Transcript of The Art of Differentiation in Marketing with Brian Sooy

Even if you're not the market leader, act like you're the market leader and do the things that market leaders do. And eventually, you become that leader.

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the Home Service Millionaire, Tommy Melo. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today. To do that, you'll have to take a lot of notes, but I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text, Notes, N-O-T-E-S to 888-526-1299. That's 888-526-1299, and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin. Com/podcast to get your copy. Now, let's go back into the interview. All right, guys. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today, I got Brian Soy with me. He's based out of Cleveland. Brian is the brand strategist, author, and marketing leader with more than 30 years of experience helping companies clarify their message, focus on customers, and grow with purpose.

As President of a Inspire. Brian has guided owners and executive teams from small entrepreneurship businesses to $5 billion organizations to close the gap between what their brand promises and what customers actually experience. He's the author of Blue Collar Branding and Trade Secrets, and a top 100 marketing influencer known for translating strategy in a simple, actionable frameworks. Brian also serves as a marketing director for Gorick-Jank. Gorick-jank, Home Services, and publishes, Entre Worship, a journal exploring faith, leadership, and work. When branding invites customers into a clear story, Brian believes businesses don't just grow, they endure. I'm really excited to have you on today, Brian.

Yeah. Thanks, Tommy. I'm really appreciative of being here and grateful for the opportunity to just spend some time talking with you.

Let's just talk a little bit about what's your last 30 years have been about, what you're excited about, where you're at today, what you're looking forward to.

So the last 30 years, it's been a long journey, lots of different experiences. Started off as a generalist designer and spent a little bit of time in that early days also working as a part-time professional with American Greetings. And that was a little unusual doing greeting card design, a lot of calendar design. But as the agency started to grow, my freelance business started to grow, broke off to start doing what I ended up calling Aspire, my marketing agency. And as you just said in the intro, I've been able to work with entrepreneurs well under $500,000 up to some fantastic multibillion dollar industry leaders in deal manufacturing, financial sector. Some of our clients, when I worked with Aspire, included Vitamix, electronic merchant systems, which is a large small business, a merchant services provider, and just, again, a wide mix of businesses that gave me a really well-rounded opportunity to be cross-disciplinary. But over time, decided it was really better to just really start specializing and focusing. That's more or less what I'm doing now.

I love it. Since I got rebranded by Kick Charge in 2018, I really had no idea what a brand really meant. We see Nike, we see all these companies that hire Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. There's just so many good branded companies out there. When you think about their slogan and you remember them, they're top of mind, and you'll pay more for a Rolex than you will for other brands. What's the common branding mistake you see leaders making today?

A lot of leaders, let's just keep it very broad, struggle with clarity about who they are, what they do, and why it matters. And when they do that, they struggle leading their teams, but where it really matters, where their customers don't always connect with how their service or their product can make their life better. I define branding as the story that people tell themselves about your product or service and why it matters to them. So if leaders aren't leading with that clarity, then the customer Others get confused.

You probably go back to the mission, vision, core values. I think there's a lot of books I've read about that some people say, What makes you different? Well, we work weekends. We do background checks. We're all been We're in an emergency. Anybody could be that. How do you really develop? Where do you start?

It's got to start with the owner. Then What's his vision for what the business is going to be or if it's a leader in an organization? So if we're talking about home services, what's the vision that the owner has? What's the vision that he's going to be able to set that people want to follow? Essentially saying, I'm going to take us here and you give the team a choice to follow or not to follow. The mission then is what you're doing and how you're accomplishing that vision and then building that around to set a core We call them shared values. What are those shared values that when someone comes into the firm, they can agree to and know that by following those values, they're upholding, in essence, the brand of the organization?

When you think about branding, I love this stuff, by the way. I'm eating this stuff up. We just change the mission, vision, and core values. I don't think it needs to stay the same throughout the company, the legacy of the company. I think you grow and then you retool. Do you believe that?

Yes. Interestingly enough, I sat with the owner. I'm the marketing director at Gordian Home Services now full-time. They were a long-time client of ours. Early last year, owner approached me and asked what it would take to be 100% devoted to them. As an agency owner, that's a question that sometimes can either go one of two ways, like what's it going to take? But it went the positive way. We sat down yesterday and worked through our... Actually, we did a way with the mission and combined it with the vision, combined it with our mission and defined five core values. We've floated around this idea of five or seven. It's more of like an update versus a replacement.

Yeah, I think that's what we did, too. It wasn't necessarily a complete replacement. You often say businesses are too close to the problem. How can owners step outside their own echo chamber to see what their brand means clearly?

Like to say, it's hard to read the label when you're inside the bottle. It's a matter of talking with clients and customers, taking a look at... When it comes down to it, your reviews tell you a lot about how your customers can see the business. If If it's internal, asking your... If you're doing a 360 with your team that could be anonymous in case they're uncomfortable telling you how you're doing with leading them, asking your C-suite team or your like the COO, the CFO, whoever that the leader relies on the most to just give candid feedback without fear of retribution or blowback. That's a hard thing because I'm sure you feel this sometimes, too. I felt it in 30 years of agency leadership. It's that cliché, it's lonely at the top. You can't always trust that you're going to get the feedback you want when you need it. It's important to find some different ways, whether anonymously or using what's already available to you to step outside and just look at your business objectively.

I was on with Gary Vee last week, and he said if he could go back into his 20s, he would have had a lot, he calls it kind candor. You could have an open voice, open feedback. You should praise more than you criticize, but it needs to be very honest, and we need to be honest with each other. No one should not see something coming. You're only as strong as your weakest link, so we need to... You might not fit our company as it sits today, or you might be on the wrong seat. I don't think that's easily obtained, and it's something I think every company should be striving for.

Sure. Yeah. One thing I learned very late in the agency time of my career was the people that you start with may not be the people you end with, which is sometimes when you're in a smaller group, We had six at one time, or up to six. People changed. The personnel changed. Just knowing how loyal some of those people were, that they weren't going to make it all the way through to the end because I had to make a It was a hard decision to put the agency on pause so I could take on this full-time role. It was challenging to know that I wanted to be very fair to my team that I had in place still and make it a very positive It was a big experience for them to, in a sense, transition to their next. From what I understand, our art director has made a great transition, but it was tough knowing that that was going to change. Then to the candor part, again, something I just learned over time is it's best sometimes to have these conversations and you do two stars and a wish, so two little points of praise.

But we could tweak this thing. We could do this better. That softens that critique. We don't want to call it criticism, but more of a critique.

Yeah, we used to call that a shit sandwich where you'd say, Hey, your tie is great, your shoes are great, but tighten up your belt.

The smudges on your uniform. Yeah.

What does your agency specialize in? I just want to get the download of where your core competencies were with the agency.

Our core competencies were working with service businesses and then over the last six years pivoting to home services. Over that time, we'd worked with a number of... In addition to the company I work for full-time now, Gordianc, a number of other HVAC, electrical and plumbing companies, some privately held, some franchised. It was just much more enjoyable for me to focus on one sector of business. You probably understand this well yourself. It's almost more challenging to market and promote a service business than it is to market a product business. For instance, We see, we install products, but we sell a service.

When it comes to the agency side, you come up with the creative. Because there's media buying, there's TV, radio, billboards There's Google optimization, there's lead aggregators. There's the branding on the side of the truck. There's endorsements. There's door-to-door teams. There's so much going on. Where did you find your sweet spot?

Our sweet spot was a brand-first approach where we're very conscious of not only the visual identity in the marketplace, but what was the story that we're inviting customers into? And how we then amplified that story into the marketplace. For instance, right now we're in northeast Ohio. We have two strong seasons, the hot season and the cold season. We have two shoulder seasons throughout the year, or essentially the four. But I had another client that was down in Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. So they have a market that's in rentals. They have one that's in the city. And the mix for each of these different markets has to be different. So our sweet spot was really understanding what strategy is necessary to communicate most effectively and use the marketing budget most effectively in in those marketplaces. So typically the approach was, and again, this is what we are well known for, is I call it the cord of three strands, where we have strong Google business profile optimization, strong website, and then at minimum one lead source. And when you have those three things as the foundation for your marketing, then you can build on that with other lead sources that are going to be most effective in your market, because not all markets are the same, and you have to continually be adapting.

I love it. I found that most companies are going to be one of three things is going to be their brand story. I'm the cheapest, most affordable is probably the worst one. We're the best. We offer trademark parts. We show up prepared. We honor our warranties. That's the trust of, You'll let me in your home, and you'll do the job right. You've got great technicians and you've got new trucks that are reliable and you'll honor your warranty work. The third one is, We'll be there lickety split. We'll be there. We'll come out at 11: 00 at night if we need to. We're seven days a week. We're going to show up holidays, nights, weekends. We come out right away. Other than that, there's a lot of things in between there. But Morris Jenkins in North Carolina does a great job. They offer till midnight, seven days a week. They got guys, that's how they run their schedules in three different layers. They picked up, they've been since the '50s, and they went on that. The other guys I know, from your experience, what are some of the things that could be the core message when you think about the story?

The one I'm going to go back to again and again is the one we use at Gordianc. We'll talk about rapid response service, but we don't want to be the one that someone calls at midnight. We're not the ones who go out at midnight. We do have extended hours. But we constantly talk about our mission is to make your home safe, comfortable, and healthy. And that ties right into the services we deliver, ties into how we deliver the service. And we don't want to compete on price because there's going to always be another company down the street. Instead of having the $119 tune up, it's going to have a $59 tune up, right? So We're leaning into value versus the lowest cost. We're leaning into what's going to let the homeowner know that we're a partner for them versus someone just coming in and being as efficient as we can to do a transaction.

I got an opportunity to meet Roy Williams, the Wizard of Ads, and studied, read his books. What I like about what he does is, his first commercial, I think he did was Rolex. It was this long one-minute thing about you've accomplished everything you want in life. You've made it. You're at the top of Mount Everest. The wind's at your back. You've made it. Rolex, you deserve it. It started to make Rolex into something like, when something goes well, I get married or I accomplish something in business or I have this, I finish a race or whatever it is, you deserve a Rolex. I like Rolex because it's so clean. There's all white It's not complicated. They've got the crown and the gold. I'm just thinking, you wrote the blue collar branding book. What advice would you give when someone needs to be thinking about how to establish themselves in a market with a lot of noise, more noise than we've ever had?

Yeah. Look at the competition. Pick your top three or five competitors that you feel are the ones that are the that you're competing against. And look at how... Let's just start with the trucks. Are there trucks completely wrapped? And if you want to differentiate, go in between. Don't just stick with a white truck, stick with one that's Got a very beautifully applied company name, the services you offer, phone number. It's not about being like everybody else. It's about differentiating yourself from everybody else. So again, that's always contextual to the marketplace. I travel enough around the country, I keep my eye open for what people are doing. We're driving, we see trucks on the road. I don't remember the name of it, but we were down in Florida somewhere, and their whole brand was around a Yardnome and a pink truck. Very memorable. But sometimes I just wonder, what do people think when they see that? Is it Is it professional or does it come off as too cartoony or caricaturish? So that differentiation that we need to do needs to align with the message that we want to project. Again, I think professionalism, respect for the customer, knowledge and expertise, those can be reflected in how things are designed and the way they look.

You remember the Maytag commercials where the guy's standing around, nothing was breaking. He didn't have work to do. When I designed what I wanted for A1, I just thought when I told Dan Antinelli with Kickcharge, I said, I want to have that old-fashioned feeling. The guy's coming out, he's clean, he's respectable, he's just going to do the job right, and he's going to fix it the right way, not the easy way. What I learned is telling stories about my mom and my grandma and how I was raised, I'm a Midwest guy, and they got to get to know me. They got to get to know who they're buying from. I try not to make very little of my ads on TV, radio, and billboards transactional. I'm wondering, from your perspective, how much should a company be spending on branding versus direct response?

Well, that's a great question because I don't know if there's a formula. So typically, when someone asks me that, I just say it depends. So you think about the customer journey. A lot of times marketers will talk about funnels, and it's not so much funnel anymore. It's more of a journey. And the customers are coming through that journey. And until they become familiar with you and until they know who you are and you've created some curiosity, they're not going to be able to take the next step and move through the middle of that journey. So you could say a third, a third, a third, a third branding at the top or at the beginning of the journey, which would include your trucks, which would include television, could it broadcast CTV, a third in the middle with display ads, just so that when they see your truck or when they've visited the website, they start to see more ads to continue to reinforce that familiarity. Retargeting. Retargeting. And then that bottom third, it may not even need to be a third, it may be a quarter of capturing that demand capture, but also where you You would have a short funnel to get them from Google to your landing page or to your call center.

So roughly a third, a third, a third. But I think it all depends on the type of It depends on your budget, and it depends on the size of your market. In Cleveland, we have half a market because six miles north of where we are is Lake Erie. So we don't have where the center of our office is. We can go east and west, slightly north and deep south, but we don't have the same overall market as a lot of companies do. So we are mixed Our mix tends to be, I would say, a third in brand building and awareness, and a third in the middle, which is really critical right now. We can talk about that in a second. And then a quarter to a third at the bottom or at the end of the journey. See, I still find myself talking about funnels versus journeys. The customer journey is more like a pinball on a table than it is a straight line because they see an ad or they hear a radio spot, and then they're going to soccer practice. And so they forget about you until they see it again or they hear something again.

So they're popping in and out of your ad ecosystem all the time.

What's a healthy amount to spend if you're growing as a percentage of revenue? I've heard 5% with established companies with a lot of service agreements. I spent 14%. I've seen people that are attacking, taking market share spending 20 %?

Wow. So typically 10 to 12 % if you're in startup or growth mode, 5% to 7 % if you're in sustained mode. 4 % might be a little low.

10 % or 5 % might be a little low, you said?

I'd say 4 percent's a little low. Yeah, 4 %. 5 to 7 % if you're in a sustaining mode. If you're really in a growth mode, 10 to 12 %. And that's based on feedback and conversations I have with other agency owners and then hearing and watching what other people are doing in the marketplace.

When Ken Goodrich, He spent the money, he went to Kick Charge, got the brand, he went to Roy Williams. One of my buddies, Gattle wasn't doing very well at the time. They had to do a complete turnaround. He told the stories about holding a flashlight for his dad, and it's been part of the community since 1940. They'd bring out the flashlight that they'd give to the customer. Dale, their top sales guy who worked there for a long time, said, Tommy, when we really be created the brand and people learned to trust us. They would welcome us in, and they were already buying from us. It was just a matter of what. We made it affordable for them with monthly, low monthly payments. The ticket went from 12,000 to 22,000 because people, they weren't competing. It was like they were calling us and we were their only phone call, the only clients. Then they opened the door and they'd have lunch waiting for us. They just loved us because they got to know us the radio. I think what they did is they identified their avatar, and then they literally didn't do a couple ads. They were every other ad on the radio stations they were on.

I think their goal was to hit 50% of the population at least five times. Meaning if they were young children, old people, if they owned an apartment, it didn't matter because they looked at those, they could be referrals or whatever. But they definitely spent the money, and I think they went hardcore. Then if you stopped doing that, it could go away pretty quickly. It's like it takes a couple of years to build the brand and it could go away in six months. You got to stay top of mind. I think that's why you were talking about awareness and making sure that you're not just lowering it too much. What's your thoughts on that?

Well, it's interesting because there's data behind that as well. I'm familiar with another company that was doing some TV spots. Again, awareness building, launching residential into a new market, combining that with some programmatic ads, which is, again, the middle of the customer journey. And what we saw, and they showed me in the data, was that when they stopped doing the broadcast, the conversions and opportunities from the middle of the funnel dropped dramatically. And unfortunately, combined with the changes Google made last year to keeping everybody on their website instead, It's really good. So that whole awareness building so that people remember you has to be constant. That's my opinion, and that's the way we operate. That's the way we operate at Gordianc, but that's been constant for everybody I've never worked with is, again, this idea that just keep in front of them so that you become familiar and eventually, in a sense, famous, but they remember you and then they recommend you.

I I have a mentor and a buddy named Cameron Harold, and he said what they did at 800 Got Chunk in this painting business he was involved in is when the guys have their two days off, they go park their trucks in a busy location like a Home Depot or a Costco or something well lit up right in the front, the first parking spot that everyone walks out and sees it. You want that right around your ideal client. In Phoenix, you probably want to go to Scottsdale. By By the way, Phoenix is a huge market. There's great markets everywhere. But it's something we haven't pulled off yet because you got to build systems around that. You're going to get some stuff stolen. You're going to get some flat tires and maybe a catalytic converter stolen. But he goes, It's worth it. He goes, It'll rarely happen because it's well lit up, and you got to work a deal out with the Uber to get the guys back home from there. Hopefully, it's close to their house and then back to the vehicle. But that's a simple way he calls it parketing. Park in the to get a lot of traffic.

That's clever. What do you think about that?

I think that's a great idea. Where I live, about two miles away are two of our technicians, and our technicians take the trucks home. One of them is on one of the most highly traveled streets in the next city over. And people are seeing our trucks, like tens of thousands of people a day just parked there when they're home at night. We We use that to our advantage, too. We use beacons in our trucks so that we're capturing attention and mobile data from clients that are potential customers in the areas we serve. So again, trucks are literally a rolling billboard. So that's why I think it's important not to have too much on the truck because you want it to be quickly readable and memorable. From the way it looks. I've seen your trucks, they do convey that. The red's great. I think not too long ago, you shared a photo of your truck in a parking lot and all the other vehicles were white. That was awesome. Yeah. And you stood out. It stood out because it was red.

Yeah, it super pops. I'm very proud of what we built, and I think Dan did a great job. He's got case studies all over the site that show booking rates go up, conversion rates go up, average tickets go up. I always say this on the podcast, but You might think 30, 40 grand, that's a lot of money. But you're betting the future of your family and all the people that work with you and the potential clients that are going to come through the door. It's like, to build a brand takes a few months to get it right. You got to do market analysis. You got to You got to get a trademark on it. You got to make sure that you got the copyrights. To do it comprehensively and do it right, you just don't want to go to Fiverr and just throw something together. Dan always makes a lot of it sales, service, and installation. Of course, you do all of that. Or you've got Yelp all over your stuff or the BBB. You're just making their brand bigger. It's like, you don't need everything you do on the side of the truck, and you don't need everything If you're A plus the BBB, they can look you up, but you want them to just remember you.

You want no distractions. You want them focused on your logo, your brand, what you do, and it's got to pop. Some people call themselves some crazy stuff, and I'm like, I like to have the name. We're A1 Garage door service. By the way, it's not the best name. A1 fell first in the phone book, but A1 means quality. A1 is like, Yeah, we're A1. We're top-notch. I got lucky that at least had a dual meeting because I was just trying to be number one in the phone book in 2006 and 2007. It's amazing how many people are like, How do you get so many great clients? I'm like, Will we market to our avatar? Now, most people We don't have a clue. We did a whole analysis of all of our top clients in our database. We were able to build an avatar. That took historical data. I know if you're just starting out, it's hard to figure that out.

Right. But you can make some, I don't want to say assumptions, but you can say this is the type of client we'd like to work for. And some of that is demographic data, how much their house is worth, what's their income. But some of it, I think, needs to be behavioral data. So for Gorgenk, we look at people who want to keep their family safe. So that's a security motivation. We want to work with families that want to nurture their family, keep them comfortable, and then protect the value of their home. So we're looking at those behavioral mindsets that they have that prompt them to make decisions the way they do. And And that gets baked into all of our messaging. And the tools that I use give me feedback on this. So I tend to be a little... Sometimes I tend to be a little less than optimistic, let's just say. And my tools will say, You're being too negative. Let's reframe this positive because that's what the prospective customer is going to want. They don't want you to lead with fear. They want you to lead with optimism.

Yeah, well, we've always hear fear uncertainty in Dow sells, but you got to be very careful when you're doing that. I think that's more when you're in the home, you could talk about air quality because it is a big issue. But I don't know if you want to lead. The magnet doesn't need to lead with that. One of the things I'll give you an example of an ad I've been talking about for a long time is, how do you create direct response with branding? The garage is the smile of your home. It's 268% return on investment. But most people don't know that all those nasty critters, the spiders and the mice and all the other bugs are coming through the bottom of the garage. If you got a bottom rubber that's not tightly sealed or over five years old, let us come on and take a peek. Let's keep those nasty critters out of your home because it's true, and it's the number one entryway. When it gets cold, they all come through the sides. It's the easiest entry. By the way, what's on the other side of the garage? The kitchen. That is probably leading with fear.

Is your door noisy? Something you don't you want to be stuck missing a day of work or missing your daughter's dance recital. But I do understand where you're coming from. What are your thoughts on that? Because those are going after a direct response. Those are like make a phone call now. I never thought about that. I should call them.

Yeah. Maybe it's the same thing, but it's typically posing a question. You posed a question, are there critters getting in into your garage door? We'll say, did you get a quote that just If it seemed a bit high? We'll give you a second opinion at no cost, no obligation. We'll take a look at the quote, measure the home, give them a cost that we think based on the size of the furnace they need. We'll talk about We talk about, are there contaminants in your water? We refer people to a website that has all the municipal water tests.

I got the site. We started selling water. Yeah. It's got the fluoride. Yeah. There's 10 things that are way over the health limits, sometimes 1,000, sometimes 10,000 X, sulfur and all kinds. When I saw that, literally, I'm like, so I tell clients, look, you might have an RL system, but you're not showering with this water, are you? Your kids aren't showering with this water. You're not cooking with this water, are you? I mean, yeah, that's a big deal.

Yeah. But you point out a problem and you agitate it a little bit, but then you present the solution and what life is going to be like when And then they buy your solution. So it leads in through the conversation naturally. But there are other times where you can say, You made this investment now. Now in, say, a new HVAC system, this membership is going to help you maintain that system so it stays running at peak efficiency. Because we lean into memberships as well. They're just a strong part of the business and keeps you in the customer's homes twice a year.

It's a good thing to sell memberships. What's the difference between a brand that looks good and one that actually drives revenue?

That's a good question. Brand that looks good and one that drives revenue. Well, I'll say a brand that looks... Well, is there an example of a brand that... You can think of a brand that looks good but may not drive revenue?

Yeah, I guess that question is, I'm writing a new book, and one of the major things we're looking at is, what do we want the person to feel like when they see the book? And so we're going to go really wide with the book instead of a normal book. There's a lot of things that go in just to the colors, but you could look like a great brand, but you're not sending the right signals, I guess. I guess you already went into that.

Yeah, well, let me think of it. Since you mentioned books, over the last 15 years at Aspire, we a lot of books for people. One of the books we designed was a hardcover, 142 pages, printed inside on a basement. The outside was black went in with a foil stamp title. It looked like it was an old book full of ancient wisdom. What's the book called? That book over time, it's called The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. And it's a book for creative services, basically anybody who's in an advisory type of role who wants to sell more business without having to do a pitch. And it had 12 principles in there. But if that book had been done as a paperback print on demand, it would not have carried the same weight from a branding perspective for the company that it was designed for as this one that when it shows up and you feel it, the only thing missing is that ancient wisdom smell. It's a gorgeous book, and it's just driven millions of dollars of revenue for that company.

Have you heard of Jeffrey Gittimer?

Oh, yeah, the little red book.

He sells a lot, but it's this really nice cover with this really nice, and it just smelt like the pages and their gold on the outside. It just feels like an expensive book.

Yeah, and it's got My copy has those rounded corners. Yeah. It's a beautiful book. We just designed other books, but I know as soon as you change... So when you talk about The design of the book actually helped create this company's brand, visual brands, because I did a monogram on the cover. They adopted that as their logo, and that's what just set them up for success since, I think it was 2010 when that book was published. So we're 15, 16 years in. Companies that invest in their visual identity and their brand are shown, and I don't have the data at hand, but the research has been done to show that drives revenue more than a company that's just winging it. Everything's Times New Roman on plain white paper. It's projecting an image about your company. Like you said about your logo, you wanted your visual brand to convey quality. The name says quality. You wanted to have that vintage feel to it, authenticity. Sometimes I see things that they look like modern, spacy, like Star Trek-y. And I'm a type designer as well. And looking at type and seeing something like a Home Service brand of any kind that has something that just looks still futuristic, it doesn't resonate.

It just doesn't fit. It's too slick.

Yeah. You know what's interesting is when I started with Al Levy, I had every color of the rainbow. He goes, No. He goes, And by the way, he took a picture of my truck and he brought it in black and white. And he shows, Show me what pops in your truck and your vans. He goes, They don't pop. He goes, You should be able to look at it in black and white, and it should pop out at you what you're trying to say. It was a good little litmus test, and I still think a lot of people are listening. I should think about the brand more, but we can't afford it. But what's your take on that, that people say, I can't afford to build the brand?

That everybody's building the brand for you, and then you're letting your... If you think you can't afford to build your own brand, That means you're allowing your clients or customers or the public to build it for you. So they're seeing whatever is available to them and forming an opinion about it. But if you decide to just invest in a professionally designed logo and then applying that logo to uniforms, to the trucks, to invoices, to every customer touch point where it's relevant, then you start to take control of that and you start to control the conversation a bit more. And you may never be able to completely control it, but at least you're informing and guiding it. But if you just rely on the perception that other people make about your brand without ever responding to that, then you're playing catch up. You don't know what other people are saying or thinking or the perception that they're carrying with them. So I just think it's a bad idea to give up on it and to say you can't afford to do it. Because what does it cost not to do it?

That's a great question. I think there's a lot of people. I was at this, it's at my buddy's house, and he's a flipper and a really big real estate agent. He had all these different trades there. And this electrician, he goes, The guy is doing really well. It's called Save on Electric Services. And he's like, I want you to do a little keynote speech 10 minutes. I said, I never want to be discussed. I didn't know the name of his brand until I saw later. I said, I I don't want to be known as discount garage doors because that's the client I'm going to attract and save on. I didn't realize this, but I used to do BNI, and I still, if I open up a new market, I will attend a BNI and get the word of mouth out there and get people talking about us. But if people are waiting for only networking, man, you're never going to get big. I could pay. I know exactly what it costs per lead. I know my exact booking my conversion rate, my average ticket. Therefore, I could pick the revenue I want. I just got to have great capacity planning and be able to have a flywheel for hiring and training.

If you rely only on referrals and you don't... He who could pay more per lead will always win. I feel like a lot of people are like, Man, I got more business than I could handle. I'm like, Then raise your prices. You got to have those key metrics down, those KPIs. How do you think about those things?

Yeah, no, I agree. We're constantly taking a look at what's the return on the ad spend, number of leads coming in. I think they call them opportunities, number of opportunities coming in, because at some point, there are always going to be an opportunity for someone to interact with that person who's calling or submitting a form on the website or starting to fill out the scheduler. If you're not using and looking at the data to drive your business decisions, you don't know where that money is going, and it could be wasted. For example, we use a platform called Searchlight.

Very familiar with Searchlight.

Yeah. So we use Searchlight for our revenue analytics. And once I started full-time in July of 2025, I started looking at all of that data really closely and realized that one of the aggregator platforms that the company had been subscribing to for a long time, produced very little revenue for the investment. And the quality of the leads that came in from it were not the greatest. So we just decided to reallocate, end that relationship and reallocate elsewhere. But if I hadn't been looking at the data, I would not have known that. Another example Well, as just last week, we did some analysis on, I mentioned earlier that in 2025, early 2025, Google made some changes to start keeping searchers on Google's website. You're probably familiar with zero search. So people search for a result.

Yeah, the AI snippet. We stay on Google.

Yeah, the Google business profile. And the realization we had was that that's changing the way Google is then using the websites that so many of us invest so much money in. So the role the website needs to change, the role of the Google business profile needs to change, especially with- LLMs. Ai searches, which get way more credit than they actually need right now because based on the research I'm seeing, there's not that much activity from them.

I agree with that. I think it's going to start changing, but that's where it comes really making sure you got the schema data. We're building another website for the AI agents to read, and we're doing Marcus Sheridan's whole playbook. We're comparing ourselves to other companies. We're comparing parts. We're winning awards. We're starting to feed the machine our background checks. We're given as much information as we possibly can because we know what's coming. We plan on winning that game in spades.

What about pricing? Are you going to be putting Are you putting the pricing on?

Yeah, we are. We built a price calculator. The pricing needs to be out there. That's one of the biggest things in endless customers is put the prices, but it doesn't mean we're giving all the price or exact pricing because we still need to get out there. It's like, I could give you the price of a transmission But your transmission might not be bad. We got to look at the other things going on. But we're being very transparent. We're trying to build... This is happening, whether we like it or not. I'm not a big fan, but I'm sold on it. I'm sold that this is what needs to happen for the new buyer persona.

Absolutely. And the companies that don't do that are going to get left behind. So you think about... That's just part of your brand, how you're showing up in the marketplace. We all have this dream that we're going to dominate our marketplaces, but in reality, there's going to be one or two that dominate. So I like to say that even if you're not the market leader, act like you're the market leader and do the things that market leaders do. And eventually, you become that leader.

What do you guys use as far as the call center? Do you use a Voke or a Lace or Broccoli or same day, there's a lot of different softwares.

We're using Lace for our call center, which everybody loves because of the feedback it gives, the coaching it gives. That's been three to six months that we've been using that, and it's actually dramatically improved our closing rate. So we've invested a lot in coaching, not only the call center, but our technicians, Rilla, actually dramatically improved our closing rate. We've invested a lot in coaching, not only the call center, but our technicians, Rilla, There's platforms like Rilla that do that. We're very much committed to that continuous learning and that coaching because if everybody improves 1% a day, then by the end of the year, by the end of the month, whatever, we can see a market improving movement.

I talk about feedback. You could take Rilla, you could take Lace, but you got to be able to have a feedback loop that's constant, and you got to have... You're just trying to make little tweaks. You're trying to get to make 1% better, like you said. I'm a big fan of Lace. We're on Lace. I love Boris. You know what I just started using that you'll get a kick out of is Mantel.

Maybe you're not familiar with it.

You got to check out. It's M-A-N-T-E-L. I can give you the information, but what it does is it allows the client to do their shopping when you're with them. Let's say the wife is at work, the husband's at work. It's on the technician's iPad. First thing it shows you is all the work we've done in your area. It zooms out a little bit if we haven't done a lot of work in that area, like a newer market. So you get the social proof. And it goes through the guy's a big fan of Robert Chedini and influence. So you're using all these influential things. And the average ticket has gone up $1,700, and the conversion rate has gone up 18%. And this is like a home run. And they build their pricing directly. And so it's a performance paid thing. You don't pay a monthly fee. It's based on what you sell, and it just builds it right into it. And the coolest thing is what you're going to love is it builds in the finance fee. So the dealer fee, and it's all transparent. It's not like you're tricking the clients. You could do a no-no plan all the way till 2029.

They like to work with companies that are 10 million or more because because it's a lot of work to get it all together. But I'm telling you, some of these companies, whether it's Real Acero, these different companies, we actually built our own because I wanted role play and scorecards built into it. We built one called Field Spark, and it's not quite where those other ones are at, but it will be because we're putting the money into it. I just love knowing on what's going on in the field. How is this guy selling so many memberships? How is this guy getting a review on every job? How is this guy selling our top product of springs? How is this getting at such high conversion rate and starting to work? When you could study these things and build a library and assign them to people, and then they get the aha moment. A lot of that goes into hiring winners that are competitive, that like to know the score. But Man, this is my jam. When I talk about conversion funnels, I am a CMO. I'm not a CEO. I'm not a good CEO. I'm more of a CMO.

I think there's three types of CEOs. One is a CFO that becomes a CEO. So the CFO, the financial guy. One of them is the operations guy. One of them is the marketing guy. I'm far more the marketing guy, a mix of operations, sales, culture. I'm not good. I mean, I could read a balance sheet, but not like my people on my FP&A team. I look at it, I'm like, explain this a little more. They're just like, well, it's right there. I'm like, okay, I know how to read it, but where are we missing? What's going on? I want to look more into why are the Why is labor so much higher in this market? We dig into it. Yeah, we're paying guys minimums in that market because it's new or this or that. We're flying guys in that market. What's interesting is, and it's probably a failure point of mind, is you would think I would try to get better at my weaknesses, but I'm here on the podcast with you talking about what I love. I want to take what I'm great at and make myself continuing to be the best and then higher for everything else.

That's what a great leader does, is understand what his or her strengths are and then complement those strengths with other people's strengths. Have you ever read the book, From Strength to Strength, by Arthur Seabrook?

No, but I'm going to write it down from strength to strength.

Yeah, it's really fascinating because... And I read it because I'm later in my career, it's going to be turning 65 this year. And what is fascinating about this book is how he studied how younger thinkers from up till about age 45 are more innovative. They're faster. Physically, we think faster, and that's their strength, but they call it fluid intelligence. But after that, we have crystallized intelligence, where we're taking all of our previous experiences and synthesizing them into new ways of thinking. It's coming to that realization that we don't have to be good at everything we do, but we have to recognize those strengths in other people and give them the opportunity. Delegate those responsibilities to them so that the so that not only can you thrive, so you're speaking of you, but also the organization thrives and prospers around you.

I'll tell you the best advice I have about Getting the Right People is an equity incentive program. When I learned that every public traded company and every private equity company and every VC uses equity as a resource to put golden handcuffs to attract the right talent and keep them, it changed everything for me. And by the way, it feels really good when the company does make a action. A lot of people that put in the effort, they feel like owners, they run like owners. Jack Trout wrote a book called A Stake in the Outcome. Man, if you look up KKR, something interesting that they do, it's called KKR. They did it with a bunch of companies. I'm trying to think of the name of it, but it's an equity program for everybody, like an ESOP, but much better positioned. Oh, man, I'll think of it here in a minute. But I'm going to read that book. It's killing me here. Okay. Ownershipworks. It's ownershipworks. Org. Ownershipworks. Org. There's a book called Story Brand, and it's a pretty good book. Then there's 2. 0. I haven't read the second version, but it's Creating a Story Brand.

What are your thoughts on that?

I was going to ask you what you thought about it because I'm story brand certified. I have been since 2017. And when it comes to creating a story that resonates with your customers, I have not found, or even helps motivate your team, I've not found a better model in the last 30 years. In fact, if you listen to Don's podcast recently, he's revised it with what he calls the Peace Framework. So it's a much simpler approach where you identify a problem, and it's easy for anybody in home services to identify a problem, and then empathize with the customer about that problem. Once they understand your empathy, share an answer with them about how you could solve the problem, what change is going to occur, and then what the end result is going to be. And you use those five steps to complete what we call the curiosity, enlightenment, commitment triangle. So you're getting them curious about why They should care. You're enlightening them. And then it's like a house. You take them up those five steps to the front porch. And then so it's like you got them to call you. Then you explain why this is going to help change their life in some way for the better, a transformation versus a transaction.

And then you call them to commitment. And that's where you get to enter the front door of the house and they buy from you. But I think it's a fantastic framework. Again, I'm in my ninth year. No, No, 10th year, 10th year now, ninth year. And over the last nine years, it's transformed the way I've done business. It's helped our business grow during COVID. We had the best years ever because Story brand led into getting some new clients. And it's been transformational in Gorzhenk's growth since we started implementing it with them in everything, from the website to emails to scripting. Just unreal how much revenue it's helped drive.

I became really good friends with Sebastian, and he talks about the company's story. Something I do during orientation is I say something really simple. Like, look, Mr. Jones, I got to tell you something. A1, this company has been with me in good and bad times. When we went through COVID, they were communicating with us daily. They take care of us. I could work anywhere I want in the country. I could work anywhere I want with garage doors. I'm certified. Sometimes I think I'm a certified badass. Excuse my French. But I'll tell you, I trust A1 for my family, and so does my wife, and so do my kids, and you should trust them, too. It's not a crazy story. You could actually bring in more of a story. Sometimes I say, Hey, tell a story about how I started. Tell a story about how my mom came in and worked. Tell a story about how I was in the truck. Then I'll call customers I serve myself to make it right, even though we service 25,000 clients a month. Tell them that we buy more garage doors than anybody on the planet, and we build a Frankenstein of a door.

We buy this part from this manufacturer. We're the only company I know in the garage industry that does it. If you get that story right, because they're buying from you, they got to know and like and trust you, but they also got to know and trust the company, and they need to feel loved. That's the empathy, and that's smiling when they tell something funny or having empathy when they say something not so about what broke. If you do that correctly, you're going to make a sale.

Interesting, though, but what if you entered that story, what if you only talked about your company, an authority, after saying to the customer, understanding you've got these broken springs, and I know that can be like, because if you get locked in your house, you can't get your car out, and it's an emergency, and then lead up to that We're A1, and my family trusts A1. That's why you should, too. And build the front of the story first where it's about the customer. Yeah, you can't use the company's story right when you walk in.

You got to identify the pain. We spend 30 minutes minimum getting another client. I would say, diagnose the person before the problem. The doctor walks in and he says, Let me look in your ears, your nose, your Let me have you cough a few times. He's going to ask you, he's going to say, Brian, what's the alcohol use? How much you're working out? What's your anxiety level? How's the family doing? Any cigarettes smoking? Any recreational drugs? Overall, what would you say? You got to get to know the people a little bit before you come with solutions and do the tests. If someone walks in and says, I've had guys that walk in, Oh, it's a broken spring. I got the stuff on the truck. How often do you use the door? Who sleeps upstairs? Did the opener make too much noise? Let's Let's go through and talk about everything. The guy's got a keggerator in the garage. I'm going to start talking about beer because I like beer. I want to find out. Then they start talking, you see them light up. You see the client light up or other times you say, How old's your dog?

They're like, Oh, That's my daughter's. He's a good dog. They don't light up. But they might have a Harley. You say, Have you ever been to Sturge's? They're like, Oh, man, last year we went to Sturge. They just started talking. Customers, if you find something in common, we started mind, and we're not quite there yet, but if they're military, pair them up with military. If they're someone that just had kids and we could get that over the phone, we pair them up with a tech that just had kids because you buy from people that are like you.

Sure. And you buy from people you like. Absolutely. So it's easier to have those conversations. Curious. What else do you do for your customers to ensure that they just have a memorable experience that they want to tell somebody else about?

Number one, the first experience is on the phone. We've got the Gina acronym, which is my mom's name. It's not just booking the call, but it's the way we book the call. We smile and we have empathy and we say, Oh, no. I'm so sorry you're stuck. You picked the right company. Listen, I'm going to send out our best technician. I'm going to tell you a little bit about him and his family. He's such a great dad, and he's been a player here at A1, one of the top-notch players for seven years. You got to book the call right. The next thing is the profile through Service Titan. It's got to have a picture of the family, why you love fixing garage doors. We're working on a really, really... We're actually using ChatGPT right now because everyone's got a good one, but I wanted a little bit more systematized. You'll answer a bunch of questions, and then it'll spit out the stuff we want and putting pictures in there. Then the next thing is we always offer coffee. Hey, listen, I'm stopping at Starbucks. What could I grab you? If you come to my house, my fiancé is going to cook for you.

Reciprocity. The next thing we do is we in a visible spot. We always have our tools with us, and we knock the door. We never ring the doorbell. Strangers ring the doorbell. Then we smile. We got to play with the dog. Playing with the dog is a big deal. Playing with the dog is important to me. Just those little things. If they know you love their dog, they're going to buy it from you. The dog's got the 6 cents. One of the things I learned also from Robert Cittini as we're working on is, listen, we'd like to give you something. You're a great client. You could pick Deco hardware kit or pick this garage door armor. We want to give you something as a gift today. Then they walk out to their truck and they say, Listen, you know what? You're a really amazing client, Brian. We're just going to give you both. What we decided as a company, I called my manager, You're amazing. We're just going to give you both. Those little things really stand out. Then I'm buying compressors because we're in your garage. I want to be able to make sure your tires have the right PSI.

I'm just making sure I don't have any liability of somebody like, so me and my lawyers are working through that. If we could, we'll take out the garbage. I had a guy pick weeds the other day. We helped put a Christmas tree back up. One thing above and beyond outside the scope, and my technicians aren't allowed to sell doors. They're allowed to turn it over to a product specialist that's on the phone. I got 20 of them sitting in front of three computers. What's in stock? We could build the door on your home. We could tell you all the promotions we got going on. We're going to offer you a door almost on every single job. We're going to say, Listen, have you ever thought about a new door? Are you happy with this door? Because quite frankly, I don't feel comfortable. My job is to offer you everything, Brian. I don't care your color. I don't care your age. I don't care if you're male or female. I don't care if you're in a low-income house. I'm going to offer you everything and let you decide. If you say, Tommy, that's more than I wanted to spend, no problem, Brian.

Let's just pick another option. There's some examples of what we do.

Yeah. No, that's great. I'm going to make sure our leadership team listens to this section in particular. There's just a few things in there that I thought were really good, especially just that personal connection. Because you've probably found this, too, and I know you hire for that, but the technicians not wanting to feel like they're salespeople or the service professionals. They're uncomfortable with that selling. So we're really working hard to make make sure that that experience is not just about walking in doing the service, but also looking for opportunities. And we've equipped them with a simple sheet that has some accessories that can make the air cleaner, the water healthier, surge protectors, things like that, just to make the home safer and to lower that feeling that they have to sell, but also to give them opportunities to make more money.

Yeah, they're always frustrated. The problem is If you were to close your eyes, and I have the guys do this in orientation, I want you to really think about sales, and I want to write down what you think, and it's never positive. A lot of that came from the Great Depression and thinking about money and we're eating like rich people at Thanksgiving. But Daniel Pink wrote a book, To Sell as Human. Joe Crissara, we just talked about buying this book. We buy this book for We buy a go for no for every technician that goes through training. The book's called Go For No. I'm going to start buying them, What Should We Do? By Joe Crisara. But what I like to tell people is, I don't need you to be good as sales. I want you to be a good human being. I want you to smile. I want you to be quiet after you ask a question. If they offer you ICT, I want you to take it. I want you to be on one knee when you're presenting because that's just respect. You don't need to be great as sales, but if I teach you these skills, you're going to be better in your home You're going to have more success.

You're going to have more friends, more deep relationships. This isn't just about garage doors. This is about changing your life.

Absolutely. Again, I'm relatively new to being familiar with how you think about your team, but that's one thing that's really impressed me. It's not just about the performance in the field. It's about their performance in life and how they care for their family and how they grow and mature, too. Because I'm sure you've got seasoned professionals who've been with you a long time, but there's always a lot of new employees coming in, depending on the markets you're in and the markets you're opening.

That's why I got a personal brand, is because a lot of the people, 62 guys just graduated, and most of them were there because they follow me and they wanted to work under... I'm not cocky about it. I mean, I got a lot of humility, but look, I do care. We've got a dream manager. We're getting a second one towards the end of this year. We want to teach you how to have money going to your account and then have it go into other accounts. One's a vacation account, one's a future self, your retirement. One is a vacation house, and we'll get split it up however you want. It helps create discipline. We're getting a full-time agency to help fix credit. I want to know what your dreams are. I want to know what your goals are, and I want to help you accomplish those. If you're not happy with the way you look or your weight or your teeth, let's talk about what we could do to get that remedied as quick as possible. The dream manager helps the whole family move in the same direction.

Is that through the book dream manager?

Yeah, so they're certified through that. But, Brian, let's wrap this up here. How do we get a hold of you if someone wants to reach out?

The best way is through my Gorjanke email. It's brian. Soy, S-O-O-Y@gorjanke. Com, G-O-R-J-A-N-C. Com. At nucleotomy. Com or on LinkedIn. That's always another good place. I'm pretty active there.

Then, obviously, we talked about a lot of books. Is there any books that you think the audience should take a look at that will change their outlook?

Well, in the home service space, if I may, I'd love for them to take a look at Blue Collar Branding. I just got a fantastic feedback from one of our partners on LinkedIn about it. He called me last week and he had just received He said he had just gotten home from an event and he was spending more time with the book than with his family. He got in a little bit of trouble with that. And he said, I've got a lot of buddies who've written books like this for the market, and you're the first one I've ever called to tell them how great the book is. In the space, even though it's more for advisors, this idea of winning without pitching and just talking about the value of your business is So that win without pitching manifesto, I think is really helpful. And Story Brand 2. 0, you mentioned that. It's listening to the Story Brand podcast with Donald Miller. You can pick up so much about how to market your business more effectively just by listening to that podcast. But Story Brand 2. 0 is fantastic. And I know Don has been simplifying the framework more and more.

And then when it comes to leadership, you're talking about Dream Manager. The Story Brand and the... How do they call it? Their coaching division, they've got some tools for helping people create their life plan. Those things. There's just a lot. I tend to read a lot to try to absorb a lot. Do you- If you're a home... Sorry.

If you're a home?

Yeah, if you're a home service business, as owner or operator, you've got a team. One book I'd really recommend is called Business Made Simple. This book has everything I wish I would have read 30 years ago and known about, like how to teach employees that they're actually revenue generators and not expenses, how they should show up. It's just a fantastic book about what a value-driven professional should be like. And if If we're thinking of everybody in our office and everybody in the field as professionals, then it's just a common way for everybody to think and to teach to.

I love it. So much good information. I'll let you close this out, though, brother, man. Anything you want.

One of the things I had to really think deeply about as I transitioned from... We still have the agency, it's in quiet mode, so I am an owner. But coming out of ownership after 30 years into a business, I had to think about this idea that ownership can be in the business, but ownership is a mindset. And for anybody who's on a team to show up every day with this idea that ownership is a mindset and that you have a set of responsibilities, you have a role, you have things you're accountable for, just have that ownership mindset and then just take it and run with it. That's what I would leave everybody with is no matter where you are in an organization, you lead from where you're at and you own what you're responsible for.

I love it. Brian, I really enjoyed this and I'm looking forward to seeing you here in the near future.

Yeah. Thanks, Tommy. We'll see what we can do about getting out there to visit you guys. I love it. We'd love to see your operation.

Yeah, anytime. We'll set it up with Ashley, and I appreciate you. Have a great weekend and talk soon. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game-changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high-performing team like over here at A1 GarageDra Service. If you want to learn the secret to help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin. Com/podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening, and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.