Transcript:
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Service Legends podcast. Today is a very special day because we’re going to do live Q&A today. You know, I think we’re on like episode 15 or something like that right now and or 1415. And so I thought it’d be kind of fun to kind of pause, take a moment as as we’re building as we’re building the podcast, maybe just to stop, take a moment and get some questions from you guys. From sales, marketing, operations, there’s hiring, whatever it is, branding and that we could just have an opportunity to kind of like have a conversation about all of it as, as we’re scaling the podcast and, and the Facebook group. So if you could please, as you’re joining in, if you could drop in the comments, hashtag live. It always gives me a good understanding of who’s tuning in live. Is this the best time to tune in to get access to your guys attention? Because obviously everyone’s got attention deficit disorder, right? We’re always doing something. Running our companies, running meetings on a bid, whatever it is, right on a job interview. So cool. What’s going on, guys? So as you’re tuning in, you type in the comments, hashtag live. If you happen to be catching this on the replay, you can type in hashtag replay as well. That way I can understand that as well. Also, as you’re joining in here, start to think about kind of the questions that you want to ask.
Again, it can be in regards to sales marketing. We can even dip into operations today, hiring, branding. We can get into policies and systems, whether it’s inventory or different things like that. I had somebody asked me yesterday about inventory systems and how to manage inventory better and things like that. And I, you know, I am not the master operations person, I’m not the master of everything. But I’ve got a decent understanding of, of, of, of these things. Now, after running Cardinal and things like that and after working with all of these companies, hundreds of companies across the country now. So as you’re joining in, I see there’s a couple of you guys here. Let me go over and check the group. What’s going on? Brian Will, good to see you guys. Okay. We have. A question. Okay. Let’s start it out again as you’re joining in. Just make sure you post in comments your question so we can keep this thing rocking and rolling and will Renfroe. His question is, what did you do before marketing and epoxy domination? Okay, so great question. So I used to be a sales and marketing kind of manager at a multiple seven figure painting company, and then they started concrete coatings as well. When I first got to the company, they had like maybe 25 or 30 painters, so they were doing pretty well. They had been in business like 40 years.
And then when I first got there, they met. I think they had like maybe two weeks out with their first crew of coatings. So they had one crew just started the crew. They were doing well and they had plenty of leads, things like that, but they had just like one crew and they were maybe two, three weeks out, something like that. When I left that company, they were starting their fourth crew and I was able to be a big part of that. So I was a sales and marketing manager for a seven figure painting company in a in a coding company. And then also so I mean, I sold in the home, I sold cabinets in the home, I sold resin paints. I sold epoxy floors in the in the home. Well, it wasn’t epoxy, it was poly and poly Spartak. We did I mean, everything I ran home shows. There’s actually a photo out there online of me with I just have a big beard and I ran the home show, things like that. So I’ve got decent experience there. Before that I was actually a commercial estimator, so I used to do take offs for big projects for Amazon and you know, a UPS, FedEx, all these all these massive companies have massive warehouses. Right. And the company I worked for, we would do sealed concrete, we would do epoxy, we would do, you know, urethane cement, things like that, commercially.
Right. And and industrial and everything was bid to owner or sorry was bid to GC. So it was all architects bidding these things or expecting these things and us bidding them and hopefully we get a win, a project, things like that. And I was stuck in an office like Forever and I didn’t like that, but I got to learn a lot of the technical sides of the company, of our of our industry, about the products, about the sheets to sheets, how the equipment works. I learned a lot about labor and capacity optimization because when you’re bidding a project where it’s 700,000 or 400,000 or even 100,000, you better know your numbers and you better know how many labor hours it’s going to take to do that job and account for overage of labor. And there was a lot of public works jobs. So these guys are getting paid 50, 60, $70 an hour to do this this work. So, yeah, I was I was sales and marketing manager for a residential painting and concrete coating company. And then before that, I was a commercial estimator for a large coding company. And then before that I was just in sales and marketing my whole life, you know, I mean, I’ve sold cars, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve sold merchant services, I’ve done marketing for a lot of these companies. And so I’ve really been in sales and marketing my whole life. And yeah, so that’s kind of hopefully that helps you out.
Will And is a good answer for you. What’s going on? Danny Danny’s life. So as you’re joining guys today, we’re doing a live Q&A. I just got asked what I did before I got into the marketing and epoxy business. So if you have any questions specifically, let’s throw them out there. And then, Danny, if you have a question to man, I’d love to. I’d like to see what questions you have. Let’s see here. Okay. We got them coming in. Brad. What’s up, Brad? That’s the man right there. So he said, do you see any benefit in some sort of official peer advisor board comp? A comprised of other professionals. Yeah. I mean so I think any sort of mastermind or any sort of time spent with others that are where you want to be, whether that’s in church, right? So if you’re in Bible study or if you want to be a better man and you want to be more faithful and you want to be, you know, not being able to your wife, but just faithful just in general to your goals, things like this, faithful to the Lord. Or if you if you want to be better at working out whatever those kind of aspirations are in life or what you’re doing, I believe you’ve got to be around people that are doing the same thing or at least have the same goals as you.
You know, they’re headed in the same direction, but also in that group, there should be people that are way further along than you, you know. So I think there’s massive benefit of an official peer kind of board. You know, I also kind of have another thought to. So I also feel like sometimes these should not be free. So sometimes I believe that the, you know, the free advisory board is one thing. But when you take out your your your wallet, your credit card, and you pay $1,000 a month or $500 a month, whatever it is to be a part of a mastermind. I think there’s another level of accountability there, another level of commitment that you’re going to be making because you’re you’re paying for it. And so I think there’s a lot of value in paid masterminds as well that are a little bit more structured because you can have more staff, more software, more value, whereas the kind of the free version or like the peer advisory board version, I think it’s going be great either way, but I think you might have people that are going to reschedule more often or they might not show up as often or. It might not be as structured, things like that. And so I’ve I’m I’m a part of many different coaching programs. I have a I have an agency coach, I have a home service coach right now. I’ve got a personal trainer.
You know, I hired a golf coach. And these are these are simply because, you know, I want to be better at these areas of my life. You know, we’re going to church. You know, we’re having those family meetings. You know, we’re going to Bible study, my wife and I. And because I want to be a better man, I want to be a better husband, I want to be a better version of myself. And so I think, again, to kind of give you a long winded answer here, I think any time you’re around people that are headed in the same direction as you and that are, and then also in that group, there’s people that are way further along than you, whether it’s financially, you know, maturity, whatever it is. Massive growth, massive, massive power in that. It’s a great, fantastic question, man. I love the concept of mentorship and just being held accountable and kind of getting pushed there. We got some more lives here. What’s going on, guys? If you guys are joining in here, we’re doing a live Q&A today. So if you could post in your comments and post some questions, some thoughts and let’s get some conversation started here. We got a question here, says, what do you know about the concrete coding industry growing man? This industry is booming. Let me just tell you. And it’s been booming for like the past five years. I mean, literally, I got a funny comment that stopped me in my tracks.
Oh, is Danny okay? This industry is booming, guys. So, I mean, I got into it about five years ago, and back then it was still booming, you know? I mean, it was it was I mean, so it’s so it’s absolutely incredible. You’ve got installers starting their own companies. You’ve got private equity firms buying companies in our industry. Now you’ve got you’ve got painting companies and garage door companies and like different trades, starting concrete coding divisions. So that’s a big deal. You’ve got, you’ve got kind of like coaching programs being developed, you’ve got masterminds being developed, you’ve got associations going to be developed. So the coding industry is super small right now. There’s no association, there’s no standards of how things should be done. And like they’re just so like for any industry to grow, there has to be competition, of course, which is, you know, just starting, but there has to be standards too. So we can charge more money by having better standards and better products and all these different things. Right now in the coding industry, if you want to go get some systems or if you want to go get your knowledge, you’ve got to go to a distributor or a franchise or a dealer network. So you can’t like go just buy this information like so for example, if my buddy Tommy Melo, he has a program called Home Service Freedom and he has a garage, a company that will do over $200 million a year.
Well, you can go to vertical track next month, by the way. Shameless plug. If you want to go to vertical track and be around seven, eight and nine figure companies and watch them speak, do a shop tour of Tommy’s office and everything is shop. If you come next, next month, I’ll give you an amazing, amazing discount to come so you can just send me a message on Facebook or something like that. But if you go look at what they’ve done, they have a successful garage door company and they’re literally helping people for free, just, you know. Well, there’s a level of that’s free. There’s there’s a paid versions as well. But like, they’re they’re letting you come just look at their shop. You know, you can go to Tommy’s podcast and he’s sharing everything that you have to know about their finances and systems and training and the coding industry. Again, you have to go pay for that at a different level. And it’s kind of like this like secret like thing versus other industries where there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s associations, there’s expos and things like that. So I think it’s growing. I think there’s going be a lot more coaching programs started, mastermind started standards, things like that. So it’s growing right now massively. I mean, think about Cardinal, right? I mean, our first year in business, we did 1.5.
But, you know. I mean, there’s there’s just so much opportunity, so hopefully it helps you out. Danny he says, How did you find such a smart, handsome and amazing account executive for service legend? In other words, what is the best method for finding quality employees? I love that, Danny. Okay, so if you guys don’t know who Danny is, Danny is our is our account executive. He does all of our sales for service legends. So if you want to hire service legend for websites, SEO, Google ads, tik-tok ads, Facebook ads, things like that, you, you most likely will speak to Danny and he’ll help you through the process and learn more about you, your business, your goals, things like that. And so he’s he’s being silly here. But, you know, if you’re looking for great employees, I mean, you know, Danny’s been here for like two and a half years and I think. I think what’s important here when it comes to finding quality employees is first looking at how your actual company is running. So what is your systems look like? What is your culture look like? Do you have training in place? Do you have branding in place? Do you have a, you know, an office that, you know, human beings want to come be at? Like they want to come work there with you. They want to feel passionate and fulfilled. Do they feel like there’s, you know, upward mobility? Right.
Like, are we teaching them things? Are they going to be able to be a leader one day and be able to manage a team one day? Are they going to be able to do what they want to do? Are they going to save the money they want to save, buy a home one day, whatever it is that they want to do? Like are we fostering an environment where that’s possible? Because if it’s not possible, then why work here, right? You’re going to find people that are a little bit more unmotivated, that aren’t looking to really grow their life. Right. You’re going to find people that are cool with kind of just staying the same, right? If your company is not really providing an environment like that, whereas, you know, you go work for ghetto or a one garage and man, they got everything. They got friggin they’ve got benefits for one K, they’ve got profit sharing. They’ve got the ability to make the money they want to make. Right? There’s there’s upward mobility. There’s training in place, there’s leadership in place. There’s all these systems in place. There’s amazing branding. So you’re you’re you feel happy to work for that company. You feel fulfilled working for that company. And so as a smaller company, right, doing a couple of million a year versus 200, they’ve got a lot more resources. Right. And they have way more years under their belt. And some of us that have been in business, one, two, three, four, five years.
So we have a lot of work to do to make sure that there’s an environment where employees actually want to be with us. So I think that’s where we start with things when we think about quality employees. And then the next thing is like, what does our hiring process look like? Do we have qualifying in process or in place? Do we have, you know, multiple people that are going to perform an interview and see things from a different angle? Are we going to have follow up in place? Are we going to call referrals and different things like that? So I think it’s kind of twofold, Danny. I think it’s like before the employee actually gets there, like what does our company look like? And then as we interview people, how do we do that, right? And then when they get in the door, what do we do then? Like, what does our onboarding look like? What does our training look like? What is our ongoing training look like? Are we running one on one weekly? Are we doing quarterly reviews with our employees weekly or sorry, a quarterly. Right. So you got to think about what you’re doing before you interview somebody, how you interview them, what’s your process like and then what is like their their experience look like long term. So that’s kind of how I would look at that.
Man, how are you finding really, really good employees, but also just be a good, good boss, right? Have fun. You know, work is work, but we can have fun too and still get the job done. So I think those are just some things, some things that I’ve learned in some things to take into account. So Brad says if we were to launch a new location and another metro area, should we have two websites or one website that highlights two metro areas that are two and a half hours apart? Man, that’s a fantastic question. So it really depends. I mean, so I think I think either way is actually fine. You know, the reason why I think that is because they’ve both been proven to work fine and be successful and the companies are profitable and big and things like that. So, you know, I think at this point this would be my opinion here and. Someone else might have different opinion, but I would prefer to have the one website and let me kind of show you. What I mean? In one second. I’m sharing my screen here. You guys should see that. Let me get you guys a better view there. There you go. Okay. So what we’re looking at here, guys, is a one and I show a one just because they have a good example here. A one is now they’re not franchise. So I would say if there’s a franchise kind of model bred or if you have like a yeah, I would say, you know, if it’s going to be franchised or you’re going to have like GM’s that have like equity, you could potentially separate them.
But if it’s going to be like, you know, cardinal concrete coatings, that’s who we are. But we’re going to have cardinal concrete coatings of Utah and cardinal concrete coatings of this site or this city or whatever. I would I would do stuff like this. So you have a garage door service and then you have locations in here. So you have all these locations and they’re everywhere. Now, again, they’re not franchised. So A1 owns all of these all of these locations and they do all of the scheduling, the the finance, the R, the billing and things like that from Phoenix. Right. And but they’re in like 30 different markets. And so in those markets, they’re doing they’re, you know, they’ve got shops, right. Or satellite offices or whatever. And in those in those areas, you know, we’re doing sales or doing the work, doing some project management, but that’s it. So it’s kind of more that like that model. Then what you want to have is you want to have this main page, but then you want to have all of these other pages. Like this. So in Michigan, right. They have all these all these city pages written out. So like, for example, this is a city new Baltimore in Michigan, but under a one, you have a content page written out here like this, you know, even in Arizona, like Phoenix, we’ve got Flagstaff up north and it even snows up there like it’s a totally different vibe up there.
But he’s got the same website if you scroll down here. Our Flagstaff set. Flagstaff. So Flagstaff is about. 2 hours or so away, something like that. So same. Same situation here. A-1 garage door headquartered in Phoenix. And they have a Flagstaff City page here. So I would say you’d be fine with just this. But again, it all depends on all the details, and it kind of depends on, I guess, preference. I think it’d be easier to just kind of do it under one website, one brand, and just kind of running those different locations. But again, kind of depends on how you’re how you’re wanting to set things up. So hopefully that helps out, man. Okay. So we still got some time here, guys. Would love to answer some more questions here and just kind of have some conversations. If you have a question, pop in the comments, let me know what question you have. And again, it can be around sales, marketing. We can do operations today, we can do hiring, we can do branding. We’ve already talked about kind of finding quality employees. We’ve talked about if we start a company in different locations, we’ve talked about some sort of like board that meets monthly and how does that work.
I even shared some insights of what I did before I got into the, the, the marketing and the coding business. So. Let’s see. I think we have another one here. Best way to get a commercial job or break into the commercial market. And let me see who that was, because it’s not a. Oh, that’s Creighton. What’s up, Creighton? So actually I was a commercial estimate estimator. So now. So. I guess when I started there, we were already in in the market because the owner of that company already had massive, massive connections with GSEs, architects, construction management companies and things like that. And what I had to do was go establish relationships with project managers of the GCS. So what you ideally want to do here, if you want to do it right, like big commercial, like not like big commercial, but like just do commercial the way that commercial should work. There’s going to be two different ways of commercial here. You’ve got bid to owner right companies that you might have like a local restaurant that just literally calls you, Hey, this is Ryan’s restaurant company. We’d love for you to do my my kitchen floor or what up for you to repaint my my restaurant. And there’s not an architect involved. There’s not a GC involved. Like you’re literally just dealing with that customer, which it’s super similar to residential, right? Like you’re just like you’re just, you’re marketing, you’re doing SEO or Google ads.
People find you online and then you get to kind of like do business with them directly, most commercial and like kind of like the reoccurring commercial that you can get access to. It’s all done through GCS, right? And so there’s a lot of online sites and a lot of online sites that you can actually bid these projects. And they’re all online. You know, there’s schools, there’s public works projects, there’s new buildings going up, you name it. And so this is like the like the long term version, too, because you have to go in, establish relationships with these project managers, with the GCS themselves. If it’s a smaller kind of a D.C. company, you can potentially even start to talk to the architects that are speaking these jobs on these on these on these plans, because the coding is usually done on the finish on the finish schedule there. So that’s how I did it. I literally just walked into all these offices, handed out my card, asked questions. I just asked them like, can I get on your on your bid list? Like, you know, my company called Level ten epoxy or my company is called Cardinal Concrete Coatings. Here’s kind of who we are. Here’s what we do. I’d love an opportunity to bid some of these projects that that you guys are putting online. And they might even tell you how to how to do it online, though, like, hey, you know, just go online.
But the more that you build that relationship with them, what you want to ultimately get to is you want us to have them start emailing you the job. So that’s what I used to have happen all the time. Hey, Ryan, I’ve got this job. It’s a new restaurant that’s being built. I’d love to get a bid on polished concrete for the floor, and I’d love to get a bid for sealed concrete on the patio. And they would email me that stuff, right? And I’m like, Boom, this is great. But that same project was on the online bid sites, right? But they knew that I that we did really good work. And so they would kind of reach out to me and let me know because they wanted a good bid for me. So if you can get to that point, that’s that’s that’s ultimately where you really start to build your relationship in your, in your in your and your reputation on, in your in your community with that that world because because it is a different world. So also, you can you can do marketing. So I mean, you can do like email marketing. So you can like if you had a list of all the GSEs, all the real estate agents, the builders, the architects, you name it. Right? And let’s say you had a list of like 5000 people or 2000 people.
You start emailing them like on a weekly basis, just friendly, no friction. We’re just, you know, and you’re you’re literally just email marketing to them. So that’s kind of they’re also a lot of the bid to owner. And if there’s a project manager at a firm that’s looking to find more contractors, things like that, they might just go to Google and be like, hey, you know, concrete coding company Phoenix, right? Or they might type in commercial concrete coding company Phoenix. And what you want to happen, have happen. Let me show you guys. So someone types in here. You might have literally you might have someone that is maybe the owner of the restaurant or a project manager of a GC firm, whatever it is. So commercial coatings I can type in like commercial. Concrete coatings. Right. So you’ve got these companies right here. Gas painting and coatings. Commercial coating contractor Look at us, Cardinal. We are in the map pack number one for that, that keyword. Let’s see where we are organically or we’re coming up organically. Number two here and this is for commercial coatings. And I have a I figured this is called but I have this. Well, they’re basically give me two, two listings here, which is fantastic. This I think it goes to the homepage. And then they gave us our. Our Pillar page are our commercial coatings page up as well.
So you go in here and we have all that right there as well. Right? So people will do this as well. So you can rank organically. So you do your SEO, you can rank organically for commercial work. You can do Google ads for commercial work. Your cost per leads is going to be way higher because there’s not as many people searching for that. Right. So you’re going to be spending Google ad money. There’s going to be some clicks in there potentially, but it won’t be as fruitful as your everyday residential job. So that’s kind of how I’ve been successful at commercial. We do quite a bit of commercial now. We’ve got some some great relationships with some GSEs. And then we do our I’ve been doing organic SEO for like two years now. Well. Yeah. Over two years now for Cardinals. So we’re really starting to rank really, really, really well after all this time. So hopefully that helps. Man And then I know you had another question here said, I’m going to skip you, Danny, real quick. Crayton said how to scale a coatings company to sell it. It’s phenomenal question. So. I’m actually working on some things right now. I can’t share too much, but I’m actually working on some things right now to, you know, potentially, how do I say this? Start doing some of that, potentially maybe acquiring companies, things like that. And what you what any business needs to have in place to get purchased is it’s got to be you want to have your operations in place, right? So you want to have like your systems, your policies, the documented kind of versions of those you want to have training in place for every single role.
That way you’re not the business. The business is its own separate entity. Right? So the team is doing their, you know, their task. You know, there’s there’s there’s accountability there. Without you necessarily being there. So you wouldn’t have your operations out in your training, out in your policies, documented and dialed in. You want to have your financials really clean. So even if you’re not incredibly profitable, right, let’s say you’re running a 10% net or something like that. Most companies are going to want to see probably a 15 to 22% net, something like that. However, if it’s a PE company or something like that, but you know, let’s say you’re running like a five, 10% net, you’re growing or you just started out or whatever it is, at least have your financials clean, make sure that everything’s categorized properly. And again, I’m not a financial accounting like that, but make sure that you know that you’ve got everything categorized properly. Make sure that that when they’re CFO looks at your your books, they’re not like, What is this man? I can’t even understand this. Like, you want them to be able to be like, okay, you know, here’s this, pal.
Here’s his balance sheet. Everything’s clean. It’s not where, it’s not perfect. But again, as you get purchased, that that company is going to help make all those things better. But you want to have those things in place to make it very attractive for someone to come in and drop some cash. So Danny is door to door sales for garage floor coatings and effective strategies? That’s a great question, man. So I haven’t done door to door necessarily like straight up door to door. I haven’t like what I mean by that is, you know, like we’re not canvassing neighborhoods. However, you know, I’ve got some friends that are doing it and you know, and they’re very successful at it. But for me, I would say it is an effective strategy, but it should not be your only strategy, right? So if you’re starting out and you’re like, I’m going to I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to grow my company. I’m going to get all the business from, you know, canvassing well, that works decent in pest control and solar, maybe security, things like that. But still, it takes a lot of time to build up that monthly recurring revenue, which is what those companies sell a lot of times outside of solar. But it takes a lot of time. There’s a deep system for it, right? It’s like it’s you know, you’ve got it’s just a whole other kind of form of marketing.
I think a better form of marketing for door to door is so after every project. So let’s say you’re doing a project on a, on any given street. You’ve got your rap trailer there. You’ve got a rap truck. Hopefully there. You’ve got your yard sign out front. And I would send either one of the installers during lunch or whatever, pay them a conversion fee or send out a canvasser. Right. That’s that’s available. But I would I would I would grab your I would grab your your brochure like this or something like that. Or if you had a flyer and I would walk up to the door and say, Hey, this is Ryan with Cardinal Concrete Coatings. We’re actually doing a project over there for the Nigerian family and we’re actually doing their garage floor. And I just simply wanted to drop this brochure off to you. And if you ever wanted a bid or if you if you want to check out their their project, we transform ugly concrete and make it beautiful. And if you wanted to quote or just want to check it out right over here and 20 to hand you this, you know, have a great day, something like that. There’s probably a lot better methods. Again, I don’t I don’t do door to door. But even that right there because I’ve done that and it works really, really well. But the leverage there is that you have a job going on in their neighborhood.
Right. And you call up the neighbor by their last name. So you’re like, hey, you know, we’re doing the Davis family right over there. It’s about 15 doors down. If you ever thought about getting a garage floor done, would love for you to come check it out. And you know, we have a good promo going on this month. If you want to quote, we’d love to give it to you. And you could probably hit ten doors and get a couple of quotes out of it. So you got to figure out what your percentage there is of like how many doors you knock around the project and how many quotes you get from those doors knocked and how many sales you get. And then kind of what the commission and the labor and the time there that would go into it. So I think it is, Danny, an effective strategy. I think it’s a better strategy when you’re you’ve got a project going on in that neighborhood. That’s my opinion on that. Well, this has been fantastic, man. We’ve got some phenomenal questions coming in. If if you’re on the replay and you didn’t get your questions answered. In live time. It’s okay. Just go to the bottom. Type in a comment, type in your question. And then I’ll come back in there and answer it either either with words or a video or something like that in the in the comments.
But if you’re here live and you’ve got some questions, go ahead in the comments. What we’re doing today, guys, is a live Q&A. So if you have questions around sales, marketing, operations, whatever it may be, post it in comment so I can answer it right here and we can kind of have a conversation about it. And also to like, if you like, this kind of format of just kind of pop it on and maybe I can get some guests to to pop on for live Q&A, maybe can get Tommy in here or maybe I can get Brad up here, maybe I can get Jason Perez. We can get different people to just kind of do live Q&A. I think that that’d be really fun and beneficial and just another way of just having conversations, because the funny thing is, is what we’re doing right now is if you come to vertical track next month or if you go to the PCA Expo next next year, these are the things that we’ll be talking about anyways. Right. So if you go to lunch with with with your crew or if you’re kind of chatting after the expo or whatever it is, these are the conversations that we’re going to have anyways then, right? So it’s kind of fun to have them now as we’re going through the week, we’re all building home service companies who are marketing our companies, so it’s kind of fun to collaborate and see how others would handle things.
So if you’re live and you have a question, post it in comments, let me know what you might have in mind and I can answer them for you. Also to. Also too, like I wanted to pop on some of your question. If you’re if you’re looking to sell the company. Right now is a really, really good time because. There’s just so much private equity coming. Coming into home service. I mean, it is ridiculous how many people are getting. Really good multiples. And different industries like HVAC, garage doors, plumbing, things like that. I mean, it’s just it’s just incredible. And it’s starting to dip into painting in concrete coatings. And so if if selling your company is something that you’re looking forward to, I think it’s a very, very great time to do it. Spencer says. What’s up, Ryan? It seems like the overall cost of a Facebook ads has increased significantly over the last 12 months. Obviously, a lot is going on in the economy. Yeah, sure. And then Apple is making things more difficult to retain data one 2% of users and will continue to do so as consumers become more aware of their privacy rights. I think many companies rely on Facebook ads for customers. What are service agents doing? Stay ahead changes and keep Facebook ads in a normal range. I think there’s some more. I got cut off there.
Let me go over to Facebook. I only saw half the question there. Give me a second here. Bear with me here. I’m trying to grab your whole comment here, Spencer. Okay. There is. And then you said. What is the next wave? If Facebook continues to be locked out further on consumer data, what is the next? Great. Great question, man. So there’s a couple of different points here. I would say over the past five years or so, not so good. Spencer It’s all good, man. Over the past couple of years or so, like, maybe five, six years. I mean, I remember when I first started marketing for for for coding companies and painting companies maybe five, six years ago. I mean, I was getting leads for $5, man. Like, literally I would get leads for $2, sometimes the same quality as we’re getting now. And I mean, I mean, I’m talking cabinet refinishing leads, exterior painting, interior painting, garage coatings pull decks. I mean, anywhere from, you know, about five bucks to 15 bucks was really the range. And if you’re hearing that and you’re like, damn, I want those types of costs, those are long gone for sure, because we’ve got inflation and we’ve got different things that are happening. But also we’ve got a lot of competition. So, you know, the lead flow is being distributed across different companies. And so I would say if you’re seeing lead costs go up over the past 12 months, it could just be the season that we’re in, maybe like you were talking about from the economy, could be that which is possible.
You know, it could just be actually the actual season like going from from from from winter to spring to summer and sometimes the transition from seasons, there’s a delay, but it talks. You know, it looks like you’re talking about the last 12 months. You know, again, like we would get leads for 5 to $15 and now our average is like $35. You know, your your location has a big factor to play of, like where you’re actually at. You know, here in Phoenix, what’s crazy is there’s like 35 different companies, probably like 350 different companies out here doing what? Doing what we’re doing. Right, doing epoxy and urea. And I will say, I think our lead cost has gone down since we started. Right? So like we started back in mid 2020. And now that we’ve got a little bit more authority online, we’ve got our SEO ranks, we’ve got reviews, things like this, and we’ve got to improve some of our reviews in different areas. But I think I think the branding is a big deal. So Spencer, I think with you updating your branding, I think that’s going to. I think that’s going to help out a lot, as you know, because your new website has the new branding. But that’s going to help out a lot with like custom videos with the branding on it.
More reviews online. Let me see how much you have. You’ve got 50. It’s great. That’s really good. But as you get more reviews in different areas, that’ll help out as well, because a lot of people right now are really relying on the social proof. You know, it’s a big deal. So the the longer the business has been in business, the better the branding, the more omnipresence you have. Those things will, will, will, will go down ideally. Also, you talk about data. I think that wave is really kind of gone away at some level. You know. I think it was, you know, was a lot easier back then. And now it relies on, you know, like the actual brand that we’re marketing for. A lot of companies will come to us and, you know, they want the stars, right? And I want to give them the stars. But, you know, they’ve got a brand new company, brand new website, 15 reviews online, you know, and they want the cost per lead that, you know, Cardinal or someone else that’s been in business five years, they want that same cost per lead on a consistent basis. Right. And that’s challenging. As you know, as you know, as we’re onboarding these newer companies that don’t really have the authority in that in that community yet. Right. So so there’s that, too, I think. I think the data piece has kind of gone away, obviously, you know, you know, a lot has changed.
But I think I think we work through that now. And you’re right, bro, like so many coding companies rely on Facebook. The reason why is because it’s so easy. Like, think about it like we can start an ad tomorrow and we can get leads probably the same day, you know? So it’s really easy. It’s really low friction. So the quality of those leads are usually a lot less than someone that finds you online, you know, and has researched everything about you online and, you know, and then calls you or has been researching for coding for like two and a half weeks and then calls you. It’s a different type of opportunity. And so a lot of these companies that are newer, they don’t really have the branding in place. Their Facebook pages are new. You know, Facebook’s cutting down or meta, I should say, is cutting down a lot on the Facebook. You know, if you’re a brand new page, don’t expect to get the same lead cost as someone that’s been doing ads and spending money with Meta for the past ten years. Right. So there’s there’s those dynamics, too, where, you know, like you pointed out, a lot of coding companies rely on Facebook ads. And I think I think as you scale the business or, you know, as you want to grow the business, you’ve got to start to build that authority from offline marketing, which is going to be a TV, radio, home shows.
Those are probably the first place I start in addition to direct mail. So you have four places there. Build that authority, get more traffic to the website, and then you start to build the organic kind of presence online with the website. Now you have all this organic traffic, people calling you, filling out your form, and then you have all this offline marketing going on and that’s going to help you get more traffic to the site, get more phone calls, of course. And then you also running Facebook ads. But like, if, you know, you don’t want to rely on Facebook ads as as as as the only thing you’re doing. And I know you’re not doing that, Spencer, but I’m just speaking to everyone here to the point that there’s a lot of coding companies that rely on Facebook ads. So. Talked about tick tock to like tick tock is really a great place to run ads. It’s a great new platform. Is it going to take over Facebook? Is it going to. Is there going to be no more Facebook and it’s only tick tock? You know, I don’t think so. But I do know that tick tock is crushing it way more users on their that than than even just beginning this year. You’re still able to find good quality customers on there.
It’s the same people, right? Like, yeah, there’s tons of kids on there, but there’s tons of adults as well. I mean, there are tons of people that are in their age of the range of 35 to 50 that are on tick tock for 30 minutes a day. And we’ve got to be there. So I think there could be some of that to Spencer where there’s a lot of people going over to different platforms. But I also think that there’s a lot of companies running ads that all look the same, you know, so you’ve got to really stand out with your branding, with your messaging, with your ad copy, with your offers. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of contractors that don’t like they’re like, you know, I don’t need to give a discount. I’m like, okay. Like, I think there’s a lot of ego, a lot of pride involved around giving discounts. But I think you got to make offers. So like right now, you could be making an offer. We got fall coming up so you can have a fall like, you know, like a like a like a like a pre sell fall program. So you got to have incentives. So you got to like you’ve got to have a little more. Enticing messaging to move people along, to separate yourselves, to differentiate yourselves from your competitors. You’ve got to really provide that value and articulate that value up front.
So there’s a lot to it. There’s a lot to it for sure. But it also could be that, you know. Maybe the marketing company’s not doing the best job they should. You know, maybe maybe there’s more that can be done to get better leads or a lower cost per lead. Maybe there’s more to do there. So, I mean, there are so many different variables that of why things like that could be going on. But I do think that there’s a lot of opportunity to drive down that drive down the lead costs, even cardinal. You know, there’s been times this year where, you know, our lead costs went up to like $70 per lead. I’m like, what’s going on right at the same thoughts as you? And then but we’ve but but we’ve brought it back down to about 30, $35 per lead, something like that. I do think that 30 to $35 per lead is probably like not as good as you can get because, I mean, I’ve gotten leads down to $20 a lead for different accounts, things like that. I mean, I haven’t you know, our company has. Right. But I think I think it can happen. So I think there’s some work to do there if, you know, if it’s been a decrease for for 12 months, maybe I’d maybe a deeper look under the hood there just in general in the ad account and the offers and the branding in the company that’s being marketed for and things like that.
I love that question because I love I love chatting about these things and kind of figuring out how to make the advertising better. Hopefully that helps out for you, Spencer, a little bit and give you some context there. Any any other questions here? We’re coming up on the hour and we’d love to answer some more questions you guys might have, like this one right here from Spencer. We’re talking about Facebook ads and going over to Tik Tok and kind of labor costs rising, things like that. If you have any questions around sales, marketing, operations, anything like that, let me know. And we’d love to answer those for you guys. Also what I want to do for you guys is. I’m going to. I’d love to see all of you guys at Vertical Track. You want to sell your company. It’s a great place to learn how to do that. Tommy’s bought so many different companies, and I’m actually going to come in here into the group. There’s gonna be people talking about selling companies, how to structure those. We’re talking everything from hiring sales, marketing systems, you name it. What I’m going to do in here is I’m going to post in comments. And this discount won’t be around forever because they’re going to take it from me. But I just post it in comments. And if you go to that page. That’s what it looks like.
Coming here garage and freedom in A1 garage for service. One of the talk about our third vertical track event, it’s October 12th through the 14th and Wild Horse Pass in Chandler, Arizona. I wanted to tell you about the feedback we got from the last vertical track, which was absolutely fantastic. Amazing people left there. They said there’s never been an event quite like the vendors call me back and they said they wanted to come back big time with this. We think there’s going to be over 1000 people at this event. We’re going to give you guys things to actually use within your business. Yes, there’s a lot of mindset and accomplishing goals, but there’s actually things to drive your business today. My big goal is that you book more phone calls, you attract more customers, you hire more people, you train them on systems and you get higher ticket averages. I want more money so you can finally give you and your family the ability to do what you want. When you want with who you want. Click the link below to see.
So it’s going to be super fun. Event Tommy’s events are just bad ass, so if you’re looking for a fun time, but also looking to scale your company and find the best strategies that are being taught right now in the entire industry, you’ve got to come to this event. It’s definitely an investment into yourself and your company. But what’s really fun try to help out and to give you a better ROI from this this this event. The Cardinal Concrete office is literally like ten, 15 minutes from the the vertical track conference area. So we’re going to hold a lead conversion training in person with myself, but also our team of Cardinal, which is my mom and then also our office manager who does a lot of our sales scheduling. And we’re going to be teaching everything from how to, you know. Had a price condition. Like how do you price condition a a prospect? I hear it all the time. You know, these people don’t want to buy everyone, you know, charges less than me, whatever, whatever. Right. But how do you provide high quality sales appointments for your sales team on autopilot? Right. We’re going to teach you how to do that. How do you provide or set the right expectations for these appointments? We’re going to teach you how to do that. How do you hire an appointment setter? We’re going to have those job descriptions for you guys so you can have literally a swipe in the job description.
And this is all, again, completely free of charge at our Cardinal office. We’re gonna have finger food, things like that. And the whole idea is. The Vertical track event, guys. The Vertical track event. The schedule. Is the 12th of the 14th, right. But on Wednesday, the 12th, there’s not a lot going on. There’s shop tours. And then that night there’s like, you know, a dinner or whatever for VIP members, what we’re going to do. Between. I believe it’s one. Let me double check. It’s between one and three. So we’re going to have like 2 hours roughly here at the Cardinal office between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. local time here in Phoenix, which will give you some time before. So if you’re a VIP ticket holder between the shop tours, the end about 2:00, so about 1:00 we’re going to start ours. But you can get your your cocktails in and everything like that. So you won’t miss a lot, right? You’re not going to miss the event. It’s going to be you know. So I would I’d recommend if you’re going to come to the to the lead conversion training in person here at the Cardinal office, you want to get here your shop tour and don’t miss out on the shop tour. Let me just tell you right now, the shop is bad ass, dude. It is like he spent like millions of dollars developing this this amazing training facility where you can learn tonality in sales, eye contact, how to move around the kitchen counter, how to ask for things.
I mean, it’s incredible what they’ve done from the sales training, but also the technician training, you know, things like that. So it’s amazing. So don’t miss out on the shop tours, but get in there early so you can come to the lead conversion training at one and that way you don’t miss any of these things in the evening time. So we’ve kind of scheduled the lead conversion training around the important things at vertical track. So the link is in there, literally just go in there. What you’re going to do is book your hotel, book everything. But I mean, you’ve literally got time. You going to speak, they’re going to do over $200 million this year. You’ve got Joe Polish, this guy just these guys are amazing, man. He’s he he he literally knows so many different things around entrepreneurship, leadership, you name it. It’s incredible. Lance, this guy runs an amazing marketing agency and but also he owns home service companies that are doing very, very well. So when I look up to you got Ellen Rowe and she’s obviously amazing and mean. Look at this. She helps run the home service company. And they’ve gone through so many different times where there was no money and they’re going to talk to you about how to actually grow the business successfully.
And she can teach you how to kind of financial literacy and things like that. You’ve got Brandon Vaughn, who is someone who I look up to. He owns a coding company. We used to run his Facebook ads. I’ll be talking everything about policies and manuals and training. Benji owns a coaching program as well, so there’s going to be some amazing, amazing people. There’s some testimonials here. If you aren’t sold enough there, there, there, there’s the ticket pricing there. So what you want to do is come here to click the register. And go in here and choose what you want. But make sure. Make sure that you use this code at checkout right here. So when you when you plug in this code on this page, when you click the button, it’s going to give you the ability to put that in there. So that’s how simple it is. Guys, I would love to see you guys there. It’s next month, so make sure you get everything booked and let me know as well that you’re coming. So that way I can I can get a good idea of who’s going to be in the lead conversion training here. I just believe I would say the main reason why I’m doing the lead conversion training versus any other training like hiring something like that is because a lot of companies that we work with, that service legend and just in general in the service space, feel like they need more marketing, right? I need more leads, more leads, more leads, more leads.
But they fail to look at their actual systems of how they convert those leads into appointments. Right. You should be converting 70% or more of your appointments, all your or sorry, 70% or more of all of your leads into appointments. If you’re not converting 70% or more of all of your leads into highly qualified sales appointments, you’re missing out. And then you want to take those appointments that you’ve set and you would convert 40 or more percent of those appointments into customers. So we’re taking we’re doing marketing, but we’re taking those leads, turning them into appointments, turning those appointments into customers. And then we’re going to find more repeat and referral business from our existing customers. It’s a circle, but a lot of companies think that they just need to spend more money on marketing and they fail to look at their lead conversion, their sales conversion and their repeat in their referral business kind of conversion. So that’s we’re going to be talking about super excited about all of that. If you have any questions at all, you can reach out to me or post it in the comments here on this live or in the group outside of that, guys have a fantastic weekend and we’ll see you guys soon.
