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. 

All right, all right. All right, thank you for listening in. This is the very, very first podcast episode that we’re going to be having. I’m doing this ad-lib right now because I just want to get my first podcast out. So I thought maybe that this would be the best opportunity to introduce myself kind of give you a little rundown on the story about what I am, who I am, and what I’m about, and why I have this podcast. 

So I own a digital marketing agency called Floor Coating Marketers. And we work exclusively with concrete coating, and epoxy coating companies to help them grow their businesses online, getting them in front of Google, on the first page of Google getting you in front of your ideal customer using different strategies like Facebook ads, and Google ads and getting your social media together properly, all in an effort to allow you to become omnipresent in your service area. 

So I don’t want to make this all about that I just wanted to kind of give you an idea of what we do. little backstory with me. You know, I’ve been in business for a long time. Really, at the end of the day, though, I wasn’t in business forever, right? I’m already in my 40s. And ultimately, I kind of got into owning a business because I really got tired of just working for the man and just trying to figure out what it is that I wanted to do. It just didn’t seem like I was really content with just kind of sitting in, you know, some kind of a cubicle or going outside and doing a bunch of work. And just being told what to do all day long, I wanted to be in control of my destiny. Most importantly, though, 

I wanted to be in control of my income. And I always knew that, unless I had some excessive training, like being a doctor or you know, something like that, or, you know, some kind of a surgical doctor or something like that, I’m never going to get to where I want it to go. 

I love traveling. I’ve been around the world on many, many places, I’ve been throughout Europe, I was backpacking through Europe in 2005. I did some backpacking in Southeast Asia back in 2013. And also went down to South America. And of course, I’ve been throughout the United States and Canada, and just really found a really deep profound love with talking with people and learning from them and their experiences. 

So I’ve always kind of had that. I’ve always just loved listening to people and, and just really trying to understand the psychology of people. And so that’s kind of I think what happened is I got into sales when I was growing up, got into corporate sales. And, you know, I was getting burnt out from that, because there’s a lot of pressure to be able to hit targets and all these different things that were going on. 

And so it just still really felt like there was always somebody breathing down my back. But I always loved helping people, I love taking care of, you know, anything that I can do to really help someone get to that next level gives me a sense of pride for who I am and makes me feel like I’m part of something. 

So I guess that’s kind of what happened is, you know, I mean, I’m kind of a geek nerd, too, as well, I really like getting into, you know, when I was actually back in 1995, I think it was, I was actually in the Institute of Technology, learning how to program video games, so I wanted to be a video game programmer. And this kind of actually teaches you how to do a lot of this, you know, coding and everything else. And, and so I got into websites a little bit dabbled in that on the side while I had a full-time job, and I really loved it. 

But then I just kind of went away and I got into life, you know, getting married and everything else and having to deal with different things, you kind of lose sight of that. And I really at the time didn’t think that there was anything worthwhile. You know, when it comes to building websites, I didn’t even know how to run a business, let alone trying to figure out how to sell websites. 

So as time moved on, and I started to grow up and learn, you know a lot about life and business and everything else. It really just kind of happened. I opened actually the very my very first business was a window cleaning business. I got into that because I decided I didn’t want to work for anybody anymore. And that was the cheapest startup costs. It really was just all about learning how to use a squeegee and the scrubbers and everything else, upgrading all my tools as I went along. So I started from literally $0 I had no money to account for I had barely any money left on my visa as I had moved from one province to another just got back from a bunch of traveling so I was kind of broke.

And so I just used my visa and I bought a bunch of tools and then I still had no idea how to run a business. So, ultimately, I just, you know, use whatever money I had started printing out flyers that were, you know, printed on black, I actually didn’t even print them. Because I didn’t have a printer, I actually just designed it on Microsoft Word, because I didn’t know how to use any other program at the time, and just went to, I think it was just a local print shop and printed them off. And I printed a whole bunch and just went around the area in my neighborhood, and just started dropping off flyers. 

Well, believe it or not, I actually ended up getting some customers from that, and all the way through the, you know, the lifespan of the business. And, you know, until I sold it, those customers stayed with me. So it was really, really cool that that happened. And then obviously, as you know, you start to make more money, you start developing different ideas and strategies, you know, you start putting some of that money back into your business so that you can, you know, spend more on marketing and, and all that kind of stuff started to, to work out. 

So that’s kind of where that went in. And I did all the marketing myself with that service business, really found that love back that I had back when I was like a programmer kind of thing. And really felt that that profound love for digital marketing. So I really just decided that you know, window cleaning, pressure washing, that kind of stuff wasn’t for me, I also started at Christmas like company with a partner. And we weren’t really seeing eye to eye and a lot of things I had to buy him out, there was a lot of frustrations there. 

Trying to keep employees for a seasonal business like that was very difficult having to recruit roofers and things like that. And of course, you know, that always doesn’t work out. And, you know, as simple as it might seem to do Christmas lights, it really wasn’t necessarily that easy for some. So it was just kind of the things that kind of led me to a different wanting to go down a different path. So, you know, knowing with knowing what I knew about the digital marketing side of things with my window cleaning business, I reached out to some people that I were connected with, within the industry, and I started talking to them about letting me build websites for them. So they really liked who I was as a person. You know, in fact, one client I still have today, you know, it was his wife that said, You know what, I really like Rudy, I think you should give him a shot. 

So that’s what we did. So I ended up reaching out to him and, and built him his first website, it wasn’t the best, but at the time, it was actually a lot better than what he had. And over time, started developing my skills and really learning and understanding daily like spending 12 to 15 hours every single day at my desk, learning, studying trying to figure this stuff all out. Because you can’t really I guess you could go to school now for learning Google ads, or, you know, for learning how to do Facebook ads, and all these different things. 

But when you start a business, as you know, it’s not necessarily easy to, you know, to be able to pay for all that stuff in the beginning. So I just learned it all on my own, and started just using these clients as case studies and they were fine with it. They were starting to grow their business. In fact, this one business, Kevin, and maybe we will, we’ll have him on this podcast, you know, he he was stagnant in his business for 30 years, he could not move up to that next level. 

As soon as I started with him, got his website, got his website ranked on Google. So it was showing up on the first page and started developing all of these things for him. He’s now at 150,000 a year in revenue, which is pretty good for a window cleaning, you know, roof washing pressure washing company, as your you know, your you know, your average tickets are quite a bit lower. So it’s Yep, you need more customers, it’s a lot more work to get to that level. And so he knows, he’s done really, really well for himself. 

He’s super pumped. We’ve basically, you know, tripled his business since I guess, when did he come on board 2018. So it’s been a really good journey along the way. And I’m super excited to be able to, to move into the floor coating industry into this kind of industry, I really found that it was very, for me, it was, it was just a really cool industry. I know it’s doing really, really well. And I know that there’s a lot of people out there that who may have been in the pressure washing business or landscaping that are actually starting to open up their own businesses and things like that. 

So learning from that experience and trying to understand the industry and what’s going on, I really felt that there was a need for someone like me and my team, my agency to really reach out and try to help them out the best that they can. Because ultimately, when you’re when you’re running a business, you don’t need to know Google ads, you don’t want to know all that stuff, because then that’s taking time away from working on the business. Because if you’re working if you’re doing the Google ads, if you’re doing the marketing, if you’re trying to build a website yourself, and you’re getting your hands dirty on that, then you’re not going to be able to have time to really grow your business. put people in the right seats to help them you know, expand it out. 

So that’s pretty much my backstory. That’s pretty much why I’m doing what I’m doing. That’s why I’m here. That’s probably why you’ve never heard from me before. Really jumping into the floor coating industry has been so far I think one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I really love it. so far. I’ve got two clients right now that are that are in the floor coating industry, we actually have multiple clients, you know, on the other side as a generalist agency, we call them a legacy agency. So we have lots of experience when it comes to digital marketing. 

So I’m really looking forward to helping out as many for coating, concrete coating, epoxy coating companies that I can, and I look forward to, you know, doing some more episodes and hopefully, I can have some of you guys on this podcast as well. We can talk about your struggles and your wins. And maybe there’s some things and some real cool ninja hacks or some kind of strategies that you have in your pocket, that have really helped you out that, you know, if you’re that type of person, you really like to help people 

Or, maybe you want the world to know about it, you want to help other people, then definitely reach out to me, rudy@floorcoatingmarketers.com. And we’ll, you know, get have a meeting, we will get together and we’ll just talk it all out. So looking forward to that. So I guess that’s pretty much all I have to say for today. Looking forward to getting all this for you out into the world so that you can share this with other people, other concrete coating companies that you might know of that could use this, and we will talk to you very, very soon. Take care. 

your job, your responsibility as a CEO is to automate delegate, your job is to make sure that everyone is put in the right spots, having to spend all this time trying to figure out digital marketing tactics and skills. Honestly, it’s a complete waste of your time, resources, and money. You need to hire a company that is dedicated to you and to the industry. Like Floor Coating Marketers, stop trying to weigh your options. Just get on board, hire Floor Coating Marketers for your agency. If you want to talk reporting business, this is your best shot at your success. If you want to three times or even up to 10 times your revenue. This is the best way to do it.