do get a lot of calls. Guys, you can use your website to pre-qualify people. I was just talking to my client yesterday and he knows this. His website's terrible. But we looked at another website that does the exact same thing that he does. He does remodeling, general contracting, stuff like that. So we looked at a remodeling company. website that he likes. And I said, if I look at this website, I think luxury. I think high-end. I think this contractor is expensive. I look at your website and I think handyman. Just because of the Emmy. Stock image of a toolbox with tools sticking out of it. If you want people to think that you're a generic company, then do that. Use the stock images on your website. Guys, your website is the portal. It's the front-facing you know, outbound image of your business. Your website should be fantastic. It should be over the top. It should be one of the best things about your business in terms of marketing is your website. People will social proof you. They may see your truck. They may talk to a client of yours, the neighbor, and they go, Hey, I saw you're having your work done by that Brad guy. How's that going? Oh, he's fantastic. Does great work. Oh, okay. I'm going to check them out. I go online, search for Brad's Construction. Nothing. That's weird. I can't even find anything about them. Oh, here's a Facebook page. They do have a Facebook page. Okay, I'll go check that out. Look at Brad's Construction. There's like three posts on there for the last six months. And it's like, look at us. If you guys want a new kitchen, call us. No value add, nothing. The header of the website, I'm sorry, the header on Facebook is just like a logo, your logo on there. It's like, guys, that is not what a level three contractor looks like. A level three contractor looks polished. They look expensive. They look like they paid someone a lot of money to make sure they look good. That's what a level three contractor in business looks like. And I get pushback all the time from people. I need to do a website. Good. That's good. You need a website. I don't have any money though. So I found this guy that does contracting websites and he only charges 500 bucks. And I'm like, what don't you understand about how important this is? Why are there companies that are charging 10 to 12 to $15,000 for websites and do that often and do it successfully? It's because those companies understand how important it is. It's not just how it looks, guys. There's metadata that goes in there. There's H1 tags and H2 tags and all these things that go in on the back end of the website that make it important for the SEO of the website to show up organically when someone goes and searches for a remodeling company near me. Those are the things that make you show up. It's not just how pretty the website looks. So why are you wanting to shortcut and... cheap out on the most important marketing piece that you have for your business. It blows my mind. Blows my mind. You will drop 10 grand on a tool in a heartbeat that you'll use once a year. You will justify the crap out of it. I mean, if I buy this one tool, it saves me an hour. And it's worth it. I'm going to buy it. I don't care. You'll go buy this $10,000 tool. Use it one time, it saves you an hour, then it sits in your shop for two years before you use it again. And you'll be perfectly happy with that purchase. But damn, drop $10,000 on a website that's going to change your business. I can't do that. I can't afford that. I can't afford it. I got to buy new parts for my side-by-side. I'm laughing because of how ridiculous this is, but I have this conversation daily with people. You have to invest in your business and yourself. It's just non-negotiable. It is. You got to have reviews, guys. You have to have reviews for your business. You have to collect them. You do it every single day. When you buy parts and products and services, you always go and look at the reviews. Always. Especially on Amazon. Guarantee you that you do that. But for some reason, you don't think your clients do that. So you don't think it's important. reviews are almost more important than having a good website. If you're a company and you have 500 reviews,4.9,5.0 rating, and you have 400 reviews and you don't have a website, I would take that over having a really good website and no reviews. Because it's tangible. It's, oh, these people have bought from this company and they actually agree that they do good work. So it's important to have a lot of reviews and it's important to have frequently current reviews. So you need to have reviews every week, every month, constantly. You don't just get 50 reviews and be like, okay, I'm done. No, you have to keep them coming because it shows a history of your business. Especially if you get a bad review. You get one bad review. If you get a bad review today, but you have 10 new reviews in the next three weeks, that one bad review doesn't matter. It's irrelevant now. But if the last bad review that you got was a bad one, and it was six months ago, and that's the last review that you got, it pretty much says that either you're out of business or you've just fallen off the deep end and now you do crappy work. That's why it's important to show the history of your business. When I look at a service and I see a bad review, I go read it. I determine if I think this person is just a Karen and they're being crazy. If I see it's a valid bad review, like a bad experience, and I read the response from the owner, and the owner is taking accountability and saying, you know what? We dropped the ball here. We totally dropped the ball. We hate when this happens. We put new policies and procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again. please reach out to us if we can make this right for you. If I see that response from an owner, and then I see that they've had 15 reviews since the date of that bad review, and all 15 of them have been a great experience, five-star rating, then that, to me, gives more credibility to that company than not having the bad review. So that's why a lot of people now actually want to see bad reviews. If you have 100, five-star rating with no bad reviews. It almost looks fake. But some of you are like, oh, man, I got to bend over backwards for the customer. I got to do everything for them. I got to do a bunch of extra work for free because I don't want to get a bad review. It's like, dude, get that bad review. Go for it. Fire them as a customer. Get that bad review and move on. I mean, why would you want to keep doing that? That's dumb. The last thing with marketing is vehicle wraps. Guys, vehicle wraps is the second the second most used method for getting business. When I first started, I had a 2000 F-150 white truck. And I had stickers, vinyl stickers put on the door. So if you think like a door, it's like three or four foot wide. And I had stickers just on the door, like one inch, two inch stickers. I had that truck for two or three years. And then it got totaled. Never got a single phone call. from somebody that said, hey, I saw one of you. I saw your truck. I saw one of your trucks. I saw your truck. Not one. Not one single phone call in like two or three years. Then when my truck got wrecked, I had to buy a new truck and I couldn't find a white truck to save my life. I used one. So I bought a used black truck and thought, well, I could just wrap it to make it look like a white truck. And this was, I don't remember what year it was, but it was maybe like 12-ish,2012. Somewhere around there,2010. I can't remember. Wraps were just coming on scene. I think there was one other company in town, in my entire town, that had an actual wrapped vehicle. So it was a very new concept. I mean, there were stickers. People were doing stickers, but they weren't doing full wrapped vehicles. At least contractors weren't doing it. Other companies were, but not contractors. And so I had my truck wrapped. And I remember the day I went and picked it up, I was nervous. I was like, holy crap, this thing, it's going to get your attention. I got to start driving better, right? Because it did work. And within a couple of months, the phone's ringing. It's ringing. Hey, I see your trucks everywhere. I'm like, oh, if you see them everywhere, you see me because I'm the only one that has a truck. But it gave this persona that we were a big company and we had lots of vehicles and a fleet, which is the image that I wanted. I wasn't trying to portray this small one-man company. We were a large company doing lots of good work. And the phone started ringing just from my truck. And then I got a van and wrapped it. And the phone started ringing more. And then I got an even bigger van, a panel van, a freaking huge billboard. And when I had that and wrapped it, the phone really started ringing instantly because it's so freaking big and obnoxious, you can't miss it. And that is what you want your vehicle wraps to be. large and obnoxious. It's not about cool for you. It's not about, oh, I want it cool and sleek. I want to have a black truck with little red letters. It's like, why? Why don't you just not do anything? Because that's the effectiveness of this. It needs to be gaudy. It needs to be bold. It needs to be ugly. It needs to stand out. That's the whole point of it, is to get attention. The whole point of vehicle wraps is to get... eyeballs on your business. It's not to be cool. It's not to be a badass. It's not to have this streamlined look and blacked out rims and whatever dumb crap you guys want to do to be cool. I don't want to be cool. I want to be ugly. I want to be bold and ugly and in your face. That's what I want. And when you do that, your phone will ring nonstop because it's not about what you like. It's about what gets the eyeballs. That's what's important. I see us all the time. Even in the clients of mine, they're posting in the Profit Club Facebook group, hey, I just got this design on my truck. What do you think? And I'm like, it looks like crap. I just wouldn't do anything because you got it minimized. You got very basic stuff. You don't need straight lines, guys. This person, if he's listening to the podcast, knows exactly who I'm talking about. I give him crap for it. So I know he doesn't care, but straight lines on vehicles do not sell. Curved lines, uneven lines, angled lines sell. If you have your name on three inch, six inch size letters and you put them horizontally across your truck, it does not have the effect as if you put it on an angle, even if it's the exact same size letters. If you put it on the angle, it catches your eye. It's like, wait a minute, something over here looks off. Something's not right. When you have it symmetrical and you have things in line, your eye will not see it. It will not catch your eye. It will blend in with all the other vehicles on the road. There's actual science behind how this stuff works. But you who have never researched an ounce of marketing and how that actually works, you're going to make a decision based on what looks cool to you. And it's like, that's stupid. That's so dumb. Do you want to win? Do you want to have a level three contracting business or not? It's a yes or no. If the answer is yes, then quit being dumb. It's that simple. Quit being dumb. All right. I don't know why I get fired up with marketing. It's such a touchy subject for me. I think it's because a lot of the success that I had in my business was because of the marketing. And a lot of that was dumb luck, like just pure dumb luck. I didn't know what I was doing, but I did a lot of research. I've read and researched a lot of marketing, a lot of marketing, and I just know it works. So let's talk about professionalism. This is the next one. If I saw myself, this is another litmus test. If I saw myself out in town, driving a company vehicle, and I started following myself around, for like eight hours that day. What would I think about me? So insert you. If you were to follow yourself around for eight hours a day, kind of like hidden camera following you around, what would you think about your company? You know, based on how you drive, how you park, how you interact with people at the store, your vendors, how you interact with customers, how you act when you think no one's around. Like, what would you think about yourself? You should basically run your business as if there's a camera on you all the time. I like the saying of you should live your life, not even your business, but your life. You should live your life as if you're planning on running for political office one day. Because when you do that, they are going to dig and dig and dig and find as much dirt on you as humanly possible. And if you're embarrassed about anything that you've done like that or do constantly, currently doing... That's a good indicator that you may need to make some changes, especially in professionalism. So I saw a truck one time. He's driving a company truck. And I can't remember what, I think it was Target, but I can't remember where. And he pulls up and he parks in the handicap spot. Now, I'm assuming his wife was in the store because he's sitting in the truck. But he's parked there with the door open and he's parked in the handicap spot. There's no chance in any scenario. where I would hire that person if I needed his services. 100% based on the fact that he was parked in a handicapped spot and he didn't give a crap. Like, what are your employees doing with stuff like that? You know, you got to go to the bank. It's real quick or you got to go. I see us every, I mean, I should say every morning. I do go to Starbucks a lot. But when I do go to Starbucks in the morning, without fail, two or three cars pull right up to the handicapped spot. Sometimes they'll even leave their driver's side door open as a message to everyone. Hey, I'm only going to be two seconds. It's okay. I'm in the handicapped spot. And it drives me crazy. I have to forcefully keep my mouth shut because all I want to do is report them, get them a ticket, cuss them out, tell them how much of a piece of crap they are. I don't care if you're there for three seconds. It does not matter. You're not handicapped. You don't get to park there. But yet we do it all the time. And what are you doing like that when you pull up in front of a store and there's no parking? You pull up underneath at the front curb because you're just going to run in real quick. What does that image portray to everyone who sees that? That goes back to even the integrity part. Do you have integrity to where you're going to actually park out in the parking lot and walk the extra hundred steps and it takes you an extra five minutes? Or do you just pull up front because you act like you own the place? I'm just saying, I mean, you have to, that's a self-evaluation there. But that's professionalism is like, what are you actually portraying to everyone around you? So I have this little thing here, look, think, act. So what does professionalism look like for your company? Are you uniformed? Are you groomed well? Do you have your shirt tucked in? Do you have, you know, is your shirt embroidered? Or are they screen printed? Or, you know, what is it? Like there's different levels of this and I'm not going to tell you which one's better than the other. Do you allow people that have face tattoos? Do you allow people with piercings? That's up to you. I'm just saying like, where is it? Where is the professionalism that you want to draw the line? And that has nothing to do with how good you are as a contractor. But does it matter? Does image matter? 100% it matters. 1 million percent it matters. The image matters whether you think it does or not. People judge books by the cover. Always. You do it. Even if you say you don't, you absolutely do it. Everyone does it. And if the cover is your vehicle, which is a rusted piece of crap with no lettering on it, and you're wearing a t-shirt with holes in it and jeans with dirt on them, stains, and that's the image you're projecting, no wonder you can't get work. Because you look like a hobo. You look like a homeless man. You look like a level one contractor. You have to have this stuff in place, guys. You have to. The next one is think. How do you think? How does your team think? How does your team think about stuff when it goes bad? When something goes bad, how do you react? Are you calm, cool, collected? Do you get all bent out of shape? Do you yell at your employees when they make mistakes? I've done it. How are you as a person? Are you a leader? or do you just kind of react to everything? How do your employees think? How do they react? And that ties into act, which is, how would you act if you were being videotaped live? That's kind of what I was saying. Live your life if you're going to be a politician. How would you act if you're being videotaped live? One time I was doing a job. We were doing just a custom closet because I used to have a dealership for custom closets inside my business. And we were doing a custom closet install. And I had one of my subcontractors. He's a full-time firefighter, but he helped me on his days off part-time as a subcontractor. And I had him over there on the day one doing the work. And then day two, I came by to help him. Or maybe it was the morning. I don't remember what it was. But I show up and of course, it's the master bathroom. So they had all their stuff out of the closet. So in the master bedroom, there's boxes, shoe boxes and clothes on the bed. Everything's... out there in the room. So it looks like a mess. And so we're working on the closet and several hours go by. And we're talking like normal, having a normal conversation about different things. And I walk out of the closet and it catches my eye and there's like a box. The shoe boxes are stacked up. There's like 20 shoe boxes kind of stacked up. And then like right in the middle of the shoe boxes, there's a webcam. Like literally, it's like it's hidden in there, but it's hidden in plain sight. And it's pointed right at us. I'm like, oh, okay. The customer is actually watching and listening to everything we say. But I wasn't worried about it because I know that my subs and my employees are not bad people. They're actually very good people with compassion and we're caring and have integrity. So I don't have to worry about stuff they're saying. I don't have to worry about anything that was said that was inappropriate. So was it nerve-wracking? Yes. But was I worried? No, I wasn't. Because we don't talk like that. We don't act like that. There was another story I heard one time of a contracting... I don't know if they were siding installers or window installers, but there was two guys working outside of a house on ladders outside of a window. And that window went to a 12,13-year-old girl's bedroom. And the two guys, thinking they're outside, are talking about... what they're doing sexually with girls and women and stuff they picked up and dating and stuff. That little girl heard every word they were saying and was freaking out, went and told her dad. And the customer was extremely livid and rightfully so. Rightfully so. Just because you're outside and you don't think anybody can hear you does not give you permission to start acting the fool. So for me, we didn't talk about politics, we didn't talk about religion, and we didn't talk about anything sexual. We just never did. So because we don't, I don't want those things. I don't want to say something political about one party and they're the opposite party and they get pissed. Just don't. So I avoid it. So it's a policy. We don't talk about these things. I mean, were there ever times where a joke was said, you know, or pushing the envelope? Sure. But it wasn't like an everyday thing that we had to worry about. So, you know, but for the most part, like it was just a policy that we didn't, we had and everyone stuck to it. And we didn't have any issues like that. So how do you act? How do your employees act? What do you tolerate as a boss? But Brad, they're really good guys and they do really great work. They just have a potty mouth. It's like, okay, it's your business. Do whatever you want. If you want the image of your business to be your employees are potty mouths and they act a fool, then that's you. You can do that. But they do great work. It's like, I get it, man. I get it. They do great work. People don't remember the great work. They remember the experience. But you do the great work. Keep doing the great work, tarnishing your reputation. Because people remember the conversations they heard, overheard. Yeah, Brad's guys were really great. They came in and did a great job. But we heard them saying things that were just bad. I wouldn't want them... They would do a good job for you, but with your little girls you have around, you wouldn't want them in the house working if you guys were home. That's what people are telling their other friends and stuff. But you think it's all about quality. It's not. It's not about quality. It's about the experience and the professionalism. Quality is like third on the list. But we're going to talk about quality because quality is important. I'm not saying it's not important. It is. But it's just not as important as you think it is. Quality breaks down in two things, the product and the service. And the service is what I was just talking about. The product is really the work that you're doing, the physical work, right? And one of the things I just had a conversation with a contractor yesterday, he's like, I can't, I have a hard time finding subcontractors. Or no, it wasn't. He posted on one of my videos and he said, I have a hard time finding subcontractors. If I pay them really well, I only get A minus work. And I'm like, dude, I would freaking love A minus work. A minus work is acceptable. Yeah, but I do A plus work and I want to make sure that they're doing the same. And I'm like, okay, so you're a perfectionist and you think that doing a 10 out of a 10 is what's going to make all the difference in the world. And it's not. You guys should be delivering seven, eight out of 10 all day long. You should not be striving for 10 out of 10s. And the reason is because your seven out of the 10 is the customer's 12 out of 10. You're so into it. You're so attached to it that you think that that's what matters the most and the customers have no idea. You could do a 4 out of a 10. They'd probably still be happy because they have no clue. And this is not permission to do crappy work. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about doing over-acceptable, over-average, acceptable work. A 7 out of an 8 out of 10 is perfectly acceptable to a customer who thinks it's a 10 out of a 10. That extra three levels that you're trying to get, if you deliver a 7 out of a 10 product and the customer comes in and is like, this is amazing,10 out of a 10, but you spend two to four more hours trying to get that extra three points to make it a 10 out of a 10, that extra three points gives you no extra profit. It gives you no extra benefit. It doesn't. It doesn't. You're doing it for nothing. You're expending extra energy, time, and money for nothing because your customers are in love with the 7 out of 10 product. Now, this is completely subjective. I get it. I'm saying 7 out of 10. My 7 out of 10 might be your 4 out of 10. Or my 9 out of 10 might be your 11 out of 10. Whatever. And I had this conversation with an employee one time. I was like, look, we're just trying to do seven out of 10. We'll do this job. Seven out of 10, that's what we're shooting for. He does the work. We go back a few weeks later to do some additional work. I hadn't seen the job. I go look at it. A couple of little things, just like caulking, extra caulking I wanted to put around this door. He didn't do a bad job. He did a fine job. I said, but let's just add some extra caulking on here because it's in an area that gets a lot of water. He's like, I already put two layers of caulking underneath. The board behind it has caulking. The siding has caulking. It doesn't need an extra one. I'm like, I get it. I understand. But I want to do it anyways. This is a friend of mine. I just want an extra precaution. This is not like a normal thing. I'm not justifying or critiquing the quality of your work. I just want to put another layer of caulking on this on the very outside so that we can just have extra protection. Can we do that? He's like, I'm not doing it. I'm like, what do you mean? you told me you wanted a seven out of 10. This isn't a seven out of 10. This is like a 10 out of a 10. Like your standards are way too high. And that's, it hit me when he said that. I was like, you know what? You're probably right. I'm saying seven out of 10, but really I'm like 10 out of 10 for most people. And that's when I realized it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how, if you get a 10 out of a 10, by the way, that I fired that guy that day, mainly because he said, I don't need your approval. And I'm just thinking, yeah, you kind of do. Actually, it's my business. You kind of do. There have been some other issues prior to that. So I did let them go. But my point is that what I say is 7 out of 10 is someone else's 10 out of 10 and someone else's 4 out of 10. But what matters is your customer. Now, what I'm about to say is some of you are going to flip out when I say this. But I want you to think of it this way. And again, I'm still saying you do good work. I'm saying you should lower the quality of your work to the point to where you get a little bit of pushback, like just a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of pushback. Like, hey, Brad, I just noticed this one piece of trim. You know, the caulking wasn't very good on it. Can we touch that up? Yeah, no problem. Five-minute touch-up. Oh, great. Everything looks perfect. Like, that's kind of what I'm talking about. I'm not saying, you know, do crappy work so that they're pissed off at everything you do. I'm saying you can lower the quality a tiny bit until you get a little bit of resistance and now you know where the threshold is and then you can step it up a little bit above that so you don't have that issue. But some of you guys are perfectionists and you think your value, your self-worth comes from the quality of the work that you do. And yes, you need to take pride in your work. I'm not talking about just having pride. I'm talking about you put your self-worth. Are you a good person in this world based on how good you do the product? And that extra mile that you go does not help you at all. It just doesn't. And that's fact. So the product is one thing. The last thing I want to talk about is service. You have to have the highest standard for service. If I had to choose between doing 6 out of 10 quality or 10 out of 10 service, I'm going to pick 10 out of 10 service every time. Every time. I'm going to put more effort into having a great service than I am into the actual product itself. Because that's what people remember. It just is. Again, not permission to do crappy work. You should do good work. You need to provide a great experience from first contact to final invoice. You may have an awesome sales experience. They love you. They want you to do the work. And then you show up on day one. You're like, oh, you'll never see me again. Tommy over here, he's the lead guy. He'll do everything. And then you disappear. They never see you again. And Tommy has a potty mouth, has no integrity, doesn't care. And you're like, I don't understand.
