goals of the company? What are the short-term goals in the next 12, 24, 36 months? And then what's the ultimate vision? And that's going to dictate how much spend or how much time and effort you put into each one

of those channels. And there's a good book that you just reminded me of. It's called Built to Sell. Love that one. You're really building the business. There's only three ways to do with a business. You either give it to someone in your family because you die, you give it to your next of kin because you just want to retire, or you sell it. I mean, those are the only three ways out. And if you want to enjoy your life, hopefully you can see some of the rewards of your labor. But it's a great book. He also wrote the book, The Automatic Customer, which I'm obsessed with. And the website is one of

the biggest assets. And I think the biggest thing I see when you're branding is you should, and I'm rebranding my site right now. So it's kind of like a piece of the choir here, but you got to have your vans near the top. You want to create this, this relationship where all of your mailers, all of your TV, radio billboards, you know, your wraps, the yard signs, everything has symmetry. And I think a lot of people miss that. And it's just such a good asset when you're selling the business to say, here's where I rank. I wanted to ask you, I figured out a lot of ways to create a ton of links organically. And one of the biggest ones is with charity and just getting involved with the community and

making sure that we give them the article a thousand words, we control the content. So it's, it's kind of killing like 10 birds with one stone, but what's a good way to really get your website ranking? If you, you? Obviously, hiring an agency is one way. But what would you say if you just said, Hey, I'm bootstrapped here the first six months to a year. How do you go about doing that? Yeah. I think for me, it always starts with that content piece. So thinking about the big hitter topics or questions that your audience is searching for, and then creating really thoughtful, helpful, educational pieces on it. So it could be a page on your website, a service page, or it could be a blog post.

And writing 800 to 1500 words, talking about that topic. And then what you're going to do is try to accelerate some traffic to that post. So you can do that on social media by sharing that post, send it out to your email list. Say you just wrote this piece and tackled X, Y, and Z. And so you're going to drive some email traffic to it. And then you can do some outreach. So like you were mentioning, you might do maybe a guest post or something like that. You can also get... If you're starting to get into backlinks and stuff, you can do a scholarship, basically. So you can say, Hey, we're giving away a scholarship to a student at the local college. And it's gonna be $500 scholarship. And we want them to write an essay and do all these things. But then you can get

a bunch of colleges or that college to link back to that scholarship. So that can be a creative way to get some inbound links. But generally, you're trying to create content that people are going to be searching for. And then you're trying to dump traffic to that content so that Google sees that people are going there. They're spending time there. It's a lengthy article. If you can embed some videos in there, some things that they're going to spend some time with. That post will start to rank. So if you're bootstrapping it, I would say shoot for two to four articles a month and start cranking that content out and then distribute.

So share it, email, social media, send it to other people that might want to link to it, other bloggers that might want to reference it. And that can be a way to start getting some backlinks. So do you do any, is it all inbound marketing? I've been very, very fortunate to do inbound, but I'm actually meeting up with some guys tomorrow. We're going to start a door knocking team. We're going to start email marketing. We're going to start asking way more for referrals. We're going to be starting a full-time position to get on calls with property managers,

HOAs, small builders, realtors, affiliate opportunities. I just think I've seen so many people that could create their own demand and their marketing budgets are so much lower, but their closing ratios aren't as good. They got to fight to close it. But I think there's a lot of positives to it. Do you do anything of the outbound? So we don't spend a lot of time in that world, but I agree there's opportunity. We talked earlier about focusing. We've said, hey, we're going to focus on inbound marketing, digital marketing, that kind of space where we're saying we're going to pull people in.

And we've picked a vertical in an industry. So that's what we did. Eating our own dog food, so to speak. But yeah, I think there's a ton of opportunity to do some outbound prospecting, especially when it comes to relationships. I mean, one thing you could do if... Whatever your business is, there's probably referral-type partners. So if you're in the remodeling space, it could be an interior designer, an architect, a realtor, and you could start a podcast and you could invite those people to be on your podcast and promote their business, basically. Well, now you've just formed a relationship with that person. And even if your podcast never gains traction, nobody listens to

it, you basically reached out, talked to that person before the podcast, you record, you spend a few minutes after the podcast chatting. Well, now at the end of the year, if you did a podcast every week, you got 50 new relationships of people that can refer work to you. So you're creating inbound content. But really, the approach is, I'm going to do this to form those relationships. Just like you mentioned, hey, I'm trying to partner with property management companies or HOA or whoever it may be. That's an easy way to form the connection because sometimes it's hard to get time with those people.

So it's a creative way to do that. But yeah, I think it all goes back to strategy and what's the best way to get to your goal. Sometimes I get off the phone with somebody and I just say, well, why don't you just do more of what you're doing now? If what you're doing now is working. And sometimes people want to get creative and try all these 10, 12 different things. Maybe you can just double down on the one thing that works really well for you now.

And that could be your answer to increasing your business by 50%. And I agree with that. I've got different goals. So I like to dabble in marketing is my favorite thing in the world. So I just, I feel like I can dominate almost any source just because I'm in an industry that most people are playing checkers and I play chess. So it's like, I go out and get the best people in the world at what they do. And most advertising agencies are good at one or two things, but they can't be. They're jack of all trades, a master of none most of the time. So I like ones that specialize. And I can tell you that Google is God.

I mean, you're right to be focusing on Google. And you're absolutely right. Focus on one thing. There's a good book by Gina Wickman called Traction. And he discusses kind of just own something. If it's newspaper, own newspaper. If it's mailers, own mailers. If it's Yelp, own Yelp.

And there's some things you got to, you want good reviews everywhere. But, you know, the first thing, let's do this. Let's say you've got 10 grand saved and you want to start a business in the home service trade. Let's just say what we all did. We all mowed lawns at some point and you want to get into landscaping. So what I did is I created a water conservation analysis to really show people how they could save a lot of money to commercial accounts a long time ago. But where do you even get started? Because a lot of people that listen to the podcast, they're just wondering, okay, there's so many options. There's so much data. There's

all these things. And I mentioned a lot of them. What's the best thing to do when you get started? You've got to have a website. But I would say if you're just getting started, I would get a bare bones website up so that you can put your listing on Google My Business, you can get found in local search, and you've got a way to contact you, address, phone number, all those types of things. But honestly, if you're just starting, the best way is to probably focus in on one neighborhood where you think you have a lot of great clients in. So maybe that's a high-income zip code. Maybe it's a low-income zip code, middle of the road, but somewhere where you think your ideal clients are and you can serve a big chunk of that neighborhood or that zip code.

And then I would probably... I would start maybe doing some targeted letters to those houses. You could drop little door hangers off when you have one project in that area. Then I like to do the, Hey, we're working in your area. And you can do like, Hey, because we're going to be here for the next 3 or 4 weeks or whatever it is, 2 weeks, we're doing 5% off for neighbors because we're already going to be over here and cuts down on drive time, whatever, you can come up with a special offer.

But then you start to penetrate that neighborhood and then you start to parlay that into reviews online and documenting the process of what you're doing. So you take photos, you put that online, you can start sharing on social media and you can start working your way into the content game. But I think when you're first getting going, it's about your first several customers. So we're an inbound agency. And I wouldn't say, start with that. I would say you need the bare

bones of your website. But to think that you're going to rank and suddenly start getting business right from organic content out of the gates, you're just not. It's going to take some time. So I would do more boots on the ground stuff. And with 10 grand, that probably won't take that much. And then you could start to test with maybe some pay-per-click and put some budget there. But I would get really targeted with that. And I would do a very focused service.

So I wouldn't pick too many keywords. I would focus them around something very targeted, maybe five or six keywords all around the same service and drive them to a page on your website that has got a lot of good information. It's very helpful and it has good conversion points set up so they can call, fill out a form, get to the next step, and then make sure you track that.

So you know, hey, if I close three of these projects, did it pay for the five grand that I just spent? And that's how you can start to lever into the web. So there's a couple strategies that I'd like to bring up. There's long-tailed keyword searches. So like garage door repair in Phoenix, Arizona is kind of long-tail. It could be garage door safety, I issue repair. And the long tail keywords are much cheaper, but the conversion rate is going to be lower. But ultimately, if you don't have a lot of money, I think a long tail couple, if you find the right ones and you really pay attention to the ones converting. But the one thing I could say

is when you're small, you should be taking that customer, asking for referrals, taking a picture, taking a video, tagging them on Facebook, getting them to do a next door, getting them to do a Yelp, a Google. There's so much more we could have these customers do, and they're willing to take the time. When you're small, you've got nothing but time. So why don't we work hard to make this customer a raving fan and press the crap out of them, ask them if there's more we could help them with. Show up on time. Be respectful. Yes, sir. Yes, ma'am. There's so many things we can do with the current customers we have. And I think that's one of the biggest weaknesses I see is you've got a phone. Everybody says, well, I don't have an editor. I don't have,

you don't need anything. You just need a phone and everybody's got a phone. If you've got an iPhone or a Droid, you're fine. And there's two types of advertising. There's going for customers and there's going for internal customers, which are your employees. And so many people, Spencer, this is the biggest thing I hate. They don't spend the money to get their employees. Today, I had a company-wide meeting with like 50 people. It wasn't a total company. It was mostly management. And I said, listen, you guys need to be top grading. If somebody makes your life a living hell, we should always be recruiting, always be hiring. Hire the next best person. Find the right attitude and we'll train them. But ultimately, I think that marketing for employees, I can make the phone ring off the hook. I can

literally get 500 calls today, inbound, no problem. Like I've got my PPC turned up for the first time ever. I mean, we've got more cancellations than we could even comprehend. And I've got 30 guys here training. So, you know, I'm not bragging. I'm just saying that the hard part is finding the quality technicians and the quality dispatchers and the quality CSRs to book the calls and get the people out there, get the conversion rates. So what's your take on hiring? Because I feel like your job depends on people making money to keep you hired. And if they suck at booking the phone calls, which you should be involved in, and they stink at the average ticket and recognizing opportunities for maybe something doesn't need to be replaced today, but we should.

It's not broken yet, but your belt's about to break. It could break in 100 miles. It could break in 10,000 miles, but it doesn't look good. We should replace it. So what's your take on that? Yeah. I mean, it's the service business. People are everything. But yeah, when you're small, you're the one person. So if you're going to add one more person, or maybe you're a company of two or three, that's a 50% increase in your personnel. And so if you go cheap there, then to what you just laid out in terms of that person delivering a service, asking for a referral, being polite, showing up on time, all those little details, it's going to be really hard to scale if that person isn't carrying through the brand and the professionalism that you have.

So absolutely. But I think too, you've got it dialed in in terms of the marketing side and you know how to turn those levers and generate more interest and awareness. But I think some people that are that one person operation, they do struggle a little bit to generate the business. And if you're not generating the business, it doesn't give you very much confidence to make that first hire. It can be really scary because you're going, well, what if I don't sell more work the next month? And so I think it is important to always be hiring and always be recruiting and find the right people. And when you do make a hire, you want to pay for that person, make sure they're really good. But I think the marketing side of things gives you the

confidence to do that. Because otherwise, you're just going, well, I might have to let this person go if I can't figure out how to generate leads and close sales on a consistent basis. You know, there's a lot to be said there with training too. I always say this comment is somebody once told me, what happens if I train them and they leave? And my comment was, what happens if you train them and they stay? So you train, you start hiring, you start to develop outliers. And then you study those outliers in a good way. You study the top. And I'll give you a good example. I look at companies all the time to buy. A lot of them are a million to 2 million to 3 million. My top guy is going to

do 2 million this year. And it's in door sales. He just sells high-end doors. Next year, he's going to do 3 million. One guy. Okay. So the difference is most guys do 300,000 a year. My guy's going to 10 times, Grant Cardone, 10 times what the average guy does. And it's not because we have to lie, cheat, or steal. It's because we sell a really good product and we go against four or five people when we sell new doors. This guy is going against everybody. The customers always go with us. They go with us because of the difference, because we take our time. We sit down at their table. We listen to them. We bond with them. We make them raving fans. And I just want people to think your whole marketing is solved because here's the facts. He who could pay more per lead will always win. So if you get the right people that are trained for conversion and optimization and making wild customers, it solves your marketing problems.

I mean, then you can pay guys like Spencer to take care of it for you. But the biggest thing I see is you can't be this guy that's placed, let's make a deal every day. You can build a business organically. And if you want to be a one man shop, kicking your tires every day, that's fine. And I think that's, it's a lifestyle business. And if you choose, Hey, I want to work and I don't want to have to worry about inventory and payroll and all the other crap that comes along with hiring. That's a decision you can make. But the problem is when you're not working, you're not making money. That's a tough way to live. Yeah. So, and to your point, you know, I think that experience that you deliver in this industry, it doesn't take much to set yourself above the competition in terms of how you interact with

that client and how you sit down with them and walk them through the process. So hitting those kind of the blocking and tackling and the basics will set you apart. And often, oftentimes in many cases, you know, this guy on Facebook a few weeks ago said, speak for yourself, dude. He goes, cause I said, no guys shouldn't be running more than three or four calls in the garage or industry a day. And he goes, my guys could run six and they're fine. And you know, my guys are better and faster and better trained. And I didn't even respond because I'm just thinking to myself, it takes you 45 minutes to get to know the customer and hear about them and build a relationship with them. You can go to McDonald's and get in and out of there in under 20 minutes.

Or you can go to a fine wine restaurant with great steaks that's known for it. You're going to spend a lot of time there. You're not going to have that dinner in 20 minutes. And that's the difference. I'll spend 250 bucks for a great steak dinner and a decent bottle of wine. But at McDonald's, I can spend 15, 20 bucks for a couple of people. No problem. And that's everything. So some people brag about how fast they are at the technical aspect. And I'm like, literally the technical aspect is so important. But in the scheme of owning

a business, it's less than 10%. It doesn't have anything to do with culture, hiring, paying your taxes, strategy, leadership. You know, I can go on and on and on and on. It has nothing to do with financing and it doesn't have anything to do with KPIs and CRM setups and, and advertising. So all of these people and Spencer, I get really wound up and excited and frustrated all at the same time because these people say, well, I'm a good technician. Shoot. They only pay $2 for it. They sell it for 10. That's $8 left over. So if I do this,

instead of making my buck, I'm making by selling this or doing this, I can make the eight bucks. But then they don't understand. They don't pay their taxes. They run into this wall. And it's kind of frustrating because I just saw a guy that used to work for me two days ago. He posted on Facebook, he's starting his own business. Well, the last two jobs he ran, he gave away an opener. And another thing I could tell you is he's literally got the biggest anger issues I've ever met. Like literally one of the tough. And you know, I like the guy, he's a good kid, but ultimately what happens when he gets a couple of employees and he snaps?

Like, I don't look at anybody in this industry as competition because it's kind of like taking a five gallon bucket to the ocean. In my opinion, there's enough for everybody. But if I had a track, what my competitors are doing, you know, one of my employees came in here earlier. He's like, do you remember when you used to do Craigslist? And I'm like, I still would do Craigslist just to keep the bottom feeders. I want to eliminate the bottom feeders. I want to steal the market share. But ultimately we're so busy when you're this busy, you do one thing, you raise your prices and you hire. I mean, there's nothing else to do. And I got everything turned off. It's just, it's fascinating to me. But SEO is the, it's the ultimate, so many people don't invest in their

website. They don't invest in conversion rates. They don't look at time on page. They don't look at their quality scores. And it's a shame because they think they got it figured out and they say, this is good enough. And I got to have a website and I got to have a business card. That's what they say. I'm like, well, think of your website as your number one referral source. It's your best friend. You got to pet it. You got to love it. You got to cherish it. What do you think when you get started? Because I would say bare minimum, a 30 page website. I mean, because you want your FAQs, you want good videos, you want product pages, you want to the about you page, and you definitely want to have everything with a good site map, easy to navigate and really good, unique selling proposition, and then something like a call to action.

So I just talked to a buddy of mine, and I want to talk to you about the website, but he said he changed one word on a website and doubled the conversion rate. Instead of get your tune up today, it said claim your tune up. So get means I'm receiving, I get it. Or claim means I got to take action. Double the conversion rate with one word. Can you believe that? Only because I've been doing this for a while. Sometimes it's the littlest thing and something that you wouldn't even know. But to his credit, he tested it. And he measured it. He had the ability to tell, oh, if I change this one word, it doubles. Yeah. Back to your earlier point, I think a lot of technicians, they're really good technicians. So you're talking about the guys like, oh, I can run six calls or whatever it is. Yeah. Back to your earlier point, I think a lot of technicians, they're really good

technicians. So you're talking about the guys like, oh, I can run six calls or whatever it is. But I think a lot of people struggle to make it from a really good technician to business owner because they're different skills. So I think you see that a lot in this industry. But back to the website. Yeah. I mean, I don't have a specific page number in mind. The way we look at it is you've got to have a website that you're always working on. A lot of people will build it and then it just sits there. Once you've built it, that's the starting point. Then you get to start running. And so we typically have a plan in place where you're adding content on a monthly basis, or you're upgrading and improving content on a monthly basis.

So say you've got your 30-page website. Well, you might have found a couple more pages that would actually be helpful. You can spin them off. Or you've got new products that you're now offering. So you need to build those pages. And then blog content, you should always be blogging. And you don't always have to create new blog content. You can go back to old blog content. Say you start doing this for a year or two. You can go back to old blogs and refresh them, improve the content, add video, add photos, and then republish them as new. And that you'll see a huge jump in terms of SEO performance there. So I look at the website as like, get something up, don't let that be the hurdle, and then make it a regular process of adding to it and improving it.

And when you get to a certain point, you are doing things as minuscule as testing get versus claim, but you're not doing that at day one. No, there's no way you would do that at day one. And I think A-B testing, I think really the difference is you really got to research your competitors in the fact when it comes to SEO. Now, I don't spend a lot of time doing anything with my competitors. I look at holistically. I'm not looking at one person. I'm looking at the industry. And ultimately, you just got to be better than the other guy. You got to have site. For example, for the Google My Business page, you should be

checking every citation your competitors have and going and getting all theirs. And then go to your next biggest competitor and get all those. And make sure you're filling out those citation sites like Judy's book and Yelp. And there's a million of them. There's probably, I think I have 800 of them. But ultimately, that's one way to do it and start getting reviews on some of those sites. Literally, why wouldn't you tell your customer, listen, did we do a good job? Yes. Well, we'd like to share the good news. If you do me a favor, I'm going to go ahead and install decorative hardware on your garage door, and I'm going to give you a list. And if you go, let us know how we did on all of these sites. We'd really appreciate it.

That's not illegal. You're not doing anything against Google's guidelines. You can't pay them. You're not supposed to pay somebody. But if you did a real job for that person and they want to share it with the world, there's nothing disingenuous about that. Am I right? Absolutely. And it's so easy. You can create a little email template that you literally copy and paste after every job and you send it to that customer. I mean, better to ask for it in person and then send the follow-up so they get the links. But man, yeah, you can automate that. It's one extra step. It probably is a 30-second move from an email perspective. And then yeah, what you said earlier too, just take a photo with them, tag them, put it on social media, give them the ability to share that with the world.

And that's how you can help accelerate that word of mouth and referral base. You know, when you're in a new city or you just start up, why not say this? I'm going to share something right now that I think is just going to blow people's minds, but you're slow. You're just trying to start up. So you say, listen, Mr. Jones, you know, let me ask you something. Do you have any close neighbors, friends, or family that I could go and service their garage door free of charge? And if I noticed anything wrong, I'm going to give them everything's half off because I'm just getting my name out there. I'm really giving this a go. I told you about my family. I got really giving this a go. I told you

about my family. I got to know your family. What I'd appreciate is if I go take care of them, hopefully they could do something online for me. They can let me know how I did via social media and some of these other sites. And if they do need something, I'll go ahead and I'll take care of it. I want to build a customer for life. And I know they're going to tell their friends, neighbors, and family. But then all of a sudden you start getting penetration. Then the HOA president calls you. Then the leadership of the church calls you. It's really a numbers game. You should never be sitting at home. You should always be doing something with your business. I used to, in my master's program, I'd always have my laptop open

and I'd always be building citation sites or working on a backlink or just typing an article. And I remember the instructors would call me and be like, Mr. Mello, what are you doing? And I had the ability to kind of answer them with a bullshit answer. But I walked into school greasy, just fixed like five garage doors. And you got to get started somewhere. If I could go back though, 15 years and tell myself, look, there's so much stuff we leave on the table that we don't think about and we don't do. And every customer should be a raving fan. There's a good book called Raving Fans.

It's a quick read. Everybody should own that book. But I want to talk a little bit more about just lead generation specifically, because if you're doing 30 or 40% and your average deal is $50,000, that means you're making 20 grand. And, you know, I think the problem with home builders and remodelers is sometimes they bite out more than they can chew and they deliver. I've never seen a contractor when it comes to remodels do anything on time because they take on too many jobs. They don't have the right foreman.

And then everything starts, especially in a booming economy. I don't know, maybe I'm the first person ever, but what's your take Spencer? Because have you ever had somebody just say, stop, cut it off. I'm too busy. Somebody in terms of like a remodeling company, just like turn off the leads, basically is what you're asking. No, I mean, nobody says that. Well, I take that back. I've heard it a couple of times, but they usually say it jokingly because they're like, well, no, I don't really want you to do that. But that's their acknowledgement that they're too busy. But I think what you're talking about really is the challenge that most companies that are trying to grow have across all industries.

I think tech is a different world because you go out and you raise a bunch of money and you overhire and you try to build a big valuation. But really, in a lot of service businesses, it's always that balance of growth and then hiring the right people and training and growth and finding that predictability. So people tend to hire too slow because they want to maximize profitability or they're worried that they can't take on that next hire. And so that's why I think it happens. I think that's why people get behind as they're going, okay, I'm trying to grow, but I'm not going to pull the trigger on hiring these great people and grow into those people.

They push everyone to the limit and then go, okay, now I better hire. And then it's too late and they're getting behind and stuff starts to break down. Yeah, absolutely right. And it's a dirty shame because you really should spend a lot of time recruiting. I mean, it's just, I figured out the secret sauce in the home service business. And I used to think it was leads and all my attention was get the phone to ring. And my buddy comes into the shop a few weeks ago and he's all outbound. And he goes, I don't know how you do it. And I said, that's not the skill of the business. Trust me, the skill is getting, man, it's really about getting the right people on board. And that's a skill. People, they post an ad on Craigslist and expect

the employees to come flooding in. And you know, you spend a fortune, you spend a small fortune getting leads and building a business. But if you could focus as much on leads as getting the leads for quality people, I mean, to the listeners out there, I promise you, your life will be better. You'll be happier. Your significant other will be happier. Your kids will be happier, less stress, more money, more freedom. It's just amazing. And that's the secret sauce. I mean, there's a lot of secret sauce to the home service business, but what other things do you recommend? Because I think there's only two things that I know of. There's link building and on-site content creation. Those are the two big ones, right? For SEO.

Absolutely. Yeah. Those are your big ones. So when you're thinking about link building, there's some creative ways to go down that path in terms of on-site. What I always tell people, because this stuff changes, Google changes their algorithm. The North Star is Google wants to get people to the best information the fastest. So if you always think about when you're creating content and thinking about what somebody's searching for, your page should load quickly. It should have good information, complete information. It should be easy to digest,

all those things that we talk about in the web world as user experience and that type of a thing. But really, at the end of the day, if that's always your North Star in terms of your on-page components, is creating the best information and making sure it loads really quickly and the user gets what they need, then the little details are going to change over the years as Google changes things. But if they don't do those two things, nobody uses Google. Because if you type something in, you get garbage or you have to hunt for whatever you're trying to find for forever, you'll go use another search engine. But they've become the clear winner in the space. And that's really why. They're doing their best to get

somebody to the correct information as fast as possible. And so I like to give that as SEO advice because otherwise you can get really caught in the weeds. And if you're not in this every day, or like yourself, you love marketing, so you're in this stuff. But the average business owner is not. And so I think that's a good global north start to think about when you're building your website. Well, you know, I explained to people, why would they come up with the Google Guarantee? Why would they do that?

Well, Google Guarantee is up to $1,000. I'd say that $1,000 or $2,000 when you're in the Google Guarantee, you do background checks with Pinkerton and now they got another background company and they get the leads. They figured out how to filter them to know that they're through the Google Guarantee. projects with Pinkerton and now they got another background company and they get the leads. They figured out how to filter them to know that they're through the Google guarantee. Well,

Google's got a lot of power on the guarantee program because if someone goes through the process of asking you for the money and they prove their case, they'll give the customer the money back and just stop you from advertising until they get their money. And that's how they do it best for the consumer. It's so nice when you think about how do I get their customers are not really us on PPC and organic and all that. The customers are the person doing the searches because they would never be able to charge PPC and all these other things. They're crazy amount of money if they didn't have the usership or the network. And people miss that. So they're always thinking, what can I do to deliver the best

customer or the best company to this client of ours? And so ultimately it means being on time. So Uber works. And you know, what's funny is Google's trying to, everybody, Amazon, Facebook, they're all trying to develop a algorithm for home service to say, it's kind of like Uber, because everybody owns a car. The problem is not a lot of companies run a machine where they've got guys that are on time. They've got clean cut background tested. They got vehicles that run right. So when they try to build this Amazon home services, it's kind of funny because it always fails because you can't have the guy with all the right tools to be everywhere at once. You can have somebody to pick you up in a car and

take you somewhere else. And these nerds that are sitting in a room somewhere, I'm going, it's just like, you know, and I'm a nerd, so it's not like a bad thing, but these nerds are sitting there going, it's just like Uber. Why don't we do this for the home service space? We'll just connect it with the closest person that has good ratings. Well, I wish it was that easy. So for all the people out there, we know the world's changing. We know that Amazon's taking a lot of the world by storm and Facebook and Google, but I promise you, if you do things right, if you take your time, you focus on quality over quantity, and you push your customers to the absolute limit to shout out about your company, you're going to do much better. You're safe.

You're not going anywhere because there's one thing I know they can't make yet, and that's amazing technicians. Call center, they come a long way with artificial intelligence dispatching you should see what some of the updates on service center are doing for me it's like it recommends routes and it moves stuff automatically if we give it permission so it's insane so getting the right technology stack how important is tracking spencer oh gosh it's. It's so important. Because as you start trying to figure out your metrics of your business, conversion rates and how many people you need in the door, that's what gives you the predictability to grow. So if you know for every X number of leads, you get Y sales, then you know from a marketing perspective that you need to turn

those levers up. And if you're trying to hire another salesperson or another technician, how much work you need to support that salary and all the costs that go along with that. So yeah, you got to have the tracking in place. And most people are still tracking leads on sticky notes or random pieces of paper or maybe Excel. And having the technology in place, the costs have come down so much. Even the one-man band can have a CRM and can use technology to track. And then from a service standpoint, yeah, I mean, I'm sure you're seeing the front end of

the latest trends in terms of dispatching and all that kind of stuff. When you're one person, that's not as critical. But as you move forward, it gets more and more important. And those things can have huge cost implications just from travel time. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you got to think about all the things that have to go right in a home service business. That's why I get so mad at my technicians that they leave with a quote instead of earning the business. Because first of all, your marketing had to do its job, which is a feat in itself. The CSR had to collect all the information exactly right. They had to sell the company over the phone and then needed to provide it in a timely fashion to get out there and solve the customer's problem. And then the dispatcher had to get everything right. Then your vehicle

had to run perfectly. There's all these factors. And then you get to the door, you walk into the garage or the air conditioner, whatever you're doing, and you leave with nothing. I mean, I was in the field for nine years. I know you should be walking out. I mean, door quotes are something else because you're going against five other people for repair. You're not getting three people to repair your toilet. You're calling somebody else and saying, just do it. So I just find it hard to believe. And this is important to have meetings with your staff and get them up to this stuff. So I do something in the podcast every time. I'm going to ask you a few questions. If someone wants to get ahold of you, what's the best way to do that, Spencer? Yeah, easiest way is builderfunnel.com. But if people want to just give me a call or text me, have questions or random thoughts,

719-660-5731. Cool. And what are three books that you really like that stand out that you'd recommend reading? Gosh, that's a good question. I would say one that I read last year was Leader Shift. And that's John Maxwell. And that was probably... I don't know if this is like 10th or 20th book or something like that. But it felt like every page was just like gold. So if you're thinking about scaling your business, growing it, you've got to have your leadership dialed in. I would say, aside from that, growth mindset is one that has had a huge impact on me

over the years. That's Carol Dweck. It's the idea of having a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. Fixed meaning, hey, I'm just the way I am. And that's just how I was born. And growth mindset. Fixed meaning, hey, I'm just the way I am. And that's just how I was born. And growth mindset is basically, hey, you can make improvements. You can get better at things. You can overcome those challenges. And I think that's critical, especially as a business owner, you've got to be able to have that sort of mindset. And there's so many good ones. I guess the last one I'll throw out is you mentioned actually earlier 10x. That's Grant Cardone. That one's really helpful for just expanding your thinking and allowing yourself to run free down the road and say like, what could this look like if I threw out this big goal or this big number, this big destination that I don't think is really

possible. But hey, if you get halfway there, it's probably further than you originally set out. So I like that one as well. Well, when you think about 10x, the first thing you do is take your number from last year and you times it by 10. And then you got to back into that and say, what's my average ticket? How many jobs would I need? And then you got to start thinking creatively, expansion or picking up something else or increasing your conversion rate. But it gives you a clear map on how to get there. And I feel like the people that make the biggest mistake is they got a dream of 10X, but they don't know how to put it in motion for reality. And it's so easy to put into reality. I have a billion dollars. That's what I'm going to

do in three years. My company is going to be doing a billion dollars in revenue. How? With 2,000 technicians doing half a million dollars a year. How am I going to get a half a million? Well, I just put an offer in another apartment complex. I need a house, 60 guys. I got to get them trained in four weeks and I got to have a full-time recruiting staff, which I have. I got a training center. I got an LMS. Reverse engineer how you get it. Making the phone rings easy. Getting technicians to do their job correctly. Getting the vehicles. I just hired a full-time vehicle washing company to come out. They're going to wash our vehicles weekly. We just got dual cameras. So anytime the guy hits the brakes or does a sharp turn, it's going to record that and make it a learning moment.

I mean, they're not going to smoke in the trucks. It's like inspect what you expect. But I said, how do I get to a billion? Reverse engineered it, wrote everything down, whiteboarded, and came up with exactly what needs to happen. And then I put it into a timeline and said, how do I scale up to this within year one? And believe it or not, by January, we will be at 55 to 60 guys a month. So that's how you do it. And I'm getting licensed in 10 states right now. And I'm probably my competitor's worst nightmare, but, um, Oh, well, I mean, like I said, there's enough for both of us. I am going to elevate the industry by elevating the standards by having great technicians that are clean cut

drug-free. I'm going to be, you know, this, the Starbucks effect made every coffee shop make more elevating the standards by having great technicians that are clean cut, drug free. I'm going to be... The Starbucks effect made every coffee shop make more money and more frequency. So I'm hoping we can do that to this industry. And what I wanted to do is give you the last food for thought and maybe give you a few minutes to give the audience something to take away and whatever you want to talk about. Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. Well, that's awesome to hear your goals and hopefully that's inspiring a lot of people to take some action. And I guess, yeah, to use up the last couple of minutes, what I would say is, the way I think about marketing is it's not just another department. It runs across the whole company. So you think about marketing as

the initial attention, brand, it's the signage, it's how somebody becomes aware of you. But then it's also all the touch points, your website, the emails, the social media. Then it works its way into the sales process, the experience they have with the call center, or the experience they have with the person that goes out to provide the quote and, the experience they have with the call center, or the experience they have with the person that goes out to provide the quote and close the deal. And then it's all the way through the experience. It's how easy was the process? Did you solve the problem? What did you do to delight them throughout that? And so I think if you look at your business through a new lens, and just realize that every single

part of it is an opportunity, a marketing opportunity, you can even look at the billing part of it. Is there something you could send in that email? Maybe it's a funny gif or gif or however you say it. Or maybe it's a link to a bunch of resources on how they can continue to maintain something so that maybe they don't have to repair or replace as often. But that can happen from the billing department. And so that can be a touchpoint. All those things contribute to marketing. And so I guess that's where I would kind of leave people with just like, it's so important. Most businesses are challenged, mine included, yours included. We just don't have enough attention if you're trying to get larger and grow. So I like that concept of just thinking

about all those touch points. And then, yeah, I mean, if people want to learn more about us or find us online, builderfunnel.com is the easiest way. I'm not big on sales pitches on podcasts. We're just out here doing this, trying to share some ideas and help.

So yeah, I guess that's where I'd leave it. Well, Spencer, I really appreciate you coming on. I hope things are great there in Colorado Springs. And marketing is a big, big, big task. It's probably the hardest thing in business. And I'm obsessed with it. You're obsessed with it. It's a good thing to be obsessed with because it's literally the lifeblood of your company. So I appreciate you coming on today, brother. Hey, thanks, Tommy. I enjoyed it. Yeah. It's always fun talking to somebody that's got that marketing hat on and is in the weeds a little bit more. So I appreciate you having me. Cool, man. Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me.

And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor, leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership.

It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your life season further. So thank you once again for

listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.