Episode•January 16, 2023•47 min

EP97: What Is Your Brand Promise?

Your brand promise is the single most important factor of why people do business with you. In this episode, we talk about: Separating yourself by defining your brand The formula that makes up a brand promise The quality of customer experience versus the quality of work Delivering a consistent experience with your clients How to be a brand disruptor Why marketing doesn’t take a day off Links to Resources: Get the skills and confidence to: Max out profits Get off the tools Have more freedom Get the business you deserve - Join the Profit Club Join the Free Facebook Group - The Contractor Profit Blueprint Take Your Sales to The Next Level - Sales Accelerator Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Apple Podcasts Overcast

Transcript

0:08

A contractor's journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. And welcome to the Hammer and Grind podcast, the podcast built for contractors to help maximize profits and get you off the tools before burnout or bankruptcy happens. I'm your host, Brad Hebner. And I'm here to help you on your journey to self-mastery. Make sure you check us out on our social media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast and you'll be able to find me there. Consider joining my free Facebook group called the Contract Your Profit Blueprint. I created this free group to give you as much information as possible to help you in your business. I go live in there once a week, tons of content to help you in your business. If you want to accelerate the success, consider joining my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. In there is a great community of contractors all willing to share information and help each other succeed, as well as hundreds of hours of training, coaching calls, everything you need to accelerate your business. If you want to learn more about that, you can find out more information on hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. Or just send me a message and I'll be happy to share that with you. Now, let's get on to the show. All right. All right. Welcome back to the Hammer and Grind podcast. Today's episode, we're going to be talking about what is your brand promise. Now, I've talked a few times on branding over the last year and a half of doing... Well, actually, we're coming up on almost two years now. March would be two years since I started the podcast. It's hard to believe. Time flies. And I appreciate you all for helping to contribute to the... success of the podcast and all of the feedback that I get from you helps make it more enjoyable for me to want to keep doing this. And we're going to get into why I do this a little bit in this podcast because it's part of my brand promise. And so what is your brand promise? Now, some of you may not even understand what a brand promise is. You've probably heard of a brand and you understand what a brand means. It's your logo and your motto and all that stuff and colors because I've talked about those things before. But I really want to get into the brand promise. And the reason why I think this is so important is because it's a key element of how you run your business. But it also is the single most important factor of why people do business with you. And when it comes to marketing, when it comes to growing your business, to getting leads, to actually creating movement in people to want to call your business over someone else, your brand promise is really the glue that holds all of us together. And so I'm going to be citing from a website today. And I just found this doing a Google search. There's a website called GaryFox. co. Gary, G-A-R-Y-F-O-X. co. I don't know Gary Fox. I don't know anything about his business, but he has lots of great resources. And his branding on his website says strategy and innovation consultant. So he works with more corporate level people like top businesses. But this all trickles down into your business as a contractor. And so I just want to start with really some definitions. So what is a brand? The definition of a brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct. from those of other sellers. If you think way back into the beginning of time, most of those people didn't have brands per se. They didn't have logos. You may have five blacksmiths that work in a town or maybe one blacksmith in one town and one in each town, but there really wasn't a need for a brand per se. It was just that was what they did. commerce became more and more prevalent in the more business function of it. In other words, the structure of how businesses work today became more prevalent over the years. It was important to have some type of brand to distinct yourself from everyone else. Because you don't want to be known as or be mistaken for some other person's business. The brand is just the name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature. It identifies one seller's good or service distinct from one of the other sellers. It just basically separates you. That's why ranchers and stuff, they have a brand for their livestock. They brand their cows and stuff so people know who they belong to in case they get lost and stuff. So what is a brand promise? And this is what we're talking about today. A brand promise is a value or experience. A company's customers can expect to receive every single time they interact with that company. The more a company can deliver on that promise, the stronger the brand value in the mind of the customers and employees. And at the end of the day, a brand promise can be distilled to the simple formula, what you do for whom. What you do for whom. So my question for you is, what do you do and for whom do you do it for? Most of you can answer the what you do part very, very easily. I remodel bathrooms. I do landscaping. I'm a drywall finisher. I'm a painter. I'm a roofer. Right? That's where we have our identity and what we do. But a lot of you can't answer the second part, which is for whom. Because in some of your business model mindset is, Whoever calls me, that's who I do it for. And that's why a lot of you struggle with leads in your business is because that is not how you run a business of any kind, let alone construction. It's not just whoever calls you, that's who you serve. So you need to start figuring out who you work for, who you market to, who are your services for, and what is that promise that you give them. That's the key part of this whole podcast is what's the promise that you're making. So if you think about this in how you would approach this, a lot of times I talk to customers and I've made memes and stuff about this. It's like, what separates you from everyone else? Oh, my quality. Quality of my work. Quality, quality, quality. Quality, quality, quality, quality, quality. Okay. Well, that doesn't separate you from everyone else. That may be a part of your promise. Your promise is to deliver quality. That's fine. But the part that you're missing on that is the customer experience part. And usually, not always, but usually the part that people remember the most when they work with you is the experience throughout the whole thing. It's not the quality of the work. It's the experience. Think about it this way. If you do a bathroom remodel and you're there for, let's say, three weeks doing this remodel, at the end of the job, when you're all done and the customer walks in and says, Oh my gosh, Brad, this is so beautiful. It's everything we wanted. Everything looks so nice. And at that moment and for the next week, the experience of the quality of your work, in other words, they see your quality. They've recognized the quality of your work. All of that lasts about three days to one week. The quality of the work. People don't six months later walk in their bathroom and pull out their drawer in their vanity and say, man, I'm so glad I hired Brad and his company because the quality of this drawer is just fantastic. I'm so happy that the quality of this work is great. That's not what people do. So for that three weeks while you're working there, every single day, they're experiencing you and your business and your brand's promise of how you're going to act, what type of service you're going to deliver during that process. So if you think that quality is all that matters, it is a part of it, sure. If you work for three weeks and you have excellent service... but at the end of three weeks, the quality is terrible, then they're probably going to call you back and say, hey, I don't accept this quality. You need to fix it. But when you hang your hat on quality, that is the bare minimum to entry. That's what people expect when they hire you, that you're going to do good work. So it's like saying, I'm known for doing what I'm actually expected to do, which is good work. That's what I'm known for. I'm known for meeting the industry standard of what work is. And some of you say, well, that's not the industry standard.

9:50

I see all these people out here all the time and we go and fix things and contractors rip people off and screw them up and they look like crap and all this blah, blah, blah, quality, quality, quality, and it's all junk.

10:02

Well, no, those people are not meeting the industry standard. If you actually look at code books and... trade books and all the standards. The standard is laid out of what you should be doing. And so that's already set. So when you're talking about these people did crappy work, those people didn't meet the industry standard. And you're talking about hanging your hat on meeting the industry standard or because you do quality work. Industry standard is quality work. So that's not a separator. That's not a promise. Okay? I'm telling you, if you listen to me, I've said this before, the experience that your customers have working with you is far more important than the quality of the work you deliver. If you deliver a phenomenal experience from start to finish, you could produce a 5 out of 10 quality work and the customer will be absolutely thrilled. But if you deliver a 8 out of 10 quality experience and your service sucks during the whole thing, they will not be happy with you and they will not recommend you and they will not hire you again. Now, if you deliver a 7,8, or 9 quality work and you deliver a high quality experience, then you will have all of the referrals and all of the recommendations coming your way because you've now mastered both elements to this part of it. The quality part and the experience part. Those are the two parts that can combine to make up your promise. But most of you are severely lacking in the service part. You want to believe that the quality is all that matters. You may not call a customer back for three days because you're busy. Yeah, Brad, but why does it matter? I'm doing excellent work. They got the highest quality work that they could possibly get. They should be happy with that. It's like, no, you totally don't get it at all. I mean, you totally don't get it. Here's the most important thing about brand promise, your brand promise. This is really what I want to talk about. There's three things I want to talk about today. The brand promise, your brand image, and how to be a brand disruptor. So the part of the brand promise is your consistency. So the secret. to having a strong brand promise or a strong brand is consistency. Consistency in the deliverables that you give, the service and the quality. If you don't have any systems or SOPs or checklists or processes in your business, it's very difficult to deliver consistent results over and over and over again, especially if you hire people. Because you're not training them on how to have the same type of results. And when you create checklists and SOPs, you really should create it for outcomes. A consistent outcome. That's what's important is to have a consistent outcome. Because if you do a job for somebody, let's say you do a landscape, you're a landscaper and you do a landscape install for somebody in the front of their house. You landscape the whole front of their house. It's beautiful. And you had a pretty good experience. When they called you, you called them back right away or you answered the phone. You had a pretty good, decent process on the sales estimating part. Your team was friendly. And everything was like, I would say, okay, or average or above average throughout the whole process. And the customer was happy with you. And so they recommend you to the neighbor. The neighbor comes over and says, Hey, Bob, I saw you had Brad's landscaping out here. How was the experience? How was it? And they said, yeah, it was pretty good. I mean, they did a great job and they were all friendly and had a really good experience. Bob's like, or the neighbor's like, cool, I'm going to call him and get my yard done. So they call you and then you don't call him back for a week. Or you call him back, but then you kind of drop the ball on getting him an estimate. Maybe you go look at the job. And you say, I'll get you an estimate in two days. And you don't give them an estimate for two days. And it's a week or two later because you're super busy that week or because you had an influx of leads and now you can't handle it. That is not a consistent experience. So this other customer who was told that they had a great experience with you is now not receiving a great experience. And that's frustrating for people. Now, he may call his neighbor, Bob, and say, Hey, Bob, I thought you said this guy, this Brad guy was on it. I called him a week ago and he hasn't returned my call yet. Bob may say, Well, that's odd. He answered the phone when I called him. But it's not a consistent experience. And so when you create inconsistencies in customer experience from one to the next, that is where you get your brand reputation starts to... have negative impact, right? Because what may have been important to the neighbor is the experience. Maybe he wants a quick turnaround on an estimate. Maybe the neighbor says, yeah, he did a really good job. I called him on Monday. He came out on Tuesday. And by Tuesday evening, I had the estimate. So it was a two-day process. And the neighbor's like, oh, I need to get this done right away. I need to get this done quick. And then he calls you. You don't call back for a week and then you don't go out there for another week. That's a two-week process. And that is not consistent. And so he's upset because you didn't have that same consistency. So it's important for your brand, in terms of your promise, is to create consistent experiences. So let's look at this in the real world. Starbucks. Doesn't matter if you like or hate Starbucks. You can go to any Starbucks. in any part of the world and have the exact same experience. It doesn't matter where you go because they've mastered the art of creating consistency in the experience that you receive, as well as the coffee, the actual product, the flavor, the taste, and all that stuff. They've managed consistency across all parts of the world. And that's not easy to do when you have different cultures and different things. You know, a lot of cultures like in China, cheesecake is a very important part of that culture. And so if you go into a Starbucks in China or in Asia, they're going to have a lot more cheesecakes available than if you go into one in the U.S. because in the U.S. it's not as popular. But you still have the same coffee experience and the same experience talking to the barista and the same experience and the ambiance of the location itself. All of that is the same. The only thing they may tweak a little bit is the overall experience based on the culture and the culture's demands. And that's part of knowing your customer base, which is really part of what we're talking about here is that you need to understand what your customer base, who your customer base is. Remember, the simple was you do what for whom? What do you do and who do you do it for? If you don't have the who you do it for part down, in other words, if you don't have a client avatar that you're working for, then you could be completely doing the wrong thing because that's not what your ideal client wants. And you're having frustrations in your business with getting leads. That's part of it. Most of you have never, ever sat down and figured out who is my ideal client? Who is my client avatar or persona or profile? I don't care what you call it. You've never actually sat down and figured out who is my ideal client. In regards to branding, in a perfect world, which this almost never happens in construction, in other industries it does, but in construction, in the perfect world, the very first thing that you would do is sit down and you say, hey, I want to start a construction company. Cool. Who is it I'm going to target? Who is my ideal client? And you would figure out who your ideal client is based on what services you want to offer. Maybe you want to be a landscaper. That's what you're passionate about. So you're going to sit down and say, Okay, who am I going to go after? Who is my ideal client? And what services do I want to offer? And that's going to be determined on who your ideal client is. If you only want to do hardscapes and nothing else. then that's going to require a specific customer persona or avatar because not everybody wants hardscapes. And so if you would figure out exactly who that client is that you're trying, that wants a hardscape, because if you look at the population as a whole, and I don't know this because I've never researched hardscapes and landscaping, but let's say you research somehow, you get a hold of information, you do your own surveys, you do your own research, and you figure out that... 10% of the population who's getting landscaping done prefers or wants heartscapes. That means that 10% of potential landscaping clients, only 10% of them actually want heartscapes. That's because of what their desires are and what their likes are. But if you're marketing to the other 90% who don't want heartscapes, Because you don't understand what your persona is, then you're wasting your effort and you're wasting your marketing money and it doesn't work. So the more laser focus you can be on who you want to work for and what services that they want, and more importantly, what kind of experience they want, when you can fully understand all of those, you can create a brand and a brand promise. that will hit it out of the park every single time that you work for these people. And they will become raving fans of your business. This is how you build brand loyalty. We all have brand loyalties. We like Oakley, or we like Under Armour, or we like Pepsi, or whatever, Starbucks. We like certain football teams. We have brand loyalty because of different things that they promise us. and the experience that we have. If you walked into a Starbucks on Main Street and you got a white mocha, Grande White Mocha, which is my drink, by the way, no shade thrown there, okay? Mind your business. I get my Grande White Mocha on Main Street and it's really good. I like it. And the next day I go to the Starbucks on First Avenue and I get the same drink and it tastes totally different. I'm like, that's weird. This tastes nothing like the one I had on Main Street. Maybe it was just a fluke. Maybe that barista didn't... New barista or something. And then I go to the Starbucks on the highway on the third day and I get another white mocha and it tastes completely different. I'm like, well, this sucks. I don't want to get these coffees because they're all different. I want a specific flavor and consistency every time I go. And a lot of you are not delivering that. And so sometimes when a customer calls you and they call you for the first time, it's for a new lead, right? They're calling you because they want you to give them an estimate on a job. And you answer the phone in two rings the first time. And you have a short conversation with them. You just set an expectation. Okay? The next time they call you back, hey, they just got a little bit of information. They call you back two weeks later because now they're a little bit further in the process. Now they're ready to get started. And they call you back two weeks later and you don't answer the phone, which is okay. Not everybody can always answer the phone. But you don't call them back that day. And you don't call them back the next day. And you don't call them back for three days. That's not the end of the world. Stuff happens. You call them back three days later. Hey. let's get this thing going. Like, okay, cool. And you have a go through the sales process. And then you tell them you're going to give them a call back in a day to give them the estimate. And then you don't call back for a week. You're not consistent in how you're delivering the experience with your customers. And this is where a lot of contractors, I mean, a lot, an overwhelming majority, don't focus on delivering a consistent experience with their clients. They all want to hang their hat and focus on quality. I'm telling you, if you deliver a phenomenal experience with an average quality, you will do far better in your business than if you deliver a high-quality product with a terrible experience because they will remember the experience. People don't ask for referrals from other people. They don't say, How did the quality turn out? They always ask first, how was the experience? How was it working with them? That's what people care about. I'm telling you, if you don't believe me, go ask and survey your customers. They'll tell you the same thing. I had over 100. And I said this at one time on the podcast. I was actually wrong. I misspoke. I said I had over 200 Google reviews. That's incorrect. I have about 150 or so. Somewhere around there. I don't remember the last time I looked. I had over 200 combined Facebook and Google reviews. But just Google alone is around the 100, like 120,150, somewhere around there, mid-hundreds. And the number one theme from all the reviews that I got was they were professional, they were clean, and they communicated well. Those were like the three main themes. of all of those combined reviews. Sure, people said they did good quality work, but that was not the number one thing. It was experience. It was the cleanliness of their jobs. It was the professionalism. And I harp on this all the time, but yet I talk to a lot of contractors, even clients of mine, people that are in the profit club who have been in there for a while and they still don't, like it just doesn't register in their brain. Like you have to... focus on the experience. And that is the consistency of your promise, your brand promise. Let me give you two more experiences I had. These are real experiences because I want to give you some real data of what this is. There was a new pizza place that opened up just about a block from our house. There used to be a pizza place there for a long, long, long time. One of those mom and pop pizza stores that everybody went to. It was there for 30-some years, a long time. Those people retired or sold out and the new people ran into the ground. So it was out of business. A new place opens up. This complex that's right next door, a new company bought them and put a bunch of money in trying to develop it and regrow this area. And so a new pizza place goes in there. And so we go try it. It's like, cool. It's like two blocks from our house. That'd be cool if we can go get a pizza right down the street. So we go there. And everything inside the store there, the pizza place, this is like in a strip mall, right? So it's not like a standalone building. Everything in this place is brand new. Floor to ceiling, everything is brand new. You can tell it's all new. It's clean. It's new. But there's no real brand identity in there. It's bare. The walls are bare. The tables are like you would see in an old VFW. from 20 years old. They got a couple big old electrical wire spool, wooden spools, and they use those as tables in the middle. And there's just like, there's no theme to the place. It's just, it's weird. It's like, okay, whatever. If the pizza's good, that's still enough to get us to come back. And so we order, they give us a menu and we order. And everything's, I would say, typical, typical experience. The food takes a little bit longer, even though there's really nobody there. There's like three couples in this place. It's very dead, but the food takes a little bit longer than what you would expect. The waiters or servers are like high school kids, which whatever, that's fine. They're all wearing different clothes. That's fine. And the food comes out and the food's okay. It's not great. It's okay. And then we get our bill and the bill comes and I noticed, Like on the menu, I forget what it was. Maybe it was like breadsticks or something. The price was like $6.72 or something like that. Some weird, you know, whatever price. On the receipt, the price is, or on the invoice, the price is $8.21 or $7.21. It was like a 60 cent discrepancy. Now, do I give a crap about 60 cents? No, I don't. But that's not what it said on the menu. The menu had one price. The receipt had a different price. There's an inconsistency there. Okay. And so all of these little things add up so that because of that overall experience and the quality of the food and the inconsistencies of that whole process, we've never been back and we never will. And this company, this pizza place, which has a really good opportunity to do well. But again, there was a pizza place there that was there for 30-something years. That old pizza place, when you went in, it had all of these pictures of sports teams and all of these things. It was kind of like the local place you went. After you went and played softball, the entire team would go there on a Saturday night and have pizza together. Or after a soccer game, everybody would go there and have pizza together. It was like this... place where everybody went. And they had all of these... It was all very sports, local sports heavy business. It had this kind of theme and ambiance to it. The new place, it was like walking into an operating room with nothing in there. And it was dread. Even the name of it made no sense. The name of the pizza place. Dumb. So you got this brand. You got this inconsistency in the promise that they're delivering. an overall bad experience, that equals not coming back, not recommending it to anybody, not going to tell anybody else about it. So what does your customer experience look like? That's one experience. Here's another experience my wife had recently. And we're not really coffee snobs. I just want to make this disclaimer. We're not really coffee snobs, but this is a coffee experience. So there is a local coffee shop. It's a new startup and they're franchising it all over the world. I'm not going to say the name, but it's a coffee and donut place. And so my wife goes in there because it was like location wise where she was at. It was convenient. And she wanted to get a donut because they have really, really, really good donuts. And she usually orders an Americano and she adds a vanilla, some vanilla flavoring to it. She goes to Starbucks, orders Americano. She gets vanilla flavoring. All is well. She loves that drink. She gets it all the time, different places. She goes to another local coffee shop, orders the same thing. No problem. Has ordered that same drink at three or four different coffee shops across the world or wherever. And it's pretty much the same. She goes to this coffee shop. It's the first time she's ever ordered it there. She wants her drink. And the barista says, I can't do that. My wife's like, what do you mean? we can't add vanilla flavoring to the Americano because it will ruin the roast. It will ruin the flavor of the drink. My wife's like, I don't understand. I get this drink all the time. Well, we just can't do that. It's against our company policy. And she's not... I mean, I teased her. I said, you're being a coffee snob. But she's not really. She's just like... And she's just trying to understand. She's not trying to be argument or anything. And there was nobody else in line. She's just like... well, I don't understand. What's the reason behind it? And this barista is trying to tell them there's different types of things and coffee and some have water and some have milk. And if you do this, it ruins it and blah, blah, blah. And so then she says, well, can I just get it on the side in a little cup and I'll add it myself? And the barista kind of rolls her eyes and says, I guess. I mean, yeah, I guess we can do that. And she's just trying to understand why they can't do it. She wasn't complaining. And the lady just kept saying, it's our policy. It's our policy. We just can't do it. And so finally, she just left. And so they lost out on an $8 sale because she was going to get a coffee and a donut. And to me, that is idiotic. That may be your policy. Like, hey, this is not how we typically make it. But if somebody comes in and basically says, I want to ruin my coffee, that's how I want it, then you should be able to accommodate that. And we thought maybe it was just a barista. Maybe she's just crazy. She was younger and stuck up and very full of herself. So we have a friend who's actually buying and building a franchise of this specific place in another city close by. And she was just curious. Again, just curiosity. And she messaged him and was like, Hey, is this the actual company policy? And he said, Yeah, actually it is. That's their company policy. But I could probably change that at my location. I have some freedoms in my franchise location. Think about that for a second. Now, there's two ways you can look at this. If that place, that restaurant, that coffee shop... If they truly know who their demographic is in their customer avatar, and maybe they're going out of coffee snobs or people that want the original flavors of coffee and they're, I would say, pretentious, but let's just say they're very specific about what they want. If that's their ideal avatar and they do really well with that and they make the money they want... then I think it's okay if that's their policy because they're not trying to serve people like my wife who want to change the actual drink itself. Right? If they know that. If they know what to be true about their avatar. If they don't know that to be true, then that's a terrible policy because maybe people like my wife and that want to customize their drink. Maybe that's their main avatar they're going after, and they just lost a customer who could potentially be a lifetime customer, who could potentially switch coffee shops, who could turn into a brand loyal customer. And so why I'm sharing this is because it's important to understand your avatar. I post ads on Facebook for my profit club and different things that I have. And one of the ads that I run is my free job costing worksheet. And I get people that come on there and they comment. And they're haters. One guy said, Ooh, a free spreadsheet. Boring. And then he commented again. And he said, If you don't know how to create a spreadsheet in your business, then you have no business being in business. And so that guy... Which turns out is not even a contractor. He owns some other kind of company. I couldn't even... His brand identity was all screwed up. Because I look into stuff, by the way. I research. I do my due diligence. He's not my avatar at all. So I really don't give a crap about his opinion. Because he's not my avatar. But if a contractor who is my avatar says that, I want to know why. What about that image? or that ad made you say that. And so what you should be doing in your business is surveying your clients. And you should be constantly asking them, what do we do right? What do we do wrong? Doing satisfaction surveys. Because you want to get laser specific. If you know exactly who you're working for and exactly what they want, do they care about... quality more than they care about experience? Do they care about timeframe? Do they care about cleanliness? Do they care more about, do you pay attention to their pets and love pets? Do they care about your political beliefs? Do they care about your religious beliefs? Let's say you build decks and your avatar are outdoorsy hunter people. And so you want to attract people that like outdoor, living outside. specific types of features in their decks and patios, then your brand and your whole promise may be around things that are important to hunters. Maybe you can factor in some kind of, I don't know, like a cleaning station into the deck. Maybe they live on a lake and they fish. And so in this deck, you factor in a cleaning station for fish. That would be something specific to that type of avatar. But if someone doesn't care about that stuff, then they may not hire you. And that's okay. But you can go laser specific on your branding and your brand promise if you know who your avatar is. Getting people to call you and working for anyone that calls you is not a strategy. That is not a brand promise. It's nothing. That's just you. I need work. Please call me so I can work for you. That is not how you run a business at all. We're going a little long on this. I didn't actually thought I was going to be a shorter podcast, but I guess I got too much into it. So the key thing on the brand promise is you got to have consistency and you need to have repeatable experience so you can create brand loyalty. The brand image is what does your brand say about you and what you do? I've talked about this before and it's kind of simple. Just because you like something, like if you like your brand, Oh, I want to have a red truck with black letters because I like dark and dungy and it's like fire and all this stuff. It's cool. I'm all into this mega death and I'm into heavy rock band. And then you're building wine cellars. That does not translate over. If you want to have face tattoos and piercings and you want to be golf and you want your brand to be like that, That's cool. You do you. But if your avatar who's going to hire you does not like that, then you're not going to get business. So it's not about what you like. It's about what your customers like and what attracts them. And I talked to contractors about wrapping their vehicles. I would almost say there should be a law. It should be a law. Let's put it in the Supreme Court, the Constitution rather. If you start a construction business, it should be a constitutional law that you have to wrap your truck. I'm dying on this hill right now. That's how strong I feel about this. And yet I see people with nothing on their vehicles. Hey, man, do you have any tips for how to get my phone to ring? You got any ideas on how I can get my phone to ring? Yeah, man, you got your vehicles letter? No, I don't have any of that stuff. Why not? It's kind of gaudy. I don't like it. I don't want people to know what I do because I like to drive crazy and I'm an aggressive driver. I don't want to ruin my business. Okay. So you don't want to be in business then. Right? So your brand has to match who your avatar is. That's all I'm going to say about that. And then finally, to be a brand disruptor. Here's how you be a brand disruptor. It's pretty simple. You do every single thing that your competitors do bad. exceptionally well. And there's a very, very easy test to this or very step you can do. Go to all your competitors in your town that do what you do and Google them and look at their reviews and start reading every single review that their competitors are getting. And anything that's bad, write it down. And anything that's good, write it down. Because if maybe your customers, they're getting good reviews and they say, They were very reasonable priced. Their price was very affordable. They had a really good deal. Well, maybe they do that well, but that's terrible. You don't want to do that. If you've listened to me for more than a second, you know that we don't want to be affordable. But then you read the bad reviews and it says, they didn't call me back for two weeks. They didn't show up when they said they were going to. We got invoiced way more at the end than what it was. estimate. Look at the negatives that all of those people have. And then you make it your mission to do those negative things extremely well. And if you do that and couple it with a strong brand and a brand promise, then you will be unstoppable. And that's exactly what I did in my business when I started. It was very important to have a good name, a strong logo, a motto, and my promises. We were out there on 95-degree days outside working. And my uniform was a navy blue polo that's with an embroidered logo on the shirt just on the front and khaki pants. Probably the most uncomfortable thing to work in. Yet, every one of my employees had that. We had the same shirts, jackets, hats. Everything was branded. There's professionalism there. Everything was at the highest level of experience. And that would allow me to build a brand that's very recognizable. Build a business that was the most highest and most reviewed construction company in the city that had the phone ringing and getting consistently over 600 inquiries a year, leading to more than 300 jobs a year sold. And you know how much money I spent on marketing, like actively spending, was less than $200 a month on Google Ads. And that's it. My vehicle wraps, my website, and my Google Ads less than $200. I mean, with Facebook and some other stuff too. But as far as like paid, things that I did that were paid, my vehicle wraps, my uniforms, and my less than $200 a month in Google Ads. That's it. The rest of it was all organic. It was all brand. It was all organic reviews and stuff like that. Reviews. Now, it didn't happen overnight. It took a few years to get there. But it's very easy to do. But most of you don't want to do those things. You don't want to wrap your truck. You don't want to do social media because you don't like being on camera. You don't have any Google reviews. You don't know who your customer avatar is. You don't have your truck wrapped. You don't care about the experience. You only care about quality. And then you're messaging me in the winter and saying, hey, my phone's not ringing. How can I get the phone to ring? And I basically say, here are some steps you can do now. And under my breath, I'm saying you're screwed because you didn't do what you needed to do when the phone was ringing. Instead, you waited until it stopped ringing. And now you want to try and solve the problem. Marketing is 24-7,365 a year, guys. You never take off marketing ever. You constantly are marketing your business. And when you can do that and you have a constant flow of leads coming in, now you can start to build out processes so that you understand that, yeah, we may have an influx in the summer, but in the winter, it slows down, but it's still consistent. And now I can build budgets. Now I can understand the ebb and flow of my seasons in my business. And so I don't ever run out of money. I don't ever run out of leads. So I know we went long on this podcast. I hope you understand the importance of creating a brand promise, what that looks like in terms of delivery, consistency in the experience, your brand image, and why it's important to have a strong brand image, and how to be a brand disruptor. Do what everyone else isn't doing. and do it exceptionally well. And you will never run out of leads. I promise you. That's the end of this podcast, guys. You know where you can find me on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. Just search for the Hammer and Grind podcast. There's also some information in the show notes. Check out the Sales Accelerator program if you really need help with your sales process. Check out the Profit Club if you're wanting a comprehensive course and program with weekly coaching. to help you grow your business and get the kind of profits that you really deserve and that you need. And you can find links to that in the show notes as well. And so until next time, you guys know what to do. Be the best version of you.