Transcript:
Hey, what’s going on, everybody? Welcome to the podcast. And as you can see, it’s Marco. It is not Ryan here today. And Ryan actually came down with food poisoning last night, so he’s not feeling the best. We want to make sure we get this podcast out to you guys. And we have a special guest by the name of Dan Antonelli. If you’re not familiar with him, you’re probably living under a rock. But welcome to the podcast.
Dan Hey, brother. How you doing, pal? Good.
Super excited to have you on here. Dan is the President and chief creative officer of Kick Charge Creative. They’re a New Jersey based branding agency that specializes in home service businesses to stand out with disruptive brands. With over 25 years of experience. I saw Dan in the notes there. You’ve been doing this for a very long time, like before I was probably even alive, which is is crazy. So Dan is a nationally recognized expert on home service branding and has authored several books on the topic, and we’ll kind of get into that later in the episode here. His marketing experience has been featured in numerous industry publications, including MSNBC, so super excited to have you on here and obviously at service. Legend We’re a marketing company. We, you know, love working with brands that have a strong presence and look really good online. It’s not going to lie. It makes our life much easier when it comes when it comes to marketing. And we’ll touch on that a little bit here. My business partner Ryan has a concrete coating company as well, which had its brand professionally done. Um, you know, brand identity, brand design, the brand guidelines, etcetera, etcetera. And what we’ve noticed is just on that case study alone, the brand conversion rates, the ability to scale the company online, the overall presence of the of the brand online is just phenomenal. So I want to touch on that a little bit and super excited to have you on here. Dan, tell me a little bit about, you know, because you’ve been at Kickstarter for a while now. Tell me a little bit about how you got started there.
So I got started when I was 15 years old and I was really into actually pinstriping. Hand-painted pinstripes. And then I started doing a lot of lettering. And then I actually got my first job working in a sign shop, working on truck lettering. So we would hand paint truck trucks. Probably one of the first trucks that I worked on was for a home service company. So it’s kind of ironic that, you know, 35 years later or so, I’m still actually doing that. So that experience of actually hand lettering trucks from a very young age and working under a master sign painter, which was a great experience, he really taught me so much about that medium stuff that you can’t really learn sitting behind a desk, like doing it on a computer screen and being in the physical environment is something that really benefited me and the lessons that I learned while working there. A lot of that is still visible in the work that we produce today. So I just remember being so excited of seeing our work driving down the street and, you know, whatever 35, you know, years later. Like I still get excited about that. You know, I was driving the other day and we did the branding for Zoom Drain, which is another national franchise, and it was driving towards me and I was like, there’s my there’s my, there’s my van, there’s my brand, like.
So I still get really energized and excited about it. And I love the fact that the work that we get to do here really impacts the lives of so many people, right? And so we really believe that our work has the ability to change people’s lives. That’s a responsibility that we take really, really seriously. It’s really important. There’s a lot of people depending on us to make sure we do our job well. But seeing the results and seeing the impact that our work has on so many different people is really what’s the most rewarding for all of us here. So we have about 20, I think, two people here right now. And, you know, just, um, you know, we’ll do probably about 200 or so Home Service brands a year at this point. And we do a lot of naming, we do a lot of taglines and things like that. But, you know, still fun, still exciting and still, you know, something that, you know, again, we just I don’t know what other I guess there’s a lot of businesses you could change the lives of people, but I sort of feel like this is the best one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
You really do, because you get to see the entire process, right? The companies you work with, you know, you said 200 per year, which is just mind bending to me. Um, you’re transforming 200 home service companies, taking them from ugly to amazing online. And yes, of course, that is, you know, taking those brands to the next level. I want to touch on a little bit of your your background, because this requires extensive graphic design and those types of experiences. Do you have like college degrees? What’s your background there? Yeah.
So I, I originally just wanted to be a sign painter and my parents were like, No, you need to go to college. So sort of the happy compromise was I went to college and I studied advertising. So that education really again, helps shaped a lot of my philosophy about branding, a lot of my philosophy about disruption. And I got to work while I was at the I went to the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania. And while I was there, I got to work under an art director and I stayed with that art director for about a year. And she actually worked at the university. And so I got schooled in graphic design, hands on again at a very early age. So I really learned the fundamentals of design. A lot of the information I learned about even just producing things like brochures and collateral and things like that, I really learned from from her. So I got kind of the schooling about marketing and advertising through the university. I got the graphic design schooling through working under the art director for the University of Scranton. And and then I would go home on weekends also and still work in the sign shop. So, I mean, I can’t think of a better mix of experience to be exposed to at such a, such a young age. And then when I graduated, I actually worked as a graphic designer in New York City for about five years. And I started the company, like so many entrepreneurs do, where I was doing sort of my day job as a graphic designer.
And then at night I was doing, you know, working on launching this company in this business. And I did that for a while until, like, you know, the 80, 90 hour weeks, I finally felt like I had enough to sort of quit my day job and then do it full time. So it’s been kind of a really cool journey. For the first ten years, I actually was home based. I worked in my basement. I really didn’t want to have employees at that point. I had two young daughters that were that were just born, so I wanted to kind of be around them as much as I could. And then when they they grew up, I started having employees. I started having employees actually come work in my basement, which is probably a little weird. And then we got an office finally, and we stayed in that office until 2017, where we had like 15 people crammed into like a 1500 square foot office. And then we built this space here in the building that we’re at now, and we’ve been here for five years. We had a 5000 square foot office that we built literally from the ground up, which was really fun. So we got to design it and integrate our branding throughout the space and everything like that. So that’s kind of been been the journey.
Yeah, yeah. I saw pictures of your office and I mean, quite frankly, we’re pretty jealous about it. It looks awesome. Um, props to that. I mean, I think it was your car up front, the picture I saw, and then you. And then. And the logo on the building. And it’s so classic as a branding company that you would have that, you know. Yeah, it’s amazing. Um, so you started the company. You were previously a graphic designer. I imagine you’re working really long, really long days, you know, kind of balancing the two full time job starting the business. Um, I heard from somewhere in the company Kick Charge Creative Early on, you guys were a little bit different, whereas now you guys have kind of evolved to home service branding only. Could you tell about sort of that transition and kind of what that looks like?
Sure. Yeah. I mean, when we first started, we were doing a lot of things. You know, branding was always central to what we were doing, but and we still do a lot of these other things. But web design used to be a really, really big part of our business. Um, and then we started doing some digital marketing. We were working basically partnering with another company that did digital marketing. And probably about two years ago we just decided, and I’m sure for you, you know, how hard digital marketing is, how hard that space is, and sometimes how hard it is to make people happy in that in that space. And we looked and we said, you know what? Like no one finishes a logo project with us and they’re upset about something, right? Or they’re upset that they have to pay Google or any of those things. And so we just looked at it and we said, you know what? At our core, we are a branding agency, period. So let us just focus on doing that only, right? So we stopped doing offering like SEO services and some of the PPC oversight and things like that. And we just said we’re going to just focus on doing what we are awesome at, which is branding, developing collateral, developing, you know, things related to collateral. We also do some social and some email and things like that, but I really don’t want to be involved in building websites and I don’t want to be coding websites and I don’t want to be managing the digital strategies online. And we did it like I still think we built really killer websites. Um, but for right now, like if somebody wants a website from us, like maybe we’ll do the Photoshop file for it, but I’m not going to build a site anymore. It’s just not what we’re good at. Um, I mean, we actually, we were good at it. We just couldn’t make any money at it, which is the other part of it.
So yeah, yeah. The way I look at it is in the digital marketing space, of course, you know, the landscape is very competitive. Um, you have those folks who are doing like sort of the lower tier websites. Then you have the folks who do the really high tier websites. And for you guys, your focus has always been branding, right? And really transforming home service companies, making, you know, taking them from ugly to amazing and you have to build really good websites at that point. So so that totally makes sense. If you guys are watching this on the replay, put hashtag replay in the comments, whatever platform you’re on helps this podcast get out there to more viewers. Really appreciate you if you could do that. Um, I want to touch on a little bit about your book because, you know, we mentioned in the intro there you’ve, you’ve authored a few books. Um, the most recent one is branded, not branded. Yeah. And you released it back in September of last year, which is, you know, five, six months ago. Um, it’s not, you know, obviously the newest thing, but for those who haven’t heard about it yet, tell me a little bit about branded not branded and we’ll kind of go from there.
Sure. I’ll do a big plug so everyone can see the cover there. So, um, listen, it’s it’s basically ten years since I wrote my last book. And my last book was more suited towards small businesses in general. It wasn’t 100% focused on home service. And there’s a lot that I’ve learned in the last ten years, and I wanted to really put something out there that people could learn from. One of the saddest things that I see online, whether it’s in. Owners page or a home service group is someone posts their truck wrap on there and they’re either looking for feedback or maybe they actually just had it done. And they’re sort of looking for props from people. And you see so many common errors being made in that realm, so many common mistakes being made with branding, with naming. And so for the longest time I just thought like there isn’t really a book that talks about how to brand a home service company. Like there isn’t like there’s, there’s pie in the sky, like BBS branding books that are 95% not applicable to a home service company.
So why don’t I just basically put everything I’ve learned into a book and try to give a blueprint and a roadmap for a home service company to follow so that they can avoid some of these mistakes. I mean, it’s it’s expensive to brand poorly. Okay. So you think about all the implementation of a poor brand and what that cost to then redo some of those things. Would it cost in terms of missed opportunities? Would it cost in terms of the inability to recruit people? Would it cost in terms of lower average tickets because you can’t get a higher average ticket cause you don’t look like you deserve to get paid a higher average ticket. So it is so much of that that I put into the book to really try to help people to understand how this medium works. And even the psychology behind branding too. Like there’s a whole chapter on consumer psychology and the decision making process that goes into the average homeowner before they decide to engage with your company. So how do we design brands that speak to them as well?
Right. Yeah. And and in terms of this because, you know, you were mentioning in the you know, before we went live here that never make a book to make money off the book. Right? Um.
Yeah.
And I was talking to Ryan as well earlier this morning, and he has your book and he was saying like, the pages are really thick and and it feels high quality. Um, the book itself feels like it’s like 20 bucks per copy just to create it like, per one unit. Yeah, a little bit about. A little bit about that.
Yeah. Well, you know, as designers, you know, obviously I want something out there that is very appealing graphically. So many people keep asking me also like, well, is there an audible of it? And I’m like, It’s really hard to talk about branding with not being able to visually show also what I’m talking about in the text. So and then I was like, Well, you probably don’t want to hear my New York accent talking also for like a couple hours. That may also sound pretty annoying to people. But yeah, so a lot of care and, and thought went into the design of this book and certainly we didn’t skimp on the printing of the book but, but yeah you definitely you know I need like New York Times bestseller status to to maybe help pay for it. But that’s not really why I wrote it, though. You know, like I said, you see these things posted online and you just wish that there was a resource. And sometimes I almost feel bad, like, hey, saying like, hey, before you do anything, just like read this book because then it sounds like I’m being self-promotional, but like, I honestly make like $4 on each book. So. So, you know, there’s no way I think I’ll ever make up the money for it, but I just honestly want some people want to try to help as many people as possible because, you know, the people they don’t know, like it’s not their job to really understand branding. Like they’re awesome at maybe running their business.
They’re awesome at the craft that they’re in and the trade that they’re in. But that’s a different world. You know, branding is, is, is, you know, a very, very specific niche. And even like a lot of sign companies and wrap companies, they’re not really they’re not branding companies. Right. You know, there’s there’s they’re they’re awesome at print and install. It’s just something that maybe they’re not really well equipped to do, but yet they still do it. And and so, you know, trusting the experts that you hire, you know, you really need to know as much about it yourself as well. So that’s why, you know, I thought the book would be a good resource. And I love it when people do mention it and just say, Hey, like before you do anything, just read this book, you know? Because if you’re about to wrap your first truck or five trucks, you know you’re into that for 20, $25,000, you know, and and so making sure that investment will yield the maximum ROI is another really important reason why to invest in the branding. So to make the statement that the most expensive logo you’ll ever buy is one that you paid the least for, and you have to extrapolate what that means. It’s not that complicated, though, but again, missed opportunities, lower average tickets, recruitment challenges, just so many things that go into skimping on that most critical aspect. And you’ll wind up paying so much more over the long haul than just investing properly in it in day one.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. I agree. And I want to get into the recruitment effect and the marketing effect before we get into that. Um, what, you know, because you mentioned this is essentially ten years of experience put into a book helping. Did you say this was helping newer businesses or already established businesses?
Yeah, either either one. I mean, I would say, you know, out of the 200 brands that will do this year, maybe 25% of them are very early on, meaning that there may be half $1 million in revenue or under. And then the remaining ones are usually bigger companies, you know, three, four, five, $20 million. Like we just rebranded a company that was $45 million. So it doesn’t really matter like where you’re at in this stage. You just have to recognize that maybe what you currently have is not adequately representing the level of service that you’re currently providing. Maybe it was good when you first started. I mean, and listen, I get it. A lot of people have to bootstrap to get out there day one, but then they keep that same poor branding in there three, four years into it and they’re at like 2 to $3 million. And I’m like, Is this even who you are today? So you’ve got to be inward in terms of really looking at yourself objectively and saying like, Does this even represent us today? Like it was fine when we started, but is it who we are today? And some owners are really, really proactive in that and they’re not complacent. And then some owners use any level of success that they’ve achieved currently as the rationale. As to why they shouldn’t change. Well, dude, like, look at what we’ve done. Like we’re at this much revenue and we’re killing it. And I always look at it and I say, Wow, I can’t believe how well you’ve done with what you have. That’s awesome. That tells me that you’re really good at operations. That tells me tells me you’re really good at running the company and performing a great service. Imagine what you might have been with a better brand. Like how much further down the road would you be? How much less would you need to spend on marketing if you had a better brand? Like all those things go into it.
Yeah, yeah, 100%. The other thing, you know, I just thought of off the cuff here was because we got our branding done with Service Legend even, and we’re a marketing company. We had we literally had brand like brand designers design our brand. You know, that’s how critical we see it. And and also for Cardinal with Ryan, I saw the entire build process, right? So like from A to Z, there’s the entire like discovery. I’m sure you guys have some process like that when somebody comes to you guys for branding and you know, in a couple of minutes, how how does that process work? And, you know, how does it differ from from maybe like Upwork designers?
Um, certainly. I mean, there’s a number of steps like you look at naming as one of the most important questions to be really ascertaining, like, so is the name worthy of being branded? Okay. So that’s, that’s certainly something that we have to look at and determine. So naming is a big part of it. How much current brand equity do you have in whatever you’ve been currently doing? You know, so is there value in what you have? Can we leverage any of that equity into something much better? So you kind of have to look at that. Then you want to look at obviously what is happening in your competitive landscape, What are the strategies that are being used in your competitive landscape? Do you own your own brand colors in your in your space, or are your brand colors the same as ten other companies? Therefore, you probably can’t ever even own your own existing brand colors. And then you look at maybe what the competition is doing in terms of a strategy, and a lot of times that’s really where the opportunity lies because a lot of the competitors aren’t even really doing anything special. They haven’t embraced the idea of branding. They have poor brands themselves. So it’s like, imagine what would happen to your business if you had the best brand in your market. Like, wouldn’t that be amazing? Because then again, the idea of being sticky in that consumer’s mind and making making sure she remembers you when she needs service goes along with it. So so we do a lot of research. Obviously. We talk to the client about direction to a certain extent. And and by that I mean do I want to design a logo that my clients love? Yeah, absolutely.
Is my number one objective to design something that they love? Not necessarily. And I say that because the brand shouldn’t be designed for one person specifically, the brand should be designed for the people that you are selling to. Okay. So if Mrs. Jones will love this approach, that’s the most important consideration is considering who you’re actually selling to and framing the context of whether or not you would like something from the viewpoint of what she likes. Like what would this brand mean to her if you rolled up and you’re you’re a wrap truck, how is that going to make her feel? What will that do to address what her primary concerns are about you? And that’s what the book talks a lot about, too, is the idea of consumer bias and the bias against home service contractors. So how do brands counter negative biases that most home owners bring with them to the table? So again, really having them so a lot of it’s education, too, because they don’t know. Like they see a really awesome brand we’ve created or a really cool truck wrap and they’re like, Hey, I want to I want something just like I want a cool truck wrap, but not really understanding the psychology behind what we’re actually doing. So we try to educate them as best we can about the reasons. You know, obviously it’s helpful if they’ve read the book already because a lot of it will be, you know, gone over in there. But we’re really trying to get inside the minds of the people that you’re selling to and design brands that are going to appeal to them.
Yeah. And price conditioning, right? Like as a home service company, you don’t want to be racing to the bottom with, you know, the cheapest price. You want to have higher ticket items and have more. You know, here our service section, we go off of more profit, more freedom, more impact. And in order to do that, you have to have higher prices and you have to price condition. And whether you’re a home service company getting the wraps or your home service company doing trade shows at local events, the branding is going to go up a long ways there because it just looks way better. Nobody’s going to come up to that booth and, you know, with, you know, thinking that it’s going to be cheap, right? So yeah.
That was going to say Marco, too, to your point too, about the home service shows that you can attend, right? So what are the points we make in the book about is how brands create empathy? How do you connect with your community? How do you connect with your consumers? We just had a client send us pictures of the trade show booth that he just had, and we did a brand for him. The name of the company is Wingate. And the brand we designed to them uses a horse and the horse has like the mane with some flames coming out of it and colors very, very, you know, eye catching brand. But they wind up actually painting a horse like from a carousel in their brand colors. And then they had all these parents coming to their booth to take pictures with their kid on that carousel on that horse. And they gave them a, you know, a giveaway, which was a a cowboy hat with their logo on it. And they’re taking pictures of it. And again, like little things like that. Now you’re creating that connection with your community and and building that empathy. And that’s another big part of it. And that’s why some of these brands that are so sterile, like, you know, if you’re an HVAC guy and you have red and blue arrows and everyone else has got red and blue arrows, well, why would I ever remember that? Or you’ve got the sun and the snowflake logo, right? So so how does that actually connect with the consumer is really the thing that you want to be thinking about as you’re building a brand is creating that empathy, that connection to that consumer.
What’s going to be memorable to them and what’s also going to have them believe something positive about the experience if they had never hired you before. So you gotta remember, too, everything that we’re trying to do is control everything about what Mrs. Jones thinks before you arrive there. Right? So. So it’s the impression of the truck. It’s what she sees when she hits that website. It’s what she sees, you know, out there, like on a billboard. What does she think about what will happen if I were to call or if she was to call that company? So that’s really you know, that’s all branding is, right? Is controlling what people think or trying to control what people think. Right. And we can do as much as we possibly can. Once you ring that doorbell and you’re in that home performing that service, that’s what’s going to leave that lasting impression. That’s what’s going to be what she talks about to her neighbor. Like that’s really what a brand is, is what people say about your brand and your company behind your back. So so how do we control as much of that process with this brand before you even get a chance to perform that service?
Yeah. Yeah, we. We have a question here from from Kaitlyn. Pop it up on the screen here. Would your book and things to implement work with the Storybrand method as well or is this something completely different? What are your thoughts on that, Dan?
I think it definitely would work with some of the some of the things that are talked about in the book, Storybrand. You know, there’s there’s a lot that, you know, he talks about in that book about building a compelling brand story. You know, I’m going to be talking a little bit more about the idea of disruption. I’m going to be talking a little bit more about how to leverage some of the visuals and things like that in my book. But certainly that is that is a great book to read. And I think it works really hand in hand with with what I’m talking about in mind. And I think to that point as well, Caitlin, is the idea that. So many companies legitimately have no brand story whatsoever. Right. If you look at some of the biggest companies in home service and you actually tried to figure out what actually is their brand story, you’d be hard pressed to actually figure that out. Right? So that’s again, opportunity because most of those big companies overcome the lack of having even a good brand and having any semblance of a brand story by simply spending more money. Right? So that’s that’s the solution to having no legitimate brand story and having poor brand is spend more money. So that’s where, again, you see opportunities for smaller companies to try to leverage something unique and do something that actually instills that empathy and connects with that consumer in a way that some of these big companies honestly just can’t because they don’t even really have a brand story. Like Google is probably the best example of a large company with a legitimate brand story. That’s a company that we branded 8 or 9 years ago when they were at only like $7 Million, and I think now they’re at 250 or 300 million. He actually wrote the intro to the book, but that’s a company with a legitimate brand story, and they’ve invested heavily in that, in that brand story. But so many others, there’s honestly nothing that you could look at to determine and figure out that that they have any brand story whatsoever.
Awesome. And I got to ask you as well, you know, because you had mentioned book, it goes over kind of the process a little bit. Um, what I guess what would you say is the biggest mistake that that business owners, home service companies make when it comes to branding and sort of that concept? And also, you know, our audience here is I would say, you know, we have anyone from newer businesses to, you know, five, $10 million companies. And I was looking at the analytics. Um, and so I think people would gain a lot of value from this. What what is the biggest mistake that you see people making in the home service industry right now for them?
Well, I think sometimes the biggest mistake starts.
Right in the infancy. It starts with naming. You know, that is one of the the biggest mistakes that we see is poor naming. So whether it’s a last name based brand, which historically and typically is very, very difficult to gain traction with, whether it’s a name that uses initials like, you know, AJ’s painting, like, why would I ever remember that? Like, what would cause me to remember something like that or, or names that also use, um, limitations like budget painting or affordable painting, things like that, or also generally mistakes because you’ll never actually then be able to charge appropriately for your work. So you see a lot of mistakes right at the root that you know the start of it, you know. So that’s why naming is something like, you know, I think this year we’ll probably name 50 companies or so from scratch or rename existing companies. So we try to fix that when we have the opportunity to do that. So starting off on the right foot is huge. So that part, you know, I think is one of the biggest mistakes you see people do is just poor naming.
Yeah.
Okay. Sweet. Um, you know, you mentioned Kettle, right? And if I were to go down the road, I live here in Tempe, I would go down the road, start driving before I hit five miles. I’d probably see a kettle truck. Okay. I see them everywhere. Um, what is your favorite branding project? If it’s not Kettle, what is it? Tell me a little bit about that.
I don’t know if you can if you’re allowed to ask me that question. I will say this one of my favorite and I think most successful brands. Kettle is one Get a Kettle financially is our most successful brand in terms of growth, right? So again, 7 million to 300 or so million dollars in revenue. But there’s a company that we rebranded called Grasshopper and Grasshopper didn’t used to be called Grasshopper. They used to be called PMA. I think it’s PMA mechanical, and they needed to build a brand to speak to residential customers. And so Amanda Triolo, who’s one of the most amazing operators I’ve ever seen and worked with, I mean, what she’s done to that company since we’ve rebranded is nothing short of historical in in my perspective. Okay, So this was a company that had about $100,000 in residential sales on a yearly basis when they were called PMA mechanical. And I think today this is 24 months later, they’re doing over $1 million a month in residential HVAC sales. So the story about Grasshopper, and that was a name that we came up with, I personally actually came up with that name. Um, but the idea of Grasshopper is goes along with the idea that grasshopper is actually only can move forward. Okay? So you think about a brand story that you can craft regarding that particular notion and their tagline is forward is a way of life.
So what I love about that is it’s not only inward in terms of what you set the expectations for the employees based on that particular tagline and that vision and that mission, but it’s also external. So customers understand that the work that they perform is meant to move their comfort forward almost, right? So, so inward and outwardly. It’s a great it’s a great success story in terms of how well that brand story lives and breathes within that culture. And Amanda Um, they don’t have recruitment problems. They don’t, they don’t their biggest recruitment problems is that there’s too many people that want to work for them because you look at the culture that she’s built in that in that company and everyone really wants to be a part of it. Now, the beauty of Grasshopper also is that it doesn’t sound like it has anything to do with air conditioning, right? You can’t think about grasshopper and say, Oh my God, that sounds like, you know, a heating and air conditioning company, right? So that’s the idea also of just sort of zigging while everyone else is zagging, right? So how do we think about something in a different manner? But it’s again, you close your eyes and you say the word grasshopper and you immediately have a visual that goes along with it. That’s. And how you build brands that are sticky that people will remember.
So that’s been probably one of our most successful brands. And she was basically, you know, I learned this later on, but the money that she invested with us was the last money that she had. Okay. And I learned later that story. And think about that in terms of our mission here and our vision and philosophy of having our clients back at all times, and that the fact that we know our work can change lives. Now, like I said, it’s I’m almost glad I didn’t know that at the time. But knowing that later, that’s the trust that she put into us and our team and we couldn’t be more proud of the results that she’s that she’s accomplished. And again, just such a tremendous success story. She there’s a section in the book that she wrote for me in the book. There’s about four pages that I dedicated to her. And she wrote the story of how Grasshopper came to be. And I’m super grateful and honored that she, you know, was a part of the book. And, you know, I’ve heard her speak at different events and got to hang out with her. And like I said, I think I think the industry will recognize her and they’ve already recognized her, but I think she’ll be known as one of the best operators to ever exist in this space.
Awesome. That’s a wonderful success story. And on your guys’s website for those listening, you go to kick charge creative’s website and there’s the portfolio section and you can see many other brands that that have been transformed there and and impacted. I want to touch on the recruitment side just briefly here. You had mentioned that these companies you’re working with, whether it’s Catl or Grasshopper, there’s no challenge in finding the right talent. And we talk about it all the time, finding players, having the best possible team members on your team to grow the company, you know, for the mission. And tell me a little bit about how home service branding helps with recruitment in these home service companies.
Yeah, absolutely.
Definitely a common challenge, right, is, you know, we can’t find people that want to work for us. And that’s that’s that’s sometimes reflective of the environment, sometimes reflective of the pay scale. But sometimes it’s reflective of just how the company is perceived externally. You could look at the branding that we did for Tommy Mello at A-1 Garage. You know, Tommy does not have recruitment problems, you know, because he’s created such an amazing culture that people want to be a part of. And you judge a lot about a company by external appearances. So you look at what his office looks like, you look at obviously what his branding and his trucks look like and his website looks like, and they all speak to a very high caliber experience. And so when you’re recruiting people, you know, and they come to your office, they come to your space, what is the even the physicality of the office do to instill those themes about who this company is and why actually want to be a part of this? You know, on our website you could actually see the branding that we did internally for A-1 Garage and for Grasshopper under the Wall rap section. And you can see what the environment actually looks like and how well it looks as soon as you walk in there, you know, and and so, you know, look, inwardly, if you’re having recruitment challenge and just say, does it even look like a place that people want to work? Am I going to be proud to wear the uniform? Am I going to be proud to drive this van? You know, and think about that from that perspective. If you’re a prospective employee, does it look like a company I want to be aligned with? Do I share the same values? Does it look like a company that is going places? Things like that.
Yeah, that’s great. And the other thing I wanted to mention here on the recruitment side was. There’s always this stigma within home service that, you know, there’s nobody who’s wanting to work for these companies, Right. Um, and, and, you know, it’s blue collar, white collar or whatever it is. Um, shortage of employee shortage of labor, shortage of recruitment. And I’ve witnessed that firsthand with, with A1 as well. There’s people fighting to work over there, you know. Yeah. And that’s, that’s technically what you want, right? You want, you want to have the best possible people working for you and, and things like that. And not only just recruitment. Right? The branding is going to help with the marketing. You know, we’re marketing. We see it all the time. The brands I don’t have any data on on hand, but like the brands that we work with that have really good looking companies, their trucks are all wrapped. They say they have a fleet of 20 vehicles. They’re doing, you know, more in revenue. Typically that the brands that are looking really good are typically higher revenue companies. We see a tremendous impact on the marketing side, even with just higher click through rates, higher conversion rates and really just better return on investment with their marketing spend online. Right. Maybe you could tell me a little bit more about the traditional side and how you guys are transforming that as well.
Yeah, And what you just said is like.
So important as far as click through rates and conversion rates. And so how, how does the brand help with those aspects of it? And a lot goes to, again, visibility within the community because if I see this van repeatedly in my neighbor’s driveway, I’m I’m already assuming something, right? I’m already making an assumption. Will they use them like they must be? They must be good. They probably happy with them. And so the repetition of the branding within that local community, again, helps instill that confidence factor. So then if they do Google and let’s say for argument’s sake that they didn’t actually remember the name of the company initially, but they Googled it, they Googled painting contractor near me, and then they happen to actually hit the website for that company whose van that they saw in their neighbor’s driveway. Well, obviously, the conversion on on that type of click is going to be greater because, again, they’re assigning higher value to it because they’ve seen it and they’ve recognized it. So people forget and think that the purpose of truck wraps or even site signs or even billboards is is calls to action.
And it’s not really actually meant to be a call to action vehicle. It’s meant to be a brand building exercise. And it’s meant to be something that, again, you hope to be sticky so that when Mrs. Jones is ready for service, she is simply typing in the name of that particular company. I think if you look at the painting space, especially to me, that’s wide open with opportunity because I don’t know why, but there’s very few people that brand properly in the painting space, you know, it’s usually done like very amateurish or, you know, it’s a white van and a magnetic sign on it or something like that. I don’t really know why, but you would think with so much competition and trying to elevate the perception that people have of your company that that would be a really smart investment. Like look at Cardinal and how well he’s branded. And I’m sure he’s well known within his community because a lot of the people he compete against, I’m sure, don’t even hold a candle to what he has.
Yeah, Yeah. There’s tons of low hanging fruit. You know, the opportunity is, is especially in those industries, but at the same time it becomes even that much more important for the other industries like HVAC, plumbing, garage door, where they’re more, you know, maybe more competitive. Yeah, yeah. And so requires that extra mile, if you will, of standing out and creating a brand like nobody’s seen before. Um, awesome, man. Well, it’s been a pleasure having you on here. Um. I wanted to ask you as well, like where do people find you online? Like where can they find you? Facebook, Instagram, website.
Tell us a little bit. Sure. Well, our website is kickstarter.com.
If you wanted to pick up a copy of the book through me instead of Amazon, it’s kickstarter.com/books. But Amazon has it as well. It also we have it on the Kindle so you can get it there and then yeah, you could just hit me up on Facebook or you know, we have our Facebook page for kick charge creative on there as well.
Awesome. Honored to have Dan Antonelli here on the Service Legend podcast and super excited to see you guys next week. And also I wanted to plug something real quick. We are you know, we don’t promote anything on this podcast. We don’t put ads on this podcast. We don’t do any of that. We’re here to provide strict value. And I really want to encourage you guys, if you got value from this podcast or anything like that, make sure you share it. That’s all we’re asking for is click the share button. Whether you’re on iTunes podcast or Apple. Go ahead and share it with your friends and different home service groups. That would be phenomenal. Really appreciate everybody’s time today and we’ll see you guys next week.
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