This is the Real Concrete Coating Talk Pod, a podcast created exclusively for concrete coating contractors, where we have real talks with industry pros about business fails, wins, and all that BS that everyone else don’t care about. all in an effort to inspire you, the entrepreneur, to keep moving the needle forward to success so that you can live out the dreams you intended to create for your life. I’m your host, Rudy Hettrick, the founder of Floor Coating Marketers, the one and only digital agency that specializes exclusively in growing concrete businesses online. So stick around for this episode. It’s not one you wanna miss.

00:44

Hey, what’s going on everybody? It’s Kyle with Service Business Freedom. And I’m here with Rudy. He’s been a good friend of mine for years, he does all of my SEO and website stuff. So Rudy go ahead and introduce yourself and what you do and your company.

01:00

Hey man. So things are good. Right? Things are good. You’re happy? Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, so my name is Rudy Hettrick. I’m the founder of Floor Coating Marketers. We’re a digital agency that works exclusively with the concrete coating industry. We help business owners, get them get their business to the next level, really try to get their business in front of their ideal customer. And we do that through all sorts of different digital marketing strategies.

01:28

Google ads, building websites, Google My Business, Facebook ads, that kind of stuff, social media management, all in an effort to make a business we go live, I like to call omnipresent. Where every anytime someone goes online, they’re in your world now. Right? So that’s kind of thethethe the the strategy behind all of that, for sure. Yeah, I know, like for us, you know, you’ve been doing our Google ads, Facebook ads, website, obviously, SEO and it’s been a game-changer for us, you know, just having leads on autopilot. So

02:02

yeah, it’s been a game-changer for us. So the only way to do it. Yeah, I agree. So as far as like, your SEO and your website, why is all that important?

02:18

Well, I guess the easiest way to say is when you have a problem where you’re trying to figure something out for yourself, where’s the first place that you go? website? For sure. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Google or Bing, I guess, depending on how old you are. But so yeah, you’re gonna go to Google. And then you’re going to be searching for what it is that you’re looking for. And then you’re going to click a listing or a link that takes you to a website.

02:47

If you’re not there, on that first page, then you’re not going to get that customer. And that’s pretty much it’s that easy, right? The technical aspects of it isn’t easy. It’s not as easy as everyone might think. But the strategy behind that is when you have a really good website that’s built to convert all that traffic into customers. And you have a website that Google loves, that will rank you on the first page of Google. That’s where all of the best leads come from. And you know, I got to talk a little bit about this, too. It’s separate.

03:23

Well, it’s about SEO. But there’s a lot going on right now, I’m on a lot of groups, Facebook groups, and there’s there’s buzz about

03:32

SEO, well, you don’t need SEO, why would you spend, you know, pay a company $1,000 a month to do SEO or a wall. This in this, this works. You know, for those of you who are watching or listening to this,

03:46

everybody is different. Every company is different, every market is different. One person who tried Google ads for one month, and spent $1,000. And it didn’t work, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. It just means the strategy or the campaign didn’t work, or the person doing it didn’t do a very good job. So there’s a lot at play here. And, you know, my recommendation to anybody who’s really considering, you know, hiring an agency or doing it themselves, or whatever it is, is do your research. Just like you would go and check reviews on a company before you buy a car. Just you know, you go talk to your friends, you go talk to your family. And yeah, definitely go on to these Facebook groups and start asking questions, but don’t immediately assume that if it didn’t work for one company who’s in the northeast of the United States, and you’re down in Florida, right, just because it didn’t work for them, doesn’t mean it’s not going to work for you. For sure. So, you know, it’s really important that you know that Now, that said,

04:52

if you’re just starting out landscaping, business or concrete coating, business or window, pressure washing whatever it might be

05:00

Any service business, if you’re starting out and you don’t have a lot of capital in the beginning, then search engine optimization or SEO isn’t necessarily

05:11

the best strategy to start out with, because it does take time. Right. But the benefits pay off because I don’t know about you. But you know, would you rather spend $7,000 a month on pay-per-click advertising just to have enough business to keep things moving every month? or half of that? Because the other half you’re getting organic leads coming in? Because your website is ranked? Right?

05:34

What’s profitable? Yeah, right. Well, I definitely think like for us, you know, in our, our business, like, the combination of the two as far as the pay per click, and the SEO, like, the pay per click kind of gives you your immediate leads, and the immediate lead flow, while your SEO is like trickling in leads to supplement everything. And for us, it’s, it’s, I know, I keep saying it, but it’s been a game-changer, like being able to have reliable leads each and every month, to be able to grow your business and scale yourself out of the business and hire employees.

06:10

You know, it’s invaluable. So yeah, like, when when when did you start? When did we start together? It was like, two, three years ago? Oh, yeah. Some? Man, it’s been so long ago. I mean, you had, you came originally because you needed more leads coming in? Because the SEO that you had wasn’t working? Yeah. Right. It wasn’t it wasn’t it was a little bit there. I mean, when we did our audit, I remember this fully. I’m like, your website needs to be completely revamped. There’s so many different variables that were going on there. And you don’t know you’re, you’re a business owner trying to just grow his business so that he can have a good life, right. The last thing you want to be doing is worrying about SEO? Which by the way, I will say, yes, search engine optimization. I’m going to explain a little bit what that means. Okay. It’s a very technical term. But really all you’re trying to do is optimize your brand.

07:05

So that you show up on Google. That’s it. So it’s not just about website. Okay. We’re talking about citations. We’re talking about listings everywhere else. Are you posting on social media? Are you just active online? Because I hate to break it to Google sees all of it. Yeah, it all matters. Google My Business matters. SEO matters, Google Ads matter, Facebook, social media, all of it matters in terms of your brand. Yeah. So if you post a post something on your social media, and you have a link going to your website, that’s a no-follow link you like it will not follow. But Google still sees that it comes from Facebook, and that helps your brand. So it is important to post on Facebook, it is important to have social media. I know we’re going in that little bit off that but that all

07:57

that all is about search engine optimization, you’re not optimizing just your website, you’re optimizing your brand. For sure. Yeah. And I think like it’s important, especially for, you know, kind of going back as far as like the searchable website content and having it easy to navigate. And all that kind of stuff like that is basically portraying who you are as a company. And yeah, I mean, posting on Facebook, posting on Google having the SEO having the ads going, I mean, it’ll basically show your customer Hey, this is who we are. This is what we do. And yeah, it’s important. So I agree with that. Yeah, 100%, man.

08:37

So as far as like, I know, we’ve kind of talked about this in the past, but you know, some of the leads that I’ve been getting from,

08:45

you know, using your services and doing the SEO and Facebook ads, and Google ads and all that kind of stuff. Could you kind of talk a little bit about that, as far as you know, maybe some of the backend stuff or how all that works? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it means, it’s it again, it’s very complex, for the average person, right? I mean, it’s not like I went and watched a couple of YouTube videos, and now I’m the expert, right? It was a lot of learning. And there was a lot of mistakes that were made along the way. And there were a lot of ups and downs. And even when we worked together, some campaigns just didn’t work, and we could not figure out what’s going on. We would optimize this, we’d optimize that. But you know, I think in terms of your lead flow,

09:33

really, what’s most important isn’t the leads, but where do you want to be? Or do you want to take your business, right? If you want to hit your, you know, if you’re at 500,000, and you want to hit 750,000 next year, but you’re only putting in $1,000 a month in marketing. Good luck. Yeah, I think you can get an extra $250,000 a year and still spend $1,000 a month it’s probably not gonna happen. So it’s really important. More on that like, well

10:00

You know, we can talk about the leads. But I think what’s more important is talking about how much is your customer cost? For sure. Right. And that is one thing. Yeah, I just want to interrupt here. That’s one thing that I loved about, you know, having you work on all my stuff is like you broke everything down exactly.

10:18

You know, the lead cost, how many leads we’re going to be getting, and breaking down all the numbers that way, as a business owner, I can sit there and be like, Okay, this is what I think we need to do. This is how much money we need to spend. And then we just brainstorm together, how to accomplish our goals, you know? Yeah, like us, as business owners, we have so much other stuff we have to deal with, I think, SEO and like lead flow and all that kind of stuff. I think you just need to leave it up to the professionals like Rudy, and Yep. To a degree, right. Like you have to, as a business owner, you have to if, if you don’t know what a KPI is, or a Key Performance Indicator, then you need to stop right now what you’re doing. If you’re driving right now listening to this pullover, then literally go to Google and go, what’s a KPI? Sure. And it’s a Key Performance Indicator, what is that? 

These are like the most valuable, measurable indicators of your business to tell you whether or not your business is going in the right direction. Yeah, you can use KPIs with employees, you can use KPIs with leads, and profit, and everything, right. And so if you don’t know your numbers, right, then you’re not setting targets, you’re not you don’t know where you’re going. And just like a ship out in the ocean, without wind, you’re lost at sea, right? So this creates that wind right creates that momentum. And so you need to know where you’re going, you need to set your targets and then reverse engineer that target. 

So if you want to hit 750,000, you hit 500,000, you need an extra 250,000. Okay, now I go okay, but my leads cost $30. Right, but I only close 25%. So that tells me that your actual cost to get a customer’s call the customer acquisition cost is $100. So if it’s $100 to get a lead, but your average ticket is $2,000. And if this doesn’t sound if this sounds all blubbery to you, and you don’t understand what I’m saying, then you need this, you need to really go and learn that. Yeah, right. This is an important part of business. Right? I like it. Sorry, go ahead. No, going? No, it’s fine. It just, I was just gonna say like, once you know, even those basic things, you can actually figure out how many customers you need to get to that extra $50,000. And then from there, you can actually determine how much you need to spend.

12:52

And if it’s, if it’s feasible for you, and if it’s not, don’t do it, right. It’s not going to work. Don’t try to like think that you’re going to be God somehow and figure out how you’re going to miraculously come up with all this capital coming in from an outside source, right? If you only think that you can grow 20% every year,

13:13

then then that’s all you can do. And if you don’t if you’re not a very profitable landscaping company, for example, because you’re always giving discounts or you’re not priced high enough, you’re never going to get there. Yeah, need to price good, too. I definitely like it, like all your KPIs on the numbers. It’s all very important. You know, for us, I know, we tracked our KPIs daily, you know, as far as some of the revenue or our margins for the day, we would track it. And it’s, it’s almost like driving if you don’t have your KPIs in order, it’s almost like driving a car without an instrument cluster, you know, or like, if your speedometer and your tack and all that kind of stuff. Like, you could be redlining it and you don’t know, you know, so we’re speeding, you’re speeding get a ticket. Yeah.

14:00

It’s totally true, man. You got it, you got to do it. And that’s a really good way to say that because you could gauge where you’re going. Yeah, and you like you make adjustments if you have to, you know, like that’s why I think it is so important to know your numbers know your KPIs, even with your employees, like because it’ll tell you Okay, I need to make an adjustment here or Hey, I need a pullback or Hey, I need to keep pushing or whatever, you know. Yeah. But you know, those new cars that are out now, I guess, they got that new lane assist.

14:36

stuff. I do, too. I actually show off now I was like, cuz sometimes I like to go into the merge. Yeah, right. Without signaling it’s like I just got to go over here and it’s like,

14:45

Whoa, that’s actually dangerous. I think

14:50

well, I only show I only turn it on now. I’m going on long-distance travels because in case I get sleepy or something, but yeah, but no, it’s true man like and that’s but I want to use that as an example because it’s a perfect

15:00

Example. Like it, having your KPI setup is like having a lane assist in your car. Yeah, it keeps you, right focused, that keeps you on target, right, it makes sure that you know, you’re going to go where you need to go, because, you know, everything else is commentary, right? All this stuff is going to hit you from all sides and all angles in your business. And you know, you’re gonna have somebody is going to call in sick or somebody’s going to get into a car accident or there’s going to be a funeral or there’s going to be a tornado, you know, there’s going to be all these things that that happen, which is you know what I say called commentary. But as long as you have that target.

15:43

Yep, there’s

15:45

no, right. It’s straight as an arrow.

15:48

Like you said, just Yeah, I agree. So I want to kind of go back as far as like the Google and the Facebook ads. So in your opinion, I’ll just say Google and Facebook ads has been crazily successful in my business, and obviously, you know, and we rely on them heavily in my business. So how would you say if someone’s first starting out? How can you implement those Google and Facebook ads into your business? Or how would you go about doing that?

16:23

Well, that’s tricky, right? Because if you try to learn it yourself, you’re taking your time away. Yeah. for your business, what’s your time worth? Exactly. But when you’re first starting out, you have more time than money. So maybe it is okay. To learn about how that stuff works, and try to really just kind of put that in place for yourself and try just do it. Just see, see how it goes. If you have some money to spend if you can do that, but you don’t have enough money to hire somebody, you’re kind of in-between there, then

16:56

just give it a go give it a try. Right? Yeah, but honestly, it’s it’s really complex, it’s really complex, you need to go through some courses, like go and buy a course on Facebook ads. Facebook even has what’s called the Facebook blueprint, where you can actually go through a certification process. And why that’s important is you can do that in the evening or on the weekends or whatever, and get it done. And then you’ll have a full, you’ll have, you could be a Facebook agency.

17:27

Here, if you could, you could add a Facebook ads agency, just from that alone, because you get that certification from Facebook, right. So but obviously, you know, time and experience will also help that, but

17:40

for anybody who’s just starting out, and you need these leads right away, my recommendation is do not do both. Right, the first thing I would actually tell you to do is get your Google My Business set up first. And the reason why I say that is

17:57

it takes a couple of weeks before Google will send you a verification postcard in the mail, then you have to verify you have to optimize your listing, upload pictures and your logo, but it’s free for one. And they provide a website within that, right. It’s not the greatest website, you can’t customize it very much.

18:15

But it does give you the option, for somebody to request an estimate. It’s a good starting point.

18:22

And it gets you kind of localized in your own little area. Like you won’t be all over the place the big like let’s say you’re in

18:31

Cincinnati, Ohio, well, your listing isn’t going to cover all of Cincinnati, Ohio, if you’re brand new, you have no reviews, you have no pictures, you have no posts, right? You just got verified. But it will give you something to start with for free. So people will start reaching out to you that way, and it costs you nothing. That would be the thing I would say that you should implement first.

18:53

Then from there, actually within the Google My Business account, Google will give you the option opportunity to open a Google Ads account from there. I think they even give you like a $200 ad credit to start out.

19:09

And then what’s really cool with that is they have a really broken-down version of Google ads. And it’s called a smart campaign. So Google will just kind of like go and take the reins for you. You just have to type in a couple of keywords that you think that are relevant. So basically your services so if it’s landscaping, you maybe you do sod installation, mulching, and tree and bush trimming, right?

19:34

So you put that in and then Google’s Okay, we’re gonna go and take that now. And we’re going to go find some customers as long as they have a place for like a landing page, which is could be the website of the Google My Business. It’s could be literally that easy. Yeah. But the reason why I don’t always recommend it, if you’re a bigger company, the smart campaigns is definitely not the way to go. Because you’re limited there. You can’t

20:00

control it. You can’t optimize it. Right? You can’t add very many keywords and you can’t target the locations. There’s a lot of variables in there that you can’t do. That’s a really good way to start. If you’re just starting out. Yeah, please look at one other ballgame. I will. Wait. Yeah, of course on it. Yeah. So but you would still recommend, like, as far as people first starting out, you know, trying to get some sort of ads going and, you know, to automate your lead flow, and that kind of thing.

20:32

I mean, cuz that, like, whenever we first started, I was doing everything myself. And I mean, we were getting leads all over the city, you know, driving 20 30 miles just to get the jobs and then being able to, whenever we started Facebook ads and doing work with you, you know, tightening down our service area. I mean, it helped a bunch. So yeah. Well, yeah. Because you know, you’re not going to make any money because you got to drive time. You got to drive one hour, one way. Yeah, it does the estimate, and maybe you’ve lost them. Maybe you don’t. You got to come back. And if you do close, and then you got to drive there again, to do the job. Yep.

21:11

Pictures, you need to be asking people for pictures, don’t go driving to jobs, you need to tell your customers, I need pictures, and Rudy’s smiling. Because as soon I was adamant that we were going to do this. And oh, it’s been a game-changer for us, like not having to go out and look at jobs. It’s been awesome. So a little plugin.

21:36

Makes sense. Because you know what, a lot of these people might not be in buying mode right now. So why would you want to waste all your precious time going all the way out there when really a simple quote, could be done with four or five pictures? Yeah. And, you know, we created that form, service autopilot, where you ask the appropriate questions to really help your cause, and then uploaded the images, they can upload the images. And you can even say in there, you’re allowed to upload up to 10 images. Yeah. Right. So psychologically, they’re gonna be like, cool. So I can take like 10 images, upload as many as they can because they want to get this taken care of too, they’re not beating around the bush either.

Right? So you’re making it easier for them? They’re not gonna be like, Oh, I have to go and take pictures now. Yeah, actually, if they knew that this expedited the at the, quote, 100%, they’ll go outside now take a picture. Oh, yeah. Well, and you know, we put expect your quote, within 24 hours, if you send in pictures, you know, and that way people know, if you don’t send in pictures, you know, like, you’re, they’re gonna get charged a console fee to come out there and look at it. Or, you know, you could be waiting a week to get a quote, and obviously, people won’t wait that long with our company. But you really want to incentivize people to send you pictures and make it easy on yourself. 

Yeah. So there’s a little plug there for that. Yeah. And I’ll add to that as well, like in the beginning, honestly, it did suck. But you might have to know, your estimates, even if it is an hour away, if you are really dedicated to your success. every customer at that level is going to matter. Yeah. All revenue. So you again, you have way more time than you do have money in the beginning, right? Sure. For sure. Yeah, I mean, in the beginning, you definitely have to deal with some of that stuff. But as far as when you’re scaling and growing your company and trying to get yourself out of it. pictures are definitely a way to go. But yeah, I mean, if you’re first starting out, you’re gonna have to be hustling on the streets, you’re gonna have to go out and look at every single job, knocking on doors, you know, whatever you got to do to make it happen. So.

23:45

So as far as like, I keep preaching on the SEO, because it’s been so crucial to our business.

23:54

As far as In your opinion, if someone wants to get started with an SEO package, what does that cost? Is it worth it? Is that something that you would recommend? What are your thoughts on that? Well, I mean, obviously, I’m biassed on this one, obviously. But I try to be, you know, I also kind of wanted to look at it like logistically, and even methodically and just like a kind of just give you

24:20

I don’t think that you need to worry about it in the beginning. You don’t, you can have your website ranked on the ninth page, it doesn’t matter, you can still get leads because you’ll have your Google My Business listing, you’ll have Google Ads at the top, maybe even Google Local Service ads if you do lawn wine, but that’s a whole another ball of wax. I’m not a big fan. I’m not gonna lie. I’m not a big fan. I think it’s a big huge pain in the butt. You’re out in the field yourself. You’re not going to be able to be controlling all of this stuff through an app. It’s very complex. You need somebody in the office to be doing that almost full-time. Yeah. So you know, it’s

24:58

Yeah, anyway, that’s it.

25:00

Another thing, but in terms of SEO, I think like in cost, right? There’s a couple of things that you want to look at.

25:08

There you do it yourself. Right? Or you get it done for you. And you can also get it from an agency that is a full-service agency, right? I’m not trying to, like promote my business, because I mean, we do floor coating anyway. But, you know, we didn’t start there, you know, we had, you’re still our client, and I have some pressure washing companies and so on installation companies. But concrete coating is just kind of the way I want to, I want to point my direction out right now. So. But that being said, We’re a full-service agency, and we know our niche, we know our industry. And so if you can find an agency that has that, you’re going to get better answers. Because, again, back to the whole Facebook group, the camaraderie that I see is one person is gonna say Facebook ads don’t work the other person say we have great success with Facebook, and another person’s gonna say, I tried Google ads for a month, and it didn’t work for me and I lost a ton of money. It’s horrible. Don’t do it. So they’re so somebody coming into this, they’re going to be like, oh, I’m just back to where I started. I have no idea. Yeah, more work on your plate than when you started. But the issue is that

26:21

that person hired somebody who only can do that this person hired the person who could only do that. So you’re gonna have agencies that only specialize in Google ads. But they’ll say no, no, no, don’t you don’t want Facebook ads, because they’re, they’re not gonna lie, they’re probably worried that maybe Facebook ads will be better. Yeah. And then they’re going to lose them. Yeah, they’re trying to push, you know, push their product, I totally, totally get that. Whereas a full-service agency, typically, you know, if you, if you buy ala carte, from them, it would actually be quite expensive, but they will package typically, they will package something together, and split it all, you know. 

And the good thing about like, this is what we do, we just package, here’s the price, and you will get what you get, we create a strategy, like this is a long term strategy, like, you know, you’re going to be spending X dollars every single month. But it’s only because you told us that you want to hit 1.5 million in revenue by the end of 2021. And this is how we’re going to do it. We’re going to and this is how we always recommend it is we’re going to build out your website, we’re gonna do your SEO. 

But SEO is a long, long game. Right takes a long time, Google only crawls your website once a month. That’s it. Right? So whatever updates have happened that month to hopefully we’ve caught them right. In any case. So we do that. And then while that’s happening in tandem, we’ve launched Google ads and Facebook ads. So you’re still getting those quick wins, you’re getting those leads right now. While we build out a website and get your SEO going. Your Google My Business is being optimized all at the same time as well. Yeah. Right. So that’s a really good strategy. And it’s been very successful for all of our clients. We don’t have one bad client. We had one client that left thinking he was going to get something good and then ended up coming back.

28:09

No, that’s definitely what I like about, you know, your business is, yeah, it’s the whole strategy. Like, it’s not just like, oh, I’m going to sell you a website, which I’ve had multiple people do that to me in the past. And yeah, you know, it’s, it’s the whole strategy. It’s the whole enchilada, the website, the SEO, the Facebook, the Google, I mean, everything, and it’s also sitting down with you, and being like, Hey, where do you want to be at? This is what you have to do to get there. 

This is how much you have to spend, you know, so I think that’s what’s the I try to drive the nail on? Is, you know, yeah, of course, you got to budget for it. And it’s important to have that, but, you know, if you’re price shopping and you’re trying to get the lowest price, guess what, you’re going to get subpar results every single time. There’s no question about it. 

Because and the reason for this is SEO is a lot of actual physical labor work. There’s a lot of going to reach out and get backlinks, there’s a lot of, you know, building citations getting verified. There’s a lot of like, on-site SEO, like, there’s lots that happen, that behind the scenes that you don’t even see. Right. And so it is very labor-intensive. And so if someone’s charging you $500 a month, chances are, they’re missing a whole walk load of things that they need to need to be doing right. So the other thing is when you’re dealing with an agency that

29:35

does the whole thing is you’re not going to have multiple different companies coming in saying Well, no, no, that’s not working. You know, it’s too salty. Or it’s not salty enough. Yeah. Never again, to get a straight answer, just like right, in the Facebook group, right? Everyone is the expert. But what really matters is if the agency that you’re dealing with and talking to if you’re trying to figure this all out, is asking you questions about your business and is genuinely interested

30:00

In your success, you’ll know, yeah, I the questions that they asked you if you’re talking to them. And they’re just talking about themselves and all these amazing results that they have. And they haven’t even asked you a single question about your business, RUN.

30:15

Run as fast as you can. Yeah. But terms with SEO, I would say, you know, if you have 500, that’s the minimum amount. Anything lower than that? I would be very, very scared.

30:28

But I’ve seen companies as high as 2000 a month. Yeah. Like we charge 1000 a month, just for SEO, and then website is 250 a month, but we don’t do ala carte, like we do, as a package deal, right?

30:43

So that’s kind of, I think, I think if you’re if you’re gonna if you hire somebody is around 750 to 1000, you’re probably going to be okay. It also depends on the area that you’re into. Yeah, they charge you a lot more. Because if you’re in Los Angeles or New York, it’s way more difficult to rank your business in a very competitive environment like that. So it’s gonna take a lot more at work. Yeah. Well, I definitely think you need to, like do some research on your company that you’re going to go with before you jump in. 

I mean, because that was one of the mistakes that I made. I mean, I’ve, over the years, I’ve, I’ve gone through a handful of website agencies until I found you. And it was because I wasn’t asking the questions. And, you know, just, I was falling for that, hey, we’ll give you a website deal for 500 bucks, like, so. Do your research. Hundred percent, man, you got it. Just like, you’re gonna go and buy a new zero turn? Yeah, you’re just gonna go to the nearest store and buy one or you’re gonna go buy one at Home Depot?

31:44

Probably not probably going to research or you’re going to reach out to your two people on Facebook or whoever else you’re going to reach out to, you know, be like, What’s good? Yeah, it’s different options. Well, you need to do the same thing for marketing. Because if you jump onto something, and it’s too good to be true, it probably is. Mm-hmm. So this is a good, good stopping point to jump into our next point here. I know we’ve kind of, you know, touched on this in your last comments there. But

32:13

as far as if someone wants to come in, and they say, hey, I want to look for a marketing agency or an SEO person, what would you or what would your tips be? As far as when they’re trying to look for somebody? Like, what questions do they need to ask what do they need to look for?

32:30

Anything like that, if they’re trying to look for someone to do their website, or do their SEO, your ads?

32:38

I think what’s most important, it’s going to be hard to know the questions that you’re going to ask for, right? Because you shouldn’t be asking the questions. They should be asking the questions, you need to be telling them your problems. So you just need to be open and honest and say, Look, you know, if you come into the conversation, say I, you know, I heard about SEO, how much does it cost? Well, guess what? You’re not going to get anywhere? Yeah. Right. If you tell them, I’m just starting out a landscaping business, right? Or a concrete coating company. And, you know, I want to hit 750,000, this year, right? What do I need to do to get there?

33:14

And then leave it open? And let them start asking you questions because otherwise, you’re gonna start. And that’s the thing we were talking about, like if they start bragging about their amazing results, and here, I’ve got the case studies to prove it still doesn’t answer your question, right? Look for the value look for, look for how they’re going to be treating you. Because if they treat you well, in the beginning, chances are they’re going to treat you well throughout the relationship. Right.

33:39

But if they’re quick to get you to sign on that dotted line, right, there’s nothing wrong with that, in the conversation down the road. If it’s something that you guys have mutually agreed, is a good solution for you. Fine, but if they’re quick to be like, Yeah, no, yeah. So it’s gonna cost this so you got a credit card, and then you know, they’re jumping on you like that, then just hang up the phone, because they’re more concerned about making money off you than they are about your results. Right.

34:06

Yeah, just talking about themselves. And I totally, totally agree with that. So. And then the last question I really wanted to get your advice on or your commentary on is, as far as like automating your lead flow. I know we’ve kind of talked about this as far as like, the different forms and things like that. How would you go about automating from the point of getting the lead? 

34:33

to transitioning them as far as getting them a quote and all that kind of stuff? Like, how does that look on your end? Well, for those who don’t really understand that question, because maybe you’re just starting out and you’re still trying to figure this all out. What he’s  alking about, he’s talking like Kyle’s talking about is a CRM stands for customer relationship module.

34:57

I never had a clue when I had my window cleaning business. I did.

35:00

even know what that was. When I first came into it. I’m like making an invoice using an Excel spreadsheet. Oh, yeah, dude, I used to have those little rip-off papers, the carbon copies. Those. Write down on them. Yeah. And then and then then you’re just like, okay, so I sent out that quote, and then you got to like flip through all this paper trying to figure out, when was it that and then you’re writing stuff down on the paper trying to figure out when you call them and then trying to Oh, yeah, well, should I just like phone them now. 

And it’s just super unorganized. Half of the papers ended up in the back of the vehicle, right? So you’re losing leads and everything else, not only that takes a ridiculous amount of time to have the phone and text and email and do all these different things. Right. But that’s what a CRM does. It completely changes your business, if anything that you should be investing in in the very beginning. It’s a CRM. Yeah, for sure. And get some, you know, service autopilot. I don’t know how much they are now every month, I can’t remember. 

But you know, if that’s not in your budget, there’s there’s still cheaper versions of that. Right? That will help you get to where you need to go. And then as you move up, and you start getting more revenue coming in, and you’re more profitable, then, you know, might be something you want to look into see anything something like service autopilot, right? Yeah. But, but I’ll tell you like that, you’ll save between 15 and 18 hours a week, having this Easy, easy. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, because if you didn’t have a form on your website, or let’s say you just have a default generic form that came with the template that you bought, from the company who you got the website from in the Philippines, that’s usually how it goes.

36:44

You get an email, saying that you got this lead, okay? Well, now you got to phone them all up, you got to find out what it is that they’re doing, what it is that they want. And then you got to figure out, Okay, so then you’re going to make an appointment to do the club. So then you go out and you do the quote, and then you got to go back home to your computer.

37:04

Right? Or you got to send them a text message or Facebook message or email right from your phone, say, okay, by the way, it’s gonna cost this, how professional does that look? Right? professional, it’s not even an official estimate on a nice PDF. Yeah, with your logo on it, and your tax number and everything else, right. So then you got to go home, and then you got to, then you got to send that out, right. And you don’t hear anything, you don’t even know if they’ve even looked at it. Right? Then you got to follow them and follow up, and then you’re not getting the responses. And then you know, so the time it takes Meanwhile, you’re still out, mowing your lawns and doing your bed maintenance or, or whatever, right? So honestly, like,

37:47

I tell this everyone that I talk to you running a business as a CEO of a company, your job is to automate, and delegate. Those are the two things you need to focus on. Right? So automation, sales automation, how to make that very, very easy. And you do that through a CRM, they already have it all pre-built for you, you just kind of have to put the little pieces in there. Right. So one thing that’s funny, though, is the automation. And delegation is like the furthest thing people want to do. Like, they don’t want to do that. And yet, it saves them an enormous amount of time. And it’s the thing you have to do to grow your business and scale yourself out of your business. Yeah, it hurts in the beginning, of course, it takes a course you got to learn this another piece of software, but it’s critical. It’s critical.

38:37

100%, you have to do it, even if it takes you an entire week straight a building out and learning this program and doing the training on it. You’re gonna save yourself hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours a year. On this again, what’s your time worth? Exactly? Is your time worth? Yep? Are you worth $5 an hour? Or are you worth $150 an hour? Well, that’s up to you to decide

39:01

to do $5 an hour tasks or you’re going to do $150 an hour tasks.

39:07

So definitely you want to have a CRM, it’s it’s a no-brainer in my mind. And, you know, for you as well, you know, this, right? They automatically these systems are designed to automatically send them text messages and emails and follow-ups. All you have to do is use it

39:27

and you have to build it out. But they have training for that. They have videos, they show you how to do it all you know, you know, it’s just a slight learning curve. And then you’re in right, yeah, and good companies like you that are you know, more full service instead of just like, Hey, we’re gonna be doing your website like they can take all that information, you know, the forms and automation and whatever and put it straight into your website or put it straight into your landing pages or whatever. And yeah, just it automates the whole process. So you’re no longer the one having to call the person

40:00

To set up a quote, it’s all done via automation. It’s all done via a website. You know, they send in pictures, the system kicks them an estimate back or kicks them back an email or whatever, just explaining your process like it’s super, super easy and great SEO and website companies like Rudy here can really help you automate that and help you grow yourself out of the business. So that’s a good point. 

Yeah. 100%. Like it is not doesn’t have to be complicated either. No, it doesn’t have to be you don’t overthink this. Like it’s literally you could have a six thing sequence. Like, they fill out the form, they get an email, an immediate email saying thank you so much for filling out the form. We’ll be in touch within 24 hours. And then they get a text message saying the same thing. Yep. 24 hours, guess what? Kyle is going to be reaching out to you right away expect a call from this number, right. And I’m really, really thankful that you were able to reach out, but whatever it might be, right. 

And what you’re doing is, you might think that you’re annoying them, but you’re not, you’re providing massive amounts of value. They see a company that has their stuff together. Right? They see a company that’s well organized. And what this is called is perceived value. Yeah. Oh, they will actually think that you’re just like a legit, big company. Meanwhile, it’s just, YOU, well, and they expect they expect when they see stuff like that, they expect to pay more, they expect that your pricing is going to be more than Joe Blow down the street because you have all these systems and automation and processes in place. And you put yourself out as a professional company that’s trustworthy. That is on top of their shit. They know what they’re doing, you know, so they expect to pay you. When was the last time you pass out a business card?

41:52

I mean, I yeah. It was the last time you pass out a business card with the price on the back. Yeah. I mean, come on. Now. Dude, I didn’t do that. Like, whenever I first started, I did that. All right, it was so embarrassing. And I felt like a loser. So having systems and processes in place in your business like this, it just makes you stand out from the competition, that is not doing it. They’re not doing it and they don’t care. And if you’re putting your mind, right,

42:21

you’ve given yourself permission.

42:25

Right? you’ve allowed this.

42:29

I guess you could just get permission to charge more. Yeah. So you don’t have to feel like you’re always going to be, you know, competing on price all the time. And you’re and you you know, you’re always wondering with these other companies, well, how are they charging so much money yet? I charge them less, and I didn’t get the bid. Mm-hmm. That’s why

42:53

you’re right. Every time that will always win, because people will buy from you for three reasons. Know you, like you, and trust you. If they don’t have any of those three or ones missing, chances are here, they’re not going to buy from you. So you need to make sure that you’re building that out for your business. If you’re going visiting these people and you’re handing business cards, or you’re writing a price on a piece of foolscap, right?

43:19

You’re just devaluing your product, you’re devaluing your service and you’re devaluing yourself.

43:25

Right? Worse, you’re gonna have to charge low rates, because you’re gonna negotiate with you. I know this for a fact because when I started my window cleaning business, I started cash under the table. Right? That was the only way I could afford to do it, in that at that time, I had no capital coming in. I could barely afford to pay my rent. Yeah, right. It was multiple months where I didn’t pay my rent, right? It was a big problem. Right? And so but the problem I noticed was every single time I did the PDF, I wrote even on that, like, so I made a, I made an estimate thing on Pete like an Excel and then I printed it out as a PDF, like a blank estimate sheet, right? I’d be writing it all in pen putting their phone number and their name and their logo on it. And I’m writing it all out.

44:16

It’s garbage. Yeah, it’s just garbage. It didn’t even matter. Because then they would come to me and say, Okay, well, you know, you know it, you know, I’ll book with you. But I’ll tell you why. Like, you know, you can book with me right away. But if you take the tax off, yeah. And then for sure, you know, whatever, you’re going to start negotiating in those ways. Bonus points. Stupid, right. They’ve been in they’ve done business with other businesses before. You’re not the first person they’ve ever done business with.

44:47

They’re used to seeing companies that have a higher level of perceived value and they see it’s it’s like, you’re like the lamb amongst wolves. Yeah, you’re done.

45:00

Right. That’s the truth. That’s the way you got to do it, man. I mean, yeah, I can’t tell you how many years I’ve struggled, because I didn’t do that, you know. And it’s a game-changer. So 100%, man. Well, that’s all the time I have Rudy. But I want people to if they have any questions or you know, might be interested in your service, could you tell them like where to find you? Or website? Anything like that? 

Yeah, so you can go to my website, it’s floorcoatingmarketers.com and has everything there about us. There’s some blog articles and a learning center there that you can kind of learn and read up on some of the stuff that we’ve talked about today. I mean, it’s very prevalent in our industry, and so it’s important to have that information out to you guys. So you can definitely do that.

45:50

You can also email me at rudy@floorcoatingmarketers.com.

45:55

Cool. Well, I appreciate you taking this time to talk to me and I’m sure people will get value out of this. Anything for you, buddy.

46:03

All right, man. We’ll talk to you later.