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On this episode of the Huge Transformations Podcast, Sheila Smeltzer sits down with Daniel Dixon, CEO of SendJim, for a high-level but highly practical conversation about modern marketing, targeting, and the real drivers of growth in home service businesses.
What makes this episode stand out is how it reframes marketing from “getting more leads” to building a system that consistently generates the right leads—and converts them. Daniel breaks down the concept of being a “big fish in a small pond,” explaining why most companies waste money by marketing too broadly instead of dialing in on their ideal customer avatar. He introduces predictive targeting as a game-changing approach that uses data to identify the small percentage of homeowners most likely to buy, dramatically increasing efficiency and ROI.
Beyond lead generation, the conversation dives into the full lifecycle of a job: generating leads, converting them, and delivering the service. Daniel and Sheila explore the often-overlooked tension between sales/marketing and operations, and why growth requires both sides to stay balanced. They also emphasize that the most overlooked opportunity for growth is a company’s existing customer list—where trust is already built and conversion is significantly easier.
This episode is especially valuable for newer business owners because it simplifies what can feel overwhelming. Instead of chasing every marketing trend, the focus is on fundamentals: know your market, stay in front of your customers consistently, use multiple channels, and build systems that follow up long after your sales team stops. It’s a strategic, no-BS conversation that helps business owners think smarter about how they spend their marketing dollars and how they scale sustainably.
Resources:
- The Huge Convention
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Automate Motivate (employee engagement / gamification platform)
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Daniel Dixon — CEO of SendJim
Transcript:
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Huge Transformations podcast. I'm Sid Graef out of Montana. I'm Gabe Torres here in Nashville, Tennessee. And I'm Sheila Smeltzer from North Carolina, we are your hosts and guides through the landscape of growing a successful home service business. We do this by interviewing the best home service business builders in.
The industry folks that have already built seven and eight figure businesses and they want to help you succeed. Yep. No fake gurus on this show, just real life owners that have been in the trenches and can help show you the way to grow profitably. We get insights and truths from successful business builders, and every episode is 100% experience.
0% theory. We are going to dig deep and reveal the good, the bad, and the ugly. Our guests will share with you the pitfalls to avoid and the keys to winning. In short, our guest will show you how to transform your home service business into a masterpiece. Thanks for joining us on the wild. Journey of entrepreneurship.
Let's dive in.
Hello listeners. I'm your host, Sheila Smeltzer and contributor to the Huge Transformations podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I have a kick butt interview with Daniel Dixon. Daniel is the CEO of Send. Jim, if you don't know what Send Jim is, send, Jim is a. Marketing product that can absolutely help you be a big fish in a small pond.
This is targeting market targeted marketing folks, and Daniel and I, you know, Daniel's got a huge passion for small business. He came out of the corporate world. Uh, we don't even really talk a lot about that, but he came out of the corporate world and his passion is helping small businesses grow. Um, he actually grew up in a family.
His mom and dad owned a carpet cleaning company, so you see why he's passionate about home services and small business. But, um, we are gonna talk a lot about marketing today and this stuff is gold. You guys, I learned so much. That I am so excited to share this information with you. Um, we talk about how to really dial into your target market and how to market and spend your marketing dollars to that target of who is your ideal customer avatar.
Um, we talk about how to convert. We talk about the lead gen. The conversion. And then we even talk about, yeah, now we have to go deliver the service. And that natural tension between sales and marketing and operations. Um, there's so much that we cover today in just 40, 43 minutes. Um, you are gonna wanna listen to this.
So thank you so much for joining us. My wish today is that you'll be an active listener because we are excited each and every interview to help you grow. Enjoy the show. Hello. Hello everyone. This is Sheila Smeltzer, huge, huge podcast contributor, and today we are here with Daniel Dixon. Hey Daniel. Hey, thanks for having me 100%.
I am very excited. We were chatting a little bit and I know that we've known each other in the home service space and through the huge convention and other for a long time, but I've never really gotten to know you. And I love a platform on a podcast that we can get to know each other and share some good insights with our listeners today.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to, uh, to dive in also. So, Daniel, tell the audience, just everybody who's listening, let 'em know who you are. Yeah. So Daniel Dixon, I'm currently, uh, I would say an entrepreneur. I, uh, I'm currently the CEO at Syn j. Um, and I own and operate a, uh, garage floor coating company.
I live in Nashville, Tennessee. I've got, uh, a beautiful wife and two children that are in elementary and middle school. And, uh, life couldn't be any better. It's, it's, uh, I'm super lucky. I love that you're grateful. I can tell. I am very grateful. I love it. Um, so I, I definitely wanna talk about Send Jim, 'cause uh, I know that this is a fantastic, uh, marketing product and um, definitely can help small businesses of all kinds.
And so I'd like to talk about that. Um, I really do wanna, I'm hoping that we can dive into some sales and marketing chat in general. Mm-hmm. Um. Because I know that I think some, a lot of companies are either really good at sales and marketing and other companies are just really good at operations. Um, it's very difficult to be good at both, I think.
Um, and one thing that I've really been thinking about, um, leading into and thinking about what I wanted to talk to you about today on the podcast is. One thing that I've noticed in my years in business is, you know, we have all of our different roles in the company from admin, sales and marketing operations, right?
Yes. And so there's that sales and operat, sales, marketing, and operations. There's just always this constant tension that's. It's supposed to be healthy, right? We want a healthy, like the ideal is that we have this healthy tension between the both. Meaning if sales and marketing is crushing it, then we need operations to meet that demand, right?
Yes, we've got all the leads coming in. Leads coming in, great. We gotta go out and we have to fulfill the services that that, that the leads. Need. Right, right. And then vice versa, operations. We can build up operations and have all the trucks, and have all the people and the equipment and all the stuff. But if we sales is lagging, then you're gonna lose, you're gonna lose those employees.
'cause they're like, I can't make any money here. Right. Yes. So I'd really like to talk about that today, but tell me, just to get started, I wanna know more about what you do in the marketing space with Send Gym and Automate Motivate. Yeah. So, uh, syn Gem is a marketing automation platform. Um, what we do, we've kind of flipped, uh, old school marketing on its head, and, uh, we've got very, we've brought like technology to old school marketing.
What I mean by that are things like. Making sure we convert every single lead, um, and making sure the neighbors of our customers know about us, uh, as a home service company and marketing to those people. Um, and making sure that, uh, we understand who in the market is buying home services and. An only market to those people.
So a lot of that we do through postcards, um, handwritten cards, um, we do some text messaging, but it's a lot of physical goods. Mm-hmm. And instead of like the, the old school spray and pray method, where it's like the more cards you get out, the better, let's try to get out a hundred thousand postcards. Um, we've said, Hey, what if we could only send a thousand postcards, but they're 10 times more effective.
Right. So how do we reduce the cost, uh, of your marketing? Um, and get the same or better, uh, result or revenue generated from that. So that's the product. Go ahead. So this is, is this what we call predictive targeting? Predictive targeting. I'm surprised you heard about that. So when the podcast goes live, it'll probably be out in the universe.
Um, but right now we have a beta group called Predictive Targeting. Um, I'd love to get into that. If I could explain a little bit about that. I would love to talk to you about that. Um, but I don't want to take up all your show. No, I'm, I'm very interested, um, because I really wanna, I really wanna stay on this topic, so I, I've always been a, a very.
Big support like I have found. So I think it depends. I think first of all, we're all in different markets, right? Yes. And for example, my market is lots and lots and lots of retirees. Mm-hmm. Homes valued 600,000 and above. So as we learn at the huge and in the Mastermind, we wanna be big fish in a small pond, right?
Yes. We wanna really target into the that target market. Who is it that we really generate our highest ticket from? Yes. And we want to, we want to find them. So if I send out a postcard to thousands and thousands of houses, we know that if we go into, um, you know, if we go to the post office and do postal routes, we're gonna send a lot of postcards that are going to houses that are not in our target.
That's not our target. Yes. Correct. Yeah. So I'm assuming predictive marketing is somehow allowing us to find that very small percentage. Of, of people and being able to only market directly to them and not all of the wasteful stuff, because the wasteful postcards are what have given postcards a bad name.
Yes. But I also know, just to finish what I'm gonna say here is that like my client, my client demographic of predominantly retirees and that 600,000 and above, they love a handwritten card. Mm-hmm. This, this is meaningful to them. Yes. So we get a referral from them. We send them a handwritten card. Thank you so much for your referral.
We're not giving 'em money off, we're not giving 'em anything. The value of just saying sending, sending someone you care about to someone you trust means the world to us. Thank you so much. So tell me how you're doing this with marketing and automation. Yeah. So, um, everything you said, right mail is becoming way more effective than it ever has.
So mail used to be super effective way up here. Gotta find my camera way up here. Right? And then as email and digital ads came out, like mail started going like this. Mm-hmm. And like now as AI's coming out and we're inundated with digital ads and everything's digital, like mail's starting to go back like this because you can stand out in the, in the mailbox, there's not many people doing it.
Why? Because mail's expensive. It's really expensive if you try to mail every house, right? Mm-hmm. So we started saying like, okay, let's get smart. And we have the, the ability and the, the fortunate circumstance at Syngen to be working with thousands of home service contractors. And we asked, uh, some of our favorite contractors, Hey, would you mind us taking your.
Customer data and doing, uh, having our data science team, uh, analyze it and understand what about these people makes them buyers. And so what we took is, uh, you know, 50 to a hundred thousand, uh, maybe more customer records. And we said, okay. Sheila bought, uh, this service, whether it was, uh, let's call it soft washing, okay?
Mm-hmm. And so Sheila bought that. Now let's look at everything else we know about Sheila and we know we, we have this data to say that she drives this type of car. She doesn't have a car payment 'cause she owns it, her mortgage, uh. Is this much compared to her home value. This is her personality type. And I'm listing like four things, five things, but we look across 250 data elements to say, what does Sheila look like?
Wow. And we do that for every single customer that we, that we got to analyze. So let's say 250 data elements across a hundred thousand people. And then what you do is you take that and you say, okay, where can I find more? Now that I understand what every one of these people looks like, let's look for commonalities.
Okay. So one of the unique things we saw, which is crazy that you wouldn't ever be able to find this, uh, without doing this analysis, is that hey, people that use e-readers are way more likely to buy home services. Why? Mm-hmm. I have no idea. Right? Mm-hmm. But like before, it was, let's target everybody with this home value and everybody with, you know, that's owner occupied and that has a single family home.
And, you know, we can get, typically, like if you look at a market and we say a hundred percent of people are in your city that are gonna, you know, that live there and then you, if you use typical demographic filters. You can get that down to like 40%. We're gonna mail to 30 or 40% of the homes, and that used to be called targeted.
Uh, but what data analysis shows is that only about three to 5% of people in in a market at any given time are actually potential buyers for your service. So we're mailing to 40% using demographics, but only 3% are buyers. So we said, well, what could we do to find those 3%? And we use this to build a data model that says, Hey, I can find other people that use e-readers that drive the same type of car, that have this personality type, that have bought home services in the past that subscribe to magazines that do all these things.
And then I can go to your market and said, show me all the people that look like Sheila, and then we can only mail to those people. And what that says is, instead of mailing to 40% of people, you could mail to five or 6% of people. Wow. So I participated in that study that you guys did, by the way. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Thank you. So, yeah, so I'm very curious, um, about that and you know, that sounds like a lot of work. Like how much time did it take you? To do that? Well, it was years of experience, right? Like people had to figure out how to do this and then, um, yeah, it was a long time in the planning and then making sure that we had the right people participating like yourself.
Um, that had good customer lists and understood the industry, and then it was all the data analysis, and then it was to actually build a tool around it, right? We had this really cool report and then we're like, now what do we do with it? So it was a, you know, we were thinking about this a long time ago, but it's, you know, now that it's finally here and it's, it's really incredible.
Love that. Okay. So, and then this is Send Jim. Yes. Syn Jim. So, so tell me about automate Motivate, because that's automate motivate, totally different part product, right? Totally different product. Um, our founder, Josh Latimer, may have heard of him. Uh, he was very big in the cleaning industry. Um, massive Ander action.
Yeah, he, uh, but he, he's a very smart guy and he talked to a lot of home service companies. He founded. Uh, sin Jim, and he said, Hey, what are the two biggest things people have trouble with? Which you kind of alluded to at the beginning of the podcast was, was sales and marketing. That's one. And then mm-hmm.
People, right? Mm-hmm. That's the second one. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And employees. And how do we manage the sales people versus the ops people and the tension there. And, and so he developed an app that, uh, gamified the workplace. Um, that said, here's the behaviors we wanna incentivize, and how can people, um, how can business owners make sure their employees get rewarded for those behaviors, like using an actual system or software?
I love that. Yeah. Yeah. And engagement is, and is such an important thing. You can just see your employees when they walk in the door. You can tell just by the way they walk and the look on their face if they're engaged with being there for the day. Yes. And I have seen it go like this and I've seen it go like this and thank God right now we're going like this.
Yeah. But um, but there's so much that goes into that and, um, yeah. Okay, so very cool. Now, what, what if, if I am, I am a plus PRO Services Incorporated and we signed up with Send Jim, what would that process look like? Yeah, so the first thing would be getting on a demo, right? And understanding about your business.
Not every business is the same. Um, well, understanding your home service business and then getting a plan set up to say, Hey, it makes sense to follow up with every single quote even after my salesperson's done. Mm-hmm. It makes sense to market to the neighbors and my customers automatically over a six month period.
It makes sense to, uh, send some mailings to these people that we believe are home service buyers based on our data model. Right. We'll put together a plan for you and then you'll sign up. And, uh, then we have like a one-on-one onboarding. You'll be paired with a success manager and they, you know, if the words automation scare you or AI or like, you don't, you're not a tech person, right?
Like, I didn't go into home services 'cause I wanna be on the computer. Right? We'll set all that up for you. And, um, this is something that's kind of new for us. Uh, and I say this because you, again, you talked about the sales and ops, right? Like, we were really cool at building tools. If you're familiar with Syngen, you know, five years ago.
Three years ago, even one year ago, great at selling. We built a really good product, but like we lacked the support to get people set up and to get them truly understanding to how to implement the strategy. And, um, and so our operations is caught up to that now. And so we do a really good job. We have a dedicated onboarding team to make sure that you're gonna get the return on investment.
And then we're going to, we're gonna set it and in three months we're gonna come back and say, okay, let's look at. Uh, the results from these, uh, campaigns and automations in your business. So I heard you say that you have the ability to convert every lead. Did you say that? To help you convert every lead, that's the goal, right?
Yeah. That is the goal. So, um. I mean, there's so much into that too. Yeah. It's like when it's one thing to get the lead, it's the other part to convert it. Yes. And then it's, the third part is delivering it, right? Yes. But that conversion, how does, because like I understand getting the lead, and I understand how Send Jim can help get the lead, but how does Send Jim help convert the.
Yeah. So here's a, here's a perfect example. And I use syn gym in my garage floor business. So I'm just gonna use, use real world numbers, um, because I've, I, I live and breathe this stuff and I actually eat my own dog food. Like, I use syn gym. I pay for the usage, I pay for the subscription. Um, so cool. And so like every single quote that we go on that's over $2,000, we send them a handwritten card, immediate, right?
Like we're connected to jobber, our CRM, but we Connect Syndrome connects with tons of home service CRMs, but every single quote that goes out over that amount, we're automatically sending a handwritten card that just says, Hey, thanks for the opportunity to give us. Uh, to let us quote your project. Right?
And then it kind of gives a value proposition to them of like, who we are, what we stand for, and people, what, what we know is people buy, especially if your service is non-transactional, um, like if you're in their home or, um, it's a high value service. Like a high dollar service. People buy from people they, they know, they like and they trust.
Right? And no one's sending handwritten cards. You, you mentioned that earlier at the value of that. And so. We know there's a ton of competition in the market. For the most part. Everyone can do what we do technically, right? Like we're not special in any way. Anyone can wash windows, anyone can do the garage floor.
And so why do they choose? Who do they choose? Well, is it the lowest price or is it because someone stood out? You know, I don't think they're gonna choose somebody that's $50 less when you're buying something that's $4,000. Um. If the person that is of $50 more is like building you this, this relationship with you.
So that's the first thing we do, right? Every single time. And then the, our sales person's really good at following up. So he has a three, you know, personal touch follow up process, and then. Um, they either have said, Hey, contact me, hit at this time, and they'll keep following up. Or at some point they've become nonresponsive or they, uh, say no.
Okay. Mm-hmm. So those people that have not responded or said no, typically this is like a, you know, two months process. So the sales person following up through their system. So we then enter them. They go into this automation that says, Hey, send them a text message, send them a postcard, send them a voicemail.
And so every quarter we're following up with something super simple. The text message might be, Hey, this is Daniel with my garage floor. Guys, I saw you had a quote in our system. Uh, are you still interested in doing this work? Having the work done? And then it's just a response, right? It's just yes or no.
There's no offer, there's nothing salesy about it. And they, you know, people say, yes, great. You know what, you know what, what can we do as the next step type of thing. Or it's no, and say, thanks for responding. So anyways, we market to people that have said no or basically have gone cold and every single quarter.
We convert like a hundred thousand dollars of work from people that said no to us. Wow. Because we just stay in front of 'em. Right. And in sales, I like to say it's, it's not a, it's not no forever typically it's, no, it's, no, it's like not right now. Mm-hmm. Right. And what I mean by that is, um, you're busy, you're running your own business.
I'm busy. Like people that make enough money to buy our services are really busy. Their kid, you know, gets sick. They have a work trip, they. Uh, something happens at their house. They have an, uh, in-law they have to take care of. They go on vacation, like they're just too busy to do the thing now, but it doesn't mean they're saying no.
And so there's a subset of those, those people that you've already paid for the lead. These are expensive. And you're just not staying in front of them long enough or building that relationship. And so we do that all automatically, right? Like, I don't expect my salesperson to follow up for two years, but syn gym can follow up for two years in ways that feel authentic.
And it's not a text blast, right? It's not. It's very authentic messaging and, uh, doing those things is just giving, it is free money basically, because you've already bought the lead. So why not sell them work for like a, you know, very, very small marketing expense. Right. And in the garage floor space, I mean, these are really one-off tickets, right?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, one-off tickets, but in the cleaning space, exterior cleaning space, like these are recurring tickets. So Sure they, so in your case at for the garage floor company, which is by the way, my garage floor guys. And so at my garage floor, guys, they may have said no, but it's like you said, life got in the way.
They got busy. They still haven't had their garage floor coded. And our case, a lot of times it's, yeah, we've already chosen somebody else. But so now that's a complete completely different campaign, but it's still that follow up, like, yes. Great. What was your experience like with them? What could you have seen that would've been better?
Yeah. How can we create that for you? Right? Yeah. Like if they said, oh, we someone else, I'd be like. Hey, no problem. I hope you had a great experience. You know, would you mind if I reached out a year from now? Um, and you know, would you be open to me reaching out a year from now when you're ready to have the work done again?
Right, right. Something like that. Or just reaching out to them a year from now. Like if they say no, let's put them into a campaign that we know they're gonna buy this service in 12 to 18 months from now. Let's start talking to them again in 12 to 18 months. Let's automate that in, in such a way, um, that feels authentic and that.
We don't have to worry about, uh, a salesperson spending their time doing. Yeah. I love that. Um, I'm really, and you can, so as far as the content that's going out mm-hmm. That's all customizable, I'm assuming? Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, because, um, you know, I'm, you know, we're, we're always talking about how we can differentiate from our competition and, and whatnot.
The amount of experience that my company has in my market 26 years, by the way, like I know so much about how to protect my client's home. Yes. How to protect their investment from environmental threats like we live in a southern climate. There's so many environmental threats that cost them thousands of dollars of repair and replacement, and I know that our service can mitigate that.
So like. I think too, like just to think outside the box, like how can we use a product like yours because it's creating. That automation, but it's creating the, also the personal touches because I'm, I'm in a place where I just wanna educate my clients. Yeah. I feel like if I educate them about what they need to know, because I have the experience, I've been doing it in this market for so long, and I've seen my clients that have benefited from regular routine cleaning and maintenance.
I've seen the benefit from it. I have testimonials, I have case studies, I've got all this stuff. It's like I'm trying to figure out. How are we getting that? How am I trying to, and that's really what I'm building all my marketing on at this point. Yeah. Is how to do that. So all these tools and like Send Gym, this just becomes a way that we can, it gives, it's like the catalyst to help us do whatever that messaging is.
Yeah, yeah. Whatever that message is, we can help automate it and get it out. And it's important that it's the right time, right? Like the old way of doing things was, well, every spring I send out this every, but it's like, well, you know, you might have served 10% of your customers within the last three months.
So are they getting that too? That's 10% wasted and or 10% of people are annoyed, right? Like, so how do we, how do we hit them at the right, the right people, at the right time with the right message? Um, now that we have all this interconnectivity with, you know, CRMs and tools like syngen, you can be much more targeted with, you know, who gets the message and when they get it and that it's at the right time.
And there's sophisticated tools out there, like I know home service companies are using go high level. A lot of marketing agencies are doing that, but, um, that is, you know, it's. It's much more difficult because they don't, they're not home service specific. And so you're out there trying to figure out exactly what you wanna build and starting from scratch.
It's like buying, you know, a thousand Legos and saying, build me, you know, uh, a. Build me a a car, like a Formula One car, right? Like build a model of this, right? Or you can buy something like Syn Gym that all we work with is home service companies and we have the recipes or the directions to the Lego set and it's like, Hey, we're giving you all the pieces.
Mm-hmm. Which is something we didn't do well before, by the way. And now it's like, Hey, here's what you're buying, you're buying. Uh, formula One car replica and here's step by step how we're gonna do it with you. Mm-hmm. Um, so it's just a lot more simple and, and, you know, easy for people in our space to use.
Yeah, I love that. Well, that's what we're all looking for, by the way, Daniel. I hope so. I hope so. That's hope add ast, come and change all of it, right? Yeah, I, I love it. Um. Okay, well big fish, small pond, right? Yes. Big fish, small pond and, and how we do that. So, um. I wanna kind of go back to like, in regard to sales and generating leads.
'cause we've talked about, you know, conversion of leads. So I guess let's just go backwards, um, and talk about the actual lead generation. And again, this is not my space, so yeah, enlighten me. We know that we want, we know that we need to determine who our target market is. Um, and then what are the other ways, like what are the top ways that companies can generate the right leads?
So send Jim as a product that you have that can do that. What are other ways that small businesses, 'cause a lot of our listeners, Daniel, are really new. Into the industry. Yeah. Probably, you know, five years or younger, I would say a ma for majority of our listeners. So they're all probably in that stage.
Like they've got the cool trucks, they've got the right stuff, they know how to do the thing. Um, but they need, they need the business so that they can grow. Yeah. So talk, talk me through it. Yeah. So the first thing I wanna say is we, when I teach about marketing in the home service space is that, um, the best return on investment is always gonna be marketing to your customer list because they already know, like, and trust you.
And like I said, people buy from people they know, like, and trust. If you did a good job, there's no reason they're not gonna buy from you again. But we can't assume they remember us or that somebody else doesn't send them a flyer and they're like, oh, $400 off, I'm gonna do that. Instead, right? Mm-hmm. Um, so when we start our businesses, we don't have a customer list to market to, right?
Mm-hmm. And so we build this muscle. We, we, by necessity, we build the muscle of I need to find the next lead. And we become good at that. Like if you're a sales organization, you become really good at finding the next lead, finding the next customer. But it's like going to the gym and only working your biceps, right?
Like you get huge biceps, but like your body's out of balance. And it's required to start your business. But what you don't realize is that in five or 10 years, let's say, like if I was to buy Sheila's business, the majority of what I'm buying is not Sheila's equipment. It's not her employees. It's, it's none of that.
It's not the branding or the website despite, you know. As entrepreneurs, we always feel like, oh, my brand's amazing. My, we have the best website. Like the reality is not from an investor standpoint, it's not, it doesn't have hardly any value. What they're buying is they're buying that customer list because they know they can sell to those people and they can generate jobs.
Really, when people come to me and say, I need more leads, I've said, do you need more leads or do you need more jobs? Right. And so the easiest way to generate jobs is to sell to your existing customer list. So at some point in your journey, you have to realize like. If I have 500 customers, like what am I doing to market to them?
Because when I had 10, I didn't market to them, I just sold to them. Right? I need the next 10 and the next 10. But you need to be aware in your business as we progress and mature, that we need to transition some marketing budget back to marketing, to our customer list. So that's the first thing. If you have a list out there, you should be doing that.
Mm-hmm. The second thing to your point is, um, we need to capture people that are already looking for the service. Right. So we, we know that people searching on Google, uh, for my service, like they're actively ready to buy, and they're ready to choose who they, you know, who they're gonna buy from. So local service ads, uh, you know, being on Google AdWords, uh, having your GMB up right and showing up on the maps, like those types of things are super important because people that find that are ready to buy.
Right. And then as you capture all of that, right, or you're doing that, it's like, okay, well that's only enough to get my business to here. Like how do I go to the next level? Um, and then it's like, well, maybe I need to be on meta and maybe I need to create my, and then at some point, like all the way, at the other side of the spectrum is I need to create my own demand, right?
I need to sell. I'm done selling to people that know they need the service and they're searching for it. I'm done selling to people that are aware of the service, but they're not sure if they need it. Uh, and now I'm gonna sell to people that have no idea about the service or that they need it. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. There's the progression and you wanna start at the left, right? I wanna sell to my customers first. I wanna sell to people that I know, uh, are looking for. I wanna sell to people that need it, but they don't, you know, know about it. Let's, right, let's work that progression. But what I find a lot is we, we become addicted to this, to the next lead, the next lead, the next lead.
And we don't really understand that we're sitting on a gold mine with our own customers. So I really want to emphasize if you have a customer list. You know, you've been in business two plus years, like you should be marketing to your customers. If you're not, you're missing out on tons of money. Um, the other strategy, can we talk, can we talk about that for a second?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, I about this. No, I love this. So, um, let's just hang on. Marketing to our existing client database. Yeah. So I know that in the huge, um, mastermind, we talk about all the different channels. Mm-hmm. So let's talk about different marketing channels. Yes. Sorry. Hang on. A call is, that's all right.
Um, so what are those different marketing channels? Yeah, so we, what we teach is we wanna do five to seven touches in the five to seven channels, right? So how do we get in front of people so many times that they can't miss us? So, um, you know, a channel can really be anything from your website, your Google ad.
Your text messaging to them, your yard sign, your truck that's wrapped your, uh, door hangers, your neighbor mailings, postcards, or your Facebook ads, right? Like, we want to at least choose five and you can't start this day one, but you wanna work up to having five different ways that you're getting in front of the customer.
Mm-hmm. Um, and you want to choose the five most effective and then. The other big mistake I see as cust as uh, companies get bigger is they start trying to attribute leads. And I know everyone's gonna say, you gotta know your numbers. You gotta know your numbers. Yes, you gotta understand customer acquisition costs and your, you know, the cost that it costs you to get a job and to deliver a job.
Um, all those things. But you start trying to attribute like, well, you know, for example, if you're running TV ads, uh, I, I work with somebody that's a really successful in the gutter space, the gutter cleaning, gutter repair, and he runs TV ads and he said, everyone says TV doesn't work because they try to say, you know, well.
I ran a TV ad, but no one said they saw me on tv. Right? But what it does, what he does see is like his website, traffic goes up, his Facebook ads get more effective, right? He gets, and so it's a system of things all working together. To say, Hey, this delivers a really good customer acquisition cost, and this is working.
It's not, Hey, uh, it's kind of like a team, right? You can't just have just the sales person. It's like, well, the sales person delivers all the revenue. I don't need anyone else, right? No. It's like, no, you need the, you need the ops manager, and you need the technician, and you need the office person. The whole team.
And it's really difficult to break it up and say, well, my office manager only delivers this value, so like, I, I should get rid of her. Mm-hmm. Like, that's silly. And it's the same thing in marketing. Right? I love that. Okay, so now we know. So we've got our target market. We know who we wanna sell to. We know that we need to, we need to touch on them five to seven times.
Is that in a year? Like in the course of a year, when you say five to seven touches, what does that mean In a year? Yeah. Um, so like the, the, the studies basically say they need to know about your brand seven times before they buy. Um, got it. On average. And so anybody, like, you're trying to get a new customer, you want to see them, you know, seven times, and if they see you seven times in their buying season, right.
That might be in. A month, that would be fantastic. Um, is it seven times over two or three years maybe? Uh, it just, we don't know when they're gonna buy, so we wanna stay in front of them, is the concept. Got it. Okay. So it doesn't really matter what the timeframe is, but that seventh time, they're most likely gonna become a lead or they at least recognize with you.
And if they want to do it, then they're gonna probably call you. Yeah, the key is to stay in front. Like we know that Sheila's gonna buy soft washing at some point, right? So how do I stay in front of her long enough to know that when she's ready, she chooses me. Instead of saying like, you know, I'm gonna run Google ads for a month and see how it does, or I'm gonna send one round of postcards and see how it does.
It's like, well, the chance you might have hit Sheila, and we know Sheila's gonna buy soft washing, but there's 365 days a year, and she got your postcard on one day and that wasn't the day she was ready to buy. So right. It, it was wasted. Right. Like it doesn't make any sense. Right, right. Okay, so, so we've got our five to seven touches, and then we've got our, so an over five to seven different channels, which could be a number of different touches, right.
Whatever that may be. Whatever, whatever, whatever avenue we're choosing to get in front of them. Yes. So now we have all that. Great. How does that help us determine. How much market penetration we can actually acquire in our current market? Yeah, that's a good question. So the tools like predictive targeting are helpful to understand how many people are actually buyers in your market, right?
So you can't say, well, there's a hundred thousand people in my city and I service 5,000 of 'em. So a 5% market penetration. You might be serving the only 5,000 that buy that in the whole city, right? Yeah. So you might have a hundred percent market penetration. You know, using a tool like Synge, you can go on, you can enter, I wanna look 15 miles from my shop, right?
Or whatever the radius is that you wanna serve and say like, how many people? And it'll break it down for you of like four tiers is what it does. And it'll say, here's the top tier buyers, there's 30,000 people. Okay, well like how many of those am I serving? Now we can start understanding a little bit better of like.
Do I have a lot more opportunity here? Do I not, you know, a hundred percent's always, you know, gonna be impossible, I would say. Mm-hmm. But what's realistic? Is there another really big competitor? Can I get 30%, you know, 20%? So that's how I would start thinking about it. But unless you understand how many people in a market are actually buyers, like market penetration is, is kind of silly.
'cause you're just like, it is like me saying. Well, there's 260 million people in the country and like Syn Gym serves, uh, 5,000 of 'em. Like I'm, I'm this much penetrated, right. But it's like, no, like there's only so many businesses that would buy this. Yeah. I think that, um, I think I, I wanna don't wanna say it's a guess because it's definitely a calculated.
Um, thought yeah. To go, okay. In my market, I, if I, if I were to do some study and say, 'cause back to my $600,000 and above, right? And yeah, most of them are retires, but they don't have to be. Um, I will know that I want them to live within five miles of the beach, and I know that my market is, you know, so much, you know, so many miles up and down the beach.
Okay? So. To come up with like a realistic market penetration. For me, it was kind of simple because I've just gone back and looked at what type of penetration do I have in these different communities that we work in, that we have long time standing in. So I know that there is one community in my market that we are, we teeter anywhere between, we've tracked it for the last three years.
We teeter right between 20 and 23% saturation in that market. Wow. Just so you know, there's over 6,000 houses. In that one community. So like that's a really good penetration in that and we stay consistent with that. And I also have a sh ton of competitors, ton of competitors in that market too. So to me it's like, okay, this is probably realistic for me to say that we can have 20% market penetration.
Now how can I do that same thing in all these other communities that we're working in? Right. I wanna have that same. So I guess like for me it was a practice of going, okay, I've got my different beaches. Those all have X amount of houses kind of trying to figure out. And you can use different online sources for figuring out how many of those houses fall on that 600,000 and above, which most on the beach are well above that.
And then also in these communities, most of those houses are too, I mean, there's very few, if they're a townhouse or something like that, that would fall below that. So it's kind of like, it's been a really healthy exercise for me to just look at my current market and say, okay, if I were to get 20% in all of these in the study that I did, how now I have an average ticket of, let's say it's a thousand dollars and I, and I times it by all those houses and then say, okay, and there's just 20% of that is what I wanna grab.
Ultimately that's telling me what size company I can aspire to be. Like what is my, what is my total market saturation where I go, okay, super successful. Now I wanna stay here and maybe now I can take that model and I can do the same thing in other markets. Right? Yeah. That's the way it all works for me and this is a lot of what I've learned in, in the huge Mastermind.
So what do you think about that? I love it. Um, the, the important thing is that we have a, uh, that we have a method, right? And that we have a good understanding. I think your point is, is correct that like it's all an estimation, right? Even our data tools and estimation, but it's to have some type of thinking behind the how you.
How you're making your decisions, right? You're not just being like, well, I think I can do this because I don't know, I woke up on this side of the bed today, there's, there should be so much. I wanna be a $10 million company. Great. How are you gonna do that? Exactly. And like it might be all wrong, but if you understand the logic behind it that I wanna be $10 million, I don't have 10 customers that pay me a million dollars.
Okay, well. If I don't get there, is it because I can't get 10 customers to pay me a million dollars? Or I can get 10 customers, but they only pay me 900. Right. And then we start tweaking the assumptions based on our learnings. Mm-hmm. But you, you gotta have some methodology. So I love how you approached it and I think even most businesses are, are even thinking about that type of thing.
Well, guess what? I learned it in the huge mastermind, huge mastermind's. Great. Hey, uh, am I able to present my screen? I can show you our tool in your market real fast. Please. Let's do it. Um, hang on. You're gonna get me not, we could do it offline. Okay. You try. If you can do it, great. I don't know if I need to do something on my end, let me know.
Okay. Let me see if I can do this.
Okay. Can you see this? Um, hang on, I'm gonna add that to the stage. Hey, awesome. All right, so this is our new predictive targeting tool. And, and this is, I think where your office is, is that right? Um, nope. You have to go. So from Florida, I'm in the southeast of North Carolina, so Okay. Go to Right the where, oh wait, where are you?
Uh, sorry. Yeah, this is, uh, no, you were right. You were right. Yep. You were right. Sorry about that. Okay. And so how far down do you serve? Uh, probably go from the state line. Okay. So you could go from Myrtle Beach to Wilmington. That would be my territory. Okay. Oh, shoot. Let's do this. Let's just do this. Just, uh, we'll do it quick and easy, right?
And you can literally just hang on the coast. There you go. Let's do this and then we're just gonna say, window clean, exterior cleaning, and go. And this is the cool thing is it's looking, it's doing all that calculation in the background that we talked about with all the data and looking at, um, what we know about people buying exterior cleaning.
And then it's saying, Hey, 31,314 people are four times, these are the most likely people to buy your product. And they're four times more likely to buy than an average person using demographic filters. So this is like, this is four times better than saying I'm only gonna mail to homes or market to homes that are above 600,000 in are retired type of thing.
So there's 31,000 that are four times more likely. If there's another 28,000 that are two to three times more likely, and if you wanted to include just people 600,000 and above, this would be like those, like they're kind of, you know Right. Just using demographic filters. Okay. You know, you're looking at like maybe 115,000 people that are, you know, pretty good to market to.
I would say these would be, you know, your ideal customers. So does that help you, uh, understand that and what, what are your reactions to that? Well, I love that. So does it find the people for me? It does. It does. Yeah. So all you'd have to do is click send Mailing here and it'll generate those addresses, uh, that you select and then you can choose the, the thing you wanna send to 'em.
That is freaking awesome, Daniel. I love it. Yeah. Really cool. I love that. Okay, well I'm gonna make sure that we, um. I'm gonna make the request that this podcast can be shown in video form, um, which I really like to move to that anyway, so I'll see if we can do that. Otherwise, maybe we can take that snippet and put in the show notes so that people can actually watch the snippet to see what that looks like, but absolutely, that's super cool.
I love it. Okay, well is there anything you wanna finish off with today? 'cause we're about out of time, but this has been an amazing conversation. What do you finish? No, I just wanna say thanks for having me. The huge mastermind is, you know, was, is super helpful. I was part of it for, you know, over five years.
Um, the people you meet there, uh, almost any, almost some, there's someone there that's done what you're trying to do. And so just those relationships and finding the who and not, you know, using chat GPT to. You know, guide you is really helpful. So, um, if it's not that, just the emotional support of, you know, connecting with other entrepreneurs is, is really incredible.
Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Um, the community. Is it's not, it's not about, you know, you go to conventions and things like that and everybody's, everybody's there kind of in show off mode, right? We're the biggest, we're the best, we're doing the coolest things. Like all of that. There's a totally different feeling in the huge mastermind, I have to say.
It's really a lot of giving to each other. Yeah, it's a lot of supporting each other, helping each other out. Um, and the whole model is set up really great for that. And you know, I think. We do talk about the Mastermind a lot on this podcast, and it's because I really want people to know that that community is out there and it exists and you know, it involves people like you, Daniel and everyone, like from people like you to people that are just starting out and people like me that have 26 year companies, um, it's all over the place.
So it's like no matter what you need, I guarantee there's somebody in there that can help you. And, you know, they've done a really good job of, of making sure that, again, back to that giving spirit. We're, we're always trying to just speak from experience. People that listen to this podcast, you'll never hear me say that this is what I think you should do.
Instead, I'm only gonna talk to you about what I have done. And most of the times those were huge, massive mistakes. Yeah, and if you can learn from me and the mistakes I've made in my 26 years, then I have brought value to you. To have access to somebody that has more than 20 years experience in doing what you want to do is just incredibly valuable.
Yep. Can't say it's all been right, but you know, I'm still learning and growing and you know, but yeah, it's, um, it's been a journey and I just love it. So, um, but thank you so much. There's so much gold that's come out of this conversation today. I love just learning from you about sales and marketing. Send gym sounds amazing.
Um, and can't wait to dive more and learn more about it. And you'll probably be hearing from us soon, Daniel. That sounds good. Thank you so much, Sheila. I appreciate your time. All right, you too. Thanks for being here. Hello my friend. This is Sid. Thank you again so much for taking your time to listen to today's episode.
I hope you got some value from it. And listen, anything that was covered, uh, any of the resources, any of the books, any of the tools, anything like that is in the show notes, so it's easy for you to find and check it out. And also, I wanna let you know the mission for the huge convention and for. Podcast is to help our blue collar business owners like you and I to gain financial and time freedom through running a better business.
And we do that in four ways. Number one is our free weekly newsletter. It's called a Huge Insider. I hope you subscribe. It is the most valuable newsletter for the home service industry. Period, paid or otherwise, and this one's free. Next is the huge foundation's education platform. That is, we've got over 120 hours of industry specific education and resources for you.
And every month we do, uh, a topical webinar and we do question and answer with seven and eight figure business owners. And it's available to you for a $1 trial for seven days. Next, of course, is the huge convention or the huge convention. If you haven't been, you gotta check it out. It's every August this year it's in Nashville, Tennessee.
That's August 20th through 22nd and 2025, and it is the largest and number one rated. Trade show and convention for home service business builders. We've got the biggest trade show, so you can check out all the coolest tools and meet the vendors and check out the software to run your business. And it's got, we've got, um, education, world class education and educators and speakers that will teach you how to run a better business.
And it's the best networking opportunity that you can have within the home service business. And then lastly, if you wanna pour jet fuel in your business. Check out the Hughes Mastermind now. It's not for everyone. You gotta be at over $750,000 of revenue and you're building toward a million, 5 million, 10 million in the next five years.
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And scroll down, click on the freedom path. Or of course you can find the links here in the show notes. So, sorry, I feel like I'm getting a little bit wordy, but I just wanna let you know of the resources that are available to you to help you accelerate and advance your beautiful, small business. So keep on growing, keep on learning, keep advancing.
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We'll see you in the next episode.
