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You're listening to the United Foundry Podcast, a podcast where builders, remodelers, and contractors build their business using AI and technology.
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What's up, everyone?
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This is episode number one of the United Foundry Talks podcast.
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And we're going to jump into some pretty interesting topics that we think you guys would enjoy and find valuable.
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Again, this is Builders, Remodelers, and Contractors.
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And we're going to just talk shop.
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We're going to talk about all the things we've seen and observed and give you guys some tips and tricks on what we've seen over the last couple of years.
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So I'm going to go ahead and introduce my co-host, Booker Fritz.
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Hello, Booker.
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How are you today?
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Hello, doing good.
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Happy to be here.
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Happy to uh dive into some of this and kind of help everyone out here.
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Um, I know we were talking a little bit before the show, and um, one of the things we were discussing is kind of like how some builders will experience super busy months, and then it just everything seems to really die off suddenly, and you know, they're a bit confused about it.
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That's right.
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The feast or famine, it's kind of like peanut butter and jelly one month, steak and potatoes the next, then back to peanut butter and jelly the other.
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Yeah.
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And you've had uh some experience with this where like the slow busy month cycle, you know, uh our opinion isn't that it's not bad luck, it's just kind of a direct, predictable maybe outcome of pausing marketing when the kind of the calendar gets filled up when the crews get busy.
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Um, talk to us a little bit about what you've seen firsthand with that, Booker.
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Yeah, so there's definitely a lag period, right?
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So if we started marketing today, you may get leads, you know, the first week or you know, whatever it may be.
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But there's a bit of a ramp up process, and there's the same thing for a cool down process.
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After you pause it, you know, you might get a few leads slowly rolling in um after that.
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But really, it's it's kind of like um uh let's see.
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So if we start a bunch of marketing today, and then you know you you fill up your jobs, you're booked out, you don't have any more um crews for for the jobs, and you say, hey, I'm gonna pause marketing.
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That's kind of the initial thought.
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But if you do that, once those jobs are finished, then you're left with nothing.
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So you really have to figure a way to kind of handle that uh workload or turn down some jobs, even, you know, start qualifying some jobs more so you can keep the leads coming in after your busy season.
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So it's it's roughly, I would say, like a 60-day long window where um, you know, you you want to prepare for it.
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If you're super busy, maybe you can reduce it a little bit.
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You definitely don't want to turn it off because you're gonna feel it.
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Right.
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And there's a sales cycle between when someone first contacts you and when they give you the green light and sign a contract, right?
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So that's that's that 60-day window.
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So the moment you hit pause, you might still have people agreeing to con you know, estimate proposals you've written a month or two ago, where you're like, oh, I can pause marketing and I'm still getting business.
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Whereas there's that 60-day lag, uh, which pretty much takes into account the traditional uh sales cycle, especially for remodelers.
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Obviously, custom home builders has a much longer sales cycle, usually six months to three years, right?
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On a big ticket, you know, million dollar plus home.
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Those aren't typically impulse items you're gonna decide over a weekend.
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But yeah, absolutely.
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So that lag is there's a a lag between when you stop marketing and when you start feeling the effects of that stop marketing, which also means that it's really interesting because the the you know most builders, entrepreneurs probably in general, they have this immediate when I make this change is gonna happen immediately, and not understanding that there's that 60-day lag, right?
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Could could prove to be a fatal, a fatal mistake, right?
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For sure.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Yep.
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So uh let's talk about what most builders, contractors get to, which is referrals.
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That's how most builders get business.
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And as you know, Booker, that's that's you know, like the best kind of uh advertising you can get is a happy customer telling their friends, telling their family, hey, I use this guy, he did a great job, you should reach out to him.
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And those are definitely uh an engine, but they're not very predictable, they're very much passive, and you can't really, you know, schedule that kind of thing.
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You might get three referrals in one week and then nothing for the next two years.
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Right.
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Yeah, those referrals are the best kinds of leads.
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I mean, the highest close rate, people are coming to you, they already know about you.
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So they are really great, but they are pretty unpredictable.
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When you get them, it's awesome.
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But you know, you don't always have those referrals coming in.
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So, you know, it's definitely important to take a look at different avenues and kind of explore different ways of of obtaining, you know, regular jobs like that.
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Right, right.
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And and I've always thought that the referral is one channel, like getting referrals, getting recommendations, that's great.
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And you can you can certainly build a business around that, but it's nothing predictable.
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There's no nothing intentional about it.
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You're essentially coasting off of like the goodwill of other people.
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And at some point, as we've seen in the recent couple years, at some point, your referrals just they they kind of just dry up.
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And then your one kind of avenue to getting new business literally just like shuts down overnight, and you have no plan, nothing in place uh to to kind of like continue to get uh leads or to continue to do business.
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That's the one thing we hear a lot from remodeling companies and builders is hey, I'm really good at building buildings, building, you know, re-remodeling kitchens, but I'm not so great at the sales uh piece of that.
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And so obviously having a second channel to build uh leads, not just relying on referrals only, because again, you're just essentially coasting.
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But what are some other options, some things that uh Booker that you're aware of that builders can do to get a more predictable and we'll we'll call it a pipeline, not just throw me a lead over over the wall, right?
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But to build a predictable pipeline of of business.
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Well, I would say there's there's really two parts to it.
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There's kind of you know short-term stuff.
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Now there is still a ramp-up period, like we mentioned earlier.
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You're just still going to take time to start generating leads.
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But kind of the the short-term stuff, you would be looking at different kinds of paid platforms, right?
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So um, for example, like Google ads, local service ads, Facebook ads, pretty much any ad that you see online would kind of yield a short-term result.
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So let's say um, you know, you need the leads somewhat fairly quickly.
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Again, there is a ramp up period, that would be kind of the go-to.
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But long-term wise, is really going to be the popularity of your website.
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So you you kind of want to be the popular kid on the block when it comes to your online presence.
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There's a lot of things that we can do with that to kind of you know increase your popularity.
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Right.
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And it's not just being the best at what you do, it's also being best known.
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Because if you're the best, you know, at you know, finishing uh or you know, woodworking or any whatever the craft is, whatever the trade is, electrician, plumbing, whatever your specific niche is, whatever you're good at, being the best is not good enough.
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Uh, you got if no one knows about you, you're gonna starve, right?
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Or you're gonna end up subbing, you know, be a sub for other people and just take whatever they can give you.
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But being able to have a predictable like pipeline, right, of paid traffic website, like leads, um, that's that's super important.
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And and what's interesting about uh about websites is most people say, and we I hear this all the time, almost every week, is hey, my website doesn't bring me in much, so that's why it kind of looks crummy and dated, because I don't want to invest in it because it doesn't bring me very much, right?
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And what would you say to that kind of a person?
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Um, I know what I would say, but what would you say to someone who's like, hey, uh, you know, the website is you know an afterthought.
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I had my my niece who's 12 build that for me on Squarespace or Wix or something.
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What would you say to someone like that?
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Nice.
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Well, I would say that, you know, it's you guys are they're super, super busy, you know, remodelers, home builders, you guys are super busy.
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You have a million things on your plate.
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Everybody's calling you, everybody wants something done last week.
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Um, you got quotes to do, you got lots of jobs to do.
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So I get it that it's it's a hard thing to just put on your plate because you have so many other things.
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But really, you need to think of it this way is that the you you know, your online presence is just like when you're building a house.
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You have to start with a really strong foundation.
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So, and you build upon that foundation.
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So it really is key.
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Um, you definitely want to be showcasing your best efforts online.
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We don't want people searching and seeing that website that was made by you know somebody who just created their first website on Wix or, you know, whatever it may be.
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You really want to look professional.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, definitely.
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So yeah, um, Matt, what would you what would you say to people who maybe have been kind of approaching this wrong for all of these years?
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Like we just mentioned, it is tough when they have so many different things on their plate.
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Right.
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So I think the idea is you have to prioritize sales and not just when the crews are not busy.
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So, for example, business, you know, I've been entrepreneur for 30 plus years, and ultimately you have to sometimes figure out what not to do first, right?
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Like do it wrong first.
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And I sometimes joke that that's my superpower is I'm really good at figuring out what not to do, right?
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And eventually you figure out, okay, here's what not to do, but here's a better way to do it going forward.
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And so being able to say, you know what, I know I'm tempted to uh, you know, now that the crews are busy for the next month or two, got some jobs booked, uh, we're gonna go ahead and pause marketing, knowing in that temptation, giving into that temptation.
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I will tell you, uh, having been an entrepreneur my whole life, is that ultimately when when money is good, that's when you should be investing in uh and you know, continuing to build and scale your company.
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Uh, think about like when you've run out of money, like the lead, the phone isn't ringing, that is the worst possible time to say, okay, now I'm gonna get serious about sales.
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You have no money for marketing, no money for you know anything, uh, including hiring team members to help you with estimates, right?
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And so uh a lot of that ends up being uh just stuff you figure out over time, and there is a bit of a trial and error.
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Obviously, every single remodeling building, every company is different, unique circumstances, unique call, uh, unique clients, uh, unique market, unique timing, right?
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So, as we head into like the fall here, as we record this episode, uh, and when you get into colder, slower months, there's all types of different things that uh you have to kind of learn and adapt to.
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And so for those of you who are interested in um and just kind of thinking about, you know, hey, maybe I have been doing this wrong, and I need to consider an alternative option.
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Just give yourself some grace, right?
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It's like it's okay to make mistakes.
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Uh, no one knows exactly what to do perfectly the very first time.
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But obviously, recognizing, hey, this is what we've done so far, uh, let's consider maybe an alternative, an alternative way to do this so that we can stop this up and down cycle.
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And that's that's common for most um like owner operators is this steak and potatoes one month, and then like a let's pause marketing, or let's let's, you know, I've even seen people who say I'm not gonna return phone calls, and then you know, you return a phone call three months later and they've already hired someone else and the project's already done, right?
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So like be mindful of that 60-day cycle and uh and just learn from those those ups and downs.
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And you have to be intentional about hey, I don't I'm sick of the ups and downs, I need something else, we need to do some things different.
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So that'd be my opinion, yeah.
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Yeah, yeah, definitely.
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I would have to agree for sure.
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Yeah, and as we're talking about like referrals and you know, word of mouth, obviously the idea, what we've said is you know, that's one way, one engine, one pipeline.
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But ideally, we need more than one, right?
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We we need some kind of like strategy, and a lot of builders don't even think about hey, what if I took 10% of my revenue and just reinvested in in marketing or reinvested in um some kind of ad spend or something to get a more consistent flow of leads, not that up and down, up and down that is very, very common with referrals, but maybe a second engine uh is like paid organic, maybe lead generation that runs continuously, like independent of how busy you are.
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So then you can start building out a team.
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You can have people, you know, not just you, but other people that you've personally trained and worked with start giving quotes, right?
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And so building you're going from you know, uh an owner-operator, one man show into kind of scaling and adding.
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Uh, I remember my very first company, my very first hire was a salesperson because I was the guy who you know built the the the projects, and so that was one of my best, and it was a little bit of a scary moment, right?
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Um, but it worked out really, really well.
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And we end up growing that company and selling it for millions of dollars years and years later.
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Uh, but uh it was it was kind of scary to say, hey, I want to hire someone, maybe he works, maybe it doesn't, but uh in order to scale, you have to take some some kind of risk, right?
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So uh uh on the the idea of building a organic lead generation, what are a couple ideas, booker, for the smaller owner operator for kind of getting some more of those those consistent leads that of course aren't the shared leads, they're not the you know, the house and you know where you're paying and they sell the lead to six other people.
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Uh that ends up feeling like a raffle ticket more than a lead.
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But uh what what are some suggestions you would have there?
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Um, I would say for organic, obviously you you want to make sure that you have a Google business profile to start.
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You at least want to be registered with Google, you know, you want you want to be on the map.
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And you know, the really important thing after you have that set up is you want to be collecting those reviews regularly.
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And of course, absolutely that's a really hard thing for let's say home builders because you know you might only be building a few homes a year, but it's still super important, even if you only get, let's say, just one review a month, that's okay.
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You know, it's at least just some sort of of progress and consistency on collecting those reviews.
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It's some kind of cadence, yeah.
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Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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That's definitely some kind of um cadence like that.
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You can also schedule posts on there.
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So on the actual Google Business profile, you can make a little post, say a little bit about your services.
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This is something you can do early in the morning while you're having a cup of coffee.
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It's not like a high stress thing, it doesn't have to be anything crazy.
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Oftentimes it's just a few sentences and maybe a picture of a recent job that you completed.
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Um, nothing really kind of too crazy.
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It just shows the activity.
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That way, when people do come across you, they're seeing your company and they're seeing you that you're active, which is most important to them.
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They don't want to work with a company that you know hasn't done a job in a few years and it's an old profile.
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You know, they want to see that you're actually there and you know you're you're updating things, and nobody knows how busy you are if you don't tell them and you don't show them, you know, just like they don't know the quality of your work.
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You have to show them.
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Right.
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And it costs nothing to set up a Google Business profile, it costs nothing, a little bit of time to ask for client reviews, and that consistency over time is really what's key.
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Uh, we've we've seen um uh we've seen some clients who that we've worked with that have six, seven, you know, their reviews are six or seven years old.
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Their most recent review is six or seven years old.
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And obviously having a bunch of reviews that are five-star reviews that are six years old is not nearly as good as more recent ones, right?
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So it's not about um getting reviews as much as getting reviews over time on some kind of consistency.
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Obviously, remodeling jobs, you're gonna have way more of them in a year than if you're building a you know, two million dollar custom home every year.
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Uh, you're gonna have probably 10, 10x as many projects in a year that you would uh if you're just a custom or luxury or even an ultra luxury home builder.
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And so those are some inexpensive way, so they're they're they're free, but they they take a little bit of your time, right?
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Uh to to kind of start building out a second lead generation like pipeline, right?
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It versus just sitting back and waiting for your phone to ring based on a referral.
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Because at some point, all the people you've worked on and done business for, at some point, they're gonna recommend everyone they can think of, and then that's that it's dried up and you're unprepared for what's ahead uh because you pretty much just relied on the the one and only um option there, which is uh which is great, but it has some limitations.
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Yeah, the instinct to turn off marketing, turn off ads, or or turn off that when we're slammed.
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I think that's one of the most expensive habits in this industry, is there's this disconnect because of that 60-day lag time where you pause it and there's no immediate, like obvious effect, right?
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It's not like you pause it and then the phone stops ringing immediately, right?
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Is of course, obviously, if you have some very, very um, you know, like a decent pipeline of quotes that are in their 60-day cycle.
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Uh, let's say you have six, seven, eight quotes that are, you know, fifty thousand dollar average projects for remodelers.
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If you have them out there floating around waiting for clients to get back to you, they're thinking about it, they're getting their budget together, like whatever that looks like, their finances, uh, then it it's it's very, very, very tempting to say, let's, let's, let's pause everything and let's let's not do any kind of any more paid search because uh things are busy right now, and I don't want to get overwhelmed, but that's perfect opportunity to maybe add someone part-time who can help with estimating while you're busy, you know, and you're you're running the team on the different projects.
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The next guy that you bring on, even part-time or commission only, or you know, some kind of hourly plus commission, that guy can start meeting with homeowners, representing you, start getting quotes, and then start lining up the next 60 day uh after the current project you're working on comes to an end, right?
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You can kind of start queuing up what's next.
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So, all right, folks.
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Well, that's what we have for you today.
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When it comes to feast or famine, it is a choice, some things to think about there as we are wrapping up.
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And of course, as always, if you aren't planning to scale your company, then you are planning to fail.
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Thanks so much for listening to this episode.
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And our next episode, we're gonna talk about leads and lead generation and why leads alone aren't enough to get the business.
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Thanks so much for hanging out with you're listening to the United Foundry Podcast, a podcast where builders, remodelers, and contractors build their business using AI and technology.
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You're listening to the United Foundry Podcast, a podcast where builders, remodelers, and contractors build their business using AI and technology.
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What's up, everyone?
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This is episode number one of the United Foundry Talks podcast.
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And we're going to jump into some pretty interesting topics that we think you guys would enjoy and find valuable.
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Again, this is Builders, Remodelers, and Contractors.
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And we're going to just talk shop.
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We're going to talk about all the things we've seen and observed and give you guys some tips and tricks on what we've seen over the last couple of years.
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So I'm going to go ahead and introduce my co-host, Booker Fritz.
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Hello, Booker.
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How are you today?
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Hello, doing good.
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Happy to be here.
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Happy to uh dive into some of this and kind of help everyone out here.
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Um, I know we were talking a little bit before the show, and um, one of the things we were discussing is kind of like how some builders will experience super busy months, and then it just everything seems to really die off suddenly, and you know, they're a bit confused about it.
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That's right.
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The feast or famine, it's kind of like peanut butter and jelly one month, steak and potatoes the next, then back to peanut butter and jelly the other.
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Yeah.
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And you've had uh some experience with this where like the slow busy month cycle, you know, uh our opinion isn't that it's not bad luck, it's just kind of a direct, predictable maybe outcome of pausing marketing when the kind of the calendar gets filled up when the crews get busy.
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Um, talk to us a little bit about what you've seen firsthand with that, Booker.
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Yeah, so there's definitely a lag period, right?
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So if we started marketing today, you may get leads, you know, the first week or you know, whatever it may be.
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But there's a bit of a ramp up process, and there's the same thing for a cool down process.
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After you pause it, you know, you might get a few leads slowly rolling in um after that.
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But really, it's it's kind of like um uh let's see.
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So if we start a bunch of marketing today, and then you know you you fill up your jobs, you're booked out, you don't have any more um crews for for the jobs, and you say, hey, I'm gonna pause marketing.
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That's kind of the initial thought.
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But if you do that, once those jobs are finished, then you're left with nothing.
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So you really have to figure a way to kind of handle that uh workload or turn down some jobs, even, you know, start qualifying some jobs more so you can keep the leads coming in after your busy season.
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So it's it's roughly, I would say, like a 60-day long window where um, you know, you you want to prepare for it.
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If you're super busy, maybe you can reduce it a little bit.
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You definitely don't want to turn it off because you're gonna feel it.
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Right.
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And there's a sales cycle between when someone first contacts you and when they give you the green light and sign a contract, right?
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So that's that's that 60-day window.
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So the moment you hit pause, you might still have people agreeing to con you know, estimate proposals you've written a month or two ago, where you're like, oh, I can pause marketing and I'm still getting business.
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Whereas there's that 60-day lag, uh, which pretty much takes into account the traditional uh sales cycle, especially for remodelers.
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Obviously, custom home builders has a much longer sales cycle, usually six months to three years, right?
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On a big ticket, you know, million dollar plus home.
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Those aren't typically impulse items you're gonna decide over a weekend.
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But yeah, absolutely.
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So that lag is there's a a lag between when you stop marketing and when you start feeling the effects of that stop marketing, which also means that it's really interesting because the the you know most builders, entrepreneurs probably in general, they have this immediate when I make this change is gonna happen immediately, and not understanding that there's that 60-day lag, right?
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Could could prove to be a fatal, a fatal mistake, right?
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For sure.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Yep.
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So uh let's talk about what most builders, contractors get to, which is referrals.
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That's how most builders get business.
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And as you know, Booker, that's that's you know, like the best kind of uh advertising you can get is a happy customer telling their friends, telling their family, hey, I use this guy, he did a great job, you should reach out to him.
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And those are definitely uh an engine, but they're not very predictable, they're very much passive, and you can't really, you know, schedule that kind of thing.
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You might get three referrals in one week and then nothing for the next two years.
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Right.
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Yeah, those referrals are the best kinds of leads.
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I mean, the highest close rate, people are coming to you, they already know about you.
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So they are really great, but they are pretty unpredictable.
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When you get them, it's awesome.
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But you know, you don't always have those referrals coming in.
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So, you know, it's definitely important to take a look at different avenues and kind of explore different ways of of obtaining, you know, regular jobs like that.
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Right, right.
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And and I've always thought that the referral is one channel, like getting referrals, getting recommendations, that's great.
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And you can you can certainly build a business around that, but it's nothing predictable.
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There's no nothing intentional about it.
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You're essentially coasting off of like the goodwill of other people.
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And at some point, as we've seen in the recent couple years, at some point, your referrals just they they kind of just dry up.
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And then your one kind of avenue to getting new business literally just like shuts down overnight, and you have no plan, nothing in place uh to to kind of like continue to get uh leads or to continue to do business.
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That's the one thing we hear a lot from remodeling companies and builders is hey, I'm really good at building buildings, building, you know, re-remodeling kitchens, but I'm not so great at the sales uh piece of that.
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And so obviously having a second channel to build uh leads, not just relying on referrals only, because again, you're just essentially coasting.
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But what are some other options, some things that uh Booker that you're aware of that builders can do to get a more predictable and we'll we'll call it a pipeline, not just throw me a lead over over the wall, right?
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But to build a predictable pipeline of of business.
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Well, I would say there's there's really two parts to it.
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There's kind of you know short-term stuff.
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Now there is still a ramp-up period, like we mentioned earlier.
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You're just still going to take time to start generating leads.
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But kind of the the short-term stuff, you would be looking at different kinds of paid platforms, right?
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So um, for example, like Google ads, local service ads, Facebook ads, pretty much any ad that you see online would kind of yield a short-term result.
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So let's say um, you know, you need the leads somewhat fairly quickly.
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Again, there is a ramp up period, that would be kind of the go-to.
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But long-term wise, is really going to be the popularity of your website.
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So you you kind of want to be the popular kid on the block when it comes to your online presence.
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There's a lot of things that we can do with that to kind of you know increase your popularity.
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Right.
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And it's not just being the best at what you do, it's also being best known.
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Because if you're the best, you know, at you know, finishing uh or you know, woodworking or any whatever the craft is, whatever the trade is, electrician, plumbing, whatever your specific niche is, whatever you're good at, being the best is not good enough.
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Uh, you got if no one knows about you, you're gonna starve, right?
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Or you're gonna end up subbing, you know, be a sub for other people and just take whatever they can give you.
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But being able to have a predictable like pipeline, right, of paid traffic website, like leads, um, that's that's super important.
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And and what's interesting about uh about websites is most people say, and we I hear this all the time, almost every week, is hey, my website doesn't bring me in much, so that's why it kind of looks crummy and dated, because I don't want to invest in it because it doesn't bring me very much, right?
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And what would you say to that kind of a person?
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Um, I know what I would say, but what would you say to someone who's like, hey, uh, you know, the website is you know an afterthought.
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I had my my niece who's 12 build that for me on Squarespace or Wix or something.
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What would you say to someone like that?
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Nice.
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Well, I would say that, you know, it's you guys are they're super, super busy, you know, remodelers, home builders, you guys are super busy.
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You have a million things on your plate.
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Everybody's calling you, everybody wants something done last week.
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Um, you got quotes to do, you got lots of jobs to do.
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So I get it that it's it's a hard thing to just put on your plate because you have so many other things.
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But really, you need to think of it this way is that the you you know, your online presence is just like when you're building a house.
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You have to start with a really strong foundation.
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So, and you build upon that foundation.
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So it really is key.
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Um, you definitely want to be showcasing your best efforts online.
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We don't want people searching and seeing that website that was made by you know somebody who just created their first website on Wix or, you know, whatever it may be.
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You really want to look professional.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Yeah, definitely.
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So yeah, um, Matt, what would you what would you say to people who maybe have been kind of approaching this wrong for all of these years?
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Like we just mentioned, it is tough when they have so many different things on their plate.
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Right.
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So I think the idea is you have to prioritize sales and not just when the crews are not busy.
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So, for example, business, you know, I've been entrepreneur for 30 plus years, and ultimately you have to sometimes figure out what not to do first, right?
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Like do it wrong first.
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And I sometimes joke that that's my superpower is I'm really good at figuring out what not to do, right?
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And eventually you figure out, okay, here's what not to do, but here's a better way to do it going forward.
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And so being able to say, you know what, I know I'm tempted to uh, you know, now that the crews are busy for the next month or two, got some jobs booked, uh, we're gonna go ahead and pause marketing, knowing in that temptation, giving into that temptation.
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I will tell you, uh, having been an entrepreneur my whole life, is that ultimately when when money is good, that's when you should be investing in uh and you know, continuing to build and scale your company.
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Uh, think about like when you've run out of money, like the lead, the phone isn't ringing, that is the worst possible time to say, okay, now I'm gonna get serious about sales.
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You have no money for marketing, no money for you know anything, uh, including hiring team members to help you with estimates, right?
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And so uh a lot of that ends up being uh just stuff you figure out over time, and there is a bit of a trial and error.
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Obviously, every single remodeling building, every company is different, unique circumstances, unique call, uh, unique clients, uh, unique market, unique timing, right?
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So, as we head into like the fall here, as we record this episode, uh, and when you get into colder, slower months, there's all types of different things that uh you have to kind of learn and adapt to.
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And so for those of you who are interested in um and just kind of thinking about, you know, hey, maybe I have been doing this wrong, and I need to consider an alternative option.
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Just give yourself some grace, right?
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It's like it's okay to make mistakes.
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Uh, no one knows exactly what to do perfectly the very first time.
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But obviously, recognizing, hey, this is what we've done so far, uh, let's consider maybe an alternative, an alternative way to do this so that we can stop this up and down cycle.
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And that's that's common for most um like owner operators is this steak and potatoes one month, and then like a let's pause marketing, or let's let's, you know, I've even seen people who say I'm not gonna return phone calls, and then you know, you return a phone call three months later and they've already hired someone else and the project's already done, right?
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So like be mindful of that 60-day cycle and uh and just learn from those those ups and downs.
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And you have to be intentional about hey, I don't I'm sick of the ups and downs, I need something else, we need to do some things different.
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So that'd be my opinion, yeah.
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Yeah, yeah, definitely.
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I would have to agree for sure.
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Yeah, and as we're talking about like referrals and you know, word of mouth, obviously the idea, what we've said is you know, that's one way, one engine, one pipeline.
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But ideally, we need more than one, right?
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We we need some kind of like strategy, and a lot of builders don't even think about hey, what if I took 10% of my revenue and just reinvested in in marketing or reinvested in um some kind of ad spend or something to get a more consistent flow of leads, not that up and down, up and down that is very, very common with referrals, but maybe a second engine uh is like paid organic, maybe lead generation that runs continuously, like independent of how busy you are.
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So then you can start building out a team.
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You can have people, you know, not just you, but other people that you've personally trained and worked with start giving quotes, right?
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And so building you're going from you know, uh an owner-operator, one man show into kind of scaling and adding.
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Uh, I remember my very first company, my very first hire was a salesperson because I was the guy who you know built the the the projects, and so that was one of my best, and it was a little bit of a scary moment, right?
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Um, but it worked out really, really well.
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And we end up growing that company and selling it for millions of dollars years and years later.
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Uh, but uh it was it was kind of scary to say, hey, I want to hire someone, maybe he works, maybe it doesn't, but uh in order to scale, you have to take some some kind of risk, right?
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So uh uh on the the idea of building a organic lead generation, what are a couple ideas, booker, for the smaller owner operator for kind of getting some more of those those consistent leads that of course aren't the shared leads, they're not the you know, the house and you know where you're paying and they sell the lead to six other people.
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Uh that ends up feeling like a raffle ticket more than a lead.
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But uh what what are some suggestions you would have there?
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Um, I would say for organic, obviously you you want to make sure that you have a Google business profile to start.
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You at least want to be registered with Google, you know, you want you want to be on the map.
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And you know, the really important thing after you have that set up is you want to be collecting those reviews regularly.
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And of course, absolutely that's a really hard thing for let's say home builders because you know you might only be building a few homes a year, but it's still super important, even if you only get, let's say, just one review a month, that's okay.
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You know, it's at least just some sort of of progress and consistency on collecting those reviews.
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It's some kind of cadence, yeah.
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Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.
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That's definitely some kind of um cadence like that.
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You can also schedule posts on there.
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So on the actual Google Business profile, you can make a little post, say a little bit about your services.
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This is something you can do early in the morning while you're having a cup of coffee.
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It's not like a high stress thing, it doesn't have to be anything crazy.
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Oftentimes it's just a few sentences and maybe a picture of a recent job that you completed.
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Um, nothing really kind of too crazy.
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It just shows the activity.
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That way, when people do come across you, they're seeing your company and they're seeing you that you're active, which is most important to them.
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They don't want to work with a company that you know hasn't done a job in a few years and it's an old profile.
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You know, they want to see that you're actually there and you know you're you're updating things, and nobody knows how busy you are if you don't tell them and you don't show them, you know, just like they don't know the quality of your work.
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You have to show them.
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Right.
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And it costs nothing to set up a Google Business profile, it costs nothing, a little bit of time to ask for client reviews, and that consistency over time is really what's key.
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Uh, we've we've seen um uh we've seen some clients who that we've worked with that have six, seven, you know, their reviews are six or seven years old.
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Their most recent review is six or seven years old.
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And obviously having a bunch of reviews that are five-star reviews that are six years old is not nearly as good as more recent ones, right?
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So it's not about um getting reviews as much as getting reviews over time on some kind of consistency.
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Obviously, remodeling jobs, you're gonna have way more of them in a year than if you're building a you know, two million dollar custom home every year.
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Uh, you're gonna have probably 10, 10x as many projects in a year that you would uh if you're just a custom or luxury or even an ultra luxury home builder.
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And so those are some inexpensive way, so they're they're they're free, but they they take a little bit of your time, right?
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Uh to to kind of start building out a second lead generation like pipeline, right?
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It versus just sitting back and waiting for your phone to ring based on a referral.
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Because at some point, all the people you've worked on and done business for, at some point, they're gonna recommend everyone they can think of, and then that's that it's dried up and you're unprepared for what's ahead uh because you pretty much just relied on the the one and only um option there, which is uh which is great, but it has some limitations.
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Yeah, the instinct to turn off marketing, turn off ads, or or turn off that when we're slammed.
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I think that's one of the most expensive habits in this industry, is there's this disconnect because of that 60-day lag time where you pause it and there's no immediate, like obvious effect, right?
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It's not like you pause it and then the phone stops ringing immediately, right?
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Is of course, obviously, if you have some very, very um, you know, like a decent pipeline of quotes that are in their 60-day cycle.
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Uh, let's say you have six, seven, eight quotes that are, you know, fifty thousand dollar average projects for remodelers.
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If you have them out there floating around waiting for clients to get back to you, they're thinking about it, they're getting their budget together, like whatever that looks like, their finances, uh, then it it's it's very, very, very tempting to say, let's, let's, let's pause everything and let's let's not do any kind of any more paid search because uh things are busy right now, and I don't want to get overwhelmed, but that's perfect opportunity to maybe add someone part-time who can help with estimating while you're busy, you know, and you're you're running the team on the different projects.
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The next guy that you bring on, even part-time or commission only, or you know, some kind of hourly plus commission, that guy can start meeting with homeowners, representing you, start getting quotes, and then start lining up the next 60 day uh after the current project you're working on comes to an end, right?
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You can kind of start queuing up what's next.
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So, all right, folks.
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Well, that's what we have for you today.
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When it comes to feast or famine, it is a choice, some things to think about there as we are wrapping up.
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And of course, as always, if you aren't planning to scale your company, then you are planning to fail.
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Thanks so much for listening to this episode.
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And our next episode, we're gonna talk about leads and lead generation and why leads alone aren't enough to get the business.
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Thanks so much for hanging out with you're listening to the United Foundry Podcast, a podcast where builders, remodelers, and contractors build their business using AI and technology.
