People don't know the words and technology and the language that's being used, right? If you're a Mason, you know what tuck pointing is. If you're a homeowner, you have no idea what tuck pointing is. So if you say we are the tuck pointing experts, there's a portion of the general public has no idea what that even means because you're not using their language. You're using industry insider language. So what is a more obvious thing that you do? Even though it's not technically what you do, we put on their truck, got cracked brick. Like the old got milk campaigns you've seen, got milk, question mark. We put on their door, got cracked brick, question mark. Now, they can fix cracked brick, but their main thing is tuck pointing. But when people see brick walls, they see the cracks in the grout, right? Not the grout, the mortar. And they think, oh, my brick is cracked. They don't think my mortar is cracked. So we're using their language. So the gap got brick, got cracked brick campaign works really well for them. Cause now I feel like, Oh yeah, I do have cracked brick. I didn't know who can, I didn't know somebody actually did that. I need to call this company. That's making them problem aware or even solution aware, right? They have a problem. Now you have a solution. So that's a clever one. I have a, there's a, he's married to my cousin. He owns a, pest control, not path. Well, he does it. He does do pass, but he do a road in control. Like they remove raccoons and, you know, things like that from, um, addicts and stuff. And he has on his truck noises in the attic question mark. I mean, clever, not clever, not even clever. Awesome. Just beautiful. That is, that is a perfect example. And the other day I was talking to him like a couple of weeks ago, I saw him at the gym and I said, Hey man, how did you come up with the, you know, noises in the attic? And he said, well, I didn't think about it until like really people kept calling me and saying, hey, I hear noises in my attic. Can you come out and look? I hear noises in my attic. And so people are calling him using that language. I hear noises in the attic, noises in the attic. And he's smart enough to put two and two together and put on there as his marketing campaign, noises in the attic, question mark. That is really, really good marketing messaging, guys. Right? If you say, we get rid of raccoons. Well, they don't know it's a raccoon. They just know there's noises in their attic. So you search for noises in the attic or I hear noises in the attic. What could it be? Boom. He pops up. Got noises in the attic. We do, you know, rodent removal. We do precision wildlife removal. Like that is good marketing messages. He doesn't have on there. We're really, really good at removing raccoons from your attic. Right. We're the best at rodent care. No, it's got noises in the attic. It relates. It's their language. So specificity wins, like I was just telling you. So last thing, number three, is why contractors are falling behind online. Online matters way, way more than anything else right now, guys. All of your efforts should be online. Now, I will tell you this. Long-term, long-term, from a lead gen source, long-term, networking is the best. But long-term means it takes a long time to build up your network. It can take years to build up a solid network of people that are referring you, which is good. But here's the thing. There's two things that people typically do in two different directions. So one is they ask their friends, hey, do you know any good contractors? And they go, yeah, actually, this is, matter of fact, one of my best friends tested me yesterday. He said, hey, man, I got a, My cousin or whatever wants to remodel their attic. They want to finish it out, put drywall. I'm not in the business anymore. He knows I'm in construction, obviously. He messaged me and said, hey, do you know anyone who can do this? Do you have a recommendation? And I gave him a recommendation of my old boss that I used to work for before I started my own business. And I said, yeah, I don't know if he's got time or not, but he could do the job. That's a recommendation. So the first thing people do is they ask for recommendations. My wife wants her windows tinted in her car, and I'm looking for someone that does mobile detailing, specifically for our camper. I washed our camper yesterday, and I just hate doing it. So those are two things I'm going to post on social media. Hey, local friends, I need some recommendations. Who does good window tinting and who does the mobile detailing? So recommendations, referrals are one way. But once they get the referral, then oftentimes they go to their website to check them out. So they get the recommendation first, and then they do the due diligence online. Okay, that's one direction. The other direction is they go online, do an AI search or a Google search. They find your website, your online persona, your online information. They find that first. And then they go through the process of figuring out whether or not you're the contractor they want to work with. Usually it's through some type of phone call or consultation, whatever, right? They may even go ask for recommendations on a website, on a social page, whatever. They may find you online, right? They have cracked brick. They go online and go, does anybody fix cracked brick? They see your business that got cracked brick and we do tuck pointing and masonry work. Perfect. I got the company. Now I'm going to go on social. I'm going to ask my friends, Hey, does anyone, has anyone ever worked with this company or have had any experience with them? So now I'm building the trust on the backside. So they go online first. A lot of times they may like what they see, but then they have to build the trust secondary. Or they go a referral route first. They receive the trust through the transfer of trust as a referral, and then they go online to see if they like you. So there's a no like and trust perspective that goes here. If you're not online, they don't even know you, first of all. Even if you get a referral, they have nowhere they can go to justify or due diligence on you, right? Because if you're not online. But the know, like, and trust always has to happen. Those three things have to happen. They have to know you exist. They have to like you, you know, what you do and the type of work that you do and who you are. And they have to trust that they're going to get those results, right? The certainty of achievement, all that stuff. So it's one of those two. You always have to have a like and trust portion of that. So if you don't have, if you're not online at all, first of all, you're way, way, way, way behind. And then if you don't know how to use online to it. to leverage that and speed up the process and make you the expert, then you're way, way, way behind. Right? So, you know, the transcripts of your, not transcript, sorry, the messaging, the copy that's on all of your contact, all of your online persona, you know, it helps with the SEO, the Google rankings, the content. you know, the creation of additional content, map, pack, visibility, reviews, authority building, consistency, so on and so on. There's so much nuanced stuff that happens in here that you guys are missing. You think it's a once and done thing. Oh, I built a website on Wix. I'm good. Like that's my online persona. Wrong. Like that's you're basically doing a NASCAR race with a tricycle. Like you building your own website on Wix and that's the only presence you have online is you just, you know, you went out and grabbed your tricycle and now you're trying to compete in NASCAR Daytona 500. That's, that's literally what it's like. The people that are doing the SEO, that are making content, that are building authority, that are building the trust, that are educating, that are doing all this on multiple platforms. They are the ones that are racing a NASCAR and you show up with your tricycle and think you're going to compete with them. That's what's happening because you have no online presence, no online authority, nothing. And with AI now, they just say, hey, AI, what's the best three remodeling contractors in my town? Who specializes in bathroom remodels? You have nothing, so you don't even show up, right? With Google, it gives you a bunch of different things. With AI, it just tells you who to call. And if you don't even show up there, then they don't even know you. They don't even know you exist. Right? This whole, you know, if I build my business, they will come. That's complete bullshit. Like you have to put in the effort and the energy and the time and the money to shout from the rooftops with a megaphone about who you are, what you do, and why people should trust you. And it's a nonstop activity. I was talking with one of my clients this morning. We had our one-on-one accountability call and they're struggling with leads. And we're talking about some of this stuff. And I was showing them, you know, about creating content, like, you know, making videos. Well, Brad, I don't like making videos. I don't want to be on camera. Too bad. Get over it. Get your daughter or son to do it. Get one of your employees, get somebody to do it if you truly can't do it. Right? You know what I did? I went out and actually paid money. to have Hollywood screenwriters and actors teach me how to be good on camera. I paid a lot of money. Why? Because I realized how good or not how good, how important it is. Now that's after I had already been going live and making content in my construction business for seven, eight years ago. I went live on Facebook in my construction business over 10 years ago. Like when it first, when Facebook first started offering lives, I was going live. And I remember the very first live that I went on. I still remember to this day, had no script, had no idea what I was doing. I just went live and people saw it. Right. So like you can still do stuff, even if you're not good at it, you will get good at it through repetition. So fast forward until. I don't know, five years ago when I knew I was going to start doing coaching and I was going to start creating content, that's when I hired the actors and screenwriters to help me even further dial in that process. So we were looking at TikTok videos. And my first TikTok videos from almost five years ago, but over 2021, yeah, they were not very good. The content was good, but the actual videos and stuff, the quality, You know, the hooks and all that, like it was just not very good at all. But fast forward to today, I have over 800 videos on TikTok alone. So if you do 800 videos of anything or 800 reps of anything, you're going to be much, much better at it than when you first started. I promise you, you can't not be good at it, right? So sometimes it just takes repetition. And, you know, action beats perfectionism. 100 times the one. Action beats perfectionism 100 times the one. Back to the NASCAR scenario. Let's say they built this brand new track and there's going to be a race in a week and you have to have a different type of car, all this stuff. Well, you can go out there and build something that's crappy. and get out on the track and start racing, you know, like a week before, start using the track, practicing, practicing, practicing, dialing it in, practicing, dialing it in, practicing. And the other company, other teams can be waiting and trying to perfect everything in their, you know, in their shop before they go out on a track. You now have 100,200 laps in on this track with your car before they even show up on the day before due to their practice, you know,10 lap practice and their trial. Pre-trial racing. You already have a hundred laps in. You will know the track. You already know the track. You already know your car. You've dialed it in. That's the difference. Like taking action and learning throughout the way you, the first day you went out there, your car is a piece of crap. It didn't even make it one lap. You went back, you tweaked it. You did it better. You learned, you got better. You learned, you got better and better and better and better. So when it's time to perform at the real level, then you're, you're far ahead of everyone else because the other cars are just, they're just trying to perfect it. Action beats perfection all the time, every time, all the time. So massive action, learn on the way and start doing it. So as far as like showing up online, you're falling behind, you're not using AI, you're not on social media, you know, you're doing things that were effective five years ago, but they're not effective today. You're not showing up in SEO. Like you have very generic stuff. You know, when you do a, when you do a premier project, a showcase, Project, you should be hiring professional photographers that come in and videographers and do a big piece on that. That should be one of your staple projects on your website. Don't go out there with your flip phone from 1992 and, you know, whatever it was and take, you know,500 megapixel pictures and think that's going to be good enough. It's not. Like, you have to do some of these things. You have to jump through some hoops, whether you like it or not. You have to. If you want to. Keep up. So most contractors have basic website, a few photos, a generic service page, very little content, no educational material at all, no social media, no videos, nothing. You just think, oh, I did the requirement, Brad. I built a website. I don't understand why I'm not getting good leads. Yeah, because again, you're showing up on the tricycle. You've done the very, very, very, very, very bare minimum. Whether you like it or not, this is what you have to do. You have to market your business. You have to. I don't care if you hire someone to do stuff for you. I don't care if you hire someone to build your website, do SEO, film content. The guy I was telling you about that did the wine cellars, he recently hired a company to come in and do on-site video shooting. So they would plan out like a half day or two hour, half day video shoot. They come out, they videotape him, a bunch of different videos, different questions, different topics, different angles. And then they professionally edit it. And then he's posting and they look amazing. They look really, really good. Like I told him the other day, I was like, I don't even drink wine, but I want to build a wine cellar just to hire you. Because they're really, really good. And a year ago, he was scared to death to be on camera. He didn't want to be on camera. You have to do what you have to do. You know, luckily he's, he put in the effort and he made the decision that it's important. He started doing it. So you have to do these things. You know, as far as building authority, Google rewards authority on Google on signals. They want signals like evidence that you're active, you're trusted, you're specialized and you're relevant, right? If your blog posts are from 20 years ago on your website, you know, you made 50 blog posts 20 years ago because you had a lot of foresight and you thought that was the way to go. And it worked well for, you know,15 years. But then all of a sudden, all the information on there is irrelevant. Right. You're doing videos and I mean, blog posts on stuff that was technology used 20 years ago. Now, no one uses that technology. That piece of information is irrelevant. So even if you're an authority figure today, it doesn't mean five years from now, you're still going to be in that position. You constantly have to fight to stay in first. But Google wants those signals and that information comes from reviews, service pages. blogs, FAQs, video content, project content, topical authority. FAQs, very simple, frequently asked questions. This podcast right now is essentially an FAQ of the questions that we get on our coaching calls, the most frequently asked questions. So you put on your website an FAQ section that says, how long does a typical, you know, how long does a bathroom model take? And you answer it. Typical master bathroom takes three weeks. How long does the kitchen remodel take? Typical kitchen remodel takes six weeks, whatever it is for you, right? How much does a project cost? Typical projects start this or they cost this or they arrange this. You know, do I do, uh, do I need permits for my job? You answer it. Like all these frequently asked questions, you put them on your website. Why? Because people go online and they search for, do I need permits for my job? How long does a typical bathroom remodel take to do? They're asking those questions. Google says, well, hey, this company over here answered this question. They answered this exact question. That makes you a topical authority. Makes you the expert because you're answering those questions. All right. So what else? Also, the ones that are winning the most are the ones that are educating. They're constantly educating their audience. Again, I have over 800 videos. I was talking to the people that I was talking to this morning, my clients. He said, and I was showing them my TikToks and how the very beginning ones were terrible. He goes, yeah, I actually found you on TikTok. And then I started watching a bunch of your videos. And that was two years ago. I got off to him. I said, dude, you waited two years to get coaching? Come on now. Which, by the way, is typical. You guys, trying to be perfect instead of taking action. Right? Trying to be perfect. You waste a year, two years. A lot of my, you know, my average sales cycle for people that end up joining and getting coaching is six months. Takes them six months. I have some that are a year, obviously some that are more. If you would have just taken action when you first learned about it, you would have been, you know, leap years ahead of where you're currently at. So taking action even matters there. But all my content, like they see one piece of content, they relate to it, they go, oh, that's interesting. He's saying something that makes sense. Then they go watch other videos. And other videos and other videos and all the pieces start to make sense. Wow. He's, he makes sense about this and he's telling me this and that makes sense. And they even told me on the call, they go, yeah, we, we saw your one video about stop doing free estimates. And we thought to ourselves, yeah, because they're the business partners that why are we doing free estimates? That's stupid. Right? So they stopped doing it. Like that's educational content. Obviously mine's different than yours in terms of the audience, but it's the same thing. If you go to my TikTok and you see there's like 800 and something videos, you're like, holy crap, this person puts a lot of effort and makes a lot of content. Same with the podcast. You know, we're on 270 something episodes now. I've been doing it for almost five years consistently. I've only missed two weeks and five years of releasing a video or an episode because that's showing up, constantly building it. Sometimes I talk about the same thing. I've talked about, I try not to. It's hard after 270 episodes and not talk about the same thing, but I try not to. So this is all stuff that you should be doing in your business. I'm not saying you got to have a podcast. I'm just saying you got to be putting out content. So additional cost blogs, I'm sorry, addition cost blogs. Like if you do room additions, what does that cost? Pricing guides, how much does this cost? You know, veteran grants. If someone needs a grant through, you know, if they're a veteran and they need a grant and you're an expert at that, or they need some type of. you know, SBA loan or whatever. Like if you're experts, you can answer those questions and be an expert, you know, online educational videos. Like I was saying, the FAQ content, those are the ones that the contractors that are doing that are the ones winning, right? So that content, when you do those builds SEO, pre-qualifies buyers, creates trust and increases close rates before the call, before the actual sales appointment. When your marketing is on point, and you're doing all these things, the sales portion of it is really just you taking their order. Like they're already going to hire you. They already know that. They're just like, you just got to get their estimate and get their information so you can put the estimate together. It's just like a technicality at that point. If you have no marketing authority, All of your effort is in sales. You have to be really, really good at sales because you have to overcome, you have to build the authority during the sales process. If you build it online prior to, they're just calling you and saying, hey, you're the guy, we want you. When can we start? Which is what everyone wants. Everyone wants those leads, but you don't want to put any effort into actually doing what it takes to get to that point. So I had clients that would call me and say, hey, Brad, I've been watching your content for... over a year now. And we already knew that you were going to be the one whenever we decided to do our bathroom. So they call me up. You know, they want two bathrooms remodeled at the same time. Boom, two jobs. All I did was make videos. They could see my personality. They can see who I am. I mean, you know, make whatever excuses you want. This is what it takes, period. If you want to have good leads and be seen, you have to make the content. Consistency is a real problem. Like I was telling you, I have over 800 videos. I've been doing podcasts for almost five years. I only missed two. That's pretty good consistency, right? 270 something episodes, one a week for five years, and I only missed two episodes. That's it. That's showing up, guys. That's not doing one here, one two weeks later, one I feel like it. No, that's consistency. Making videos and posting them online, that's consistency. I did the math, and I don't know the exact number, but I have over, I think it's, I forget now the exact number, but it's like for sure over 150 hours within just the length of the podcast, because my average podcast is about 40 minutes. I have over 150 hours of podcast episodes. I mean, it's over that, but I'm just saying like I've spent 150 hours recording podcasts and that's just the recording portion, not the before and after. So it's, it's well over 200 hours. I've invested over 200 hours in making podcasts. Like that's what it takes. You have to do that. So, um, the consistency, you know, again, action beats perfectionism. Just start posting. I don't care if it sucks. I don't care if it's the worst video on the internet, post it. Don't do 47 takes. Do three takes most maximum and then post the best of the three. Just create content, respond to content of comments and follow. Every one of you, every post on social media, every single post, every comment, everything on postal media, I respond to. Every single one. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, direct emails, text messages, whatever. I respond to every single one of them. Some videos I do have 500 comments on there. I respond to every one of them, or at least like the post, you know, like the comment I'm interacting with every single comment. And if you follow me on Tik TOK, you know, this is true. Very rarely do I miss, you know, a comment, but I interact with every single one of them. Why? Because I know it's important. So, you know, most of these guys are not, most of the guys are not doing this or not. You got to post more, you got to create more content. You got to respond faster. You got to improve your SBO SEO. Um, but the, the, the operational chaos in your business kills that consistency because you don't make it a priority. It's a, when I have time kind of thing. And then what happens is, you know, that you drop the ball, your marketing falls behind, uh, you know, you're wearing too many hats, right? So the contractor who consistently builds trust online beats the contractor who only shows up when the work gets slow. Hmm. You ever have the flyers in your mailbox? You know, Hey, we're a contractor. I've been in business for 20 years and we'll help you. You know, when you have a flyer in your mailbox, they're slow. They're out of work. And you know, I would never, ever, ever hire someone who puts a flyer in my mailbox. Just, I mean, maybe other people are different, but I'm just telling you across the board, I would never, ever hire someone who puts a flyer. And I'm talking about like a printed flyer, not a direct mail. You drove by and stuck it in my mailbox. Never would I hire you ever. And usually I make fun of you when you do. So that's the end of this episode, guys. Again, another one I thought would take 20,30 minutes and here we're at almost an hour. Next week is going to be the sales, the top three things of sales and the following will be general business. So just to close out here, the contractors who win over the next five years will not just be the best builders and the best at what they do. They'll be the contractors who communicate trust the clearest. They educate the best and they consistently build authority online. That's, that's the ones that are going to win. So I, uh, I appreciate you guys hanging out with me and all the, you know, like I said,270 something episodes has been a long run. Uh, not planning on quitting anytime soon. I do change up the, you know, the format a little bit. I'm still looking for more contractors to interview because I do want to bring in contractors and talk more about their experience. What's worked well for them. you know, how they got to where they were. So if you do know anybody, some of you have reached out and recommended a few. I really appreciate that. If you do know anybody that you would recommend or yourself, just, you know, shoot me a message, shoot me an email, whatever, however you want to smoke. So, you know, I don't care. Just get in touch with me and let me know more than happy to have a conversation with you and talk about that. But guys, I appreciate you hanging out over all these years. I can't believe, I can't believe it's been 200 something episodes,70 something episodes. It's crazy. Had no plans when we started our first episode that we would be here today, but we are. So I owe all that to you. I thank you for watching, listening, sharing, and I really appreciate you guys. You can always find me on the socials, just search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. And remember until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
