A2O Digital meets with hosts Brandon Falone and Justin Bencsko to discuss how you can protect your business and brand from a business owner's perspective. Brandon dives into multiple factors that all home service business owners should proactively do. Check out this episode to hear what collaborative business efforts you can do to protect your business and reputation.
A2O Digital meets with hosts Brandon Falone and Justin Bencsko to discuss how you can protect your business and brand from a business owner's perspective. Brandon dives into multiple factors that all home service business owners should proactively do. Check out this episode to hear what collaborative business efforts you can do to protect your business and reputation.
Brandon 00:00
Welcome back! This is Brandon and Justin, we're really excited to be talking to you about the service industry. In particular, we've been talking about brands, we've talked about building it, promoting it, this episode, we're really gonna be talking about protecting it. And it's really important is protecting a brand because everything that you can you build can be brought down really, really quickly. And you know, Justin, you and I have really talked at length about this, you know, everything that you do is so important. But if I don't do the right things on my side, all the hard work that you put into building our brand can can really be brought down quickly. So why don't you start off, I know that the world, you know, has changed drastically right? The way people can take down companies is different than the way it used to be. What is it talk to me a little bit about how the world has changed? And what affects a brand today from marketing standpoint?
Justin 01:11
It's a good question. I think the main thing is the consumer has a bigger voice now, compared to I mean, really, you're saying compared to like, 20 years ago, when the Internet wasn't necessarily a thing, right? So if a consumer didn't have a good experience, they have a platform to be able to go and I guess show that to the world, they can go and leave a review, right? They can go on social media and post something. Just the world is so different. Now where one bad experience can have so many negative impacts versus let's just say 20 years ago, if someone had a bad experience, who are they going to tell? Maybe I mean, we talked about this in previous episodes, maybe they go to the BBB, maybe they tell their friends, you know, close friends and immediate family members, but wouldn't necessarily go beyond that. Right? Versus now you have one customer that's upset, they will go on and we've seen this, they'll go leave a review on Google on Yelp, they'll go on social media, they'll go everywhere, right? And so just amplifies their their voice. So that's, that's what I would say is changed, you know, compared to 20 years ago, or whatever.
Brandon 02:21
And yeah, it is it is so fascinating, because when people did not have the same voice, companies could survive, they can even thrive, even though their brand was not didn't have the best reputation, right? People keep going back to restaurants, even though that restaurant maybe wasn't, didn't have the best food. But what today with the different ways people can leave reviews can spread, you know, information about a company bad experiences, cell phones are so quickly to take out right? Isn't it nuts in the world today? You know, you do something and people are taking videos of of women going crazy on planes? I mean, I thoroughly enjoy some of them. They make me incredibly uncomfortable. And I do I as a person, you know, think that is this? Just justice kind of gets brought to light sometimes. But have you seen with like, from your standpoint with customers that don't necessarily put the same emphasis on reviews, and I want to talk about reviews. I know I have my philosophy on reviews and unhappy customers. So I guess I don't know if you want me to start first. But I know you've had customers who don't have the same belief system when it comes to negative reviews.
Justin 03:32
Not necessarily belief system, I think everybody knows they need to get reviews. But the thing is, you need to put in the effort to get the reviews. If you just leave it up to the consumer, it's not going to be a real reflection of what the average customer feels right? If you don't go and ask the every customer to go and leave you a review on how their experience was. People don't necessarily go leave a review and they had a good experience. Right? They don't think oh, I'm gonna go to Google and leave it. When do people unprovoked leave a review for a business?
Brandon 04:06
No, I Personally, myself, I don't leave. I don't know. What do you leave a lot of reviews for businesses?
Justin 04:11
I don't but we're like if you had to, like guess, right? When is someone gonna go leave, and they're not happy when they're not happy? Exactly. So if you leave it up to you know, the consumer to go do it whenever they want, you're gonna get reviews when they're not happy, you will get some good reviews it'll trickle in to but it's not going to be a true reflection of how your customers as a whole feel. So you have to actively go and get those reviews and ask every customer to give a review. So that's a true reflection. So when you do have a couple of those negative reviews, right? It's drownded out by all the happy customers.
Brandon 04:48
So speaking of that, right because that from a from protecting the brand, the way people some companies approach negative reviews, I'm sure you have customers of yours that still are kind of maybe stuck in the old, the old ages of the way, because I've seen that before where you go on somebody's Yelp page, and there is an argument with the customer, right? Oh, yeah. And like, how I mean, you, as the marketer can only do so much. And they're blaming you, because they're not getting the same lead volume. And but their approach, like, that's going to be a struggle for you huh?
Justin 05:24
I mean, it's coaching them through it, right? People when it comes to, you know, they own the business, they can get very protective of it, and go into it and listen there, I'm sure there are times where a customer is being unreasonable. And you want to go and say, you know, FU like, I'm going to tell you what really happened here. And like, you know, you're the problem. And that doesn't come off well, right? Yeah. So you kind of got to swallow your pride usually, and figure out like, you know, from Listen, yeah, the customer could be a total D bag, but you kind of got to swallow your pride and figure out how to answer it in a way that isn't going to make you look bad, because people will go and look at the negative reviews and see how you respond. So you got to be really conscious of that. And we've had to coach, you know, people through that.
Brandon 06:15
Yeah, yeah, I've listened, I've had those, it's affected. The way that I have approached the business, I know that when I started this business, 10 years ago, I have this approach where it was still, I still wanted to kind of fight with the customer a little bit and speak our side, I remember we had a customer, it was out in Long Island, and the customer was not happy. And we wrote a dissertation of all the things they wanted to threatening us and said, basically, if you don't come and give me everything for free, I am going to blast you everywhere. But you can get out of this by give me everything for free. And they tried to you know, kind of hold us hostage and it was a tough one. Yeah, but but the reality was what they created on Yelp, and the time I spent trying to fight.
Justin 07:07
What did you end up doing there? In the moment?
Brandon 07:11
I wind up giving. So that customer I'm my philosophy has changed completely since then, back then, I really tried to, you know.
Justin 07:24
Did you give them all their money back?
Brandon 07:27
I went and gave them their money back and the review is still up on our Yelp page. And to this day, so they didn't change the they didn't change the review. I didn't give her the free opener, which is completely different than my philosophy today, but I argued, I mean, there's a point where it was probably longer than a paper I wrote in college, I didn't even spend time in school working on stuff. And I wrote this whole dissertation based on like, why this person was wrong and I was right. And that didn't matter. But my my philosophy that's definitely changed.
Justin 07:59
That sounds like they were blackmailing you. Yeah, that's different I don't even know how I would handle that. That's really a tough one. But the majority of the time, right? It's not someone trying to blackmail you. It's someone that had an issue, whatever it is, right? And there's a way to, you know, figure it out where you can answer in a way where you know, you apologize, and honestly trying to blame, the customer is never gonna work well. It's like apologize tell them how you're going to fix it, how you're not going to make that mistake happen again, even if you really weren't at fault and people will care, no one is perfect, right? You're servicing 1000s and 1000s. There is always going to be something that happens. It's how do you respond to that? How do you stand by what you're doing? How has your philosophy changed? How would you have done it now if you ran into that?
Brandon 09:00
You know, something, I live by a new feeling that I have. And I read a book recently, and it put it into really good words, but their perception is our reality. Right? And some customers I wish weren't our customers, right? And you know, my dad who's been in the construction industry, for his whole life has always said some of the best jobs are the ones that you don't get because the customer you can see them becoming that problem. And we really aim for another philosophy, right? It's like the customer's always right within reason, right? If they become abusive if they become, you know, you know, a monster you know, and are treating my staff a certain way. That's my breaking point. Right. And this customer was that way they the way that she spoke about some of the people in my building and you know, I was really fighting it but the reality was, the review was going to hurt us for so much longer if we didn't take that down and protecting our brand, sometimes is swallowing our pride and realizing that I'll start showing some my personality right now. But their anger towards me, I don't have to accept it right I there's this great story about Buddha. Buddha was walking down the street and this boy walks over to him and says, you know, Buddha you know, you're a fraud, you're a fake. I don't believe in anything that you do and trying to provoke Buddha. Buddha just keeps walking. The boy walks over and says, aren't you gonna fight me? He says "If you gave me a present and I didn't accept it, who owns that present?" And the boy bewildered looks and goes, "Well, I own the present." Well it's the same thing with your anger. And that's kind of the approach, right? The customer's perception is our reality. We take it, we don't take their anger, we don't take any of this. And we just move on. Right? I've had people, I remember getting in a fight with a insurance company, somebody worked in the insurance industry, he was telling me were a rip off, right. And it bothers me, because they're, when they're arguing about price, they're not taking the person into account, right, they're not paying for a part, they're paying for the people to come out there. So my philosophy really has, we've got to get the review off, we've got to get it off as soon as possible, we need to, you know, I don't, I don't take money out of my technicians pockets. You know, if they do something that could have avoided it, sometimes it is always a coaching moment in there where I will, but most of the time, when that person is unreasonable, I just move on, and I don't accept their anger, and I just really move on.
Justin 11:31
So you said you gotta get their review off, what do you what do you do?
Brandon 11:34
Well, you know, again, so protecting the brand is whatever I have to do, you know, sometimes calling, sometimes going out to the customer's home, we've brought boxes of donuts, we've done a lot of different things to make sure that we got that review taken down, because you don't get another chance with customers, if they if one review is what's going to take them away from doing business with you, is it worth it? No. Even if I had to pay double the amount of what the repair cost, I do it. And I'll do anything, you know, not anything, but I would do a lot to get these reviews down. And you've known me for a very long time. I'm a big personality and I think the big thing that I have to really do is kind of bring myself to realize that this is not personal. I try not to make it personal. I don't accept the anger in it. And we just move on and we do whatever we can. And, you know will we flag the customer? Yes, we'll flag the customer. But we have negative reviews where people pay $0, and get an estimate and don't like our prices, the ridiculousness of that blows my mind absolutely blows my mind. Because that's like going to a restaurant looking at their menu and saying, Oh, I don't like this restaurant because their prices are too high. What? That makes no sense, but to protect our brand, I've given out gift cards to restaurants to try and support local, that people have taken reviews down that we didn't give anything to them. But it is crazy the world that we live in.
Justin 13:08
No, I will say that going to a customer and trying to get them to, like remove a review. There's gray area from on Google with this, and you can actually be outside the guidelines. I wish I knew we were going to go down this this rabbit hole today. And maybe I can get it and we can talk about it on the next episode. And I can go into the exact details. But you cannot say, "Hey if you remove your review, I will refund you money." You are not allowed to do that. That actually is against Google's guidelines, and if Google kind of finds out that that's happening, they could potentially wipe your reviews and it cannot be good. So you have to be careful about that. Now, how is Google going to find out that that's happening? That's a whole other story. I don't know. But just bringing that up with all this. Because, I think that this is an approach that some people potentially take like, hey, take you under review, I'll refund your money or whatever it is, it's technically against guidelines, you have to be careful there.
Brandon 14:11
100% customer satisfaction, we don't let money stand in the way of our customers being 100% satisfied. So when it comes to that, like we want them to be satisfied from that standpoint. So that's that is good.
Justin 14:24
You can say hey, I'm going to refund you this money because I understand you're not happy or whatever the situation is. And you I think you can say I would appreciate it if you revisit your review and update it, based on your updated experience, but it cannot be conditional.
Brandon 14:46
I hear you and you give me that and honestly that's how we approach it. There's not this point where we'll take the moment you do this. We'll give you this back. We do this where we try to rectify the situation and we do talk to the customers about affecting people's families, like, would you revisit this after having a conversation with us, but what you do to protect a brand, it's really important to me, and to the team, and we take this really seriously.
Justin 15:16
And the big thing too again going back, if you're getting all of your customers that have a positive experience to leave reviews, it's okay to have some one star reviews. You say "Listen, we screwed up here, or you explain what happened, you talk about how you fix it, and you move on."
Brandon 15:43
Yeah, no you've said that to me before, so we try and promote protecting the brand, getting those really good reviews, we incentivize our technicians to take time at the end and address customer satisfaction, and it's really important to us, we really involve them, it's part of our culture, it's part of who we are. You know, that is a really important part, is that the customer is happy because without happy customers, we're nothing. You know because we're not getting that repeat business our brand is known for what, that we fix the door at a certain price, like what we do and how we do it, but why we do what we do is everything with our culture or with our brand, you know, those happy technicians that come out. I had a customer the other day that just left a review where he said "if you just want to put smile on your face, call the technician up." I could pull it up but it was it was really cool because the customer left a review was like this, it was just he put a smile on my face. And I love it. I love seeing when when people just enjoy the experience they have with the technician and that's the brand that we want to be known for. Is being that positive brand that is people first and company first and culture first. You know. As far as like when it comes to, like culture. I don't know if you want me to expand on that at all. But I know that you've always told me that that's really important to our brand. I can definitely expand on that. Yeah, I mean I can talk forever about culture. I know we talked about last podcast a little bit, but culture is important.
Justin 17:33
Yeah, you touched on it in previous episodes. I know that culture is very important, you know, part of your company. What do you do to try and promote that culture? Talk about it a little bit.
Brandon 17:54
Yeah, I mean culture is key, you know, I think doing right by other people is such a core value of mine. It's core value of the ownership group here. It's the core value of what we do, right? We want to create this environment where people are going out and they're happy because I feel like happy technicians, happy salespeople, happy installers, happy people on the phones is going to create a brand that is like I want to do business with these people because they're just, you know, really fun to be around. And I work really hard on this. I work daily on it to be honest because if the guys are happy, they're gonna go out and that is what we're going to be known for. My dad's been in the construction industry for a long time. A lot of what we do is run around food. We make sure people are happy there. But it's about serving the customers. So when you're talking about the brand, that's everything.
Justin 18:55
You say you work on this daily. What are examples though, you said food, right? Yeah, make sure that you know you have breakfast what like tell some specific things that you do.
Brandon 19:05
Yeah, there's not a lot of hungry bellies around here. It's really important to us. Because we have food in the kitchen, we constantly are making sure and that was a big change in what we did. When they were going out to these customers homes if they were getting a little hangry it was causing problems for us early in the morning. Getting people into the office early or making sure that they have the coffee, the iced coffee. We had an iced coffee machine because some of the guys didn't drink hot coffee and it just really started to just spike and grow really quickly as we started to put more emphasis on having fun and as we start to grow and our brand and grow everything you know spreading the clothing around. It's crazy but when you're talking about the brand, I have so much branded clothing that I get made fun of by my relatives because all I do is wear Precision logoed stuff. Every time I get new swag, I give it out to the guys. Golf balls and I take them golfing, I do all of these different things. But I want people to see our brand everywhere. And it's not just the generic stuff, when guys wouldn't wear clothing because it wasn't comfortable. I went out and got the clothing they wanted and stuff that was branded, or certain brands like Carhartt. So I got it. And it's fun and when you talk about our brand, you know, our guys are going out there wearing our clothing, they know, hey, when I wear Precision, it's important to act a certain way because if a customer or somebody else in the world sees the way we are. And we're promoting our brand, like we've got to protect it there. So it's really, the culture never stops. It's the core of what we do. It's the number one focus, I will do everything I can to protect my team members by, you know, working my way with customers who are unhappy, and to protect our brand, because they're worth it. It's really, really important to me. So you try and do the little things, what it sounds like, that show that you're listening and you care about your employees. Yeah, I do all those things and as you you've known me, Justin, for a very long time. And that's probably the easiest part of my day is just being fun and laughing making jokes. I like to consider myself the Michael Scott of the garage door industry. I do, I like to really keep people happy. You know, we work to help people, not just at their work life, but their personal life. And we do have fun, and it's infectious to the customers. And I'm sure from your standpoint, promoting a brand like us, you know, you do such an amazing job. We talked about promoting our social media, and you have this team, that's awesome. That's creating these fun videos asking them questions. And we promote the brand. And I know we're not talking about protecting it. But those videos helped so much with our culture, it puts them in a good mood when they feel like they're a part of something. I mean, speak to that from marketing standpoint, when you have a company with people that want to be in videos and content, how does that help you?
Justin 22:16
I mean, I think we could get our content team on here to talk about it, we've got a great team that, you know, is always thinking of things to put on social media. I mean, ultimately, it's just having fun with the rest of the team and you know, putting that on video, and I think we could get them in here and kind of pick their brains. Yeah, and it's been fun, they do a video once a week with like a new theme. And they go around interview everyone. And at first I think, you know, people were like, What is this? They didn't want to be on camera you know, camera shy. And now there's people coming over saying, Oh, what are we doing this week? You know, what's the video gonna be about? Listen, yes, this is a job. But we also want it to be fun and you to enjoy yourself. And you know, those videos, they've done a good job, if someone's looking for a place to work, and they go look at our social media page, right? I think they'll look and say, Oh, this seems like a cool place, something that I should look more into.
Brandon 23:34
I love it. It's fun. You know, it's just fun. And the most important thing about protecting the brand from my standpoint is the people who are out there promoting it. And working are happy, because if they're happy, you're not trying to put out fires that never start. So when we're talking about negative reviews, they have gone down significantly over the years. Because we have happy people and protecting it is trying to go backwards and fix that. I was talking to somebody about prices, increasing prices, like your prices go up. Only if your customer satisfaction is going up at the same time. Right. And the third part to that is as your prices go up, feeding your culture at the same time making sure people are happy. Yes, financially, they need to win 100% That's just a fact. But winning isn't just money. It's about feeling like they're a part of something. And this all plays into that protection of the brand because these people, man, they'll fight for you out there, they'll fight to get reviews, they'll fight to make happy customers, all of these things and you know this, it's all of it and I know we've talked about the core values of mine and a lot of this kind of surrounds around that but it's fun. So culture, culture, culture. Yeah. I want to kind of jump down to the question I had from your point of view, like staying ahead of the game protecting the brand. From a marketing perspective, that's a really good point that you brought up about Google and knowing certain guidelines. Anything else from a protecting a brand standpoint from marketing that you can do? I mean, it's hard I feel like you're in this position where, and you spoke about this in an earlier podcast is choosing the right partners is really important. If somebody doesn't have the same philosophy that you do about protecting the brand by getting positive reviews, and working with customers who are unhappy to rectify situations when possible. Is there anything else from a marketing perspective that you can do to kind of protect this brand?
Justin 25:48
No, I mean, I think we talked about but I don't have anything else off the top of my mind.
Brandon 26:03
Yeah, I mean, I guess the proactiveness is, you've always kind of taught me, don't wait for the fire to start, create the culture of getting reviews. Any advice you have to people from a review standpoint, is Google still the most important place to get them?
Justin 26:20
Like, you need to be proactive and getting your reviews. I mean, we could talk about where to get them. Yeah, I would say Google is probably the most important. You want it to be consistent across the board. So you can't just focus on one thing, and then have negative reviews rolling in another place. For instance, Yelp, I know, that's one that people struggle with, you could have a whole podcast talking about Yelp, and getting Yelp reviews, and how to get them to stick and all that. But people when they search your brand, if you go and look in a search results page, you have your Google listing with reviews, Yelp listing will show up, obviously, your website will show up, we have a whole strategy around reviews on your website as well. Which I'm not going to get deeply into, but you just want to make sure that everything winds up and is consistent, right? If you have a five star rating on Google, but then you go to Yelp and you've got 50 reviews, and it's two stars, that will affect you in some way. Some people may not see that. But if they search your brand that typically shows up and they're gonna say, hey, that's weird, right? Like Google's this, but then Yelp is going and showing something totally different. So that's the main thing I would say, consistency and Google's the biggest driver.
Brandon 27:41
It feels like Yelps lost some of it.
Justin 27:45
It depends on where you are. Yelp out on the West Coast is still huge people just use it more. Because I think everywhere people use Yelp for restaurants and things like that. But for like Home Services we don't see as many people leaving reviews. But if you go out to like the West Coast, there's companies with hundreds, 1000s of Yelp reviews, which is like crazy. I don't know if that's where Yelp started, but it's just more important. There's more people using the platform out there.
Brandon 28:25
Honestly, when our team Yelp, like the angriest people always go to Yelp and they have the loudest voice there. And they write these like these, everything's in caps. It's like always fun to read, because they're like Yelpers. Yelpers are unbelievable, you start to read these reviews, and you click on their profile, and they just have all these like one stars. I mean, we've all seen them in the service industry. And you just sit there and you're like, why are you the way that you are? I mean once I go out to these people's homes and just be like what happened to you in life that you want to be this angry. But Yelp definitely has for us, I definitely think that it has lost a little bit of steam. I think one thing that worked against Yelp was the fact that they had these verified/unverified reviews, right?
Justin 29:07
What do you mean by its lost its steam?
Brandon 29:10
It used to be like a topic of conversation internally, we had these Yelp bombs.
Justin 29:16
I don't think it's lost steam. I think you put yourself in a decent place where now you know, you're in a good spot. I don't think it's something that you need a billion reviews on, right? But you need it to be consistent with everything else. So you guys went out and got 50-100 Yelp reviews on your different profiles and you're in a good place. You got 100 reviews and let's just say 4.8 Stars 4.9 star rating that lines up with everything else. Now, you don't necessarily need to be getting reviews every two seconds from Yelp. Yes, they can trickle in and you want to continue to do that, but I think that's kind of what it is. What can happen is if you don't make a concerted effort, it can snowball. So you get like a couple bad reviews, right? And it just becomes this like, hard thing to catch up on, you need to like, stay out in front of it. So I think you guys got out in front of it, and you're in a good spot so in your brain it's like oh, it doesn't, but it's just because you're in a good spot now, right?
Brandon 30:19
Yeah, it is funny, I laugh, you've always kept me very grounded in a lot of ways, you know, I can get a little emotional when it comes to some of these reviews, and you've helped me come up with strategies, especially when it comes to looking at the overall like picture of the company, you know, go into that looking at our company and looking at every place that reviews can be left. And you've helped me really find ways to kind of say, "Okay, work on the Yelp, work on this" and to my core I'm a salesperson, so you're like this is gonna benefit you and pointing me in the right direction has been really important for sure. I appreciate you always doing that, and I am grateful. You know we've kind of alluded to this a few times in some of our episodes, right? You're more of that, like logical person, I'm more of this emotional person. So when it comes to protecting the brand, I am like a protective parent at times, like I want to jump on people. So it's hard. It's hard to remove the emotion when it comes to protecting a brand because I do anything. I hear our competitors talk down about us. And I don't care if they say something bad about me, but when they talk about our team members or badmouth us, and people talk about price, like price bothers me, right? We're not the cheapest garage door company by any means we're not cheap. We're not a cheap company but what you get with us is much more than just a part being replaced. So when people judge us based on just pricing, it really bothers me and I know a brand can be brought down there. And I know, in the grand scheme of things we focus so much on the negative, but there's so much more positive and our company does focus on that positive. I appreciate that and it's funny but I have this emotional approach, you take this much more logical approach with everything. I don't know, you've got any advice on that? It's just finding the right partners? What do you think?
Justin 32:27
I mean, I think we are born a certain way some people are naturally more emotional, some people naturally are not. And I think that emotional is not bad. Like, it's not a bad thing. If you act emotionally, in my opinion, and don't think through you have the potential to do some things that you regret. I don't know, like with reviews, right? If you're going to respond to review, or you're gonna go call a customer and you're pissed off, write the review, get it all out, don't hit send. I think this goes with any communication, if you're acting emotionally give it a second to breathe and come back when you're not quite as hot and worked up and then maybe you think, I don't need to say those things that I did, and you can look at it from a more practical standpoint.
Brandon 33:30
It's true and honestly you've helped me. We bought a company in one of the franchises that was sold, and we had to repair that brand. And it was a very different emotional attachment to that. And you helped me take a really logical approach on how to really build that brand. You know, you had us get a new location, start a whole new Google page. So there's been a lot of positives and that's been interesting for me, the rebuilding of a brand in a location where it was a bad brand. Anything you want to speak to with that? Rebuilding a brand? We got a new location, you had us work on getting positive reviews. We tried to rectify some of the problems. Any other advice you have for somebody trying to rebuild? When they have this brand that's already is broken, is there anything that they can do to kind of rebuild it?
Justin 34:30
I think the same things that you would do when you have a good brand, you're still trying to solicit the customers that are happy to leave reviews. It's more important when you have a reputation that isn't great because you need to do double the amount to get yourself to a certain place. We've got multiple locations now for other reasons to, not just reputation, it's for other marketing reasons as well.
Brandon 35:14
The other locations have been amazing.
Justin 35:15
And we've talked about multiple locations and that type of stuff before. We could get into talking about how do you go about doing that? A lot of it relies on the techs in the home, that's how you're gonna have the most success getting reviews. Maybe you could speak to this when you've had the most successes, like the techs ask the customer and say, "Hey, do you mind leaving a review? My bosses care about this, this will help me in my career, right?" Kind of make it a personal thing.
Brandon 36:03
Yeah, I mean, I think in the industry it's become very well known. But it's in the end for us. If you were to ask me, "What's the most important thing to do to protect a brand?" The reviews, it's such an important thing because this paints the picture of your company to everybody. But it's also the people. If you want to protect something, getting the right people working for a company that are going to ultimately represent a brand is the most important thing.
Justin 36:32
Your employees are the people that are representing your brand every day. So if they're running around, pissed off and making customers angry.
Brandon 36:40
We've had guys here that their sole motivation was money, right? And those people don't care about your brand nearly as much as they care about themselves. So when we start to see these people where one of the first things they do is say "hey, how can I help." The sum of all of us is greater than sum of one of us, and the people that are the sum of one of us, those are our brand killers. So when it comes to protecting, it's about creating an environment culture of people that believe in what you're doing and constantly foster that constantly feed into that. And that's what it is. That's why I'm not scared of anybody trying to replicate it because you have to have a certain mentality and you have to have certain people. It's unbelievable, just what we do to have fun and how it all works together. So it's fun and I'm glad we talked about brand. This has been a really fun episode talking about brand because it's everything. It's your logo, it's everything to what you're known for, who you are. Our company Why is just being that wow company, and we want to be known for that everywhere. So it's pretty cool. Great chatting with you again.
Justin 38:02
Absolutely. See you later, bye.