Adapt Your Home Improvement Business to Endure Economic Uncertainty

Audio Transcription

Welcome to another episode of the Contractor Click Podcast. My name is Andrea, and today I'm joined with our founder. And mastermind behind all this, Danny Barrera and our wonderful and talented ads doctor, Mady Barrera. Yes. What are we talking about today, guys? What do we want to bring to the table?

What value do we want to add? Well, today's, it's a relevant conversation. Look, the season is starting for pretty much everyone. I'm excited to bring the conversation of what it's going to take this year, specifically to find the momentum that you're looking for in your business, whether you're a concrete coating, that could have concrete business owner, or perhaps you.

Improvement services like fence and deck or remodeling. There's something for you in this conversation. Most of what we're going to talk about for in terms of, of, specialty is going to be in the concrete coding space just because that's where our greater greatest, , number of clients who we serve and we have contact with.

, these are the conversations we're having right now. So these are relevant conversations. , and we want to empower you to start thinking ahead. if you have a plan of action or at least a strategy, man, that's part of winning that you're like halfway there already versus you being on the receiving end, then you navigate through 2024, somewhere in the middle of the year, you encounter chaos, business is not growing at the rate and at the pace that you had planned for.

And before you know it, you're blaming everyone around you. So you can have a two ways, or you can have it one way, which is. You, the leader, the owner taking full ownership of where your ship is navigating. So, Mady, I know you, you're having conversations, with, clients and, and our accounts team.

Like, what are some of the things that people want to know? early this year to plan out for the year ahead and make sure that they're aligned I mean one of the big ones that comes to mind is people are asking a lot about how to offer financing in their in their In their companies. I think that's a really big one It's an important one and it's definitely something that that is is something that everybody should be considering moving forward What why is that?

It's important to offer financing because you will sell a a floor easier or a paver or whatever it is that you're selling easier if you break it up into installments it feels like for the consumer like it's almost cheaper I guess. Of course. When you have to pay things in installments. And it almost creates a better chance of being able to provide this service and having somebody actually like buy it than if you just have to like up front pay.

People are almost like protecting their money right now. It's interesting because we have conversations with individuals in like the entire scope. People are self employed, you know, they earn a decent living, they have a family, a lot of responsibilities. They're talking about like, man, I can barely pay the bills now with cost of, Of, groceries going up, you know, rent's going up and then we have individuals that are playing at this level, which is the complete polar opposite where money is not an issue, but these individuals are also money conscious, very conserving, one of our mentors, he talks about this is a time where he's going into what, what, what is he going through?

Yeah, he's selling, , He said, like, he has, buildings, he's selling things that properties that he has, and he's just holding onto it right now. That's right. So he wants to be, conservative. He's not making any major moves. He's like, that's the, the other thing is like, what is happening with the people that tend to in normal, circumstances, invest into just throwing money left and right.

And we just came out of the, we can call it the COVID. gold rush and that's it. We're no longer at the gold rush. So if you want to write something down or just be conscious of it, stop looking at the last three years. As a pattern trending curve for how the economy is going to operate in the industry.

I don't believe it's going to be the same as it was two years ago. And we're probably not going to see that on to probably another two to three years. any major uptrends upticks, who can recall something from COVID? What, what happened during COVID time? Oh man, I was talking about it actually just this week is the week that it all kind of went south, four years ago.

And I remember that we had emergency meetings we had to call. , I was working for my church at the time and we had an emergency meeting on March 13th. And then I think it was like the 17th was our last service for a super long time. And that, that's a hard memory. And I, I think you guys can all rewind back to that and get a little reminiscent of that.

We might've pushed it down and tried not to remember, , how disorienting that time was, but it, it really was. Some businesses, completely floundered and closed. My favorite gluten free bakery closed forever. And I still, I tried to like do takeout, but they're nowhere to be found now. Rest in peace, percent bakery.

But, but that, that, that. That happened. They were fantastic. , whether it was the mental game that shut them down, the unknowns, , it was definitely not the product, you know, it definitely wasn't that they had people who loved them. It just, there's, there's curveballs that are going to happen again. How do you think people would operate if they know something is coming that severe?

How would they prepare? How would they pivot? How would they, what moves would they make? Totally. Danny, that reminds me of like when a hurricane's coming. Yeah. You know, we do hurricane prep here in Florida. Some of you listeners might not understand, but, I grew up in tornadoes where it's like, You just get underground right then.

That's it. Hurricanes. It's like a you have a hole like it's coming. It's coming It's coming. So you fill up your gas tank you go get extra Groceries that aren't gonna spoil easily you fill up all these water bottles you have all of a sudden Everyone's gonna drink gallons of water every day I don't know what that's about, but my husband goes into prep mode and That's all he thinks about.

He barely sleeps, , getting ready for the hurricane. And then whether or not the hurricane really hits. I've slept like a baby. We do the windows. He goes all out. But the thing is that I lived around during Hurricane Andrew, so I definitely know what it's like to like, you know, experience that. The people that didn't prep.

were the ones that didn't have water to go to the bathroom, that didn't have water to shower, they didn't have food, so like, they were struggling. So all that crap, yeah. You gotta get your cash. You gotta get your, you couldn't go to the gas station, you couldn't go to the bank, you couldn't go, for like weeks down here in Florida.

And you've gotta, if you've got a family now too, I think that's part of it is, you know, it's not just you. It's not just you running by yourself, you've got other people to care about. So you're a business owner. The responsibility of the weight falls on you. So what we want to do is equip you and start having the conversations now and challenge some of the conversations going out.

In the marketplace right now, you're going to hear a lot of hype. This is a time, especially when, when there, there's a lot of chaos and problems. you got to guard your heart. you, you've got to, , slow down for a moment before you make any major decisions. In your business and when you make decisions, commit to them.

What do I mean by that? Is this is a time in like just historical references. Marketers love to come into spaces and like disrupt and make this big bold promises, , and. You know, this is the time to go all into your business, but understand from a strategic perspective, I'm not looking for the shiny objects of 50 leads or it's free a hundred leads or it's free because as we're going to share here in a moment, , We have put together the concrete code and growth system.

And what are the key metrics you should be measuring and you should prepare for? And what are the key things that will help you out? So going back to the conversation of preparing and like, if we, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to just make sense of the math here, you literally take from 2021 to 2023, you're going to start to see some uptrend pattern 2023, which is last year, you, you.

You saw the slowdown in the, again, I'm speaking to the concrete coding, , industry as a whole, this is blended data. This is not, , isolated geographical data because in the midst of all of it, Mady, you can speak to that. Man, there's clients that have had their record breaking years and continue to, but this is in a blended, so we're looking at local economies being one aspect, the political systems in each economy, the real estate market in each economy, and that is something that we cannot just say, okay, everyone's going to feel it in this one, one specific way.

So I just want to be very clear on that. every area is different, throwing some weather in there. And then, now you got a curve ball there. 100%. You have like every, it's true. Regions are all very, very different, , patterns in, in what people are doing in terms of, of buying, clicking, all that stuff is very, very different depending on the region and the area in the United States in which you live.

Cost per leads, conversions, very different. But the awesome thing is that, you know, we, as a, As an agency, as a partnership, we actually have eyes on the entire U. S., so you can speak to a overall trend where a specific territory in a specific state might not be seeing that, but you can give them a heads up, like, overall, this is what I'm seeing.

Yeah, so 2023, again, the curve has started to slow down and what it looks like if we were to just say, okay, judge the entire again. The entire ecosystem and say, just in the concrete coding space, you would think that the industry as a whole is tanking. It feels that way from a bigger picture. However, when you're looking at 2019 and you put 2023, there's an uptrend to it, and it's not a severe uptrend as it was.

From 2021 and 2022, right? From 2020 to 2021, 2021 to 2022. It was just like a vertical skyrocket. It's like, man, everywhere you, you could just go and cash collect the gold rush. , that is not the, the actual landscape in 20. So we have, the political system coming in hard. I mean, there's going to be quite a bit of chaos.

In my opinion, we might see some of that in marketing, right? The political landscape is they're paying to be shown to people so that The cost per leads might go up. So Marty, how does that, how does that, , that alone, how does that affect advertising costs? That's gonna affect a big time in the sense that the cost per lead will be high.

Because imagine if you have these political people that are playing it at a level of millions and millions and millions of dollars, that it's not hundreds of millions of dollars. Like, it's not even like no store can compete, not even like a. Like anything that's that's that sells stuff can compete with the amount of money that these political people are putting into These ads that are going to show up on your feed all day long in every in four or five different avenues different different Ways and then you're putting in even if you have a hefty budget You're putting in like less than like zero zero point zero zero zero zero zero percent budget of what these political People are putting into these advertisements.

So it's like all that money is going into the market most So your cost per lead most ad platforms, pretty much every ad platform out there, advertising platform, not most, all of them are bidding platforms. Whoever pays the most, we'll get the most impressions. And the reality is, is that that's going to drive the cost of impressions app, which the cost of how many people you can get in front of, which is the CPM per Million, whatever it is per thousand shown, it's going to go up.

It's just a reality. , and that's what we're expecting. That's what we're prepared for. That's what we've been preparing our clients for. and that is what I would prepare you for 30%. You must be willing to increase your advertising spend 30 percent to be at the same place that you were last year. Now, that doesn't mean you need to be at 30 percent more and you're not going to get more money back.

, worst case scenario, we're right. And you do the same as you did last year. Your cost of acquisition has gone up. and that's just the reality of the market. Best case scenario, we're wrong and then you're ---winning. So you got to bleep that out. , leave it there. Leave it there. Just give me that beep.

, I want you to get a book called Simple Numbers Straight Talk Big Profits by Greg Crabtree. We're going to work on having him here in a future episode. And he was having a conversation about the real time pulse on the economy and what it's looking like in labor, for example. the labor hasn't necessarily come back into the marketplace the way it was operating before COVID 19.

So we're not looking to have that, , come back. and it's interesting because we want to see how that plays out with, with the economical system here. wherever it goes, we just got to be ready and have a plan in place. and that's the whole thing about this conversation. It's like, Hey, let's plan some things out.

How should I be prepared and not wait for it to strike so that now I have this big business, multi million dollars, and I don't have any jobs lined up for my guys in the next six weeks. Well, here's the nice thing too, is if you go through all the preparation and, and it doesn't happen, nothing bad happens.

The hurricane doesn't come. Yeah. Guess what? You've got a lot of water. You've got a lot of cash. You've got your gas tanks filled. Like, the concept still is valuable to you and you almost. End up having more money in the bank because you prepared. So it can only be a positive, you know, it's, , it's the biggest thing is just getting yourself aligned with what do I need to do?

What, what should I be improving on right now? And I want to share with you, , what we use for, for our clients here, the concrete coding growth system. And we use this in our coaching calls at Codemaster as well as for our clients. and if you can see this, if you're watching on YouTube, by the way, make sure you subscribe, like this video, share, leave us a comment right down below.

If you want to get. A copy of this specific, sheet here. These are some of the things that we want to measure on a daily, monthly, and quarterly. and I believe there are three specific sections here. When we're looking for someone to scale and grow consistently, three areas of mastery. Keyword is mastery.

Mastery doesn't mean you need to do it yourself. Oftentimes it's, how do I partner up and align with the best individuals that can help me maximize, , maximize my potential. So the first one top left, , I'll give that over to Mady. Lead flow in the daily activities. what does that look like Mady?

So daily the lead, you would have to advertise, engage and follow up. Yeah. , just be present, be present on social media, you know, advertise for your company, you know, follow up with the people that are reaching out to you. Just be engaged. , there is a, , an audio book I want you to get. If you're not first, you're last, by Grant Cardone.

It's an awesome book. that was written on the 2008 ish recession cycle. And, he talks about like cells, you know, it's a follow up game. You, you, you, you must be willing to go above and beyond. And that's part of the follow up, follow up, follow through. , if you. Are comfortable with just giving out an estimate and giving one follow up versus a guy or gal company that comes in and they have an incredible sales process that has multi touch points going out at once, during an entire week period.

Um, guess who's going to get that job? Yeah. A little more boldness, even the squeaky wheel gets the grease kind of like the squeaky door. I know my squeaky door finally got fixed because. It was very noisy and annoying. So what are some of the ways, when we're talking about engage, Andrea, can you talk, what is engage exactly?

What, what falls under that? Yeah. I mean, it's engaged online and offline. I think that's a, something that can be missed. You might be really good at one or the other, but are you capitalizing on both? With your community? With your community. I love, one of the things I love on social media is that I can comment on a local business and then they know about me because they're going to click through and be like, who is this, coatings company?

And they're going to click through and they're going to see my profile. You're not being annoying. You're value adding. It might be the restaurant that you love going to. The coffee shop that you frequent but you're, you're getting yourself in front of them and then who knows those could be commercial projects that you get to do down the road.

On the other, on the other hand is If you have not taken social media seriously, like this is the, this is the time for you to capitalize on it. make sure you follow our friends at, at Epoxy Pros, because they lead the way when it comes to their positioning and how they engage with their community, how they engage with the entire world through social media, because engaging is, is also you coming out and you putting your best self out there and How creative are you showing up?

And this is what we're working on here at Contractor Click with our clients, the digital marketing partners. It's what are we doing to empower There's even an entertainment factor. Yeah, there's entertainment, but The quality has to also go up, right? It can't stay in a one specific formats and there's different ways to, to leverage the quality of the content, the cadence of the content, the communication.

So engage that that's what falls in that. And we're noticing the clients that are winning are the ones that are consistently showing up, not just from, Hey, here's more money to, for, to put into advertising, Mady, right? But the ones that that engage on social putting better content out there, what happens to them?

No, it's, it's just a better thing. They're well known. It's a matter of fact, the other day, I don't even know I was talking to someone, they're like, Oh, that's the guy that because he's always like posting himself on on social media. And like the other day, he was even posting himself like cleaning the actual floor, like metallic floors, like that stuff is engaging, entertaining.

And in turn, that person or that company draws attention. People want to be featured in their videos. people that buy the product, like, Oh, I want a product from this guy because this guy has such fun videos. I want to be a part of them. Maybe he'll make feature my floor when I do my floor with them.

That's right. Yeah. We're talking about entertainment. What, how does entertainment play in, in a slower economy? What, what, okay. Better question to ask is what industries just crush it, on a stagnant economy? Netflix, man, entertainment, entertainment, entertainment. Why? Because people love to be entertained.

So create great content. We're working on that internally. You might see, make sure you follow us on Instagram or Facebook. Andrew's doing an incredible job there with our crew, our team. , and. The goal is for people to see the human behind on the other side, behind, who's behind it all, right? Or if you want to be too perfect, show, show yourself up in a way that's too professional.

Sometimes that could be intimidating, but what if you start showing up, showing the behind the scenes? I'm fascinated by that because I don't know your world, right? I don't know how you pack the truck before you go. I don't know what all the You know your checklist your middle checklist of the day. I don't know what your office looks like I don't know.

Let's stop there. That's going to force you to level up Yeah, right and also too like if you're going to be promising that your product is offering all of these things show me for real Like yeah, show me how should they show how should they show me how easy it is to clean? Show me there you go You know, there's so many promises, so many promises, right, that I hear of constructors saying, Oh, our coatings are UV stable, easy to clean, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Yet I go to our social media and this is something we're working with our clients, by the way, it's like quite literally going, grab some car oil, spill it on the floor and say, guys, look how easy it is to clean. There you go. this is our coatings and this is the competitor's coatings. You do that. That could be an ad that you can repurpose, run it as a retargeting.

Boom. That's a homerun ad for you. but you, you've got to be willing to go the extra mile. Again, this is in these circumstances, worst case scenario, man, you're going to be crushing it. Yeah. I'm not going to curse you. You're setting yourself apart more. And it is funny, even that factor of like the mess is the hook sometimes where it's like, The start, you're wanting to see the finish so you can't stop watching it.

The problems, right? They ask you answer. You've got to highlight the problems, the most common problems of floor chips and peels, one of our, coat master lab members. He literally did that. He went out to one of the job sites and in social media, he's like, Hey, look at this floor. And it just literally came off the entire lamb and the entire, coding came out as they were peeling it out.

He was talking about it. That's great. That's great content. You could use that. That's an ad that could be the ad hook where it's like, Hey, this is the 2 difference on a quality concrete coating floor. Boom, right? This is the guy who lowballed you and now i've got to go fix it. The cheapest option in town will give you this, right?

Um, so those are some of the things that is the daily So if you're willing to commit for more and grow and be better and do more You're simply going to get more the more you do That you, seeds that you plant, the more that you're going to be able to harvest. So let's go into the, the monthly conversation and lead flow.

We're still at lead flow right now. so this is quite packed and then we'll go into fill your calendar and grow on scale. If you can show the chart here shortly. , there are three key things every month, , that we want to make sure we're nurturing number one, and we're expanding on Mady. You want to talk about, , the, the first one.

Okay. Referrals? Referrals. What, how does that look like exactly? I mean, like, is it just from customers? No, I mean, referrals are, it's a great, like, hey, if you are in contact with, if, say, you do coatings and you're in contact with, or you have a friend that does pavers, right? And another friend that does painting and another friend that does, you know, garage cabinet storage, like, form a referral network and refer, you Back and forth.

This is an active and proactive. And if you're a contract or click partner, we will help you and facilitate the conversations, introductions, how to what to say to each other in order to not feel awkward, like, Oh, my gosh, no, there's got to be a proactive aspect of, of referability, not just from the sense of like, Hey, if, , you know, you know, if you hear of anyone doing, , wanting to do their floors, just giving my information.

That's, that's a very passive way. What if we have a proactive way where you are helping them initiate the conversations with their customer base so that once they finish a paint job or once they've done the power wash, or once they've cut the trim, cut the grass, whatever has happened now, it could, it could feel like almost like a gift.

Hey, look, one of my buddies is doing a great, , great deal for our customers and we just want to make the introduction. Would it be cool if I, if I connect you both, boom, put you in a two way conversation. Imagine if you get five referrals for each one, which is very, very doable. Super doable per month.

And it's big time from each one of your referral partners. It's big time. Awesome. Because if I'm a person looking for one of those services, right, I'm going to trust you if I trust what you do for me already. And I'm not even going to like Look for exactly because I'm gonna trust you especially if you're servicing the home already so This is your challenge for you.

Whoever listens takes action. You're gonna make a lot of money. You should be at a minimum bringing in 12 12 jobs and again concrete coding, contractors are speaking to you 12 12 jobs minimum from your referrals. This is without paid advertising. And the beautiful thing is as you acquire clients, you also train your clients so that each client and customer can also give you three to four introductions to other people.

So that now you can have your salesperson start working the relationship. This is how you maximize the dollar. This is why I'm not afraid of paying the most to acquire a client and customer because that one client and customer, say my acquisition cost is 800, but that one can turn into five or three referrals.

And now when I average my acquisition. What's my real acquisition on that? And each one of those three clients now multiplies into another three. That's only if you have a proactive referral network. most people don't know how to create that. Mm-Hmm, . , a con contract. Click. I was gonna say concrete marketing crew.

Shout out to concrete marketing crew. We're now contract. Good old days, right? Good old days. we have a referral network. This is what we do. This week alone, we've gotten three referrals from our clients, which we're very grateful for. And look, if clients come in, they commit, et cetera, we honor, we have an honor system here where we take care of our clients and we take care of whoever they've referred, right?

This is a proactive strategy. and I'm going to tell you in this economy, this is going to be one of the key areas that you must maximize. I mean, this is like, it's for free. You just gotta be good with people. Good with people. And Danny, it makes me think of right when the job happens, of course you're wanting to get the reviews that are mentioned there and the referral in the same day that you installed the floor.

But really, if you build a relationship, that's a recycling, like you can go back to people that you've installed a floor for last year. There you go. Oh, I'm afraid if they're gonna complain like take it as an opportunity Take it as an output. We hear that so many they complain then there's a problem You can record the video about the problem, you know, we're looking at yeah Who cares if people know is not a big deal like the worst that can happen if the worst thing can happen is no or do Not disturb or leave me alone that if that's the worst that can happen which which goes back to to the point of make an incredible five star customer experience, a referable experience.

, again, if you're a part of the Codemaster, community, coaching community, or you're one of our Contractor Click digital marketing clients, we're going to help you along the way to implement these strategies for your business. So they're like, some clients find the benefit of working with us more so in the coaching side than actually they're getting jobs, they're making money.

The ROI is positive. You can't keep up with that. Oftentimes it's in all these small strategies. What do I do, Denny? Like, what's the next step? Well, this is what you need to deploy. And now get to work and you will see the result. I promise you on this one, referrals is untapped. So untapped. And all it takes is for you to be an incredible human, just like you are, but bring your best self out there, connect with people and have a process and a system.

So that is consistent. So your KPI in my book should be 12 referrals per month to all people that are committing to be in your calendar so that they can get a job done from you. If you find that to be too far out, that means that you don't, you're not well connected in your community, so you must make it a mission to do that.

Another way is, you know, the good old, everyone goes to the good old, general contractors. That's amazing. You should do that. Like that's by default, we're talking about other individuals that service your ideal client, especially in the key locations that you want to service. Like find out who they are, take them out to lunch, make it make a special, invitation, right?

So again, so many things you were talking a lot about, you know, real estate agents is interesting because There's been a an exodus of real real tours, with Some of them of them quick quitting. So if your business is dependent on them, however, there's a lot of people that know people , so you just got to pay attention and be active, reviews We're not going to spend a lot of time on this one.

But how important are reviews? People check reviews, the first thing they do is check reviews, and then they're less, sometimes they're not leaving you a review, but they definitely checked them. They read everyone else's review. Yeah, 100 percent and they're also very important in terms of searchability and maps.

Searchability, it's, look, we've mastered the art and science of Ranking clients and I can tell you there's so much Our clients that are getting reviews every single month and following the process They just skyrocket like it's it's a question of once we start the program They start ranking the ones that don't it doesn't matter what we throw at it Like, it doesn't matter.

They just, oh my gosh. It doesn't matter. Hey, do we want to send fake reviews now? Is that the, the business that we're on? So we've made a commitment to not do that. There would be a time where we would do that. We would get fake reviews. And I'm not proud of saying that. And we will purchase fake reviews for our clients.

I said, no, no more. if they don't want to actually work, the process and give a great customer experience and go the extra mile to earn the review, I don't think we're a good fit, right? It's turned into more of like a coaching and educating on how to get. Yeah, and there are so many great platforms.

Nice job is one of them. We help our clients with the CRM that we give them, but it's more about. experience that the platform, I want to make that clear. It's more about the experience that you give someone than the actual platform that you use. Some people think like, Oh, well, I just want to automate the SMS and the email.

And like it's going to follow up with them until they deliver review. You can think that way, or you can think about how do I solve, the problem of people not seeing me as, Someone that they want to leave a review for and just being 100 percent when it comes to my entire customer journey experience to go above and beyond and then just mapping out what that looks like.

And then as you're getting, To the finish line, start to get them excited about their new floor, right? And once they have the new floor and they experienced it, you let them know, Hey, we'd love to work with people just like you, you know? And that's when you go and ask for the review. Once they told you, man, we're so satisfied.

This is all great. , again, for referrals and reviews, reactivate, you know, database reactivation. Do you know, you know, that you, your database holds money. Okay. Like all anytime we choose and, and this, we do it here. Our contractor click again, we throw ourselves under the bus. We don't communicate with our marketing list for the purpose that right now we're backed up right now.

We're at full capacity. We're, we're still about three weeks in the wait list. We have a wait list. If you're a referral, someone refers you to us. We'll welcome you in your, you get priority. That's just the name of the game team. , but when it comes to anyone out there. We've slowed down in our reactivation campaigns.

Why? Because every time we send an email out, people come and book a time. And they continue to get on the calendar. They want to get right. You're laughing, but isn't that true? And they get upset because we're like getting our ducks in a row. And you guys have experienced that too, where you're like, what?

You'll want to pause your ads. Cause you had someone leave. That was your main installer. Like we get it. But if you're wanting to continue to push forward and grow the reactivation works like a charm. It's every month you hit them up. so there's a couple of reactivation campaigns you must consider.

One of them is a simple nine word email, which are you ready to get your floors done? Are you ready to give you a garage floor or make over this month? Simple one liner. the subject line is their first name. And then that's it comes from Dean Jackson's playbook. Hey, Mady, are you ready to get your garage floor makeover this month?

Ben, boom, right. That you sign it off out of your entire list that you've ever acquired from advertising on Facebook. There's going to be a handful that say, sure. Yes. Send me more information. You move the needle in the conversation. You move forward. The second one is, those that have booked, booking an estimate with you That haven't shown up, that didn't go in like, Oh, I need to counsel, because of this and this.

And then you couldn't get ahold of them back again. That is still a list that's still part of your database. And your job is to nurture that when you can offer them specials incentives, whatever you got going on. And then, right. , financing. So let's go to this one right here. Anyone that you've pitched that hasn't converted in the last year, last three months, et cetera.

You get to rework those leads. And checking on them. , and how are you sending them new material? No content. This is why we're so big this year about project highlights, because what else is new that you can send to people in their world? Hey, look at your neighbors, a new floor or pool pool deck, new patio.

We just got done. Are you ready to move forward with your project? New project highlights, show them what's new. What's trending in re inspires that person. Or, Hey, did you know that we're offering financing? You could get a new floor for as little as 65 a month. Right now do metallic, you know, whatever it is.

We're now doing our as you expand service offering So think about your position in reactivation. And I have one more after that. For the people that say absolutely no, I do not want this, I went with someone else. I have, , we have a, I work with a company who has a survey and asks what made you choose the other company.

And why did you like their service before? And what did, what could we have done better and what could we have improved? And they take that no, leave me alone column and they use that to better their sales process. I love that. That's so good. So, anyone that you've lost, lost sales, you inquire about that.

That's so good. And now you get to refine your sales process, which now let's move, you know, let me, let me caveat also by saying that that particular company has a 70 percent sales conversion. There you go. They've been taking notes. So they're students. They're students of the game, and they're doing exactly what we're, what we're mapping out here.

On the quarterly growth plans and budget alignments, this, you know, the budget alignments, it's like you, you have your growth goals, growth plans, but do you know your profitability, your numbers? Do you know how much your job is going to cost you? Have you calculated everything down to the T, right? Right down to the T.

What is my profit? Cause now I can create a vending machine for myself and say, you know what, I'm investing this much, but every job I'm getting back this much after all is said and done. If you have not quantified your fulfillment, your process, your true costs, you're going to be making numbers up that even if you think you're having a positive ROI, because the marketing is giving you incredible returns, you don't understand, or you're not tracking your referrals.

Um, you're going to realize that there's going to be years that you don't make any money. You can, you can play job, but no, you're like, man, I made 1. 2 million, but I'm like, I made 6%. It's like, it's bearable. I overworked. I barely saw my kids, you know, like all these conversations or you can be on the other side.

You know what? , this is time to realign and look at, your vendors, look at your strategic partners, your marketing partners, , looking at the conversations, what is working, what is not working. So the growth plans is really to map out what are the things that are going to come in the way. into that next level, for your business this year and being strategic about it and having a plan for that, right?

Um, and then what you want to calculate here on the bottom, it's like CPA. You have two, two calls. One of them is like the CPL, whichever one looks at, but the true, the true, , the true acquisition costs is a CPA. , why is that important? Well, that's very important because then you know how much it costs for you to acquire a client.

I have a client that's like, I don't care about the cost per lead. Just tell me every, every biweekly, we're going to have a chat and I'm going to tell you how much my cost per acquisition was. That's all I care about. And it's interesting because like you can now just choose to invest more. And again, this is the year where if you're, if you're not clear on your profitability, your numbers, be willing to maximize advertising investment.

So that you can be at a good position, a consistent position in your growth. , but you got to also look at the numbers and say, you know what, , how does these compare to, to my growth potential in my business and how am I looking to play a, we are seeing when player, other players come into the market and they start advertising at the same rate and level of your current advertising, we're seeing that the cost of marketing goes up ridiculously by 40%.

That's sometimes. We're seeing that actively and we're telling our clients if you're willing to invest just a little bit more or maybe it might not be the Advertising investment, but it's like the media and the assets that we get from the clients because you've got to be disruptive in this world Which is another conversation that goes to the engage and advertise conversation But that influences the acquisition costs.

Would you agree on that? Absolutely. Educational content. 100 percent educational content, just cutting edge things, things that are new and different and, and, and things that are give information, that give data, that give, not just the pretty floor, but a lot of it, you just have to kind of think about all the things in terms of like what you need to, educate your, your potential, client about, and that's the content that you have to be creating, advertising, giving your marketing people so that they could advertise for you as well.

Absolutely. So the commitment to better content, it's going to impact your closing ratio, like educational content. It's going to impact your closing ratio and as well as your CPA. Both of them. So you might as well just do it. We talked about the strategy. What was the strategy we talked about last week?

Oh yeah. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, , the 7 11 4 strategy from, from Google, it basically outlined seven hours of engagement that you need to be putting out there. So this is what we're talking about. You don't have the content, start producing the content. Eleven touch points before someone's ready to commit to buy.

And then four different, Yeah. And we're seeing marketers coming through and like quite literally they take this same model and they apply it to their clients. We encourage you to follow this model because this is going to help your clients. Please use it for your clients. you can literally, Christian wanted to take it down.

I'm like, leave it, dude. You know, I want everyone to, to understand what it's going to take for, for you to grow your business. It's not just lead flow. We, we just talk about lead flow. And we didn't, we didn't even talk about it at a deep level because we can go. Just in each one of those specific subjects, which is by the way, we're going to be having live in person events later on this year.

Stay tuned for more contract or click summits in person experiences. The goal is to empower you so that the application of all of this is relevant and in real time. And you're literally walking away with, with the blueprints and plan. You need to have assisted support, all of that implementation in person in the beautiful South Florida.

Whether. So you can bring your spouse, you can bring your business partners, , and, we can mastermind, , more in the works on that. I'll leave Andrea to that as we, have farther developments, but we're looking out for, by the end of summer, have something together for, for our people. So fill your calendars, I'm not going to spend too much time on this right here.

It's look, two areas that you need to master this year, not improve. What, what, what do we need to do, Mady? Master. Mastery, mastery of appointment setting. That means every opportunity last year, I said it counts as two. I'm going to say this year, every opportunity counts as three. If they're in your service area, they inquired about your service.

, and they're Interested in what you have to offer and interested in see how much it costs. Times three so just multiply it by three and I like that you're looking at this We have to this is something that you have to look at on a daily monthly and quarterly Sometimes people are like dead set and like oh, I know how to sell and that's it.

And then they don't Revise their weekly monthly every week and month. We're conversations with your admin assistant with your Appointment setter with your whoever is handling the phones in other words And if you're the one handling the phones right now I want to say that, man, there are so many great partners out there that can take care of the leads for you, make the investment, pay the few hundred dollars a month so that they can take care of the leads for you and the upfront and set the appointments for you.

Like just do that because if you're investing to advertising, And your appointment setting is flawed. That's it. You're done like that will actually cost you more to advertise because your acquisition is going to be all flawed. So again, closing percentages that's at the bottom line, which is the sales process mastery.

That is what we're covering this month in Codemaster lab. Is that right? That is what we're covering. Yep. we're excited about that because we're master We're spending some time with pete johnson our lead coach and trainer in coatmaster lab. We're going we're deep diving into sales mastery process for the concrete coating industry, we're excited about it because Small pivots make a big impact in the closing and the higher you can close.

Um, it also reduces your cost of acquisition. If you close at a higher percentage, believe it or not. , and then the last piece here, and we'll spend just the next two minutes here, growing scale, growing scale. , what's, what's the most important thing about growing and scaling? I think that the, what, what struck me the most is the, the awaken the leader on a daily basis.

Like if you're not leading your, your people. If you're not looking at yourself as a leader role and leading your company and your people, how can you grow and scale? So when we do reverse engineer production for our clients, and this are like what the growth alignment calls every quarter and every month, what they are is to be a help and assistance to the leader, because the leader, you got to have real clarity and data, but also you, someone's got to hold you accountable.

Yeah. Because if you said, Hey, we're going to improve our sales process, or we're going to implement this or that, or we're going to get this, like one of the biggest struggles is, with our clients. It's always been like, Hey, how do we get more, more and better pictures from you? Because small changes.

Andrew, what, what does that, how, how does that impact? I don't know if people understand, their ability to take better pictures. We even created a guide on how to do that. We did. We want to resource you guys on that because it isn't that, sometimes it's not that big of a change physically to take a better picture.

It's almost training your eye to know, , what to look for and make sure it's like a distraction free kind of photo. But we even had a tutorial on our coat master of how to even erase a cord that you accidentally left and you don't have to throw away that picture. Yeah. So there's a lot of opportunity there.

Just stepping it up. , even micro changes make a big difference on social media. You want to stop that scroll? You want to stop that scroll? Yeah. So it's the biggest difference. So holding the accountability, awakening the leader. we talked about this yesterday. I believe in us being multidimensional individuals.

You're not here just for the business. You think what really matters at the end of the day is how you live your life and who you impacted. And the first person you got to impact is you. How are you impacting yourself every single day? Like there's got to be a spiritual alignment that you're connected with God, the source every single day.

And if you wake up with clarity on where you're going, everything else becomes more manageable or you could choose to ignore that area of your life and go in chaos and addictions. I mean, this is the world I'm playing in this year. It's irreplaceable father. I'm on a mission to impact the lives of one million divorced men because of all the things that just happen as a byproduct.

Your spirituality goes out the door. You put all your focus and energy in trying to look better, deep inside of yourself. You're dying every single day. You're showing up and you're like, what's this? That's the point here. I'm so disconnected from my children. I'm so disconnected, right? So as a business owner, I know for a fact, the more that you're growing, your relationship will suffer if you're not bringing your relationship up with you at the same level in intensity.

But then if she's a stay at home mom, no, you are the leader. You create the space for her. You're her protector. You're her guide, or you can choose to just continue playing it the way you've been playing it. So a contract or click, I'm not here to give you the little quick, get your leads for a lower cost.

We're done playing with that game. If you don't step up as a leader and lead with power, with certainty, with momentum, and you're not dialed in spirituality to the point that you know who you are within. And you can empower others around you because if you're empty, you're pouring from an empty cup, your people are going to feel it.

They're going to end up quitting. Guy, I can't find good people. Well, you're not an attractive leader. I'm sorry about that. It's the reality. It's the reality. We want to create the environment for you, the leader. Again, the Contractor Click Summit in person experiences are going to have a piece in a moment for you to bring your spouse so that we can have the real and raw conversations of how to navigate business and relationship at the same time.

Because I believe this is one of the greatest opportunities because your wife has been left all alone to take care of the children, all the chaos at home. She might be cheating on you, you don't even know, and you wake up to that reality. And frustration, getting divorced, losing half of your business because you didn't show up as a man in her life, or maybe you're crushing it and you're empowered and you're leading in truth and uncertainty with direction.

We're now the conversation of marketing is just a little piece of it. Body being balanced in business. That is what awakening the leader is. Getting you dialed in, in the most certain area of your life when it comes to your body, your being, your balance, and your business. And it all leads back to the code, which we don't have enough time to talk about it.

But I hope that this piece right here speaks to one of you guys out there. Because I know for a fact, if you're struggling in business, you're probably struggling in your relationship. Or if you're struggling in business, you're probably, it's because you're struggling in your spirituality connection with God.

You know, I want to challenge you to just In your most stressful moment, play a worship song. Just get in a pocket, in a space of surrender. Yes, you can go to the gym, you can blow off steam. Yes, you can go and do all of that physical activity to get all of that. But if you want to get into alignment. And this is going to help you make better decisions.

So awakening the leaders to really know who you are, not because you've seen someone else accomplish something in business. You want to copy them. You want to be like them. You want to forget about that. It's you, my friend in front of the mirror, and you have a call in this life, which is to lead your family, lead yourself.

, if you're single, you don't have any, anyone that, you know, it's you maximize your potential. Right. So, I'll leave it right there. , year over year growth. You should see year over year growth in yourself, in yourself as a human being. I've seen Mady. How, how different am I versus how you met me when I was like, literally quite literal, I don't recognize.

Most of, 90 percent of who I was versus who I am today. Yeah, no, 100%. You're a totally different person, down from like the, I don't know, just everything. From like not speaking out in certain things to like, you know, just your role in your life. You just are a completely different leader, for the better, 100%.

For the better. And that has created challenge in our relationship too. There's been, there's been times and seasons where it's like, Hey, where are we at? Like, I feel like I'm growing, but then you're here or, and there's been times where I'm like, man, I'm done. I'm just so in the business and I'm dying and she's up here, she's flowing.

And this is where the balance comes into play. I think of like, if, if you're changing, which you should be changing, but then you don't keep aligning with your spouse, then eventually you're, you're going to have no clue who each other is. If you haven't actually had that opportunity to grow together.

That's right. And that's, what's most important is who are you getting to impact every day yourself? You're here for growth and expansion. And not just one area of your life in every area of your life. And I want to challenge you with that. The rest of it gets a lot easier. Why processes, numbers, people, if you have the right mindset, man, you're going to get your processes dialed in.

You're going to know what pivots to investments you need to make recruiting, training, empowerment of your people. That's what it's all about at the end of the days. How am I creating that recruiting experience, the training so that when they come in and work at this place, it's a great experience and the empowerment, which if I'm not empowered, how can I empower them?

, so that being said, what's your biggest takeaway and share after this podcast? Well, I was, I was talking about it a little bit before we even recorded the episode, but you know, we've talked about building the arc and, and today, , You're basically trying to identify what some of those little holes and cracks are that, you know, the water hasn't risen to the, those cracks and, it might, it might end up being a bigger flood going on.

So go ahead and fill those cracks, find those holes and, make sure that you've shored up your ship getting ready for this next season. That's good. And the cracks are not always in the financial system. It's in your system as a, as a, as an individual. Mady. I think for me is you can't just leave it and set it and live life like well it works I'm leaving it alone.

You constantly have to be searching and looking and evolving and growing And shifting whether it's in yourself and your business and your processes You always have to be an active person in that aspect when you're a business owner You have to actively be changing, evolving, bettering all the time. You can't just feel like, okay, I'm complacent.

I'm done. This is good. This has worked. It's fine. No, if you think that way, you're going to stay behind. Team, it's not about reading every day, personal development, and you're going to grow. It's not about that. You got to put in the work. The reality is your business is not never going to outgrow you. Your business is never going to outgrow your capacity.

And your capacity only can get expanded when you expand yourself in different areas of your lives, in every area of your life. And you can be the guy that has made millions and millions successful exits. And I'm not going to mention the individuals because there's a lot of these guys that people look up to.

When they end up divorced, losing half of their wealth in the process, just by the mere fact of losing their family and who they were as a father, as a, as an individual, as a leader. Only to have to recreate the entire thing and probably do it another two to three times before they realize man I've been playing this wrong.

I've never heard an individual that's played at over 100 million dollars say , I wish I spent less time with my children never heard one. It's always a regret. It's always a Hidden thing so when you get dialed in and you know who you are and you can find balance and momentum in your area I want to encourage you Concrete coding growth system.

At the end of the day, it comes down to you. It all points out to you. So I want to encourage you and challenge you in this goal to grow and expand in different areas of your life. My first one is. My spiritual alignment with God. That's all that matters has nothing to do with my wife or my children. He has everything to do with, and I know if I'm aligned with that, the rest of it starts to fall into place.

What's that Bible verse, seek first the kingdom, seek first the kingdom of God and all his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you added. And now the same token, when you are doing that at the highest level for yourself. You're going to look at yourself. You're going to see yourself eating like crap.

You're going to be like, nah, that just doesn't align with that. Or you might be saying, well, I'm the boss. I'm the one that works, goes out and work all day long. So you just got it right. Treating everyone else around you, your spouse, your children, right? Right. Instead of investing and mending and loving them, protecting and pouring into your relationships.

Instead of doing that, you're distancing yourself from your family. So it's your choice. This episode here, I wanted to finish it with this because this is what it's going to take when there is uncertainty in the financial system, but you have certainty in God, in who you are as a family man. It's an individual and within yourself, you know, I was going to bring and share a quick share.

It's too extreme for me to share in this one. I'll leave it for another episode. It's going to be too extreme. But I'm going to tell you it's, it's, I'll leave you with this one here. Lily, I used to share this notes with her. She's my daughter while I was pretty much at my worst time and looking back, I mean, I'm living what I dreamed of at one point in time.

This is my peak. Transcribed A woman I love who I feel connected with, who challenges me, nourishes me, gives me the attention, right? This, this, this is a real talk. Like I love Mady. I love growing, expanding next to you, but, I don't know if you can see it here. Every single night she sends me a Bible text and I tell, I told her yesterday there was a point in time where I was just putting notes like, man, I hope that she remembers me, like I wouldn't have her during the week.

I wouldn't see her probably for two weeks. I would pick her up every other week from her mom's place and I would leave notes and I'm like, man I'm just gonna leave and I hope that you know one day she She knows that I love her and like whatever is happening right now. It's not who I am and You know, I told her hey, thank you for inspire inspiring me every day.

She sent a beautiful Bible verse yesterday And she's like no problem. You inspired me first So, men, I want to challenge you to inspire your children. Set the standards so high, and your life is going to change and transform. The complete growth system starts with you. Forget about the marketing side, the sales.

We'll fix that. We'll fix that. That's just a mindset thing. We'll fix it in no time, but let's get yourself aligned. And if you have any questions, feel free to connect. , I'm looking forward to putting more of these conversations together for men who feel like, man, I'm all alone in this deal, in this world, I'm running at such a high pace because the reality is you are, if you're running a business, you're running at a pace that no one can understand, except very few people.

And I want to create that environment for you. Click. You see, the name is no longer a concrete marketing. Forget about marketing. Let's put marketing aside and let's grow the individuals that are actually leading their worlds. And I want to empower you, bring you everything we need. Resources, training, coaching, the digital marketing, the partnership, But I want to create an environment for you to come and have this conversation so we can build alignment for you.

So connect with us. Send us a message on Instagram. That's probably the best. What's the best way people can connect with us? Yeah, if you are on social media follow us on Instagram At contractor click and then if you want to email us social at contractor dot click we can We'd love to give you a copy of that PDF that we shared today because we want you to print it out and put it right there in your office to make sure that you're keeping up with those daily, monthly and quarterly, , achievements.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Thank you for tuning in. Appreciate your time. Contractor click podcast. Make sure you follow us on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple, wherever you listen to us and give us a review. Cause we love to hear how we're doing. What, what else would you like to hear from us? Let us know in the comments we'll see on the next one.

Take care.