A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Welcome to Hammer and Grind, the podcast built for contractors. Real contractors, true stories, real solutions. My name is Brad Hebner, and I will guide you on your journey to mastery of your construction business. You can find Hammer and Grind on all the social media platforms. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. Now, if you're looking for more help, you can check out our free Facebook group called The Contractor Profit Group. I do free trainings in there and it's a great community to be a part of. Now, if you're serious about making more money, saving more time, and creating a business that supports your lifestyle, check out my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. I've put together a proven system for creating a winning business. Now listen, I'm so confident that you will succeed in my program. I'm now offering a 10x ROI guarantee. That means if you don't make at least a 10x return on your investment within a 12-month period, I will refund you the full amount. You can find out more information about The Profit Club at hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. All right, let's podcast. We're going to be talking about why you're doing social media wrong. I see a lot of contractors trying to do social media and they're doing it completely wrong. So let's dive into social media. Real quick update. I had surgery last week. I had septoplastic surgery last week. I deviated septum surgery and just got my splints out today. So this is going to be a short and sweet podcast because to be honest with you, I still have a lot of pain in my face. So I don't want to talk as much. But I appreciate everybody who's had me in your thoughts and prayers during that. And we're going to be back to rock and roll in our normal scheduled podcast going forward. So I'm hoping this is going to help me a lot with some sleeping issues that I've been having. And it's going to be able to give me some more energy, be able to give back to you guys even more. So the second half of this year can be straight fire. because I want to keep bringing the fire for you guys. I want to keep bringing you content, keep helping you in your business to make a difference. That is my goal is to help 1,000 contractors make over $100,000 a year in your pocket. There's a lot of guys out there still making $30,000, $20,000, $50,000, $60,000 a year, and that is crazy, guys. You should be making a lot more than that. So let's jump right into it. Why are you doing social media wrong? Let's first talk about what you're doing wrong. Let me back up for a second. Before you even do social media wrong, there's one step before that. And that is a lot of contractors don't even do social media. And that's because they don't think it matters. They don't think it's important. They don't want to do it. They're not tech savvy. They don't get on social media because they're private and they don't want people to know about them. They don't want Big Brother spying on them and all these other crazy conspiracy theory things and whatever reasons you want to make, that's fine. You don't have to be on social media. But I'm telling you right now, your customers are on social media. Your competitors are on social media. So if you want to continue down the path of... slowly going out of business, then don't do social media. I'm not going to lose any sleep over you doing social media or not. So just know that everyone and their grandmother and their grandkids and little kids are on social media. Now, there's a lot of things about social media that can be scary, daunting, overwhelming. There's so many new platforms coming out. You got TikTok and you got Twitter and you got Instagram and you got Facebook. And there's a bunch of others out there that aren't as popular that get a little bit of traction. And then you got to deal with apps like Nextdoor and some of these other types of platforms where everybody wants your attention. The thing you need to do first is figure out where your customers are at. What platform are your customers at? You need to understand that when it comes to acquiring customers, leads, it is not about what you like or don't like or want to be on or not be on or what you feel about the big brother and all that crap. What matters is what your clients are doing and what your clients want. That's what matters. So again, you don't have to do this stuff. Totally okay. But if you're wanting to know where your leads are, they're all on social media. Like 99.9% of people are on social media. Okay? So just know that you need to be doing some type of social media strategy. Now, so what are contractors who are on social media? What are they doing wrong? A lot of you are posting pictures, which is great. Pictures do well on picture sites. Videos do well on video sites. Okay, so there's the ones that I mentioned, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. That's pretty much the main ones right now, the four main ones. Twitter, I would say, really serves no purpose for most construction companies. Construction is a visual type of business that you're doing as far as the service that you're providing is a visual service, right? So yes, you can post pictures on Twitter. There's some holdouts on Twitter. I've honestly never got on Twitter ever. I have a profile and I've made five or six tweets on there, but I just never did Twitter. Twitter is more for passing information. If you're a Hollywood actor and you want to pass information to your fan base, Twitter is a good way of doing it. So what are the other ones that are available? Instagram, Facebook. Those are the two main players for the last... I don't know, five, six years. Facebook being the number one, Instagram being the number two in terms of platforms that were being used. Instagram is predominantly a picture-based platform, but they've tried to compete with TikTok now. They're trying to do always super short reels and videos and blah, blah, blah. So you have to understand where your clients are at. And there's something unique happening right now on social media. And I want to talk about it. And you guys need to be aware of this. So TikTok is the hottest craze right now. Most of my efforts that I do personally are on TikTok. And I've been on there since yet last year. I probably joined about six months later than I wanted to as far as getting started. because there would have been a lot more land grab early on. I would have been further along. The thing with platforms is when a new platform comes out, if you aren't one of the early adopters and you join later on, there's already tons of people in this platform. Think of it like a pool. A brand new pool opens up in your town and... the first people to get there, they're in the pool by themselves. And it's like, man, nobody else is here. I have this whole pool to myself. And then six months, a year, two years down the road, you go to the pool finally for the first time and it's jam-packed. And you have a hard time just getting in the pool because there's so many people in there. That's kind of what it's like when you wait. Now, there's lots of platforms that have come and gone that don't take off. There's like Telegram and there were some other ones. I can't remember off the top of my head. The one that actually was doing really popular and then got shut down. I think by Amazon, like the Amazon took their servers down or something. Can't remember what that platform was off the top of my head. But last year that was happening. And so the entire platform went down. So if you invested, you know, hundreds of hours creating content and posts and stuff on this platform and then the platform itself gets shut down. that can be devastating to you and all of the work that you've done. So one quick tip on that, when you're recording content, don't record it directly into the platform. Record it on your phone or camera first and then upload it. That way you always have the original content and it's not sitting on TikTok. Like with TikTok, you can record directly from the app. But then that video is in the app. And if that app ever shuts down, you lose that video unless you have it set up to download the video automatically. So always record on your camera first and then upload to the platform. That's a little tip for you to keep your content. You want to keep your content. So what's interesting, what's going on with TikTok is everybody is flocking to TikTok. TikTok, I don't know the statistics, but it is like... one of the fastest growing platforms ever in social media. And it has become the number one search engine. The number of searches happening on TikTok have surpassed Google and YouTube combined. So it in and of itself is turning into a search engine. So you have this phenomenon of everyone going to TikTok to watch videos. But TikTok is a worldwide platform in the sense of the audience that you're trying to attract. So, for example, on Facebook, I can have a Facebook page and I can run Facebook ads directly to a specific target market demographic and only those people are going to see it. If I'm local on Facebook and people go on the Facebook and they're looking for a contractor... usually the people in your network, like the people that like your page and the people who are friends with the people that like your page are usually local because I'm, you know, I'm not going to like a painter in California's page. If I, if I'm not a, I mean, obviously I'm in the construction space, but if I'm a homeowner and I live in Indiana, I'm not going to randomly like some painters. who lives in California because it doesn't benefit me. I'm going to like the pages that are local to me. So you have a local community that you're building on Facebook. Okay. So, and the ads are targeted locally. So on TikTok, though, you have the entire world and it's not segregated by demographic, like geographical location. So anybody anywhere can see your videos. I can log in and see a painter's video about how he does painting and he's in California and I'm in Indiana and that doesn't benefit me at all. So I'm not going to hire the guy. So it becomes this weird phenomenon where you're no longer targeting local. You're targeting nationally or worldwide. And those people aren't your customer. And everybody's leaving these other platforms like Instagram and Facebook. to go beyond TikTok, and you're losing the local reach that you have on those platforms. And so it's really weird. It's a weird time because Facebook ads work really good for local targeting. Facebook pages work really good for local targeting. TikTok does not really have that capability, at least not yet. So everybody's leaving those platforms. So your customer base are leaving the one platforms that are local. going to an international platform, and you're no longer having direct access with them. So it is a weird time of what's happening. And it's going to be interesting to see what happens over the next six months to a year with that. That being said, there's still plenty of opportunity on Facebook. There's still people that have no desire to be on TikTok because they think it's all teenagers dancing. So they don't want to be on TikTok. So they're going to be later adopters a year from now, two years from now, when everybody in their family and all their friends are like, man, you got it. Grandma, you got to get on TikTok. You got to get on TikTok. It's so funny. You got to do it. Then maybe grandma's going to switch over. Right? So you're going to have this delay reaction of everybody moving over. There's lots of interesting things happening with social media. So you got to keep your eye on that stuff. When you are posting on social media, regardless of what it is, let's talk about Facebook predominantly. When you're making your post, you want to have pictures and videos and posts that are educating, that are inspiring people. Stop trying to sell through posts on Facebook. The number one post that I see contractors making, which is the worst post you could make, is... Look at this beautiful bathroom that we did for so-and-so or we did for this client. Call us today to get your dream bathroom built. Look at this one we did. Call us today to get your free estimate. That's what selling is. When you're like, hey, call us today and we'll give you a free estimate. That's selling. You're actually trying to sell your clients at that time. So what you want to do is something like, here's a beautiful bathroom we just did for our clients. What's your favorite thing? What do you like the most? Do you like the tile? Do you like bathrooms or showers? I mean, do you like the vanity? You know, what is your favorite part of this bathroom? Or you post two pictures, one of a very modern bathroom and one of a very elegant bathroom, shabby chic or whatever. And it's like, which one's your favorite? Those are the types of posts that you want to do. Those are entertaining and engaging type posts. And you want to do that versus the selling, which is give us a call today to get your free estimate. We help people all over town. We're the best. We're voted the best in town. If you want to have the very best do work for you, call us today. Click the link below to schedule your free estimate. That's selling. That's what selling is. You need to quit trying to sell. You have to start inspiring, start educating, start giving tips. Social media is now a long play platform. It's to educate people and to show them why you're the one that they need to ultimately call when the time is right. So if I go on Facebook and I'm scrolling Facebook, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and there's a video that pops up of you and you're showing this. kitchen remodel that you're getting ready to start. And you're like, hey, look at this kitchen remodel. This kitchen, we're going to start doing a full gut on this. It's going to turn out to be an amazing project. We're going to be changing the floor plan altogether because the client didn't like the floor plan. And we're really going to be doing some neat and creative things in here. You're going to want to follow us along this journey as we do this. Now, that's day one, demo day. And then this project is going to last for six weeks, eight weeks, whatever. And you're going to be doing constant updates along this journey, maybe three days in. Hey, it's Brad here again. We got the demo done. The plumber's here today doing all the rough in. Here's something really neat I want to show that we're doing. We're actually going to be putting in a faucet over the stove so you can have a pot. You can fill up your pots. That's a very popular feature that we have. been requested a lot to have so that you're not having to carry in your big pot over from your sink over there and fill it up. So this is something we have to rough in for and the plumbers here are doing this. That's educational, but also entertaining. You're educating them on a new trend that's happening and you're showing them behind the scenes of what's going on. And it actually is entertaining. That is... something that I would want to watch. Like, oh, that's neat. I've never seen a pot, you know, a faucet for your pots before. Interesting. And now I'm engaged in your project. Now I kind of want to come back each day or each week and start seeing what you're doing because you've captured my attention with something interesting. Now, here's a question for you. Who gets paid more money? Entertainers. or educators, Hollywood actors, or professors. Which one of those two professions makes more money on average? Entertainers do, right? I mean, we have literally people that do fake wrestling who make millions of dollars because it's entertainment. Entertainers will always make more money than educators. So the way that you get viral videos, and content that people really enjoy is by education through entertainment. This was something that I learned last year that really changed how I do content, especially on TikTok. If you've ever watched any of my TikTok videos, I have some entertaining videos in there. One that I've done as a doctor contractor going to the hospital and trying to get a patient saved, i. e. a customer. and the Dr. Prophet is there to try and save it. It's a skit that I did, which is entertaining, but there's education within that entertainment. It's the same reason when you see a funny video that's really well done, you're like, oh man, that was a great video. I love it. That is entertainment, right? And if there's elements of education within that, it's even better because you've entertained and educated throughout. Now, you can't always do entertainment and education at the same time. So a lot of times you got to mix that up. You got to do some funny stuff. You got to do some educational stuff and you kind of just throw in a mix. And some things are going to be super hot and hit hard and some things are going to fall flat on their face. There's no really rhyme or reason or any kind of algorithm that you can apply that's going to hit every single time. So when it comes to social media, it's really about quality of the post. but also about quantity of what you put out there. So if you're only making one post per week, it's not enough. I mean, Gary Vaynerchuk, Gary V, if you follow him, he tells you you need to post four times a day on every platform, which is crazy. It's like a full-time job. But you should be posting frequently, very frequently. And one thing about social media is that you need to really, if you're just starting with social media, you really need to find one platform. and predominantly post on that platform. Don't go out and get Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok and try to post on all four platforms every day. It's too much. You will end up producing crappy content just because you need the sheer numbers, the volume, and it's not going to do well. So pick one platform and do really well at it. I'm still saying that for contractors, in terms of getting leads, Facebook right now, as of the recording of this, is still your best bet for posting organic posts. There's still life left in Facebook. If you want to be on TikTok, that's fine. But that is a video platform only. Facebook can be video and picture or text or a combination of all three. So I would stick with Facebook right now. You can multi-purpose. You can record a video for Facebook and then also post it on Instagram or TikTok if you want, or vice versa. But really, for contractors, Facebook is still a very, very valuable option as of right now. So when you're making your videos and your posts and your content, you want to do things that educate, inspire, show behind the scenes, show off your team, show off your equipment and your warehouse and all that stuff. Give tips. You generally want to be helpful. You actually want to give away very vital information in your content. And the reason why you do that, let's say I want to do a bathroom remodel. I'm planning on doing a bathroom remodel in the next six months. But right now, I need to fix my plumbing, my faucet, because it's leaking, which is why everything is dilapidated and outdated. I want to fix it. But right now, I just need to fix my faucet. If I go on Facebook or Google, whatever, and I search for how to repair faucet, it may show up on YouTube. But if I'm on Facebook and I search for something like that, and I come up with faucet repair, and there's a video of you giving tips on like, hey, this is how you repair a faucet, whatever it is. Even if you're teaching them and they're able to do that by themselves, and that literally stops them from calling someone and prevents a service call. which some old school people will be like, well, that's just taking money out of my hand. I want everything. Yes, but you don't want the faucet repair. You want the whole bathroom remodel. So if you teach them how to do the faucet repair and that works, they watch a video on your Facebook or whatever and that works, the next time they want to have something done, they're going to come to you first because you were the one that went out of your way to help them with information that actually worked. And now they see you as an authority figure in your area, in your town. Now, Google My Business, which has now changed to Google Maps. If you have a listing on Google, I don't technically consider that social media, but it also includes social media aspects, which are pictures and posts that you can make within the maps. So it's also smart to post there. And also YouTube. A lot of contractors do really well with YouTube because they are able to post helpful videos on YouTube to host it. And then they end up sharing that video on Facebook. So you can make a Facebook post and say, here is a video we did on how to repair a faucet. And it lives on YouTube. So they click the link from Facebook. It takes them to YouTube. And now they're on your channel where you have all of these videos on how to do things. or tips and tricks or whatever. So you can use multiple platforms to benefit yourself. The idea is you want people to consume your content regardless of what platform it's on. But you got to get away from that. Look at this bathroom we did. We're so awesome. Give us a call so we can give you an estimate. Stop selling. Stop trying to sell. Educate. Show behind the scenes. Roll up to the job one day. Get out your truck. Hey, I just got here to the job we're doing over here on Lincoln Avenue. And I want to share with you kind of what's going on. I haven't given you an update in a couple of days. Let's walk in here. And you walk in and you open the door and your crew's over there working. Hey, guys, what's going on? I'm live on Facebook, giving them an update of what's happening. And they're like, hey, what's going on Facebook? And you, you know, your guys are cutting up and having fun. And it's a great environment. And you're showing everybody doing things. John's over there dancing to music or something, being silly type stuff. That shows you that you guys have a great culture and a great type of business. And not only do customers want to hire companies like that, but people who are watching that who may actually be future employees are watching that. And they see that culture. And now it's like, man, that's a great culture. My company I work for sucks. Boss is a dickhead. He doesn't pay us well. We've got crappy tools and everything, blah, blah, blah. This company over here looks like they're killing it. I need to check them out. It can literally be like a recruiting tool for you by showing behind the scenes of what your business is doing and showing your team. And you can give tips. I've done tips where one time we had a door repair, a door jam was rotted out. And I was like, hey, guys, look at this door repair. This is the number one repair call that we get is for rotted door jams. And the simple way to fix this is to make sure you caulk and paint it, blah, blah, blah. Like I give a simple little tip. I've done videos where it's like, here's one thing you need to know before you buy that vanity from Home Depot. And it was a YouTube video I did. It was a screen share where I was actually sharing my screen about things they need to know about if they're going to go to a Home Depot or a big box store and buy a vanity because there's some things that people don't realize. And it's just, it's educating people on what they need to do for their projects. I've literally had customers say, I called you because I saw your video on how to hire a vanity. I'm sorry, how to buy a vanity. And, you know, that's why I called you. Because that video was so educational and so informative that I knew you knew what you were doing. So that's why we called you to remodel our bathrooms. Two bathrooms out of it because I made one video. That's the power of using social media to educate people. You want to be known as the expert in your industry, in your area. This is literally what I'm doing with this podcast, with my TikTok account, with my Facebook and everything else that I do. I'm giving you away 90% of the content and information that I have to help contractors. Now, I don't give you 90% of it on one platform at one time. So it's all broken up in little chunks like the podcast. My videos are 30-second to 3-minute videos. I can't teach you how to run your whole entire business in 3 minutes. But if I do 50 videos and I give you 50 different little pieces of nuggets... and you can piece those together, it helps you in your business. Why? Because one day you're going to say, I could do this on my own. I could keep watching videos and listening to podcasts and do all this stuff. And I am getting really good information from Brad, but it would probably be easier to just hire him and join the Profit Club because I would shortcut this learning process 10 times. You would 10x the learning process. That's why I do this. This is why other coaches do this stuff. Why we give away free information. It's to educate. It's to show you that we know what we're talking about and we're educating you guys on how to make changes and do things in your business so that the one day when you're ready to pull the trigger and change your business, you're going to call me because I'm the one that's helped you along the way. And there may be other contractor coaches out there. There are. I mean, I know a lot of them personally. And they can help you just the same. Right? But everyone has their little bit different things that they offer, a little bit different take, a little bit different personality. So when those things line up with what you're looking for, that's whenever you'll make the decision. And it's the same for your customers. Whenever your customers see what you're doing. and what you're producing in your business and what your business is like behind the scenes, they feel much, much more comfortable hiring you. They almost know you before they've talked to you for the very first time. I've had customers tell me that. I've seen all of your videos and stuff that you put out and I really felt like I know you guys before we even called you. That's when you're doing social media correctly. When you're giving people... a look into what it's like to work with your business. And you help them and you educate. There's lots of different ways you can do this through tips. And here's the other thing. It doesn't even have to be your content. I got an email newsletter for a company that does articles on trends for the home industry, the renovation industry. And they would email me an article that was like, here's the top 10. most popular colors in 2021 or whatever. All I would do is take that article link, post it in a Facebook post and say, here's a really interesting article from so-and-so about the new trends in painting. And I would just share that. I didn't create that information. All I was doing was sharing it. So it doesn't always have to be you coming up with the information and creating the content. It's just that you're the source. for providing them with the information they're looking for. And that will help you leverage coming up with new ideas. So I want to kind of wind this down a little bit on the social media. It's super important to be on social media, number one. Number two, you got to figure out where your customers are, your clients. If they're all on TikTok and nobody's on Facebook, don't spend your time on Facebook. If half of them are on Facebook and half are on TikTok, you may have to divide your... your attention there. Whenever you create content, create it first on your phone and then repurpose it to multiple platforms so you're not having to recreate the same content three or four times for different platforms. Try to focus on one platform primarily until you have that figured out and then you can add another platform. There's going to be a major shift in construction. In terms of marketing, you're going to see a lot more companies hiring full-time content creators, hiring full-time videographers, hiring full-time social media experts in their business because social media is that important to the livelihood of businesses. The 20-somethings that are coming up right now that are on social media, they will be there for the next 20 years. And 10 years from now, there may be an entirely new virtual reality platform where you live in virtual reality almost all the time, which sounds absolutely terrible, to be honest. But if that's where the new generations are at, eventually that will carry up and you will have to start using the new technologies that come out. But right now, social media is king for creating organic content and also for ads like Facebook, running Facebook ads. They do work still. And I think there's going to be an interesting thing that as everybody's leaving Facebook and Instagram to go to TikTok, Facebook ads are going to have to start to drop in order to keep people coming back because they've been raising their prices over the years for Facebook advertising. And now if everyone leaves, people aren't going to keep advertising unless it's super cheap. So I think you're going to start seeing fire sales on Facebook advertising costs. Probably within the next year, it will start coming down dramatically. People are leaving Facebook in the millions. So that's all I got for this podcast episode on why you're doing social media wrong. I hope it was beneficial. I hope it was helpful. Go and leave me a comment. Let me know what your favorite platform is. Let me know if you've seen me on other platforms. Go to TikTok or go to your Apple podcast or whatever platform you're listening on and just comment and let me know how you consume my content. I'd like to hear back from you guys. So until next time, you know we're talking about social media. We're talking about all the platforms. You should know where to find me by now. It's on search Hammer and Grind Podcast on all of them. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. I also have a Discord channel. That is really more for direct conversations. If you guys want to have more direct conversations with me, Discord is a good place to do that. But also the free Facebook group that I have, the Contractor Profit group. There's lots of information being passed in there as well. So find me on one of the social media platforms. Say hi. Ask me your questions on how I can help you. And until next time, guys, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.
