The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Painting Marketing Pros Founder Brandon Pierpont Unlocks the Secret for Painters and Rest of Us
Brandon Pierpont is HYPER FOCUSED on helping painting companies grow their business through digital marketing and he shared several of his secrets in this area. His goal is to help his clients have an unfair advantage in the market. He helps in all stages of growth, if you are just starting you need to get the leads in, phones ringing, emails coming, and then start to work on the website presence. Did you know our amazing voices can go beyond just the microphone? Yes, we have video! Subscribe to our YouTube channel here!
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Brandon’s Links:
• LinkedIn | @BrandonPierpont
• Website | Paintermarketingpros.com
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GOLD NUGGETS:
(10:23) - Vertical Integration in Digital Marketing
(18:45) - Marketing Strategies for Painting Companies
(29:21) - Trends in Digital for Small Business Owners
(39:26) - Starting a Business and Overcoming Challenges
(48:56) - Painter Marketing and Business Growth Benefits
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Books Mentioned:
• Thinking, Fast and Slow – Daniel Kahneman
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Previous guests on The Small Business Safari include Amy Lyle, Ben Alexander, Joseph Sission, Jonathan Ellis, Brad Dell, Chris Hanks, C.T. Emerson, Chad Brown, Tracy Moore, Wayne Sherger, David Raymond, Paul Redman, Gabby Meteor, Ryan Dement, Barbara Heil Sonneck, Bryan John, Tom Defore, Rusty Clifton, Duane Johns, Beth Miller, Jason Sleeman, Andy Suggs, Chris Michel, Jon Ostenson, Tommy Breedlove, Rocky Lalvani, Amanda Griffey, Spencer Powell, Joe Perrone, David Lupberger, Duane C. Barney, Dave Moerman, Jim Ryerson, Al Mishkoff, Scott Specker, Mike Claudio and more!
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If You Loved This Episode Try These!
• Moving Titan Shares His Secrets for Elevating the Entire Industry | Wade Swikle
• How Seasonal Businesses Can Propel You up to the Mountain Top | Matthew Efird
• Essential Tips for Recruiting in Home Services Businesses | Tina McKenna
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Have any questions or comments? Connect with me here!
I'm going to start a business.
Speaker 2:tonight, brandon's firing me up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, I'm fired up. I'm going to start a business, Right. And then uh, come on amen. And that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And then I was I mean, I got, I got fortunate again. It wasn't like a massive, massive exit, but it was decent and I and that gave me a ton of confidence. Then, going into my next business, I was like, hey, I built that from nothing, but I didn't have that confidence before. So just going in, go in, expect to fail, and that's great, but just start sitting on your couch thinking about it, listening to Chris now, as entertaining as they are, is not going to get you there. You do have to start.
Speaker 1:That's right, man. Get off your ass. Get off there and go do it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no wait, wait, hang on, hang on.
Speaker 1:We've still got a few more things to do. Then go out there and go do it 10 minutes.
Speaker 3:Brandon didn't say that Don't do it yet. Wait, hold on yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah Right, welcome to the small business safari where I hope guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in adventure team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountain top. Here we go again Small business safari team. Time for another great adventure.
Speaker 1:Alan and I come to you every week talking about what we're going to do and what we can do to help you get that business going. Get going on scaling. Maybe you can scale that business a little bit harder. Heard from somebody earlier today, believe it or not, saying Chris, what was the hardest from the email bag? What was the hardest time you had scaling your business over the last 15 years? And I was like I can't just give you one and so I fired back my email was probably the hardest thing was going from manager to entrepreneur with hands off and letting the team kind of do their thing.
Speaker 2:That was really yeah you're not a let it go kind of a guy. I'm not and, by the way, I thought we got together once a week to drink beer and then just talk about what you were going to do the next weekend. I know it kind of seems like what we really do, so and then a little business makes its way in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so. So big daddy had a big weekend and but it has another big weekend coming up because Georgia Bulldogs were in the football season. As we're doing, this one has a final tailgate for my final senior year of my final kid Finally getting out of the freaking house. But no, you've got to get a raise. I don't, I think so, but then it's. But then I was just told that mama thinks that we should be able to help with the next one and we're having a debate on that and currently in the house, the next kid no, that's something you haven't told me.
Speaker 1:This one wants to go to law school and she said we should help him. I said, well, I think that's what loans are for. Yeah, but we're having that debate just got fired up because he got his LSAT, so that'll be another one that you lose, and I'll probably lose that one. So here we go, and long. So where do I win? I went in business. No, I went.
Speaker 1:Being here with you podcast, small business Fari, my hardest time was was really going and getting that entrepreneurial. You know big picture thinking. You know being able to be out in front of the business a year, six months, maybe even three months, and not in the day to day. It's really hard. I mean that was probably the hardest for me and then to let go and let people make decisions, but that was my hardest time. Let's get to our guests, shall we? Let's let Brandon Peer point of painter marketing pros is obviously has been through it, has started, it has pivoted, has gotten into painting, but before he got into painting he was an auto detailer. So, brandon, welcome to the show. We want to hear a little bit more about where the hell you're from and how did you get into business.
Speaker 3:Appreciate you having me, chris. So before we get started on that, I have a podcast as well, and now that I'm looking at you two guys interact and how you run your podcast, I'm rethinking my life decisions.
Speaker 1:This one seems a lot more fun to me.
Speaker 3:Well see, we have to make up for the fact we're not as good looking as you, and you've got that full head of hair.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure you're making me feel better. You guys are killing me.
Speaker 3:So the my background.
Speaker 2:It's a bit weird.
Speaker 3:It was on the finance fast track so it was doing investment banking, doing private equity, and was going that route applied to business school and then ultimately just wasn't going to continue on that path. Wasn't a good fit for me so I ended up stopping that.
Speaker 3:Cations didn't fall through the business school, left private equity moved to New York, lived on my friend's couch for a while, started teaching the GMAT because I had taken out to go to business school. Fast forward a bunch of years, moved to Latin America for a while, did this and stuff, and then wanted to start a company and the problem with my background was we had done a lot of analysis of companies. Wait a minute, sorry, did you say you went to Latin America and did some stuff?
Speaker 2:Did we just gloss over that? We just glossed over that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're just going to move on. Okay, yeah, I did some stuff. Yeah, maybe next time we have them back we can dig into that. I think we need to have them in studio with a cocktail.
Speaker 1:That's an episode too. Okay, nice, I like it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm so excited, I just want you to know I'm paying attention, so intrigued.
Speaker 1:That's a tasty little nugget just sitting right there for you.
Speaker 2:Smile on his face. I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it.
Speaker 1:I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it. I love it that. It's like when you go—I can't do that one— but when you see a lady on the beach with a bikini, you want to know what's underneath. My head is going so far with what he did in Latin America.
Speaker 2:It's probably not nearly as bad as what you were imagining. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1:I don't know, it could be really cool. It could be, but let's continue on, because we glossed over that On kinds of movies, TV shows in your head right now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, The—anyways started out a detailed business. Wife got me to do that. She said you can probably figure out how to wash a car. Said, yeah, I could probably figure that out. So we did that. I figured out pretty quickly that to be a successful entrepreneur you need to know how to sell a market, which I didn't know how to do either of those things, especially running a commodity business like auto detailing. So I ended up learning how to market, learning how to sell, Got pretty into digital marketing Through that, was able to build it big enough to make a successful exit. It wasn't anything I was going to retire from, but I was proud of it and then ended up falling in love with digital marketing, so transitioned to marketing from there.
Speaker 1:Now that's kind of an arc that a lot of people well, we all have it. You don't know where you're going to end up, right, and where you're going. So he's fast tracking through the IB world and then on the couch and then in Latin America, which we glossed over, and then we're coming back.
Speaker 2:And he's dropping these little nuggets, like my wife says. Well, you can at least wash a car.
Speaker 1:You can at least wash a car. I'm thinking in my world a little bit dumbass. You could at least wash a car. So pretty wild, right, because the world you were in before analyzing businesses and B2B man, you were firmly in the B2C world doing what you were doing and then had to build that out. How big did you build it up to team-wise before you sold it?
Speaker 3:Not that big. I think we had six people at the time of sale, so it was pretty small.
Speaker 1:I was no longer detailing.
Speaker 3:I started actually doing the detailing. My wife and I were doing that in the beginning. We did get to the point where we had a couple of crews out there doing it, but for me it was more of an exit try to recover some costs, try to make some kind of gain from it. But ultimately I knew at that point I wanted to go into marketing.
Speaker 1:Nice, Well, I think obviously you built that tool, set the toolbox, putting the skills that you had in there, and then realized that you could take your experiences and make a digital marketing system out of this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, 100%. What was fascinating is I was so naive starting Because I had been doing private equity, we had been analyzing businesses, doing M&A and then going in and getting our hands dirty with operations. So I was in leveraged buyouts, we'd go in and improve the operations. I thought, man, I really know a lot about business, I should start a business. But what I didn't know is that you have to make sales. And that was where I realized I suck. So when I started I realized I don't know how to market and I don't know how to sell the first in the 12-stem program.
Speaker 3:And then it's like but that doesn't really translate into people wanting to hire our auto detail business. Huge discount Nice. What's?
Speaker 2:the most unusual thing you found in a car.
Speaker 3:Oh, I found guns, we found drugs, we found I found in one car and I could say it because it's not tied to anybody in particular like a male infertility test. I mean just a lot of stuff you probably probably don't want random people looking at. Hey, you know, you should probably clean your car.
Speaker 2:What's the craziest thing you found in a car, chris, not in a car, in a house, in a house. What?
Speaker 1:So we went to work in a house and we had to. We were painting a bathroom as part of a handyman punch-out list. And this is when I still had the truck and I had to come over and one of the things we had to do was some trash out. And so my guy I'm downstairs taking out the stuff in the basement, helping these guys, because I'm still back out selling most of the time and my guy comes out and goes Chris, you got to come up and you got to see this.
Speaker 1:So we go up and I go in the closet and this is a huge house, so this is like a million and a half dollar house back in the day in a very prominent neighborhood that's gated here close to where we are. And I go up there and there's a box. There's a box of can you, can you say dildo? No, I can't say it, but it was a box of female those, those Recreational devices. So check this out. So I go back down and I'm like dude, don't touch them, get back in there, keep painting. We didn't see anything, right. So I'm down there, a car pulls up, I'm taking stuff out, out jumps as really hot blood, right, and and then I keep going, keep going, and then I go up to check on them and of course we have to peek and the box is gone.
Speaker 1:Good thing you left it alone. So, all right, great question. Yeah, thank you, I wanted to answer mine. Are you so excited? I know Brandon didn't want to hear all that but okay, let's go.
Speaker 3:I appreciate you taking the direction that way. That was excellent.
Speaker 1:So, so, so Brandon will not be sharing this with a Sunday school service group and yeah, okay, thank you. All right, so back to digital marketing. Obviously, you had the business pension you knew to do that and you started to build the digital marketing thing. You exited. How did you build? Painting marketing pros, painter marketing pros? I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we started out generalist. So painter marketing pros wasn't the first agency. We were industry agnostic. So we were working with home services, painters, plumbers, we had dentist, veterinarian, med, spa, kind of a bunch of different niches. And what I figured out through marketing is every niche there's a huge learning curve. So the way that you're going to actually market for a painter is extremely different from how you're going to market for a lawyer or a dentist, and so every single time you bring on a client in a new vertical, you have to go through this huge learning period and you're just not as good for a while. It's super inefficient internally. So we ended up transitioning to painting and launching painter marketing pros because we did really well with home services painters in particular.
Speaker 3:I enjoyed interacting with them. So we had all kinds of conferences. I speak at a lot of events. I don't want to be surrounded no offense to anyone who's listening. I don't want to be surrounded by lawyers at all. I just didn't enjoy those interactions quite as much and the industry was underserved. So it was a largely neglected, antiquated industry. It was not up to speed. So there was market opportunity there as well.
Speaker 1:Nice, well done. Obviously, that's, you don't want to work with lawyers, especially now.
Speaker 2:You know those big, those big lawyer brands you're seeing on every TV commercial. So I've been enjoying the 50 straight days of football watching some action. You know the in the like Tuesday and Wednesday night, the Mac baby, yeah, and very entertaining football. But I swear it was the guys doing the chains who had logos Like they were sponsored by one of these attorney brands.
Speaker 1:Oh, really yeah, so I can. I'm like really Well, the yeah, those, those big brands not to let's, let's segue. So you did it with some lawyers. You did some marketing with lawyers. I have a friend a good friend is a lawyer and he was on some of these marketing calls or what they do. Some of these big brands are spending was it a million a month? It's insane. A million a month for personal injury law, I mean, just think about that. That's a mind blowing stat when you when you're talking to either starting your own business or rescaling small businesses a million dollars a month in advertising alone, it's crazy, right.
Speaker 3:If you're looking at Google pay per click, so Google ads I have heard that certain terms for personal injury, attorney things like that in in metros like New York could be upwards of $1,000 a click. I mean that's crazy, absolutely nuts.
Speaker 1:And then and to put that in perspective for our listeners what's a, what's a painting keyword? Click right now in New York. Well, you said that, so I don't know that one.
Speaker 3:but painting is actually. I don't like Google pay per click for painting right now. It's actually got a lot more expensive. It was a year ago. It was around eight to $10. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Versus the thousand $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000.
Speaker 3:$25,000.
Speaker 1:$25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $25,000. $5,000. $2,000.
Speaker 3:$5,000. $5,000., $2,000., $5,000. This is a beautiful, classic, quality product $9,000 to $15,000. And then, as I mentioned, both of you guys and I had to start with our printer no-transcript because, as there's a line on the cover, I mean we had a других printer people really people should pay or Scottish brands, and they were having a totally change of opinion. Here I want to be, I want to be OK, got very active in social media, ended up launching a podcast off the back of the Learn to Grow. That was a couple of years ago. That podcast ended up catching and kind of developed the brand and the name from there.
Speaker 1:Nice. So you had a good client roster. That's a great way to go, and then getting in with the industry. That's a great way to market yourself in anything, because you went from B to C. Well, you went from B to B to B to C to B to B again so nice as you were developing that and learning that. How did you change or pivot the business? What?
Speaker 3:do you?
Speaker 1:mean. So you started going to the industry doing the learning stuff? Were you just digital marketing or were you all marketing? You're like, hey man, I could be your marketing guy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no. So we're digital right now, so we were already offering the services that we offer right now. I'd say the thing that we have pivoted or developed over time is we've gotten more vertically integrated into the sales process. So when you're bringing in leads through, you know let's just call it SEO, or Facebook ads, Google ads, whatever you're doing email marketing, painting companies oftentimes are not the best salespeople. They oftentimes don't have the best sales systems, so we've adopted a CRM that we've built out and utilized for them. Essentially, our goal is to take over as much of that marketing and sales process as we can to maximize the success.
Speaker 1:Nice, yeah. So that's been the pivot. So just saying I'm all things, everybody in digital. Now I'm going to go industry vertical. I start teaching everybody. Now I'm going to go even deeper in that vertical. I'm actually going to help you with your sales process in the home.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we don't do it in the home so we should go into the home. But we do the. We do a lot of value based pre-sales. So we have a CRM where they're getting messages. We have a video script that we create, share with our partners. They record a video of that message, get sent by a text to the homeowner before they show up.
Speaker 3:I'm Bob, owner of Bob's House Painting. Thanks for requesting an estimate. I want to let you know what you can expect from our team. So now the homeowner knows, likes and trusts them before they show up Right Series of things that come after they've conducted the estimate. So they're going to get stuff like that. Hey, I'm Bob. Thank you for allowing us to provide an estimate for you.
Speaker 3:I do want to let you know what's going to happen if you decide to move forward with that. We love your business. Here's what it's going to have. So, setting expectations, if you have any sort of workmanship warranty, if you have any kind of portfolio or testimonials that you want to let the customer see, you can kind of include that stuff before and after. And ultimately we say we want to make it unfair for their competitors. So when they walk in, there's the typical. You know, chuck in a truck guy who's going to drive up, try to low ball, do it for half the price. Hey, I'll slap some paint on the walls. You don't want that guy to even be in the conversation.
Speaker 2:Did you come up with that as a I don't know strategic value add, or was it you were getting tired of doing a good job making? You know clicks happen and phone calls happen, and then the client saying, hey, my business hasn't gone up and you're like it should because you know we've generated a lot more activity. Maybe we need to take a look at your process.
Speaker 3:I would say that the pain part of it. So I'm saying hey, it's not necessarily our business hasn't gone up, it's that the leads aren't good. You know, that's why you'll hear the leads aren't good. So then we investigated that, explored it, figured out okay, the leads are actually fine because some companies are getting those same leads and they're crushing it and you're getting very similar leads and it's not going well at all. So for us it was a. We really believe that if our partners succeed, we succeed because ultimately, everything we do is built on reputation. We play in a super small space. The industry association that that we have a lot of our partners from is only 1,000, 1,200 people in it, maybe like 600 companies. It's pretty remarkably small. The paint industry overall is highly fragmented. There are technically a lot of painters I think 330,000 in the US but the average size of a company is 1.2 people. So there's very, very small percentage of that market is actually going to make sense for us. So when we are partnering with companies, it's really important that we do well.
Speaker 1:I love that. Actually, I was right. No, he was right. I'm just like feverishly writing goes average painting company is 1.2 people. Wow, the point two people, how do you have 2.2? I'm like, oh my God, chris, average, bro, average.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they get into the small pieces.
Speaker 3:Are they cutting people into pieces?
Speaker 1:You know what I got to get. Really, it's a tight space. You got to get way back in there. I only need I need a quarter of you, big guy.
Speaker 2:Take some of those fingers off Quarter's too much. It's got to be a fifth.
Speaker 1:All right, let's talk a little bit about who you serve and what you do. So let's I think it's always better, I think, for a lot of people to hear a case study. I mean, I do so. You pick up Bob's painting company. They're usually one to five people, maybe have one, maybe has two crews. Who do you usually pick it up and then take me through what you're doing with them?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so our average customer is usually 500,000 to a million. That's the typical company that we'll start working with. We've worked with people who are small as not even started. So we've worked with a couple of people who were had full-time job and they just wanted to start the company on the right foot. So they wanted to start investing into the brand and the SEO and everything before they launched. And then we've built other companies north of eight figures, right. So they're doing over 10 million the, but the typical size, just given the nature of the market, is 500,000 million.
Speaker 3:That's when people can actually afford to pay. That's when they can kind of get out of that, that hand-to-mouth grind that they're in under half a million and then our focus is on getting up to five million. We do that through really the long-term built. That's what I'm super passionate about. So SEO, the organic owning your search engine, just owning the online market and then the short-term, although we we usually end up continuing to do it because it works really well, but it's paid ads. So I view it as kind of a one-two punch. You use paid ads because then you're not you're going to get your ROI right away and you use that to fund your long-term build, which is going to take some time to get you your ROI.
Speaker 1:All right. So step one website build, seo build, get that lay the foundation organic and then start from there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we usually. So there are a couple of different scenarios. One is someone's pretty small. They need to return right away, right? In that case, we're going to just do paid ads. So, okay, we're going to start paid ads, because you need to see your ROI on every single marketing dollar account, pay one. We're going to do the paid ads. We're going to build up to the point where you are not that tight, right? You know, hey, I can set aside a little bit of money each month to invest into long-term growth through the business. Then we're going to start doing the website, the SEO stuff. So it's kind of backwards from what you just said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's where I was going, yeah, okay, so you're saying, hey, you guys got to make that phone ring right away. You got to get that cash register ringing up, you got to get the sales paid. Ads is going to be. Make that phone ring Right, correct, yeah.
Speaker 3:So for smaller companies, that's usually the play For other companies, for bigger companies again, painting is very seasonal too, so it depends on is this spring, we're going into busy season, is it fall or winter and all of a sudden we're worried about laying off our painters. Where are we at in the season? But for bigger companies, let's say that it is almost coming up on spring. They're probably going to just do the web SEO stuff, because they're going to want to look toward next winter and say, hey, I don't want to be in a bind. You know I've been in the bind the last few years. Let's go ahead and solve that right now. It's nine months from now. Let's get ahead of it. So we'll start doing that.
Speaker 3:But we don't need to do the paid ads because their calendar is already full, right, they're having a hard time actually finding the labor to actually complete all the estimates and the projects that they have. And then there are people who comment and they just want to do it both. They say, hey, I can use more estimates, I need it. I'm not super stressed about our capital. We do have some money in the bank, we're comfortably operating. So let's actually do the paid ads so we can start getting leads and closing them right away, but at the same time, let's start investing for the long-term future. That's the ideal version.
Speaker 2:And I want to go back and reiterate something because I think it's a pretty big thing for our listeners, no matter what industry they're in. So if somebody calls them they're not a painter and they want your service, you tell them no.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we won't do it. We've even had partners of ours who open another business and they wanted us to do it for that business and we won't do it.
Speaker 3:And it's not. It's not to be mean, it's not just to say we only work with painters. It's because it is going to get us out of our business alignment. You know, for us we have a very core focus and if we start taking our team and we want to learn all about remodeling our handyman or we want to, you know, whatever it is, it's number one we're probably not going to produce as good a results as we could if we were focused full time on that. And number two it's just going to muddy what we're doing. So it's going to be hard.
Speaker 2:when you start, though. I mean, you're absolutely turning down business, and Chris and I have talked about this a lot over the years, and it's like you know. Chris will tell the story. When he started, he just said yes to anything, and so it's a remarkable discipline that you have to say no. Are you tempted to maybe launch another vertical? No so no.
Speaker 3:I mean, when I started, it wasn't just me.
Speaker 1:I stopped. First of all, I applaud his discipline. Yeah, it's amazing. I don't have it clearly you have very little self-discipline I don't I mean it really doesn't, because I would do anything to anybody at any time when I first started For months. Well, still, I still probably will Back to those.
Speaker 3:But now it's for fun though.
Speaker 1:But now it's for yeah, so, but, but that is, that is a huge gold nugget, because you've got to say no. You've got to say no because time is all you've got and you know your market, you know your niche. You got to say no and those no's come back. And I actually just got done talking about that with some of my sales guys Guys, we don't do roofs, we just don't Well, but I think, but that's all they wanted. I said, then refer them to the roofer you know, and said and let that roofer know that you referred him because he'll refer you back on all the other stuff we can do. You know, because I'm going to wear a handyman company, we got a lot of stuff we can. So I think that's that's key staying in your focus and that probably it's hard to say no, but it's, but it starts to get easier. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It does. Yeah, I mean when you, when you figure out that it works, when you see the results that you're generating, you start to get more referrals. You don't have to be a massive, massive company. People have this misperception. Well, if I just niche into this, I'm leaving so much money on the table. The reality is, if you actually look at whatever vertical you're focused on and you actually do the math and let's say, you own 10%, you own 10% of your market, of your applicable market, the company's probably going to be bigger than your wildest dreams. So there's so much depth in markets and it's it's very easy and I see it happen all the time with other marketing agency owners to look and see another shiny object. They go well, I'm been working with a landscapers. Or I try to do X, y or Z, I try to do only pay per click. But man, I see these Facebook ads guys. Or I see, you know, branding over here. You know, I think painters is where it's at.
Speaker 3:I think this, this method of advertising, is where it's at. It takes longer and it's harder than you want it to be, but the opportunity is right where you're focused on. That's not always the case, but 90% of the time it is.
Speaker 1:No, that's solid move. All right, let's go back to our case studies. So you, you stand up with Bob's painting and say, bob, we're going to go pay dads. Bob says, no, I don't believe you, but he signed up with Bob. So you know, bob shut the hell up Bob we're doing paid ads.
Speaker 1:All right, Bob, how long do you give Bob before you come back to? And Bob says hey, Brandon, it's not working. You're like well, Bob, let's go back and look at the stats, and so, how do you take them through? What success looks like and how long does it take?
Speaker 3:Yeah, success with paid ads should be pretty instantaneous. So for us, we have a. We have a dual onboarding process, basically two onboarding steps. Step one is the more standard onboarding. It's a little bit more in depth what services do you like? What are your territories? What's your goal for your business? Where are you going? We need to understand it really well.
Speaker 1:Right. Step two is actually the.
Speaker 3:CRM onboarding. So that's where we use our CRM, because that's where the leads are going to go. If you don't understand how to operate the CRM, or what's happening or the messaging that's going out, then none of those leads are going to convert. You're going to be super confused and you're going to be wasting ad spend. That whole process depends on the partner. It's usually about two weeks at that. After that we launch and those ads start coming in within one day. So for us it's pretty fast. There is no. Hey, bob, let's go back and look at the stats. Because we're already looking at the stats. We use a live reporting dashboard. He gets Bob can access that reporting dashboard 24-7. He has a login. He also gets monthly reports and then we have a dedicated partner advocate looking at it as well. So if there's a problem, we already know about it.
Speaker 2:Stop. I'm just still so enamored with how niche this is and I I do have a phone call. Hang on, Brandon, Chris has a phone call.
Speaker 1:I had this thing on. Do not disturb dude. I'm sorry but I'm very into man. Do not disturb is flipping on, bro. I don't know how he broke through. He broke through by seal.
Speaker 2:Somebody really wanted to talk to you.
Speaker 1:He just entered my inner sanctum and I have do not disturb on, actually, and that's that's my buddy, kj, you know. So we've had a month, all right.
Speaker 2:I, I'm sorry, I'll, I'll kill it again Well, okay so, but the power of this niche is, I mean, you think about it. It makes it so much easier to sell a prospective client Cause when they say, well, tell, give me an example of, and you've got a million, and they're in their exact space, as opposed to, well, we have this dog rumor that we, you know, so you've got that in. And then if they start complaining about their results, it's a lot easier to diagnose. Or it's a lot easier to say, you know, as Chris would say, shut the hell up, bob, I'm sure you don't do that, but much more professional. Thank you, yeah, but you know you can. You can help them see, based on all this data that you have in exactly their space. I mean, it's just brilliant, I love it. Marketing is is very.
Speaker 1:That was a lot of ass kissing, no, but do a great job. I like that.
Speaker 3:We're going to love really well.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah, you're going to come up. You're okay too, you're going to come up and you can play Ellen's golf course.
Speaker 3:Yeah, fine, yeah, no marketing marketing is not an easy game. You know there are a lot of people on a play the game. Ultimately you are. You're trying to manipulate algorithms. That's the whole thing. Even when you're running, you know, ads on Facebook or Google, you're trying to be better at manipulating the algorithm so that you have a lower cost per lead than the next guy. That's how you become a good marketer, right, and then you get that the quality of lead again, but it's all. How do you actually position it? How do you actually manipulate the algorithm? There are a lot of smart people who are marketing, so the more that you can understand your business, the deeper understanding you have, the easier it is to actually perform well.
Speaker 1:Alright, so Bob's Bob, bob's a believer because he's working with you, because you're very positive and you're very focused, and you didn't tell me to shut the hell up because he's already fired me. So, alright, so.
Speaker 2:I had to talk with Bob.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but, bob, you need to talk with Brandon, alright. So what is month three, month five what's the next step? So, you guys, website, what's the next thing they started doing?
Speaker 3:Yep, so for us the SEO stuff is typically going to kick in. I mean, it's a wide variance somewhere between six and 12 months For us it might be 12 months.
Speaker 3:If it's a brand new company. They don't have a domain, they don't have any authority whatsoever on Google. That's a harder thing. If they're out in the boonies, you know, in some rural area, it's not going to be that difficult. If they're in Metro New York, it's going to be super difficult If they are. If they've been doing SEO, have they hired another company and they just weren't getting done? Well, at least they have some activity right. So every situation is going to be different when they come in. But that's the longer term approach. It's the long tail win. But it's the big win Because once you start getting those leads, you're not having to pay on a per lead basis.
Speaker 3:The paid ads again, that fluctuates, so we are always targeting which we succeed at about 80% of the time. We're targeting a cost per lead of under $50 a week when we do paid social. Now, right now we're coming into a time where that's a little bit more difficult, because Facebook ads works on an auction process. We're going into winter, fall, winter that's when all the painters who don't really have their act together, they go boy. I'm about to lay off painters, like I do every single year. I'm so surprised I should start advertising. So then they go on because they haven't laid the foundation of the website and the SEO and they don't own any space really digitally. So they start paying. And now Facebook has more and more supply right for a reduced demand, because now the exteriors aren't really being done, so it's just interiors and cabinets. So the cost per thousand impressions goes up. So now your cost per lead goes up. So it's seasonal as well. But ultimately I'm a big proponent of owning your space digitally, owning your market digitally.
Speaker 1:So I know you're humping the digital stuff. Is there any print that you guys would advertise or talk to them about doing Advocate? I should say not advertise yeah.
Speaker 3:So the print may be in the arsenal, it's in the pipeline. So for us there's so much to do and perfect and just make sure that we knock it out of the park. We don't take things on halfway. I think direct mail, I think there's power in it 100%, but most people stop it too soon. So I am in friends with someone who runs a company called Trace Fix they do direct mail for contractors and he gave me kind of a whole crash course on it for an hour of how to do it and we've experimented with some stuff together. I know you should be sending them every six weeks. I know you need to. There are all these different options you can select in terms of how targeted or untargeted it is by home. I know that there's certain minimum sizes you need to meet and you should be doing it for at least six months. So whatever opportunity you present you focus on, you should be doing at least six months.
Speaker 3:What people do and what's kind of what they do in life, is they'll do it one or two or three rounds. They don't get a return. They think, oh, that was a waste of money. Direct mail is expensive, so it is expensive and you have to throw a lot of money at it for a long time before you start to see the return. I am very like. I'm big on the digital. I'm also big on the omnipresence. So I think if you're doing direct mail, if you're showing up in ads for those people, if they're seeing you anytime they search on the website, if they see your truck driving around, if they see your yard sign, if they do, you know you do like a five round or 15 rounds. Or you're hitting when you go paint the house or give an estimate, you're hitting all the surrounding houses with door hangers. That's super big because of brand awareness. All those touch points encourages trust.
Speaker 2:Is it five round or 15 around? As simple as hang five door knocks or 15?
Speaker 3:Each direction. Yeah, okay, all right, so you would go out and just kind of pepper the neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's grab and pound stuff, I mean. That is. That's why I asked the question.
Speaker 1:Direct mail it's a hard game, but the digital presence is there. And then if you're there and you've got the marked trucks and you're dropping the flyers and you're doing it over and over. I just get done saying this again as we've opened up our Athens market with our second truck. One truck looks like one, two looks like four, three looks like nine. It's exponential. And when you're out there and when you're dropping, you're dropping the door hangers. When you're out there, then they see the digital ad, then they get the magic seven touch points or whatever they call it now and you get that call and back to your. I love what you said earlier on which the video first is no, they can trust you before you show up. That just helps you annihilate the competition.
Speaker 2:Yeah you're trying to suck it now.
Speaker 1:Well, I that was more of a sucker, but no.
Speaker 3:I like that, but I'm moving on, yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, thank you, I just want you to come to golf at my place.
Speaker 2:So what are some? What are some new trends in digital? I mean, I'm a little out of the loop with that and it seemed like it was changing every six months or six days. I mean, what's going on now?
Speaker 3:It's. It's always changing, so we're always experimenting with things. We got really big in a tick tock ads for a little bit. Not the best approach for painting companies. Painters you have to get people who are a little bit older, a little bit wealthier, like that's a word targeting. We're not targeting the people. They don't have that much money, they don't care that much about the quality of their paint job. The YouTube ads you can go and listen to this.
Speaker 1:You, you expect shitty paint. You might as well just go to Walmart get shitty paint, because, by the way, I scored a guy. If I drank Walmart paint I think I'd live, I'd be just fine. I mean, that thing was like a 99 9% water. Because they had a customer, I should have Walmart made paint. Well, I did, because customer supplied paint. We showed up Walmart paint and my guy complained. So I went to the job site this is years ago and I'm like this is Walmart paint. I'm like, come on, I can paint. I just that stuff went on. It was like water bro, it was so bad. But I don't even know if they're making any more. But but so if you're young and you, you don't like paint job. So you get to be old soon, like us, and then you can appreciate a good paint job. All right, back to Brandon. Back to Brandon.
Speaker 3:And you have the money to to pay for that paint job and I want your money.
Speaker 2:So no tick tock like Chris is doing, I mean he's, he's wearing hula skirts and everything, and no, yeah, I mean we don't do.
Speaker 3:We don't do tick tock right, but if you, if you were focused on tick tock and you become a tick tock guy in your local market, you can probably knock it out of the park. We just have to choose the things that work kind of across the board.
Speaker 3:I think the thing with marketing is people think, well, x, y or z channel doesn't work, but it might work if you commit to it and you make it your channel For us. We have just found meta, so Facebook and Instagram tends to have our audience in a larger percentage than say, tick tock does. And then if you think about the companies that we're working with, you know they're. We're not asking them to make super entertaining videos that we hope will go viral on tick tock, right. So we're going to have to make ads that are a little bit more static or traditional. It's just not going to perform quite as well.
Speaker 1:So you're not doing hula skirts.
Speaker 3:No no, I don't think that we could ask, but overall that one really hit, though no, I'm just kidding, I did have it.
Speaker 2:This is highest hits are when his shirt comes off. For some reason, that's true, though that's.
Speaker 1:That's a different story, yeah that's the yeah, because I thought during COVID. So I, during COVID, I took a picture in the mountains with my shirt off and somebody said oh my God, he's the shirtless guy. You always have your shirt off. I said Well, I heard that shirts give you COVID, you know, back with nobody knew where I was coming from. So it went on for like a year I didn't realize that was a real thing.
Speaker 3:It's funny, yeah, so you're totally making that up now.
Speaker 1:No, no, it was real.
Speaker 2:I'm straight man.
Speaker 1:And and actually literally, I showed up at a job and or an estimate with one of my sales guys. The guy goes hey, I recognize you. You got your shirt on.
Speaker 2:I was up here. Oh my God, I know, I recognize with that shirt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, my God, yeah, so all right, but no, I, I grab you like Instagram, instagram, facebook, the meta stuff building that up so more of a social program really doesn't make that phone ring. So that's what Bob says hey, I kind of believe in you. Now it's the next step. Let's keep building that awareness of what we're doing. One of my questions is Google my business. How, how much do you push that with them?
Speaker 3:I push it pretty hard yeah, Google my business is big, especially on mobile, so you're looking at probably at least half your leads can come through there. The biggest I'd say the biggest low hanging fruit that painting company owners mess up on is review generation. It is not that hard to get reviews. You should build it into sales process. You should be setting that expectation before you even start a project. You should be incentivizing your team. Your project manager should be financially incentivized to do it. The five star review is worth a lot of money to you and so and people just super neglected. It's a huge ranking factor for your Google business profile. People just sleep on it. They get one a month and they think they're doing well.
Speaker 1:No dude, that, oh, that is so big. We are up at 760 reviews here in a while for us and I do, I put a big premium on it. So I I'm a big guy in training, so we bring our handyman team actually in my remodellers together once every other Wednesday and we celebrate the successes and we post all the good reviews in the training room when they come in to talk about that. And then of course we do, we incentivize them. You know, every time you get a good review you get extra 25 bucks. All I'm asked to do is ask for the review. Somebody asked me I was on another podcast what's the best way to get reviews? I said it's really easy. It's when you're there. It's a personal thing, it's a don't. I said I've heard so many people oh, you got to have digital or you got to pound them with messages. You got to know that's annoying.
Speaker 2:I mean that is super annoying when you get my dentist does that and it's like I get. I love my dentist and I get 42 follow ups trying to get me to.
Speaker 1:I mean, if they did just ask me there I might have done it, you might have done it right then and there, because you're looking at the dental hygienist and she goes hey, if you give me a review, he actually is going to put my review up or he's going to give me extra 20 bucks, you would go. You know what. I'm going to do that for you right now.
Speaker 2:I thought you were going to go nasty on that. I'm glad you kept it, see. See, brandon already knows you. I know there's a dentist story I pause because I kept it about four boys Come on now. Everyone's like. We're recognizing the fact that you did well.
Speaker 1:You did good. No, but I think that's good. Brandon, we're starting to run out of time. And give us a little bit of time and give us some other great topics or nuggets you want to give everybody before we let you go. And have we got to?
Speaker 3:ask for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, for sure man.
Speaker 3:Well, I think the biggest point would be to just start. So, even though I did an auto detail business, I had tried to do a software business and I had thought about a thousand other businesses, right? And that's where the comment of my wife said, well, can you figure out how to wash a car? And so we started this and I had no idea even what I didn't know. I had no idea that I would find marketing, fall in love with Maria. I'd never done anything with marketing, but what was required was me to just start doing something, just pick a direction and just start running, and you should. So, if you're listening I know a lot of listeners aren't, really they don't have a business yet. If you're listening and you want to start a business, just pick one. Have it be a service business, not a product business, so you don't have to make a big investment and then just start running. It doesn't have to make any sense at all You're gonna figure out along the way.
Speaker 3:You're gonna find things you like, find things you don't like. You're gonna probably fall in love with this.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna start a business tonight. Brandon's firing me up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, I'm firing up, I'm gonna start a business, right. And then Come on amen. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then I was I mean, I got fortunate again. It wasn't like a massive, massive exit, but it was decent and that gave me a ton of confidence. Then, going into my next business, I was like, hey, I built that from nothing, but I didn't have that confidence before. So just going in, go in, expect to fail and that's great, but just start sitting there on your couch thinking about it. Listening to Chris now, and as entertaining as they are, is not gonna get you there. You do have to start.
Speaker 1:That's right, man. Get off your ass. Get off there and go do it 10 minutes.
Speaker 3:Brandon didn't say that Don't do it yet. Wait, hold on.
Speaker 1:Yeah right. Brandon that's great advice I do?
Speaker 3:I swear to God. I mean. You know what I mean. Motivations. Look at this.
Speaker 1:I do, I know I got my hairs on my arms. I'm ready to go start a business right now too. Gotta do it. Yeah, no, I've got enough.
Speaker 3:I'm too busy.
Speaker 1:Great, that's great advice.
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 1:Brandon, how can they find you out there in the marketplace? We'll put this all in the show links. All right, Brandon, you're on. All right, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon, Brandon. I'll put the show links.
Speaker 3:Yeah, if you go to paintermarketingproscom paintermarketingproscom then you can check out our website. You can also send me an email, brandon, at paintermarketingproscom. I'm on LinkedIn. On Facebook, take my Facebook says I grow painting companies, so it says that I'm the right guy.
Speaker 1:I love it. Man, you gotta go check this dude out. If you're in a painting business, you think you're where you wanna be and you wanna get bigger. And let's face it, guys, this is 23. When we're laying this one down, 24, it's gonna be a tough market. All the. We're gonna have an economist on here a little bit later in the year, which is gonna be really exciting because this guy's gonna be phenomenal. But all the economists are telling us it's gonna be a little tough and my experience has been in my home service business is that elections years get really tough those three months right up to an election. So you're looking at an election year.
Speaker 2:I don't care which election or who you're gonna pull for, everybody pulls back those three months Going up to it, yeah, but if you do a good job and you don't pull back on your marketing, you're gonna be fine.
Speaker 1:So I say, lean in, and I actually I'm leaning in with you, man, so I love it. So, painter marketing pros, brandon, we love this stuff, but don't leave yet. Before you go start your business, guys, we gotta ask Brandon his basic big four questions. Brandon, what's a great book that you would refer to our customer, our listenership?
Speaker 3:Yep, it's a thick book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Very big fan of that. I don't know that one Whoa gosh darn it.
Speaker 1:Hang on, I gotta write that down.
Speaker 3:Daniel what. Daniel Kahneman, K-A-H-N-E-M-A-N.
Speaker 1:Nice, Thinking Fast and Slow.
Speaker 2:What's the gist of it?
Speaker 3:Just is that we have two different brains essentially. You know the reptilian brain or system one and then system two, which is more deliberate and thoughtful. We oftentimes make emotional decisions with system one and then we rationalize them with system two. I think a lot of people kind of know that this is a like a 350 page psychological study that really dives into it, how it affects your life and how you can essentially make better choices.
Speaker 1:Wow, and this is why I brought Ellen on the podcast, because I am 100% system one, and let's see what happens when I'm system two.
Speaker 2:That's why we're so well together. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Love it. That's a great one, dude.
Speaker 2:Oh, whatever reptilian brain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do have a reptilian brain.
Speaker 3:I'm actually very what a certain brain.
Speaker 1:I'm so comfortable with that. In fact, I may make a sure of that. You were looking at a reptilian brain. That's right after striving for a solidly overweight. Okay, so back to Brandon. Yes, sir. Question B what is the favorite feature of your house?
Speaker 3:It's super long and open. So we have two kids they basically have. They call it star cars or something I don't know. We have those little trikes and stuff. They get on them and they basically just ride up and down the house. So I love the fact that they can do that. That is cool.
Speaker 2:How cool is that. That is very cool.
Speaker 1:That is Right after what he yelled at me, yeah.
Speaker 2:My dad did. Sorry, I struck a nerve.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, no, actually, because somebody just said I shared an Instagram post saying you can't hurt my feelings. I held my flashlight for my dad and I was like, and somebody shared that with him. I wrote back and I said and I did it really badly, you can ask him. She wrote back, I will. So, yes, my dad yelled at me all the time, but don't worry, I'm not scared kind of All right now, all right. Next question when you're out there and you're the customer, what is a customer service pet peeve of yours?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this is a weird thing. I'm glad that you asked me this. It's when people are rude. I feel like a lot of times people are rude, especially at a desk or, you know, checking into a hotel or maybe a waitress or whatever. These are all great professionals with great people, but sometimes you run into a bad app. They're rude. You're trying to be nice, they're rude again. And then I was like you know what, let me try being rude. And then I'm rude and all of a sudden they're nice. And I've tried this several times and it seems to work every single time.
Speaker 3:So, I approach the situation nicely repetitively. You continue to be rude and however you want to define this, and then I'm like you know what Screw it. Let me be rude right back, and then you're gonna back up and be nice.
Speaker 2:Why is psychology a mad?
Speaker 1:Dude, that's so Elon Musk. Right there, I'm listening to Elon Musk's book. I mean, this guy, I mean he is a genius but he also has so many quirks, but he is probably an asshole genius. Not a genius asshole, he's an asshole genius. So I can just see this. So that's what I'm gonna do next time. You're rude, I'm just gonna be rude. Right back, I'm gonna like I'm gonna 100% Italian Yankee him. What do you think Nice Do?
Speaker 2:it. Let me know how it goes.
Speaker 1:All right, oh, brandon, that's a good answer. Dude, that's like one of the best answers I've ever heard. He just told me I can be an ass.
Speaker 2:Yes, thanks a lot, Brandon, you gotta give him a couple chances.
Speaker 3:Give him a couple chances and then just pull him.
Speaker 1:Oh, couple chances first, oh shit.
Speaker 2:You just enabled, chris.
Speaker 3:Oh, that's awesome, but then they're nice, you can go back to being nice. You don't have, it's a whole dance, it's a whole dance.
Speaker 2:You should go back to being nice Chris.
Speaker 3:Not so very nice. They'll stay nice at that time.
Speaker 1:Reptilia Bred says go in. Brandon told me I should be a total ass.
Speaker 2:I'm walking and going serve me now.
Speaker 1:Sit me now on the table. I will not accept this. Brandon said I could. He's with Peter Markman bros. Let me give you his card.
Speaker 2:Man, this is brutal Anger management, All right.
Speaker 1:Last question, which is my favorite Give us a DIY nightmare story. We love fires, dismemberment, deaths of kiddies.
Speaker 2:Or just wrecking somebody's really nice car when you're detailing it. That could be a good one. That would be a good one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no.
Speaker 2:I would have done that.
Speaker 3:I don't have anything too bad. We our house three years ago and we hired a company that you can hire anybody. So let's just start with that, because all the houses were your Florida.
Speaker 1:you had the hurricane came through. Oh yeah, man.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but this was, this was actually Tropical Storm. Also, it's a I don't know Edda Tropical Storm, edda in like 2020. And so it wasn't even a hurricane, didn't even hit us. But our house managed to fly and a bunch of others did, and so you couldn't actually get a contractor to come out. We found one that could all of a sudden start the next week. Like man, this is awesome Phenomenal started up with them. They basically just parked one guy at the house who did everything Like. The guy definitely was not qualified to do some of the projects that he did. He's, I can tell you he was not a good painter and he just essentially lived at our house for like half a year. I was like this is, this is freaking nuts.
Speaker 3:Like we should definitely have crews of guys doing this stuff, but we just got the one guy who, who just kind of like, became a dude who lives at our house.
Speaker 2:Old reference Murphy Brown. It's like Murphy Brown. Oh yeah, that's right Nice call yeah, murphy Brown.
Speaker 1:So I talk about that with my team all the time when we do a remodeling project. I've got a number of remodellers who my project managers, who could do everything, and they started doing it. I'm like, no, you have to earn the fee, bro, you can't do everything. We bring certain specialists in because that's what people are looking for in a remodeling project. They want to know that you're bringing the A team in and not the B team, or you're not going to do everything when you really don't-. Did you point at me when you said B team, no, no, okay, what kind of you just pointing past you.
Speaker 1:Oh, is that what it was. Just pointing this will be on YouTube If you want to see exactly what I was pointing I was pointing. I definitely was not pointing with the one finger Right.
Speaker 2:You need to mute so you can tell me to flip me up.
Speaker 3:I could do it one more time.
Speaker 1:So, brandon, this has been awesome. Painter marketing pros go check it out. You've been listening. You got to keep going, even if you're not in painting. Listen to what Brandon just said. Figure it out. He's not going to help you if you're not in painting. However, you just earned a lot of stuff, about anything that could help you in your own business. Stay in your market, stay in your lane. Figure out how to do it the right way. Brandon's got it figured out. We love this stuff. Brandon, thank you so much. Let's get it done. You're awesome man.
Speaker 3:Appreciate you guys having me. Thank you guys, and I'm going to start a business right now.
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