Transcript of How Tommy Mello Spends $5 Million A Month On Marketing And Tracks Every Dollar | Sara Nay New

Why is it dangerous to only be referrals and word of mouth?

A lot of clients that come to us, like, they've grown to, let's say, a million based on good service, word of mouth, referrals, connections, but they're stuck and they can't get to that next growth path because they've only been reliant on that.

Yeah, but you're tiny and you're still doing the work yourself. Why are you so proud of that? Or that they got the really shitty wrap on their truck and they're like, I don't need a good wrap to get business. I do it through word of mouth. Welcome back to The Home Service Expert. Today I got Sarah Nay with me. Sarah Nay grew up watching her father build Duct Tape Marketing, one of the most trusted names for small business marketing for over 30 years. She started as an intern, rose through every role, and became the CEO. Her new book, Unchained, endorsed by Seth Godin, makes the case, case that the mo— the way most small businesses do marketing is fundamentally broken. And she had a system to fix it. Today, she breaks down why paying a marketing agency isn't the same as having a marketing strategy, what every contractor should know, should own instead of rent, and why referrals alone will never get you to $10 million. I cannot read today. I'm sorry. I butchered that, Sarah, but it's a pleasure to have you on.

Thank you for having me on. You know, I think people like authenticity in the age of AI, so they can tell that you're human there in that intro.

Tell us about you, Sarah. Tell us about how you started, what you're excited about, what you're looking forward to.

Yeah, so I started at Ducktape Marketing, as my intro said, about 16 years ago as an intern. And at that point, you know, I was after college, I had done some traveling around the world and I was like, okay, I need to get serious about a career path. So I started part-time as an intern. I didn't know anything about business or marketing at that point, but I've, as you said, had all the different roles in our company over the years and I absolutely fell in love with solving problems and learning new things. And that's what a lot of is included in marketing. Things are changing very quickly right now in the age of AI. So it's allowed me to just constantly be learning and growing. But, you know, if you had asked me a couple of years ago, what do we do for a living? I would have said, you know, we're a marketing agency or we're a fractional CMO firm. But of late, I've been saying more of, more of we help small businesses stop wasting money on marketing because I believe there's so many people out there that are just throwing money out there and trying to results when it comes to marketing, but they're not doing it in a way that makes sense.

So standing up against wasting money on marketing and helping people spend effectively.

I love it. Yeah. I mean, we go through over $5 million spend a month on marketing. And I think what most small business owners lack is any knowledge of how marketing works, of attribution, of understanding the customer cycle, of booking the call, Reducing cancellations, capacity planning, conversion rates. I don't mind what the cost per lead is. It could be $10,000. If I get $50,000, who cares? But they don't follow it through the cycle. So they don't even know if it's good. And everybody wants cheap leads and they wonder, well, why are my leads so much? Well, do you look at the outcome of the leads? Because I can get the— I— garage door company for us. And I don't want a bunch of battery replacements and light bulb changes. You know, I want demand-driven calls that turn into conversions with, you know, decent tickets. What do you think the biggest problem is for small businesses?

Yeah, I mean, I feel like I have similar conversations every day with small business owners. It's like, I just need more leads, I need more leads, I need more leads. And I'm like, do you need more leads, or are you taking care of the leads that are already coming in? Are you tracking things effectively? Are you seeing where your customer journey drops? Are you getting recurring revenue if it makes sense? Are you turning your clients into referral sources? So like more leads is always the thing that people start to think about when it comes to marketing. But I always argue oftentimes, like if you don't have the rest of your customer journey buttoned up, you're just going to waste money on these more leads. And so I absolutely agree with you saying like what you're saying is, is looking through the whole entire customer journey. And so we have our framework that we call the marketing hourglass. It's how are people getting to know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, and refer a business. And so you need to be thinking through like, are you nurturing and taking care of people in each of those stages.

But to your point on tracking, also, how are you tracking that people are effectively moving through these stages? Because when you have those things set up, you're able to say, okay, maybe more leads isn't what we need. We have people coming in, but they're not converting and they're not turning into clients and they're not retaining long-term. So we need to button up all of those things before we can go back to saying, okay, now we're ready for more leads.

You know, I, I agree with you. Yeah, it's, it's, it's the same thing you hear. I feel bad for marketing companies, really. They blame— they get blamed for everything. Uh, I always say, people always ask, what would happen if you bought my company? And I'm like, I would fix the booking. I'd fix every online speed to lead would work. I'd have— you'd either block me or buy from me because you'd be hearing from me every day. You'd be getting text message, email, voicemail drops, phone calls. And you'd be like, this company's persistent. I either gotta get them off, especially on high-ticket sales. Your book called Unchained: Breaking Free from Broken Marketing Models, you said that traditional agency models are broken for both businesses and the agency. What's broken about it?

Yeah, I wrote that book about a year ago. Well, it went live about a year ago. It was published about a year ago now, and I feel like it's getting even stronger of a statement over the last year since it was published. But essentially, you know, what I was calling out in that book is There are a lot of agencies that are either just working in the old way that doesn't make sense anymore, i.e., meaning they're just like super heavy on execution and they're not leading with a proper strategy based on what the business is trying to accomplish on the front end. And there's also unfortunately a lot of agencies that take advantage of small business owners. So I speak to small business owners all of the time over the last several years, and I hear stories all the time about, you know, I hired I hired this agency and I have no idea what they're doing every single month, or they send me this report and it looks like they're getting me leads, but I'm not actually seeing revenue on the back end. Or even worse, I hired this agency and they own all of my ads accounts, but they tell me we're getting traffic, but I don't even know.

And if I leave them, I basically have to start over. And so I think that there's, there's issues within the model in general, but there's also issues with certain ways agencies interact and work with clients. And so the basis of the book is I believe small businesses should have ownership of their marketing. So I believe small businesses should understand like what's the business trying to accomplish? Okay, what's a strat— marketing strategy that will help get them there? And then who do I need to bring in to get the work done? But then they need to be focusing on building systems internally, leveraging AI internally, handling execution internally when it makes sense. for the business, but they should own all of the accounts. They should own all the software and the systems that they're using. And then they should have control over their marketing ultimately. And so that's typically how we end up working with clients is we'll come in and we'll create a strategy. And then we stay on as more of a fractional CMO where we're helping them identify like who they need to bring in and who they hire and how they set up these systems and processes internally.

Because If they can build a marketing system in their business, it's going to increase the value of their business long term and they have more control of it in the short term.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. These companies where they are like, we built you sometimes the ads accounts, but also I've seen where they own their website.

Yes. Yeah. We've had to rebuild websites from scratch for companies and they've been in business for years and years and basically they're like, we're leaving this agency and they're not giving it back to us. And I think the website is one of the most important assets someone should own. And so that one's really tough. But yeah, ads accounts is another common one. CRMs, I've even seen agencies own CRMs for clients and then they lose like all their data. So analytics accounts is another one. So it's really common, unfortunately, in this space. And so I think if you're listening to this and you're a small business owner, like these are the things you should own and these are the types of questions you should ask when you're potentially hiring an agency, like who will own these key assets in my business?

Or another common one that I've seen with a lot of agencies that actually know how to do real SEO, and it's still a major factor, is getting the right links. And some of those links you pay for, but the problem is when you stop using that agency, they all get disavowed.

Yep.

Where all of a sudden you got a great, you know, this is old school domain authority, and you got the right links and the trust signals, and you do it, everything's dialed in, and then all of a sudden all those links that you bought somehow, because sometimes it comes from a link farm or a private blog network. Some of these sophisticated companies actually know how to build those the right way. Yeah. But I like to just go out there and put out great, great, great stuff that real companies pick up out there that like, you gotta have the right outbound links too. But I mean, what I see is a lot of agencies too is Like they'll have, we're spending, they'll do packages. They're like, well, for the 10 grand, you're also getting SEO, you're getting the social. Let's say you just got somebody in the Philippines posting every single day for them on Hootsuite. And it's like $4,000 is going into paid, $6,000. And that's how these agencies make their money. Yeah. Is the free stuff that they're doing hardly anything for. And these small companies, don't even know if there's stuff going on.

They say, well, we drove these leads and they're really— they say you rank for this. My mom, a long, long, long time ago, was like, I rank for the number 1 realtor in this city in Michigan. And I'm like, is it getting traffic? I'm like, is it getting any clicks? It's like agencies know how to dress stuff up for the most part and say we're doing really good. But I always say, look, I gotta see the revenue. I gotta bring it back to the comp. How much are we spending as a percentage of marketing? I mean, I'll get in a new magazine in a new city and I'll say, if your uncle calls us tomorrow, we'll know his name, how much he spent. We'll give you back everything. You're going to get a 360 review of all the analytics, the revenue we brought in, the conversion rate. First, hold us accountable. Secondly, if we do not get the right comm, not only am I out of this, but I'll never recommend this to anybody. I'll never buy from you again. And then all of a sudden they're putting me, well, let's, instead of a half page, we're gonna give you a full page.

We're gonna give you 3 free months because very little people have attribution. They don't, they don't know if something's doing well.

Yeah. And that's where people fall into just like the random acts of marketing, as we often talk about, is like they don't know what's working because they don't know how to track it. So they just keep spending ultimately, which isn't the way to go. And so I think if, again, if you're listening to this and you're spending money on marketing and you're not sure what's working and not working, like take a step back and figure out how you can properly track things to actually understand where leads are coming from and are they turning into revenue and that whole story. And so when we work with clients, like we typically are reporting on like the marketing components, but then they're reporting back to us on like the actual sales that they completed. 'Cause that, as you were saying, is telling the whole revenue story. And so you don't wanna be working with a marketing agency that's like, look, we got all these leads and that's where it ends. It's like, okay, We got this much traffic to your website, this many form fills, this many booked calls, and then they report back to us out of those 10 consultations, X turned into revenue, and this is what the customer lifetime value is on these leads.

And so oftentimes when you're working with like an outsourced agency, it's a bit of like co-reporting, like they're reporting to you on components, but you need to be reporting back to them on revenue. But like, that's the only storyline that will help you determine like what makes sense to continue on with moving forward.

What about the companies that you've talked to that are like, oh yeah, I've got an intern, they're running all my PPC and social media versus a real agency that's got the tools and really knows what's going on with the newest updates with LSA, PPC. There's so many things now. There's like, man, there's YouTube, like PMax. There's just so much stuff to think about. And you got these people that like, yeah, I've heard of Google, I run my own.

Yeah, it's— I think that is a really big challenge right now, especially. I was actually speaking to someone this week and he was brought in with a company where he was brought in to run paid ads for this established company and that was his role. And then once he proved himself in running paid ads, they're like, actually, you can own the whole revenue division of our company. You're responsible for all revenue across like recurring clients and all the areas of marketing. And he's like, wait, hold up. Like, I'm just out of college. I know how to like run paid ads. How am I supposed to do all of the rest of this stuff? But like, that's not a rare story. I hear that all the time. Someone comes in because they're good at one thing and then they want them to run the whole marketing department. And I think, as you were just saying, it's, it's a unicorn to find someone that can be great at all of the different channels, but also can understand metrics, that also can think strategically and big picture, and that also can like keep the ball moving on all of these things.

Like you're talking about multiple different skill sets, multiple different channels, multiple different roles. And so that's where I believe, like, you can have one person that's leading the strategy. So maybe it's a fractional CMO, maybe it's a leadership person internally on a team, whatever that might look like. You can have one person leading the strategy in most cases. And then you can maybe have someone that's like focused on organic content. So they're doing things like some SEO and thought leadership content, some social media stuff. So they're, you know, they're focusing on a number of channels, but not everything. And then maybe you have like a paid specialist that goes really deep on paid and then maybe someone that can focus on email conversion. And so just to ask like one person to be able to do 6 people's role, like you wouldn't do that in a different area of your business. So I don't understand like why so many people think that's okay in marketing.

You know, it all works too. I mean, if you look at text messages, it works, but you gotta be compliant. There's a lot of things now that just have to be compliant.

Yep.

And there's a lot of cybersecurity issues too. And just like the lead ads work. Newspaper still works. The Yellow Pages, done right, still works. Valpak still works. TV, radio, billboards. I was gonna ask you, how do you feel about direct response versus top of funnel, meaning more of a branding play? Alex Hormozi always talks about, I think it was New Balance, they were 20% kind of that upper funnel endorsements and 80% direct response. The new CEO came on, Flipped it on its head. They did the same revenue for the exact same 2 years. The 3rd year, it spiked by getting that top, top of funnel brand awareness, because brand meant it was top of mind when you thought about it. So it had a lot more branded search. It also had a higher booking rate, less cancellation rate, higher conversion rate, bigger average tickets because they trust the brand. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, we've always focused on branding as a component when we're first starting to work with clients, because I do think it's really important to have out there. But obviously you have to drive traffic and funnel there as well. I would say that in the age of AI, and I know I've mentioned that a couple of times, there are more and more people that are using AI search today regardless if they even realize it or not. And so I saw a stat like 87% of people searching are using some form of AI search. So maybe that's them going to ChatGPT or it's them just searching in Google for something and then reading the AI answers and not even realizing that's what they're referencing. But I make that point because a lot of how you you can get found in that search is by having a clear brand, by answering questions, by taking a position in the market, by creating thought leadership type of content. All of that stuff supports obviously direct response stuff as well, because people are going to look you up and they're going to review you. But I would argue that the whole branding component and having that presence online is becoming more and more important, because when you have that, you'll be pulled into, you know, AI search when people are searching for you as authority on a specific topic.

So It's becoming more important today, I would say, than it ever has been.

Yeah, I mean, LLM optimization with schema data, just awards you got to win. You got to answer questions nobody will. You got to do comparisons. You've got to be making the right content, which is a skill within itself. And there's a lot more about price transparency, and most people are not willing to do that. And it's really tough for me to diagnose your car when it's making a noise, you know. So going in, but a lot of people say, I got a broken springer, I know I'm going to replace my HVAC unit. What are your thoughts? Because my problem with that just frame of thought, and I think it's the right thing to do, but it starts to commoditize.

Like, yeah,

am I going to get out there the quickest? Am I going to give the best warranty? Am I going to be in business in 3 years? Am I a one-man show? Do I have background checks? Do I do drug tests? Am I safe in your home? How do I show up to you and your family? Do you know, how do I run warranty calls if something goes bad? And did I finish the project on time? None of that stuff is considered in the price.

Yeah.

And so what's the training like? Am I able to diagnose something and actually fix the problem, or am I just gonna try to do replacement units, whatever the industry might be? So what are your thoughts on being with transparency? But what Google and Amazon, all these places don't understand is home service is not the same as products.

Yeah.

Yes. If it's the same product, I could pay for cheaper. But what about who's coming out to my home and is it getting fixed right?

Yeah. I think all those questions that you just mentioned aren't, that aren't showing up like when price is, I think answering all of those questions on your homepage as like FAQs, because then it will be pulled into search when LLMs are comparing you side by side by competitors because it's looking for those types of answers to then share the price. So I do think they can be part of the conversation if answered in a way that LLMs can pull them in. But with the pricing piece as well, I think it's a good thing to consider right now. But I understand that it is hard to give like exact numbers until you're able to come in and diagnose. But I think what I would recommend in that scenario is giving a price range, for example, of where you typically are so people can then compare you to competitors. You know, we're not in a scenario where we want to just be compared and going with like the cheapest option. So that's why it's so important if your pricing is higher than the competitors, then being able to tell the story of why it's higher. But then also have the reviews and the testimonials and the case studies, the results that you're able to pull in as well that justify the pricing difference.

Because there's a lot of people that will pay a little bit more to have their air conditioning unit replaced, let's say, like we had to this last year. Because they're willing to pay a little bit more if the experience is great, if the communication is great, if they're going to get reliable outcomes and all that stuff. So, it's like justifying the why behind the price by the story you tell on the homepage, but also the reviews that you're able to gather as well.

You know, this is a bad comparison for most, but I'll ask you the question. You know, sometimes we think about our home and think it's a commodity, but when we go to dinner, you go to a nice steakhouse where the manager stops by. The steaks come out on a 400-degree plate. The martinis get shaken when they're half full. They ask you if there's any special celebrations. They also call you the next day. It's $400 for a couple. I mean, for a nice meal and one drink.

Yeah.

But yet McDonald's, you could go get filled up for $20. It's really hard to compare that to home service, home improvement, which is a massive growing industry. There's not enough people coming into the field to actually support this in the next 4 years. But why don't people think about when they're working on the most precious asset they own, which is their home, about quality a little bit more and the experience and making sure all these things are thought about? Because how many times— how many people do you know that have been burned where the guy never showed up? He took the check and then the work didn't get completed or it failed and nobody showed back up. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Well, I think there are enough people that have been burned in that way that there are enough people from my experience looking for that more premium experience when it comes to home services. So, we've worked with a lot of home remodelers over the years and ran their marketing. And whenever we're working on their messaging, it's never, we make the most beautiful kitchens, or, you know, your bath will be amazing. Like, that's not the messaging we're leaning into because that messaging is told by pictures. But the story that we're telling are like, you won't even know we're at your house, like your family will feel safe, we'll take care of your dog. Like those are the types of things that people want to hear is that reassurance. And so I think there are enough people that have had bad experiences in the home services space that if you can kind of fight against that, but also tell how you're different, that's what's going to help you be able to charge more than someone just saying like, we'll make your kitchen look the best in your neighborhood. Because there's a lot of remodelers that could probably do that.

Yeah.

What's the best? It's, it's—

Yeah. What's the best? Like, what does that even mean? Or we've been in business for 30 years. That's another one that I love all the time. It's like, okay, well, what does that mean to me as someone trying to run a vacation?

Or open 24/7 background drug tests. Yeah. It's just, yeah, you gotta get different on this stuff. Like, there's a good book by Janie Smith. One of them's called Relevant Selling. And, and then it just explains what's the only thing you could promise.

Yeah.

Is your past results. Out of the last 10,000 jobs we did, 9,997 were done on time. The other 3 were rectified within 48 hours. So you're kind of using key stats to talk about you and how you're different based on real knowledge. We talk about KPIs that are interesting for us, like conversion rates, average tickets, cancellation rates. But what about the KPIs that are important for the client?

Yeah. And that's where Yeah, that's where, like, for years and years we've been talking about interviewing your best clients on a consistent basis where you're trying to learn from them and their experience with you and what were their pain points or struggles or mis-hires before working with you and how did you help solve their problems and what transformation did you take them on? Like, that's something that we've been doing since I've been at Duct Tape Marketing, so 16 years now. But more recently, we've also added on, obviously with permission, recording 100% of your sales conversations as well. Because in those you're getting probably people that have been frustrated and burned before and they're sharing their desires. And so whenever you're able to get a large volume of sales calls and get the transcriptions, you can feed that into different AI platforms and you're able to look for themes over time. And so then you're able to create landing page copy or pre-sales email nurture emails that are capturing the actual voice of your customers and their concerns and pain points. And you're able to talk about how you're different and a different experience than those things that other people have gone through.

I think this is a really important exercise because when you're running a business, you might, you know, you might think features or products or, you know, you might not be thinking in what your clients are always thinking. So it's really important to get— take a step back and actually record calls and interview clients to get their perspective to then craft marketing copy that speaks directly to those people.

We record the sales calls in about, I think 13 states are required 2-person consent. So you do need to let the client know that.

Yeah.

The other 37 are just 1-person consent. But we actually built our own tool. There's a couple tools out there. Ours is called FieldSpark. There's Ciro and then Realvolve Voice. I don't know if you've ever heard of them that actually analyze the calls and tell you that it followed the script. I think it's really smart to do that. What are your thoughts on private equity?

On private equity? That's a loaded question. What specifically?

Well, a lot of people are just, they hate private equity. I look at it and private equity comes in all different shapes and forms, but I'm like, private equity in a lot of ways is just like an investor going into the real estate market or investing in gold or investing in Bitcoin or investing in you know, VC funds. I mean, they go where the money's at. And I think what COVID opened up the eyes to a lot of smart investors is we were deemed essential. We had to go fix stuff when you're stuck in your home or the AC doesn't work. And I'm not offended by private equity. It's just another investor that's interested in a good company they think they could grow. Uh, but a lot of people, it gets a bad stigma because they go, all they do is raise— I don't think private equity should exist in medical. per se, where you profit off people's sickness unless they innovate. Like, I'm not mad if somebody makes $2 billion for a cure for, you know what I mean? Like, I understand all the time, effort, and energy and to get through all that stuff to actually get through the FTC and whatever compliance they need to actually have prescription drugs that work.

But, you know, innovation is— capitalistic markets are going to figure out a way to make profit and innovate. But, but what are you overall— I mean, I'm just curious what your thoughts are.

Yeah, so I've been around like the private equity space for several years just through a mastermind that I'm part of and a lot of people involved there. And I mean, I don't hate the concept, but I know it is hard. It's challenging for local businesses to compete against. And I also know that there's a lot of private equity firms that are rolling up the home service companies or any industry specifically, and they roll up the companies, they completely change the culture, they take away the brand, and they kind of diminish what was built. And so, I think there's some hesitation or fear in that if you're really building a business that you want to be proud of long-term. So, I mean, I understand the model, I understand what they're doing, and I do think it is hard for people to compete against because they just don't have the finances that a PE firm would. But again, I don't— I get what they're doing at the same time.

I mean, Amazon, Jeff Bezos owns 8%. I mean, you take dilution for deeper pockets and you get the well-oiled machine. I think it's unfair that it hasn't been in home service. Why couldn't someone— I mean, you got to build to a certain size, but then that money scales and now there's millionaires made. For example, A1 sold in 2022. And 24 millionaires came out of that deal. And then that were, that were just in a recent process. And I'm not defending it because there's a lot of horror stories out there. But I think also that private equity fails with weak leaders and weak owners.

Yep.

They just let them come in and dictate how it's going to go. They didn't buy your company to go run it. They bought it because you're supposed to be good at what you do. And you meet a bunch of assholes that think that their shit doesn't stink. No offense on the language, but ultimately, You gotta be open to ideas and different ways of doing things. I think that most home service companies are weak on marketing. They're not priced correctly. They're not branded correctly. And they don't have the money to stand out in a crowded world. And it's not gonna get any easier. I was gonna ask you, you know, I'm just gonna throw out a few things here. Nextdoor, Pinterest, Angie, Houzz, Yelp. You know, I'm on all those and I'm building teams. Listen, it's still important to be on TikTok. Still really important to be on LinkedIn. Still important to be on X, Meta, YouTube. I mean, it is like, holy crap, what do you do when you're small? I think you gotta pick a couple and really try to own them. Yeah. And get good at 'em. But I mean, I feel bad for the guy out there.

Like, I happen to be really good friends with the CEO of Angie and the COO of Yelp. And, you know, I was just on the phone yesterday with the old chief revenue officer of LinkedIn. So this is what I spend my time is really learning about. It's a people business and there's ways to dominate, but it's trial and error. It's not being afraid to fail. Don't give up and get to know these people of what, who's winning, because someone's winning in all these. And I like to find the number one person at the top, call them up and say, I got a lot to learn. I think I could help you too. I'll pay you for your time. Yeah. If you need 10 grand to teach me your methodology, But some of these people, just Thumbtack. I mean, but what I just named a lot of things. What's your overall experience when it comes to these things?

Yeah, it's hard. It's overwhelming because as you said, let's say you're an HVAC company and you have one internal marketer and you're doing a million in revenue and you're trying to grow to 3. Like being on all of those channels would just lead to doing all of those channels poorly because you simply don't have the capacity to do them all well. And so that's where I think it's really important to go through creating a marketing plan to identify like who your clients are and where do they make decisions and where do they primarily hang out online and like how do they decide or pick an HVAC company, for example? Are they asking for referrals from friends? Are they going out and doing research on one of the platforms you mentioned ultimately? And then after you understand like where they're making buying decisions and where they're hanging out online, then I would prioritize, you know, 1, 2, 3 different channels and get really good at it and build a presence there. And once you have that foundation, maybe you're then expanding to LinkedIn or whatever the next channel might be. But don't go out the gate being like, okay, I have to be on these 10 different things with this one person running the show because like I said earlier, you just won't do any of it well.

So get really good at a couple of channels, get them performing, get them working for you, get them like bringing leads in, then don't forget about them because that's often what happens is then they'll be like, okay, now we're gonna go do this thing because these things are working. It's like, continue doing more of what's working, but then when you have capacity, layer on another channel and another one from there. So don't come out the gate doing it all at once.

What are your thoughts on So there's a lot of varieties of agencies. Some of them are super specialized. They don't take on anything else. They strictly do organic. Some of them do LSA, some of them just do meta. And there's like bigger agencies that kind of figured out we gotta do a lot for these clients because you don't want to have to go to 10 agencies. But what I found is just like at every company, like how many people are at your company?

At ours?

Yeah.

There's about 13 of us. And then we have partners as well.

So let's pretend, Sarah, that you have this account coming in and you're not available to handle it. And it's a massive grand slam. You probably have that person within your company that you'd be like, here's who I'm assigning to take that. Everyone, every agency and I know you're not the typical agency, but at every agency, what I try to do is, who's the best? Who is the person? Yeah. A lot of times it's the founder. A lot of times it's the right hand, could be the operator in the business, but who's the most talented? Because at every team, I feel like there's the Tom Bradys and then there's a third string.

Yeah.

And I wanna get close to like, who's the one that's actually building the playbook? And I ask to work with those people and I say, look, we're gonna spend a lot of money. I'll probably get you 100 clients. So we deserve this opportunity, you know? So what are your thoughts on that?

Yeah. And I agree with you. Like there's all different ranges of experience in agencies. And that's another common thing that happens all the time is people will be brought in to work with like the A-team and then they'll go through like the sales process or the strategy. And then all of a sudden they're with like the interns. For execution, and so I think that's also an important question to ask is like who am I going to be working with originally? And I'm willing to pay you know for that leadership and experience, but then also who's going to stick with me long term? And so again, when we work with clients, like we have fractional CMOs on our team, all different levels of experience. And so as you were talking about with like a grand slam client that I couldn't take on, like I have like my top fractional CMOs that I would fully trust in leading that for me, and I would match them with them. But then those top CMOs. would also be with them the length of the engagement with us moving forward. And so I think it's who am I going to be with initially, but it's also who am I going to be with long-term?

Are they going to still be around?

No, it's definitely something I want the listeners to think about. There's a lot here. The listeners on this podcast, I guarantee, are drinking out of a fire hose, so they might have to listen to it twice, but there's just a lot of value I just want to understand when you interview clients, what does that interview sound like? Like, what are the top 5 questions I should be asking to give me marketing insights? Like, what did you search for? How did you find— I mean, I've got attribution based on call tracking, UTM parameters, everything else. What does a good interview sound like?

Yeah, but not everyone has that great tracking like you do. So, in some cases, it is trying to figure out those basic questions initially. But what I'm trying to figure out is not only like, what steps did you take, but also how did you feel? What were you thinking? What were the emotions going through your head in each of the phases of the customer journey? And so I'll ask, you know, how did, like, what was the problem that you were trying to solve? And like, how did you find us? Like, how did you conduct initial research? Okay. What was your impression when you came across our company? Like, what caused you to reach out to us? And did you compare us to any of the competitors? And like, why did we stand out? Okay, after you moved forward, how did that feel like? Did you feel like you made the right decision based on how we communicated or what we delivered, or did you have hesitation? Could we have done something better? And then what does your end state look like now that we've delivered product or service? Are you happy with the choice you made?

Are you willing to refer us to your friends? And what would you say if you are? And so the questions, you know, those aren't all the questions I would ask, but if you're asking for like the top ones, it's basically Understanding how they moved through the journey, but also understanding their hesitations, their fears, and their goals through those stages. Because that's how you can effectively sell to someone is, I understand you might be feeling these hesitations, but this is why we're the right solution to help you get to where you're trying to go. And it's that story of transformation that will help make sales easier.

I love that. And I don't do that enough. And, you know, I'm probably pulled in too many directions to do everything I want to do because I like to interview. I like to be on all the exit interviews too of my internal clients.

Yep.

Of understanding where do we go wrong? And we were talking about this before we started the podcast, but all the leads in the world don't really matter if you don't have a happy team. I mean, we talk about net promoter score, but if your internal net promoter score is not high, if you're not recruiting and understanding capacity planning and And trying to get the lowest cancellation rate, you know, we use a company called Lace AI. And when we look at jobs not booked, we're at a 91% booking rate. And you know what I hate the most is time slot not available. Mm-hmm. When the client needed us, we don't have capacity. And even if we, we wanted to force us, force that on a guy, he's running too many jobs. They're gonna get burnt out. They're gonna end up either in the emergency room or quitting. Because you're working them like a dog.

Yep. Yep. And we think about, like, when you think about marketing, we think about marketing, sales, customer service. Like, you need to have all of those areas of your business aligned and working towards a common goal. And so often with clients, as we were talking about before we started recording, like, we'll actually help them hire and recruit team members to bring on. Because if they don't have a team that can deliver on closing the leads and sales or delivering the service, like, you will end up wasting money on marketing ultimately. And so even though we're we're talking about, like, different business divisions, all of them should go towards growing revenue, getting recurring revenue, retaining clients for a long time, because that's where the business will actually grow. And not just, again, as we talked about earlier, more and more leads. It's like you need all of those functions to be successful.

How much do you think is sitting in a client's database of past clients that they're not taking advantage of? They're not doing any outreach, any outbound, Any geo-targeting, nothing.

So much. I mean, there's so much missed opportunity there. Obviously depends on list size and services they're providing. But we'll ask all the time as part of our onboarding with new clients, like, what are you doing to stay in touch with current clients or previous clients? And often it's like, oh, we send them promotions when it gets hotter or whatever it might be. But like, that's it. I'm like, well, how else are you nurturing the relationships? How else are you staying top of mind? How else are you continuing to add value? Because again, maybe someone hired you going back to home services to do like a tree service. Let's say we work with a couple tree service companies. So maybe you came and you cut down their trees, but then you just like disappeared and you never stayed in touch with them. Like they're not going to remember who you were even in a lot of cases. And so if someone asks who did your trees 2 years later, they're like, I have no idea. But if you're still providing value and if you're still staying in touch and you're still giving, Like, you're still gonna stay top of mind.

So there's a lot of missed opportunity for both like past clients, but also for current clients as well. Like, communication is one of the most important things.

You know, your dad said something that stuck out to me. This was a while back. Uh, he said, if you focus on the biggest problems your clients have and communicate that you understand the problem, the competition is irrelevant. Is that something that you guys believe in?

Yep. And that's a lot of what you're trying to uncover in those ideal client interviews or their sales transcripts. It's like, what is the problem? You see too many companies just focusing on like features or services or all of those things, but it's like, what is the problem that people are trying to solve? And so like, that's one piece, but then the second piece on top of that is like, why are you uniquely set up to solve this problem. So, you got to tell those 2 pieces together.

I was always told you could be 3 things. You could be the cheapest, you could be the fastest, and you could be the best quality. You can't be 3 of 3. You could be 2 out of the 3. And I'll tell you, it's very hard to be the fastest because you got to be open. Late weekends, nights, weekends, holidays, it doesn't really matter. But I've always wanted to win on that. When your garage door is broken, you're stuck, or your HVAC's not working, or your roof's leaking and you need somebody out there, that's how you could win. And very few companies have that capacity built in to be able to handle that.

Yeah. And I don't think you ever want to compete on cheapest. Like, to me, that's out of there. So, it's like if you can layer in being the best quality or the best experience, with then being fast when needed, then you're leveraging those 2 effectively.

You know, I got a lot of buddies that still go to, and by the way, I love these meetings. I mean, it's not my favorite thing today in the business, but BNI meetings and getting referrals. And they're like, I keep the phones ringing through referrals. And I'm like, yeah, but you're tiny and you're still doing the work yourself. Like, why are you so proud of that? They got the really shitty wrap on their truck and they're like, I don't need a good wrap to get business. I do it through word of mouth. Why is it dangerous to only be referrals and word of mouth?

You hit on one of the elements, like oftentimes it's relying on the business owner to go out and build those relationships and always be asking for referrals and always making those connections. So it does put a reliance on one person in a lot of cases primarily. Also, it's unpredictable. You never know when people are going to be able to go out and make a referral for you because it has to come up in conversation or there has to be some reason for it to happen. Another area where it's a bit risky is I think you can grow to a certain point often based on referrals, and that's who a lot of clients that come to us, like they've grown to let's say a million based on good service, word of mouth, referrals, connections, but they're stuck and they can't get to that next growth path because they've only been reliant on that. So, I think it's— I think referrals are huge. Like, John, my dad's written a book called The Referral Engine. It's a huge part of what we do for clients, but it is a part of what we do. And so, it's building that referral engine through a great experience and working with your company, but it's then diversifying your marketing with something like paid, which can be like more consistent with calls, bookings, and leads coming in on top of the referral program.

I knew a guy probably 11 years ago. I talked to him and he had a sign behind his, uh, behind his desk. It was like this big bold statement. It said, he who could pay more per lead will always win because it's so predictable. I mean, Google has smarter people than I'll ever be. So does Meta. So does every other platform. Trying to figure out a way to get you over from organic to paid.

Yeah.

And if you can't afford to pay, you reduce your likelihood of having predictability, like you said. And I think that's kind of scary. And some people are just like, I don't have to pay. And it's like, I guess you might have different goals of your business, but I think you started a business so potentially you could have freedom. I don't think people get freedom for the first 5 years. I mean,

I don't,

you know,

freedom means business owner.

Most of them fail. I mean, but I do feel like paid is just the way— I love organic. I love getting referrals. I love testimonials that go viral, but they're just so unpredictable. It's a good thing to have in your sandbox.

Yeah. And I think it's more important for certain industries than others. And so like e-commerce, like absolutely. Home services, absolutely. Like people that are trying to do volume, but we also do work with like a B2B client that's targeting like enterprise firms that wants to get like one new client this year, and that makes their business grow at a rate they're happy to. So in that scenario, paid doesn't ever make sense. It's really more of like making direct connections, outreach, like providing value, doing webinars, like that type of stuff. So I agree with you, but I think that paid is more important in certain industries than others depending on what you're trying to sell.

You ever heard of a book called No BS about marketing to the affluent?

I've heard of it. I have not read it.

So his whole philosophy is, for example, I'll use my industry, garage doors. There's areas of town, the clients have 10 garage doors in every market I'm in. I mean, they're just, they're affluent, but they're not looking at the same places. Yes, a lot of them go to Google, but they might be looking at an airline magazine of custom airplanes. a jet, or maybe where do affluent people look? I guess they're looking at really custom boats and their own Voyager of sorts. But I do think there's some science in understanding who your clients are, your avatar. And a lot of people say every client is a garage door homeowner that has a garage door. And I will tell you, that's not the case. I mean, we're pretty broad. I mean, if you do have a garage But there are certain areas we don't go and there are certain people that just can't afford our services. But ultimately, how important is it to know who your client is and understand who are the ones that convert the best and just like and trust you and will spend the most with you?

Yeah, I mean, it's incredibly important because everything we've talked about so far in terms of understanding the problems they're trying to solve and where they're trying to go, if you don't know who they are, It's really hard to identify that type of information. And so with the garage door example, maybe you're looking at like certain neighborhoods that you want to target more effectively because you have an opportunity for business there. But then you're also identifying like who the homeowners that are best to work with and easiest to work with and who move forward the fastest and, and understand like what their challenges are and what they're looking for. So then you can target them more effectively. So there are ways you can get more narrow. Where businesses really do struggle is when they're trying to be everything to everyone. everyone because it just doesn't allow you to target effectively on things like paid ads, for example. But it also doesn't allow you to connect with the audience and it doesn't allow you to tell stories that actually, like, the goal is they can picture themselves in the clients that you're already serving. And if you don't know who they are, then it's impossible to do that ultimately.

Love this. AI is a tool in the toolbox. A lot of marketers are using AI and most of them are doing things backwards. What are they getting wrong?

Yeah, I'm surprised we're like 40-ish minutes in here and that's the first time you asked me a question about AI, which is like pretty rare these days. So kudos to you. I think the biggest thing people are getting wrong with AI is they're not approaching it strategically. Same thing with like marketing in general, but they'll bring in a tool. Let's say ChatGPT. I think that's one of the most common ones, but they won't spend time to answer the questions of like, what are we actually trying to do? Where are we spending the most of our time? What are repeatable things that we shouldn't be doing anymore? Like, where is the business trying to go? Who is our ideal clients? What is our messaging? What's our tone of voice? What's our branding? Like, all of that stuff needs to be considered. And then you might be ready to say, okay, let's bring in ChatGPT, and here's how we're going to train it properly on the front end. So we're going to feed it all of this really important business information. Okay, once it's up to date and it's trained on us, so it's speaking like us and it's telling our stories and it's telling our client stories and all of that stuff, then you can say, okay, where are we spending most of our time on a regular basis for things we're already doing?

I think that's a good next step with AI. And then you can start building different workflows to be able to take that time-consuming stuff off of your plate. So then you can focus on the more impactful strategic work. And so just like a personal example, we use Claude. And so one of the first things that I did with Cowork was I was spending a decent amount of time like analyzing our profitability and our business. And I hated doing it because it was like spreadsheets and numbers And I'm a marketer. And so I was like, how can I leverage Claude? So basically, one of the first things I did is I set up a whole system where it analyzes our profitability on a weekly and monthly basis and gives me really valuable reports so I can spend more time actually, like, thinking about what those numbers mean and thinking about decisions I need to make for our business moving forward versus spending hours entering numbers into spreadsheets. And so that's where I would start with AI if I was starting from scratch. It's like, what's the strategy? What are we trying to accomplish? And then what are some of the things that we should be delegating that are mind-numbing work so we can focus on more impactful work moving forward?

When it comes to AI search, whether that's Grok, Perplexity, Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, you know, we are getting those kind of one-paragraph answers. The problem is, Like, they go from Reddit to Yelp to this to that. If we could all be in the same room with the exact same search query, we could all get different answers. It's— I can't wait till the paid comes out. OpenAI has paid, but we'll be the first ones because it's predictable. But what do you suggest people think about when it comes to contractors?

Insert in showing up in AI search? Yeah. Specifically? Yeah. I would say, you know, there was a study I saw recently that the homepage is, like, the number one source being pulled into AI search right now. And so think about that. What should you have on the homepage specifically? I mean, it should be talking about who you solve and the problems you, you, or who you serve and the problems you solve. And as we were talking about earlier, maybe some information on your pricing if you feel comfortable. But it absolutely should have FAQs because LLMs love pulling that type of data in there. And then before, you know, with our homepages, we used to just have like logos for awards or certifications that our companies have gotten. Instead of just having those logos, now we have like text. text that explains the awards that LLMs can pull in. And then we also always have had like reviews on the homepage as well from happy clients. But maybe we would just say like, link to this case study. And now we're like pulling the most important stats from the case study onto the homepage because LLMs will pull that data in.

And so I think like the whole website's important, but making sure the homepage tells the story of the problems you solve and the results that you've gotten from clients and the FAQs they ask is really, really important. And then on top of that, as you said, like Reddit was huge and now it's not. And so those types of channels are changing, but I just think having authority type of content on different platforms is important. And so maybe you're producing content on LinkedIn on a regular basis. That's another channel you can produce it on. Maybe you're doing podcasts. Podcasts is a great way to get on other people's websites with backlinks back to you. So it's authority building. And so focusing on getting good content on other people's platforms is the next thing I would focus on. And then the other area I would focus on is we were talking about this a little bit, but getting reviews on different websites other than— or different sites other than your own. So you obviously want to have some testimonials and stuff pulled into your website, but you also want to have in home services a Google Business Profile that has a lot of really happy reviews that you're all responding to them as well.

And so those are just like standard good practices. Yeah.

Very few people— I mean, most, most of the clients I know, they just go to the bad reviews and see how they were responded to.

Yeah.

And if it's responded as— if it's responded to, we're really sorry for the miscommunication. We've tried to get ahold of you 7 times. We're really looking forward to making this right. We've tried calling you 7, you know what I mean? And if it's like, and you read that from the owner or somebody in charge there, you're like, man, they really tried to make this right. You know what I mean? Like, and if the response is, well, you didn't show up and you're a prick of a client, you know, it's like,

yeah,

but most people don't even respond at all.

Yeah, I agree. But also responding to like the positive reviews, like let's say you don't have any negative reviews, good on you. Um, then I think responding in a positive way so they can just kind of get a feel for like, oh, there's humans at this company. They're not using AI, hopefully, because you're responding as a human and they interact with their clients and they're responding even after the sale. So it also sheds a positive light in that sense as well.

It's hard not to use AI. I literally talked into AI. I told a story about my grandma. I used Claude and I told all these details growing up in Detroit, worked A lot of jobs, family of 5, all the good things. She was like a second mom. And it just helps me write a little bit quicker. It's easier. It actually writes like I'm not the perfect writer. Yeah. And so it really took my story and it made it really good to read, I think. And it was all my words. It didn't embellish anything. Like, I gave it instructions on, like, just say precisely, but act like you're talking to a friend. All that stuff that you could set up in your personalization. And it said, I looked at my posts a day later and it says, like, under on Meta, it says AI, AI written or whatever. You know, you know, when it says that, I'm like,

yeah,

shit. And we've got ways to get around that. And it's just a lot of work for my social media. I'm like, I'm not— this was only— it wasn't even my public profile.

Yeah, it is hard. And I feel like the different platforms are cracking down in different ways. And so, like, LinkedIn is another platform where where they just like added the AI slop button. So now people can just like report your posts as AI slop and then you're no longer shown to other people, which to me is very frustrating 'cause I'm like, that's just one person's opinion. Like I could have written this and you're just saying it sounds like AI slop 'cause you don't like me or whatever it might be. So that, I think that's kind of challenging how they set that up. But I think like with the AI, it has helped a lot with writing, but as you're using it, I think it's important to do like human on the front end. That's where a lot of people miss and do create AI slop is they'll just Like, write me a post on this topic and it's just generic and doesn't sound like them.

Oh yeah, you gotta share stories. So yeah,

you gotta share stories on the front end. But then like we use Claude as well and we have a skill in Claude that will run after we write content to like remove any AI slopped. So like things like saying like generalizations or it's not X but it's Y, like things that it says all the time. So then we run the skill and then if we take it out of— so it's human on the front end, run the skill. And then once we take it out of Claude, we then edit it further with the human on the out end. So it's like human, AI, human. And I think that's really a good way to approach it because I think some people are missing like the front end step where they're starting with AI and then they're editing, or they're missing the back end step where they're starting with their voice and then using AI, but then they don't edit. You really have to have those 3 pieces of the puzzle to avoid—

Right. Yeah. You know, this is a really big subject that I've been kind of claiming for the last 3 years is I think the brand of the founder/CEO is more important than the brand of the company itself. I think people go to work for people, not companies.

Yep.

And I think that if you're not posting on social media, not necessarily to get likes and shares, but to stay ahead of the competition, to be top of mind, to be recruiting talent. And I think owners are probably listening going, so you want me to stand in front of a camera and post regularly? Yeah. I mean, that's what the new day and age of business does. Get testimonials from your employees and clients and be involved. And I'm saying that the CEO that shows up and one that doesn't online could be millions and millions of dollars. What are your thoughts on that?

I 100% agree. I think someone needs to be representing the brand, whether it's the CEO, founder, or maybe a marketer or whoever makes sense to be representing. But as you said, people want to buy from humans. And so when you see these websites now that are like stock images, AI images, like AI-produced videos, there's no like actual pictures or names of anyone that's employed there. It's like, what, who am I even buying from and how can I trust this company? Everything's overpolished and fake versus if you come to, again, like we work with a lot of remodelers. If you come to a remodeling website and it's like, here's our actual, like here's the people that are going to be showing up and working at your house and here's their story. And a fun fact, they love their dog Bingo or whatever it might be. But like, people are drawn to that because they know what to expect. And so I think that's really important. But I joked earlier, like being authentic is important as well. I think people are getting really sick of this like overpolished fake content. And some of my best stuff that I've put on like LinkedIn, for example, has just been like a complete random rant, top of mind, not overly polished.

Maybe I make a typo even in there and like that stuff really resonates with people. Because they're sick of fake at this point.

Yeah. One of the things I've been really trying to focus on is stories and impactful stories. And there's 100 stories that you could actually think about of just so many things in a day. And people want to hear the struggle. They don't want to hear the success. I will say that stories that actually say, here's what I learned

Yeah.

Here's how this could apply to you. You know what I mean? And if you do that correctly, and if you're just really raw and you let yourself let your guard down a little bit, hopefully you're not in the middle of the pain because that's really vulnerable. But hopefully you say, look, I went through a really hard time. This is where the story went and this is what ended up happening. And I think people will appreciate those stories more than anything.

100%. Because they can connect. Connect with you as a human because you're being vulnerable and you're talking about your challenges that you've overcome. And so then they don't feel as out of place having challenges themselves ultimately. And so I think that's an important piece. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking about like, how do I pull those stories out? Where do I get started? You know, a lot of people talk about using Claude or tool of your choice to literally say, okay, this is what I'm trying to accomplish. This is my target audience. Audience, this is what I'm trying to sell. Like, interview me and basically ask me a series of questions to pull out these stories so I can connect with my audience further. And ask me the questions one by one. And then, you know, instead of sitting there and like typing the answers, use the voice feature. I use WhisperFlow. It's just one of the voice tools I use. But using a voice feature where you're actually just like speaking to it, because that's going to be your authentic self, your authentic voice, your authentic storytelling versus like sitting down and typing the perfect answer out.

And so I think that's a really good exercise if you're listening to this and you're like, I need more stories, but I don't know where to start. Have Claude interview you or tool of your choice interview you.

100 questions a week.

Yeah.

You can do 100 questions a week. It, you know, I gotta say, listen, this is what I always tell people. Google knows everything about you.

Yeah.

Meta knows everything about you. You don't use it for anything. They just, that right now I'm gonna have an ad pop up for a dog named Bingo.

You are?

You know? So, so like they're taking this data some way or another. Why not use AI to use it for your wellbeing and your progress in your career or life? I know a guy that talks to Claude every day about being a better dad.

Yeah.

And some of it's just like, he's got this, you know, Otter or whatever, a box or whatever that listens to stuff. I don't really— I think that's a little intrusive for me. But

yeah, but, you know, I think the idea of like talking to it to ask, like to answer business-specific questions or stories makes sense. And there are a lot of recording tools where you can go out and like go for a walk. Like oftentimes when I'm moving, that's when I do my best thinking when I'm not sitting at my computer desk. So go for a walk, drive in your car, have it ask you questions and just talk as you're moving. And I think that's a go away to process. And like you said, I don't know if I'm getting parenting advice yet from Claude, but I do tell it all my business stories at this point, ultimately.

So, you watched your dad, John, build the duct tape marketing from scratch. You start out as an intern and rose to the CEO. Growing up in that kind of household and I guess, what did it teach you about entrepreneurship and the good, bad, and the ugly?

Yeah. I mean, he's been doing this for 30-ish years now at this point, a little over 30 years. So, it's obviously been a big part of my life for that time. And one of the things that I've really loved watching over those years is he is very passionate about what he does. I think there's a lot of people that wake up for work every day and they're like, oh, I have to do it again. Like, I don't want to be working. I don't like what I do. I'm like not excited about my career path. He has always been so passionate about serving small businesses and solving their problems that it makes work fun for him. And he's still curious 30 years in. And so that's been a really good role model for me. And also a reason why I've stuck around at Duct Tape Marketing is I also feel that, like, I feel that there's a lot of challenges and there's a lot of struggle. And I feel like I have an opportunity to to help fix some of those challenges for people. So that's been a really great experience just to see that over the years.

But it also, you know, I have 3 sisters, and all 3 of them have started companies at some point in their lives as well. So I followed along his path, but he really showed the way that like entrepreneurship is an option. Going to college and starting at a corporate role isn't something that any of us did. So it just really laid the foundation for that being a great

You know, who was it? Jensen with, what is it? MicroStrategy? No. Jensen, what's the name of his chips? Nvidia. He goes, I would never wish entrepreneurship upon anybody. He goes, if I go back, I would've talked myself out of it. Now, it's the number one company on the planet, I think. But ultimately—

I mean, Like, there's a lot of challenges in entrepreneurship as well. You know, I've, like, he's the founder of Duct Tape Marketing. He's the sole owner at this point. But I've, you know, worked alongside him for 16 years. So I felt a lot of the challenges of entrepreneurship when there's stress and there's pressure and there's, you know, wanting to do everything and limiting capacity and time. And I'm also part of a mastermind that I've been part of for years. And those are all founders and entrepreneurs looking to scale and exit their businesses. And you sit down at a table with these people. I sit with them 4 times year. And a lot of them are unhappy, a lot of them are burned out, a lot of them are drained, but there's also an equal amount that are incredibly excited and loving the freedom and all that stuff. And so I think a lot of it comes down to not building a job, but building a business. And so building systems and team around you so everything isn't reliant on you, I think is the way you can sustain long-term, but also have your business be more valuable over time.

And so, as I said, you know, John is the owner, my dad is the owner of Duct Tape Marketing, but he's semi-retired. His title right now is Chief Innovation Officer. He's not doing any client work. He's doing stuff that he loves and enjoys. And so, he could keep doing that forever, he says. And so, I think it's really important to just think about like, am I building a job or am I building a business? If I'm building a business, then what system structure and people do I need to surround myself with so I can do this long-term and I can sustain this ultimately.

2007, I got handed a book by a CPA that wouldn't work with me because he only worked with 10 clients. But he said, I want to help you. You're just a young guy that seems to be super ambitious and I like you. So he handed me The E-Myth by Michael Gerber. And I thought that was so interesting. I'm like, wow. Wow, it's a business system. It's a franchise model, even if it's not a franchise, because franchises runs off of systems. Yeah. And it talks about the lady who showed up early at her bakery, stayed late, never really made any money until you apply the systems and you could duplicate yourself. And maybe it won't be as good as you, but it'll be darn good. And couldn't agree more. You talk a little bit about this, but they get burnt out and you say, stay in your zone of genius.

Yeah.

Well, we'll just ask a couple more questions. You probably got to get going, but we'll close out. But for a contractor who's been doing everything— marketing, sales, operations, HR— how do they figure out what their zone of genius actually is?

Yeah, there's a book, Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell. Have you read that one? Somewhere around you? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, he was my coach for 2 years. Yeah.

Oh, awesome. I've never met him personally, but he seems like a great guy. I love all his content and stuff. But he has an exercise in there where he actually talks through how to audit your time. And it's painful because you literally have to sit down for like a week and every 15 minutes, like, write down what you're doing. But then after you do your audit, then he talks you through identifying like where you're actually driving value in the business and where you like are doing things that you hate or you like aren't bringing any income in. And So that's a really good initial exercise if you haven't done that, because it will help you identify, like, what are things that you're just, like, doing because you've always done them? What are things that you're doing because you think you're the best? But if you just built a system around it, you could delegate to someone else. And so I think the time audit makes sense initially. But then after you have your list of things that— because you'll have a list of at the end, you'll have a list of things like, these are things I just should stop doing because they're not important.

And then these are things that I should delegate to people that will then tell you, okay, who do I need to bring Or can I leverage AI to do these things for me instead? And so starting with the audit, categorizing what you're getting rid of, and then finding the who. Oftentimes people start with, like, just bringing someone in, but they don't know what they're gonna have them do yet. And so don't start there. Start with identifying what needs to be done and then bring the person in.

That's great advice. When I first started working with Dan, And we went through this time analysis. And at first he asked me, how much are you driving a week? And I did some math. I said, 11 hours. He goes, so you're going to hire— well, first we figured out what I make per hour.

Yeah.

And then we had this number and it was a lot larger number than I thought on a 60-hour work week. And he goes, so what we're going to do, unless you absolutely love driving, Then you're going to hire a driver. And then he goes, what do you like to eat? And I said, Uber Eats, or I barbecue a couple nights a week. He goes, okay, so we're going to hire a chef. And I said, dude, I'm a blue-collar dude, man. Like, I'm not showing up to work with a driver and I'm not hiring a chef. He's like, you're looking out of the wrong lens, man. Think about how much better of a leader you could be. He's like, you think that's being pompous or vain? He goes, what, how much more could you give to your team. And he said, the problem with you, Tommy, is I'm going to give you back more hours than you know what to do with and you're going to fill them right back

up.

And he goes, I just know you're exactly like me. He goes, for years, I just, I got hours back, then I filled them back up. He goes, look, if you love mowing the lawn, mow the lawn. If you love fixing the pipe, showing your kids how dad knows how to fix stuff, fix the pipe. But that's a very valuable lesson. And then he says, when you're going to train somebody, use the camera. camcorder method, like record it how you want it done or do a voice note and actually train people. And that's what we build is people don't like manuals, but I call it a success guide. Like my EA knows exactly how to book my flights and hotels. She knows what airlines I prefer. She knows I only sit in the aisle. She knows that the hotel has to have a gym and a restaurant if possible. All these things that people are like, they get so mad, but they've delegated. They didn't delegate, they dumped stuff and then they wonder why mistakes Yeah,

I mean, they— I heard once, like, don't throw good people at bad systems. I think that's exactly what you're highlighting. It's like, what should you delegate? And then after you identify what should you delegate, like, what's the exact SOP or video or whatever that tells them exactly what to do and what success looks like? And so, um, that's a huge piece in any area of your business, not just marketing, is to have those systems and processes in place so you delegate to good people and they can be successful in their role.

So good. I got 2 closing questions. So if a home service company is listening and their marketing feels like chaos right now, what's one thing they should do this week to start getting control?

Yeah. Can I cheat and give you 2?

You can do whatever you like.

I would say most of the time they feel out of control because as we've talked about throughout this episode is they just don't know what's working and what's not working. And so get a handle of your metrics and tracking. And if you don't have that expertise, it's probably worth investing in hiring someone that can even just come in and fix it all and clean it up for you and then leave. So I would say get a really good understanding of like, if you're currently spending money on marketing, you need to know exactly what's working and what's driving revenue. Like that is where I would prioritize. But then based on the rest of our conversation as well, if you don't know who you're targeting and you don't know who you're speaking to, it's going to make all of the other marketing So once you get your metrics buttoned up, the next piece I would be doing is, like, actually recording your sales calls, getting the transcripts with permission as we talked about, and then interviewing some of your best clients so you can understand how to attract more people like them. Those are the 2 action items I would take.

I love it. Well, the only thing we didn't talk about is influencer marketing, but we'll save that for round 2. So what's the best way to find Duct Tape Marketing and your book Unchained and get in connection with you?

Yeah, everything is on our website, ducttapemarketing.com. Actually have a URL as well, dtm.world/hsep. And on that, we actually have a free guide that helps you save yourself from spending money on random acts of marketing. So it does a bit of an audit to see how you're spending money and where you should be focusing moving forward. So we can hopefully add that to the show Notes. And I'm also active on LinkedIn as well.

Fantastic. Is there a book other than Duct Tape Marketing and the book you wrote, Unchained, that just changed your whole outlook on business or marketing or strategy or life?

There's so many books that I read all of the time. I mean, like I said, I already shouted out Buy Back Your Time. To me, Like, I, 'cause I teach a lot of people about delegation because we do certify agencies and consultants and fractional CMOs and we help them like build a business. And a lot of times I see people really struggling with getting out of their own way and actually being able to let go and to delegate. 'Cause there's a lot of mindset around, I can do this the best. I can't trust anyone else. And so I've been talking about delegation and the importance of it for years and years. But when I read that book, book, it was like, oh my gosh, this is like a very clear framework that tells people exactly how to approach it and exactly what to do. So, that was one of the best books I've read recently.

I love it. Well, final question is leave the audience with anything you want to close us out. We talked about a lot of stuff, but I want to give you the final thought.

Yeah. When I'm talking to people, I always tell them, like, if you're listening to this, we threw out a lot of ideas. We talked about a lot of stuff. If you're feeling overwhelmed, you're not alone. I think marketing is changing faster than it ever has in the most recent years. And so the biggest piece of advice I can say is take the time to take a step back, to actually create a plan, to understand your audience, but then stick to the plan moving forward. Because I think a lot of people will invest in the strategy and the plan, but then they'll get sidetracked by shiny object syndrome. So, take a step back, look at what the business is trying to accomplish, build a marketing plan that supports it, and then work towards that moving forward.

Absolutely phenomenal. Sarah, I really appreciate your time today.

Thanks for having me on, Tommy.

This was good.

Good.

Now, that's a wrap. I always say when I got pages of notes and just, it's really good, you know, that time study My calendar is just marked out with where my time goes, like everything from call mom to walk the dogs. But I think I could probably revisit that because I've done that exercise a few times. I just think, what's getting me to where I want? But then again, sometimes I forget that I'm human and I want to be alone and I want to read a book and I want to do a workout or a walk. And like, I got to make my personal time because you can't be productive That's more productive by taking a step back and taking care of yourself. Like, yeah, I go to the gym, and I got my trainer, and I do my morning walks and all that stuff. But like, more time to have an open schedule.

Yeah, I 100% agree. And I think that's where a lot of people get burned out over the years. So like, yeah, for me, I'm like, I got to go to the gym in the mornings. I usually do a walk during the day. I take some time to go to the sauna with like no headphones and just like think for a while. And I think incorporating that stuff is so important because I'm similar to you. Like, I'll take on more if I have capacity. So, it's important to take a step back and focus on yourself.

I love it. Is there anything I could do for you?

No. I just really appreciate you having me on the show. If there's anyone that you come across that needs help from a marketing strategy perspective, would love any introductions.

Absolutely. Yeah, you bet. I know a lot of people lost. I think you'll probably get a lot of people to reach out from this.

Awesome. Do you have any idea of like timeline?

Um, guys, do we know when this is gonna get aired? Phil?

It's okay if not.

Hello? When is this gonna come out? Can you just send Sarah an email when it's gonna be released? Yeah, of course. Yeah, we'll send you an email here. That's how I delegate.

Yeah, that's perfect. I love it. Okay, Phil. Cool.