Effective Branding Strategies for Home Services: Insights from Ryan Chute

A2O Digital meets with host Justin Bencsko and guest Ryan Chute, a partner at the Wizard of Ads. This episode discusses the importance of branding for home service companies and how the experts at the Wizards of Ads create a brand's story using emotional connections with customers through repetitive messaging and evoking emotions. This approach emphasizes brand-building which aims to establish trust and a strong reputation.

For more information about the Wizard of Ads you can follow this link.

Transcript

Justin  00:03

Welcome back to the podcast, Justin here. And today, I'm really excited about the conversation. We have Ryan Chute in from the Wizard of Ads. In many previous episodes we've kind of talked about brand, building a brand, the effects of that. So I'm really excited to have Ryan in today. If you haven't heard of The Wizard of Ads, they are the, you know, one of the go-to if you're trying to build your brand, and especially as a contractor in the home services industry, they have had a ton of success working with a lot of different companies. So really excited to just kind of talk Ryan, and kind of talk about this topic of building the brand. So thanks for coming on.

Ryan Chute  01:01

Hey, thanks for having me.

Justin  01:03

Tell everybody that doesn't know a little bit about yourself, your backgrounds, kind of just give us a you know, a little minute, couple minute explanation of what you do, where, where you've come from.

Ryan Chute  01:16

Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in retail, my family owned a furniture store and a video store and a number of different small businesses. And I kind of got my chops in the in the gulags of retail. And that took me to University where I managed to figure out more of the operational side of things that brought me to what I really wanted to do in life, which was to kind of run the operation and then to go out and consult other companies for doing that. I did that for a number of years. The family business sold, I decided I needed to get into something else. The automotive industry is what kind of piqued my interest the most. I have an appreciation for for cars and had a lot of strength in sales and sales operations, had been doing marketing for a long time as part of my business, and got into the auto world for quite some time and ended up traveling around the world doing sales, training and marketing for for the OEMs for the manufacturers of of cars. Spent a bit of time in Australia and New Zealand, England, South Africa, all over the place, really just helping companies grow their businesses. We could usually do a marketing strategy and a sales training that got them a month's worth of business or two months worth of business sold in a day. So it was a highly impactful in a way for us to pay for ourselves as we, as we trained and supported them and did some marketing for them. Coming back in 2017, I came back to figure out what I needed to do as done in Australia and didn't know what to do with myself. I could have continued doing what I was doing in Canada, but they played it out so much that it was, it was just a horrible experience for everyone, including myself. So I stepped into the Wizard of Ads and from 2015 I had been taking classes with Roy and, and we've gotten to know each other quite well. And he asked me to become a partner in 2017, which I did. And you know, it's the rest is history. I leaned in to the home service space fairly early on, we had some significant successes. I really didn't want to kind of continue toiling around in retail. This retail was was struggling and continues to struggle in it's, in its own ways these days and home services and professional services just stand so much taller and come with so much less baggage and challenge. The real challenges were in the marketing. And because they're externally triggered grudge purchases, these were the things that I wanted to do to to help out companies that, that really struggled to get, become a household name more than just being a name that people recognized. And that's, that's where we are today. We have about 200 home service clients and I would say about a dozen professional service clients. Another few 100 in retail. But we were really focusing on myself and my teams, we focus in on the home services side and the professional services side. 

Justin  04:27

Yeah, yeah. And so like, you know, A2O Digital (A Second Opinion), we work with obviously a ton of clients and I see this over and over again in accounts. If you build that brand and you become that household name, like you just said, right? All of your other marketing performs better. We see it you know, people spend a ton of money on Google Ads paid search, and more branded search, higher conversion rates on just normal category searches, right? A branded search may cost, let's just say $10 to $20. And this isn't always the case, but I was looking at a couple of our accounts recently and $10 to $20 for a branded conversion. Meanwhile, someone just goes and does kind of a category search where they don't have that company name. I think it was like $150 for them. So like, it just, we see it over and over again, where there's just the impact of having that brand where if someone already, when this problem happens with their home, right, they already have someone in mind, or maybe they didn't necessarily remember the name. But when they go in search, they see that name, right. And now they're like, oh, yeah, that's right. Those are those people from whatever the radio or TV or whatever it may be. You know, we talk to people, our clients all the time and the value, it's hard to measure that, right. Like, there's not this, like, oh, from our branding campaigns, it resulted in this ROI. And it's really hard to like, measure that exactly, but we see it time and time again, you brand yourself, people know you, results are better. And it just, it's I think it's a key part if you if you have visions of really trying to grow your business. So let's let's jump into becoming a household name. How like, how can a home service company do this? What what are some of the things? First thing that, like question that I guess I would have, is the channel right? Like, what channel should a home service company look at? There's radio, there's TV, there's billboards, there's, you know, a million different places, there's social media, like how would you look at that and recommend, you know, what channel for someone to use? Do you look at each client and it's like, kind of a case by case for their situation? 

Ryan Chute  07:01

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what we do. You know, that's, that's the classic, that's the classic approach that that everyone takes is is what channels do we go on to get leads? Right? That's, and that's a very natural, normal human instinct to, to do exactly that. It's, it's where do we go where the food is? Right? And ultimately, you know, do you go but down by the river to get your food? Do you go into the forest? Do you go into the fields? What are you going to do to get your food? Well, that makes that makes sense when you're a hunter and gatherer. But it doesn't make sense when you're a farmer. And this is where the evolution of of the human race kind of evolved to is really getting into this whole notion of doing something that takes longer than today to get food. That's the agricultural movement, right? And that's precisely the way Wizard of Ads looks at it is, instead of us saying, hey, where are we going to eat today, right, we're going to get a cache of food, right? We're going to go eat today. But we're also going to be thinking about what's the long term play? And with that, it requires a strategy. And that's what we think about first, because we're not, we're not toiling anymore. And we're working with clients who've kind of managed to get a cache of food, a storage, cold room of food, to be able to survive and have some revenue to be able to afford doing the next big thing, which is planting a crop. So that takes strategy, we have to decide what crop we're gonna plant. We have to decide what we're going to do to actually market our business in a way that captures not the today lead, and only the today lead, but the tomorrow lead and to attract people into our environment, so that they're very willing to work with us when they need our thing, not work with us, because they need our thing today. If you look at a standardized bell curve of human interaction, 7% of the marketplace needs your thing today. Of that 7%, there's about 2% that are ignoring that all together of the 2 of the 7, so we're down to 5. Then we have about 3%-2%, depending on the marketplace that already have a chosen provider. So there's 2% more gone, maybe 3, now we're down to 2-3%. Then, of that percentage that's leftover, about 32% of those people couldn't afford to finance a hot dog if they want to, they're they're not buying your thing no matter what you do. And then of that remaining balance of 3%, which is roughly about 2% left, you have but 50% that are going to be highly transactional and only convinced to buy from you if you sway them by price, and the other half that are going to buy from you, given the opportunity, right, they're going to click on you. So if you look at the average major city that has 2000 or so major competitors, you know, a competitor that's going to take a place somewhere in Google, this is no different than than gambling, this is roulette, right? Google is 100% roulette, you're just placing your chips on a particular color number, and you're hoping that the customer chooses your option versus somewhere else, you hope that that ball lands in the thing that's going to get you paid out somehow. Well, if they know and like you, if they trust you, before they get to the roulette table that is Google, you have a much higher chance of getting that customer and then not playing roulette at all, but just simply going right to your website. And that's the benefit of branding and mass media and, and having a strategic advantage over your competition. Now, for most companies, that starts at about $3 million, approximately, I'm being pretty vague about that. In smaller centers, you can do it much less than that, and in larger centers, it's going to be pretty darn expensive. But there's, there's tactics that can be used to attack a small portion of LA or to serve as kind of the bottom end of Philadelphia, or whatever the case might be. There's always a way. So the channel becomes kind of the last part of the conversation for us. The first part of the conversation is, is what is it that you're trying to achieve, and what is your story? Because, well, most people think that branding is about a truck wrapped in a logo, it has nothing to do with those things. Those are just smaller. Think of that Justin, like, like the book cover of your book and the title of your book, right? If you choose your name, that's the title of your book. That's what you're going to attract people into thinking, I'm going to read that. Then you have the logos and truck wraps those are the front pages of your book and the pictures within your book. Is it easier for you to draw pictures? And then write a story about it? Or is it easier to understand your story intimately, like your true, sincere, authentic real story, and then draw pictures about that story? My argument always going to be that a real brand always starts with the brand story, understanding who you are, what you stand for, what you stand against, and how you're going to get that out into the marketplace with the budget that you have. So when when you think about Wizard of Ads, think about strategy first, then the creative is dictated by the strategy that we're choosing, as is the channels, and all of the channels matter, be it mass media channels, and targeted channels and lead gen represented channels like Google.

Justin  12:42

Yeah. Interesting. You were talking about how there's 7% of the market may need your service and you kind of whittle it down. And you said, there's 50% of when you whittle that down of people that are going to just pick whoever's the cheapest price, right? And then there's that other percentage where they're going to call directly you, and they're going to understand the value that you bring. And that's a higher value customer, those are the people that we want, right, not the person that's gonna go and, you know, price shop and isn't, you know, well, loyal to anyone, which I think is what you do is finding those those customers, right? 

Ryan Chute  13:25

I absolutely love that. You just said that, that is exactly the case. And we're fooling ourselves if we think that we somehow deserve the high value customer, when we haven't told our story yet, right? If they know us as much as they know anyone else, we will get absolutely no more value positioning or high value customers than the company that does have a story where the customer trusts, knows, likes and trusts them ahead of time. In the absence of that, you're you're going to get, you're going to get the what we call the transactional customer. So people, people think that there's two groups of customers out there that, there's these transactional customers and relational customers, that people who will trade time for money, and people who will trade money for time. So the transaction was time for money, right? I'll spend more time wasting more time chasing more people down to get the cheapest price, right? In the absence of trust, you're going to have 100% transactional customer mindsets, calling you up, right in the absence of trust. Why? Because there is nothing else to measure besides money. Right? Relational customers, on the other hand, who know that you're not going to just take their money, but you're also going to care for their time and their stress, their energy, as it were. The stress the anxiety, the frustration, the sheer exhaustion from having to deal with an externally triggered grudge purchase like repairing my HVAC system, or buying auto insurance. Well, those are those are things where unless I have some sort of predetermined opinion before I get to Google, it's all transactional. So all of us have the, the two, the two things in us, the the transactional and the relational buyer, you're transactional about some things, and you're relational about some things. And if you had a chosen provider that made you more relational about it, you would be more relationally minded. And that's where the great customer comes from. It comes from your effort in branding, to let people know that you're the place to know like and trust, you got to be the guy, particular category for you to get the, what we call the high cap customer. High cap stands for conversions, average sale and profit. If we get the person who will close on first sit, because they're listening to our advice, because they trust us that their average sale is going to be whatever the average sale is going to be, because they buy what we advise them to and they buy it at a higher profit, because they came in to us far more affordably than than the generic customer, where you paid 10 times more, quite literally 10 times more for the unbranded lead than the branded lead, you're playing a losing game. If you want Google to be your partner, enjoy, it's going to be frustrating. Is it what you have to do and get that first few years of business? Often, because branding costs money, talking to a bunch of people cost money. But the trade off is is that you spend all of your money in the place that gives you the worst results. Or you can break up your spend into the places that are going to eventually get you the best result, not the the only option that you have, which is which is just another lead. 

Justin  16:56

Yeah, yeah that's great. So let's talk about, I know you got you believe in kind of like storytelling. How like, what is the philosophy that, you know, you have and the Wizard of Ads has in terms of that, that messaging, that story that you're going to tell the customer? How do you, how do you do that? What's the philosophy of you know, creating that connection and becoming that company that someone's going to know, like, and trust and have that positive connotation going into it when their thing breaks in their home and they you know, you need your help?

Ryan Chute  17:31

Yeah, no absolutely, thank you so much. That's that's where it gets really, really interesting. We don't buy media, the way that it's sold, we buy media the way that the brain works. So there's a bunch of little areas in the brain, there's Broca's area, there's Wernicke's area, there's, there's the prefrontal lobe, there's the working memory, there's the long term memory. Let's simplify it a whole bunch for you. First, we need to get past the electrical part of the brain, that early part of the brain that lasts about seven seconds, when you say something like an advertisement to catch person's attention. If you're saying all the generic things that everyone else is saying, what you're getting is instant invisibility, right? You're going to disappear within seconds. Now, if you say something of interest, you're going to start showing up in that mid level of brain working near that part of the brain. And that's going to last about seven days, it's erased with with sleep. Think of sleep like the good old days of PCs, where we defrag our hard drives and got rid of all of the extra clutter and consolidated things. Well, that's what's happening when it comes to getting rid of all the nonsense we don't need to remember, pay attention to. Now, if you have a home service business, or a professional service business, like insurance or legal services, nobody's remembering your stuff, because there's no need to remember your stuff. They don't need your thing right now. We're not selling Lululemon pants where you have this emotional connection that goes along with it that feeds your identity. It's simply a functional thing. It's a transactional thing by nature. Well, we need to get past that and get into the chemical memory. Now the only way to do that is is through two very specific mechanisms. One is repetition, right? So the way we buy media, it has to be at a very high volume of repetition so that the people can have it hit them a bunch of times, right. That's that's the first phase. Now the second is salience. It needs to be something that matters. Now, what do you say that matters to somebody who doesn't need your thing or doesn't perceive that they need your thing? Well, the only way that you can make it matter is with emotion. Emotion, is the mortar to the building that you need to build and the chemical side of the memory. We're creating real estate in that back part of the brain that's going to grow us and make us larger than than what we are. So, when we do that, what we're doing is we're saying something that creates emotion. That's what these ads have to be. We can't just talk about your business, we can't just talk about all the table stakes stuff that you want everyone to know about your business, we don't need to educate anyone, we need to entertain. Entertainment is the currency of a too busy public. We're only going to get their attention if we do something that doesn't sound like an ad and really kind of sticks out as something a little bit silly or funny. So the way that Wizard of Ads works is that we one, understand how to buy that media the way that the brain works. And you get cross cumulative traffic done right, so that we get people when they switch stations. The second part is that we absolutely want to say a message that is going to act and function more like a screen. Screenwriting like, like, like a script for a movie, or a TV show, like friends, or Seinfeld, or Big Bang Theory, where you get this investment in the characters that you're having people tune in to find out what crazy thing is going to be said next. And whether it makes them laugh, cry, or even make them angry, we make them feel something, because when we make them feel, now we have the mortar to our bricks, right? Every ad that we put out is a brick. The more ads we put out, the more bricks we're putting out. The more emotion we feel, the more, more of that mortar is stabilizing, and building on the brand in the chemical memory of our customers. And what we're looking to build as the McMansion of our brand, right, to stand out, because we're the largest thing in their brain in that category.

Justin  21:57

Yep. Is there a particular, you said emotion, right? I mean, there can be funny, you said entertaining, you know, you can be, it can be sad, like, is there a particular emotion you're going for? Or is it kind of anything as long as it's kind of bringing out an emotion. Is there like, is there anything to that? 

Ryan Chute  22:17

There is something to that. Well, the important thing to know is that as long as you're making them feel happy, so, you make them laugh, you make them cry, or you make them angry, you're activating the chemical cocktail, the adhesive cocktail of the mortar that we need. Without that chemical cocktail of the emotions, we're not going to actually get them to land. We're not going to be sticky, right, in the in the brain. Pair that with repetition and you've got yourself a recipe. Now, understand that every single person who laughs at one of your ads, there's going to be, for every 20,000 of those that find that a kind of silly and fun and positive resonance, you're going to make somebody feel negative about it. We have a mutual...

Justin  23:06

It's going to happen in the world today, no matter what you do, there's always going to be someone that...

Ryan Chute  23:11

That's exactly it. And we know that if we haven't had a Reddit account created, or we haven't had a complaint come in, that we're actually not doing our job. We celebrate complaints quite vehemently, because we know that the optimal number of complaints is never going to be zero. We know that the real volume of complaints is indicative of how powerful that that campaign is making people feel. And, and we use that as a measuring device for us in lieu of, of the last touch attribution metrics that we see out there. We're looking for Twitters and Reddits and and phone calls and, and all kinds of other things that articulate that we've done the thing that we need to do.

Justin  23:55

Cool. Yeah. So that's good. Messaging. You talked a little bit about like frequency, right, and making sure you hit people enough times. Going to the like, to radio, TV, that type of stuff. How do you how do you decide like, you know, I know you guys do a lot in radio, and some people will say, wait, does anybody listen to radio anymore? Right? Like...

Ryan Chute  24:28

Yeah. 

Justin  24:29

Obviously there are people that that do it. Is that, is that because, is radio going to end up being a spot that you, that works because it's cost effective too? Like, what, or like why would I do radio or TV? Why would I pick one or the other? If I'm, you know...

Ryan Chute  24:45

Yeah. So what we're talking about now is is the channels right? And the channels are no different than Google or Facebook or a direct mailer, or a truck wrap. All of these are channels. Ultimately, we're what we call media agnostic. We actually have no affinity to radio or television or OTT or truck wrap at all. They're all just channels, they're just a thing. What we care about most and start with is always going to be the strategy. So strategically speaking, if you're a service business, and you service a very small part of the city that you're in, we're not going to use radio. That's ridiculous, you would never use radio. We may use TV, and we may do that through a cable strategy. And we would use the cable strategy because we can target the specific zip code that you're in, or various zip codes that you're in. We also may use social media, but we'll use it more like a mass media and less like a transactional form, like Google, which has an intent based channel. And it all really boils down to what is it that we're trying to achieve, right? So if you are servicing the whole city, radio makes a lot of sense. If you're not servicing the whole city, TV sometimes makes more sense, depending on what kind of TV you have in your city. And other situations we're looking at, yes, you service your whole city and to other cities, well, we have to factor all of those things in and see what the most cost effective way to get you the listenership that we're looking for. What we do know is that you need to have a certain amount of repetition for this all to work and that some channels cannot produce repetition. We have to look at your revenue. Not only do we look at your revenue, but we're looking at your gross profitability within your revenue and your net profitability within your revenue. If you're running at basically two points of net EBITDA, we need to be very cautious about how we approach it and where we're going to try to pull those numbers. But as a marketing strategist company, we're not just looking at how to write a clever ad and put it on mass media, we're also looking at how can we get your prices up and save you on expenses so we can go from a 2% Net to an 8% or 10% Net. And then, what kind of money do we want to pour into this so that we end up getting you to eventually a 10 plus point Net, and then keep growing you not just top line, but bottom line? So the strategy has to work and it's purely unique to every single company that we work with. We can't say there's this one way that we do it, and we're always gonna buy radio for, for home service companies. That's crazy talk, and it won't work. Just like buying Google and just doing that it's not going to work and, and just running Yelp leads aren't going to work. But all of those things work with the right strategy to get the thing that we were looking for to do the next thing that that's going to make the biggest impact. So that's why I say branding very often happens kind of around the $3 million mark. When does branding, when should branding start? From the moment you name your company is when branding starts and most companies just do a terrible job at that. And heck, a lot of the naming companies do a terrible job at that because they're incongruent with what story is actually happening and being told with the employees and the customers. So ideally, you do it early, right, strategically and mathematically, financially you're probably doing it midstream as you hit kind of two, three million. And then it really works best for those companies that have ambitions that far outweigh the natural demand in the market that they're in.

Justin  28:46

Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Do you guys ever, you said like kind of from the beginning, do you guys ever help strategize, like a business from from the ground up of like, how are we going to name this and all that? I feel like that, right, that's probably, you guys love that because you can be involved in what's the story right? If you're already a business that's a certain size, like the business is the business and there's things that they can do to change, but you can be involved from like, the ground up. I feel like that is like probably in your wheelhouse too.

Ryan Chute  29:17

From the ground up and from rebrand standpoints... 

Justin  29:22

 Or rebrand, yeah. 

Ryan Chute  29:23

...we have we have fairly great weight and significance. Most people believe that their brand is far more valuable than it actually is. And that's not to say it to be disrespectful. It's an awful lot of blood, sweat and tears, sleepless nights and challenges that go into all of these businesses and we never disregard that, that is that is deeply important. But the chances of customers having an impression about your business if they haven't worked with you is basically non-existent. So the reality is, is that the majority of businesses that we work with, if you're a $3 to $5 million company who's never run branding from day one, you're quite literally invisible. No one knows who you are and and if you change your name, it's not going to hurt anything, it's going to help a lot. Sometimes we don't need to change the name, sometimes we need to realign what the brand actually stands for. But our goal isn't to come in and rename companies. The challenge, most of the time when a company needs renaming is that they have something that means absolutely nothing, or it means absolutely everything to the wrong thing. You can't own the term "best" or "allied" or "quality." These are things that you will never have enough money in the world to convince people that that should stand for your particular brand. There's easier ways to win that game. Right? So are we...

Justin  31:06

It's funny you just said that. That's one of the, that we talk about, as an agency, on a website, right? What is going to make someone call you? That's not verifiable, like that's not a verifiable. You say you're the best, everyone says that they're the best, right? That's what they go on every single site and every single person saying they're the best, or they're the highest quality or whatever. So that just hit home with like, from, from our side from, you know, Google and building websites and all that. And so. 

Ryan Chute  31:34

It's equally true in things like three random letters, the initials of the two partners, or the or the guy who started it. Now, when you're dealt that card, we're going to take those three random letters, and we're going to make that the strategy. And it's by embedding in what those three random letters stand for now. We're going to have so much fun with it, we're going to carve that thing up in six different ways from Sunday, so that the customers all think of those three letters nonstop all the time. So again, it comes back to the strategy doesn't matter if you're on Google or social media. If your if your strategy sucks, you're going to get mediocre results, or no results at all. If you're going on the radio, and you're running, you know, two spots a week or three spots a week, and you bought some goofy package that the radio guy sold you, don't waste your money. If you're going to run a billboard, and you don't have audio intrusive medias to support it, don't waste your money. There are far better ways for you to execute on your marketing strategy than to put out things that happen to be marketing channels, right? We're of a big belief, and this is a kind of a cheeky thing for me to say to people, but it is if they're selling you a channel, they're not selling you a strategy. They're selling you a tactic. And it's not to be disrespectful to all those, those channels. We believe in those channels, we wholeheartedly support those channels. But very often there's a there's a missing strategy to getting the result that you're looking for and it often comes from there being no story. And a lot of people in home services and in professional services don't think they have a story. They just think that they're just this, this ugly box that puts out a thing. And that's what we do. But there's always a story, there's always something that we'd find. And if we don't find it, we create something cinematic that represents it. Right? The worst ads are about you and your business. And the best ads are about your customer and their lives and their trials and tribulations, their, their transformations and their struggles. And when we get really good at just telling the story and people saying, oh, yeah, that's me. Yeah, yeah, I'll use those guys because they understand me. We do that, we win before they get to the spot where you show up when they go looking. We win, right? We win in spades, it's not a little bit of a win. It's a lot. But that means you're gonna have to spend some proper money in those early days. And the market size is going to determine how much you're going to have to spend. In LA, you're going to spend millions before you have to stop spending. You're in Little Rock, you're not going to have to spend millions right, or all of it right? You're going to be able to be a giant company proportionate to the size of your, of your population for fractions of the of the price of LA. So all of these things factor in. There's actually six factors, and they all overlap a bunch of times to mean that there's just dozens and dozens of combinations in which we're going to solve this problem. And then you start layering in channels on how you're going to solve it. Right now we're working with a little guy in in Phoenix. And that little guy is going to do direct mailers, Yelp as a new business, just to get off the ground to get those brand new leads because there's no GMB, there is no LSA, there is none of that stuff. And they're gonna get enough to get those those reviews in. And then they're gonna layer in a Facebook strategy that targets a very small area, and direct mailers, with door hangers as a support function as the techs go out and do their job. And that'll be the first probably two years of that. But they also anticipate that they're going to be able to pull 5 million out of that market within 18 to 24 months.

Justin  35:49

That's awesome. Yeah, it's like you're saying, it is so nuanced to each particular businesses' situation, where they're located, are they targeting, are they servicing the whole service area? Are they trying to just, you know, focus on one small area? It's so nuanced. It sounds like you guys kind of keep all that into account to find the best strategy for the person at that time, so.

Ryan Chute  36:14

And for the company sensibilities. For example, we have a home service company, HVAC company, that is, is currently right now just absolutely determined that they want to be the energy experts of home service. That they want to use the HVAC and heating system as the jumping off point to be able to do a whole home renovation, to tighten up the home, to lower the tonnage of the HVAC system to, to really sell the right thing with blower door tests and, and leaking air measurements. The whole, the whole bit, very honorable, very excellent business to sell, right? You know, from a belief standpoint, that's the right way to do it. 99% of the marketplace does not care about any of those things, because the amount of money that it would take to convince people and to teach people why that is so important, is beyond the scope of a $3 to $4 million company. Right? So when you look at that, we have to look at the sensibilities of the company. There's four different business models, the one I just spoke about is a customer, custom tailored business model. They're going to be incredibly successfully $4 to $5 million for the size of their city, the size of their company and their, their ability to be able to deliver upon that. The level of skilled knowledge that's necessary in the field for that kind of work is high and the reality is, there's just no way to grow that company at a top line dramatically. So what do you do you build a plan that's going to get them very healthy profits, that they can have a $4-$5 million, $6 million operation that appeals to companies, to the customers that are interested in that kind of thing, at the greatest volume possible. If they're that kind of customer, they're going to think of this company and this company only. That's the true brand of this particular company, where a competitor in town is going to do exactly what the competitor always does in home services, and they're going to have a $50 million company. It's really what truly is the result that the that the business owner is looking for. And if they're looking to be wealthy, the only way to be wealthy is to sell to the masses, right? You don't make your fortune selling to the classes and that's effectively what this custom guy is is doing. He's selling bespoke equipment and, and, you know, insulation around windows and resealing doors and all the great stuff that needs to be done. That's not a big volume business, because the majority of the population can't afford it.

Justin  36:15

 Yeah. 

Ryan Chute  36:15

Or feel like it's something worth affording, frankly, because they can't see that the relationship no matter what kind of math you put into place. It's all just a little bit aspirational. So will you get business? Unquestionably. Will you get business and volume? Absolutely not. What do you do? Build a marketing strategy that gets them the thing that they need for their business, and the customer needs from their business. So there's always a way to solve that problem, but it's not always going to be more.

Justin  39:40

Yeah, yeah. What about, so let's just say I own a home service business, um, I service the whole metro area. I want to you know, I want to grow, I want to have everybody or as many people as I can in the metro area and start to know, like trust, build this. How long from the start of, you know, if you're going at it aggressively, how long does it typically take to start to see results? Because you kind of talked earlier about, you know, you're you're kind of farming, right? Like, it's not a, you know, you're going out and hunting and whatever you, whatever you, you know, kill, it's we're planting a seed, right? And we're waiting for this to grow. How long, how long does that does that take typically?

Ryan Chute  40:26

That's, I love that question, Justin. Thank you. The reality of it is, is that it depends on the, of course, the size of the market, how many other companies have established the know, like, and trust in that marketplace. We have a client in home services, we built them together. We built the company up from two man truck to $40 million, and then skipped completely over the city that would be the obvious next choice and went to the city above that, north of that by by another three hours. And the reason we did that is because the city that would be the obvious choice was riddled with people that had deep relationship, bonded campaigns. These people were household names, and there was more than one of them. But the city above that had none, right, like quite literally none. So, to penetrate that second city was the right strategy to go after. Now, most people would feel pretty darn good about, you know, getting $3 to $5 million in their first year in a new city. These guys did 20 in their first year, with really strong aggressive marketing that went in like a wrecking ball and smashed it hard from from day one; in fact, before day one, with a teaser campaign, and then had the resources to be able to put trucks as many as they needed and people as many as they needed in to meet demand immediately. So strategically, they were able to hit $20 million, and in year one on top of their 40, which makes them a $60 million operation and they can just repeat that again in another city that has very little bondable brand oriented campaigns. Now, the truck wraps don't matter, the people on the billboards really didn't matter, the people in the business didn't matter. No one knew them right? But at the end of the day, we were able to create a quick bond by speaking to the injustices that have been going on in the home service industries, HVAC in particular, and win the hearts of people because they were sick and tired of being sold all the friggin time. And that's exactly what we did was, we just looked at what the landscape looked like and and took advantage of the landscape to to the benefit of the customer. You're not going to find that in the demographics and the nuts and bolts of the of the economy, you're not gonna see it with the household incomes and the FICO scores. You're gonna find that out by boots on the ground, understanding what the sentiment is and what your competition is saying so that you can go out and absolutely destroy them. Sometimes it's a knife fight, and it's going to be bloody. And sometimes it's going to be kind of easy, because there's no one there to fight with, really, they're all just sitting on the sidelines, expecting the customers to keep putting up with their nonsense. So, it depends. Like this company in in Phoenix, small business, brand new, green field, no real major money, there's you know, there's a, there's a few $100,000 on the table to get things cooking. And they're targeting a very, very specific zone that was researched through zip codes, understanding where the highest potential of postal codes, in the postal codes the highest potential of incomes, over 150,000 ten-year old houses and houses in excess of $400,000. And then you just look for the sweet spots within those zones and go, how many competitors we have in comparison to the each one of those zones? Where can we make a difference? We identified the three zones that made the significant difference and targeted those first because we know that we can pull 5 million pretty fast, because they're under serviced by the rest of the city. 

Justin  44:04

Yep. Yeah. So yeah, like with everything, it kind of, it depends, right? It depends on the situation, on the competition, on that market. There's so many, there's so many factors. That's where you need someone that knows what they're doing with this right?

Ryan Chute  44:20

Well, that's why you need a strategist, not just a channel expert, and we appreciate everyone, like everyone has a job to do and you don't win this game on your own. We're certainly not a full service agency and we are never going to pretend we are. What we are is strategists, creative strategy and mass media strategy. Those are our three buckets. The strategist job is to make sure that all of the channels align, whether we're the ones in charge with them or not. So if if we're running a direct mail campaign, we're going to find direct mail participants that are going to do exactly what needs to be done to be incongruent with the brand and the overarching strategy. You know, sending out best postcards with all of their ridiculous offers and having it just get thrown in the garbage, and then you're pointing at the 1 or 2% at best results and saying "see? it works" is utter nonsense, right? That's, it's, will you get leads? Yes, for the 1 to 2% of the 7% that are looking for your thing right now and do not have a decided buyer or decided supplier. That's the worst possible lead. But if you could do the exact same thing with a simple, good old fashioned piece of paper letter that goes out in a normal old envelope, and maybe you handwrite the name of the customer and address and put the stamp on it, maybe even a little bit crooked. Now we're talking about guerilla marketing, and even a $0 company can afford to kick out 1000 of those for 60 cents apiece in bulk and, and start to make friends with the people just in their backyard, right?So there's, there's always a way. Our priority is to find companies that are smaller companies with big ambitions and darn good operational brains, right? The operator is the absolute essence of what we're looking for, to partner up with. And if you're not a great operator, or if you really are just trying to still figure things out, or if you're just a hopeful and with lots of aspiration but, but no kind of chops, no, nothing to back it up?

Justin  46:30

 Yeah?

Ryan Chute  46:31

We're not for you yet. We're gonna break break you, we're gonna break you're really fast. Because we're just going to accelerate your, your inadequacy. The people who don't think that they're maybe quite ready for us yet, are very often our best customers, because they have a humility to them that recognizes that they know that they need to get better. But you can't get better doing the things that you're doing today, that you have to get better by going to that next level. And, and we're the next level people. We're the, we're the company that's there to make sure that you break past that ceiling that you seem to be hitting. 

Justin  47:09

Yeah. Awesome. All right. Well, you know, I'm not gonna hold you too much longer. We've already been talking for 45 minutes here, I appreciate you coming on. I think this is all really, really interesting stuff and you guys clearly know what you're doing and, you know, do an awesome job and the proof is in the pudding with all the clients that you work with. Any last word you want to kind of leave us with before we sign off today?

Ryan Chute  47:40

Yeah, you know, one of the biggest things that we've seen in the last, in the last six months or so is that about half of our clients are flat this year, the other half are shooting up like rockets. And the thing that I've noticed the most about the companies that are shooting up with rockets, of course, all of them are doing branding. It's all back to the operator.  It's to the people who are looking at this as not a recessionary or high interest economy, this is an unstable economy with politics happening this year, all of the uncontrollables that we can't control, right? They're looking at it as people need our thing regardless of what's going on, and that we're going to be there for them to take care of them. And we're going to tell our message in a very brave and bold kind of way that gets attention. We're not going to pull back, we're going to step forward and lean in. Everyone that has leaned back in the last two years is feeling it right now because they're scared, and I respect that. I genuinely do. But being scared isn't what's going to help you succeed. What's going to help you succeed is standing for something. Finding Your North Star, believing in what's right and doing what's right when it's inconvenient for you. When you do that, and you do it for the convenience of your clients, your clients are going to recognize it because what they're looking for in this unstable economy, in this unstable times, is they're looking for the rock. They're looking for the navigator, they're looking for the leader, the one that they can trust. Trust comes from a combination of empathy and competence, and that's all we have to share with our clients is that we are the empathetic and competent one. And very often the way you do that is by entertaining them, right? By being the the little bit of a chuckle in the car on the way to work when they're struggling themselves a little bit, that little bit of peace that they get. Because when it comes time that that thing breaks that they didn't have money or time for, they're gonna think of you and that positive resonance. That positive connection that's attached to the trigger is going to be the reason why they call you and that's how you build your household name. 

Justin  50:01

Well said. Awesome. All right, Ryan, really appreciate it is really good chatting with you, lots of lots of great stuff. So appreciate it and thanks for coming on.

Ryan Chute 50:13

Appreciate you. Thanks, Justin. Thanks.