[00:00:02] Speaker A: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Cutting Edge Install Podcast brought to you by Omni Cubed, where innovation meets installation and literally everything in between. I'm your host, Merv Campbell, and it's an absolute pleasure to have you with us. This podcast is about celebrating pros, installers, experts, game changers in a number of different fields. And today that field is in marketing. And man, do we have a game change and a pro for you. We're going to dive into stories, insights, we're going to have fun. I'm Irish.
The person that I am interviewing today has roots in Europe. And so this is going to be a great old time. So whether you're on the job, whether you're on the road, or if you're looking just to stay sharp and have fun for the next who knows how many minutes you are in the right place. So let's get cracking. Stuart, it's an absolute privilege to have you on, my friend.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Thank you, Merv. It's a great time to finally be worthy of being a guest on the pod.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: Oh, well, it's been coming and it's been good, but yeah, that's awesome.
So, hey, let's get cracking.
Can you give us a little bit of your story? How did your company come to be? How did you get the name, what was the driving force behind it? And basically tell us your story, my friend.
[00:01:30] Speaker B: Yeah, well, thank you.
It's always funny kind of recounting the story of how we are where we are.
So page 50 is a national and international marketing company. We serve folks all over the world with what I would call boutique marketing services, which means we don't do copy paste mechanisms. We figure out what the needs are and then we implement those needs in order to help people basically make more money, grow their business greater, whatever their goals may be.
And none of this was on purpose.
Everything about this business was something that, I mean, was just kind of a divine appointment for us. So I'm a pastor. I planted a church down in south Louisiana. About 11 years ago, my wife and I moved into a town called Opelousas, Louisiana.
And we've been to work.
And at that time we had two children, my older two girls. And things were going, my wife was working, I was working as a pastor. The church was growing, things seemed to be going well.
And we had very strong convictions that we wanted my wife to be home with our younger children. But my older two girls were school age, so they went to school.
And so my wife is a teacher. She's a phenomenal educator and so whenever my older two went to school, we. We sent her to school with them, basically. And she started teaching at the school that they were attending.
Our church has a little classical Christian school attached to it, so it was great.
And then my wife was there for one year, and she found out that she was pregnant for our third.
Our son. And we thought we were done. We thought we were done because we thought there was some medical complications involved, and we weren't. We were done.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: You were not done.
It actually sounds very familiar.
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Wow. That's awesome.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Two became three. Wow.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Yep. That's awesome, dude.
So my. My wife and I were talking, and I just.
We still had the same convictions, you know, we were still like, look, we really want you to be home with the littles while they're little. That's important to us.
And so I remember we were in the living room of our. Of the. It was a parsonage, actually. We were in the living room of the parsonage that we were staying at at the time. And I remember just looking at my wife and I said, I don. Know how we're gonna do this, but we're gonna do it, and the Lord's gonna take care of us. And here we go. That's so cool. And so my wife turned in her notice that she wasn't gonna go back to school the next year, and I just started hustling. Wow.
I had a little bit of experience with a camera. Like, I had enough experience with a camera to be dangerous. Nice. And so I started.
I started getting hired to go and second shoot different projects. Mostly weddings.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:25] Speaker B: In fact, I think it was exclusively weddings. Maybe we did one commercial. I can't quite remember.
And I did that for several years, and it paid well. I was happy to do that.
And then I bought a computer and I started editing videos for the same company. Nice. And I would edit them in my house. And I could do. Do about one significant project a week. And so that was a way for us to make more money. And the revenue went up.
And then one day, that particular company, their work started slowing down.
And it got to the point where I was like, well, this has been the way that we supplement our income. I gotta figure something else out. So I went to the owner of that company and I said, hey, man, I'm not trying to be weird, but I've gotta be able to pay bills. This is how we supplemented our income. I think I'm gonna have to start my own thing. Is that gonna bother you?
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: And he was great. He Was honestly great. Awesome. He was like, no, man, I totally get it. Don't worry about it at all. Knock yourself out. Let me know if I can help you. He was a great guy.
And so I went and started my own business and I shot weddings. That's what I knew. Shot weddings for a little while.
And then I got subbed out by another company in a town nearby us to go and do some event coverage for a, for a marketing project they were working on. So I was just shooting video and photo and sending it to them.
[00:05:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: And I remember whenever I was there, I was just kind of looking around and thinking, I could do this.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I got this.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: I think I could do this. And so I started trying to solicit commercial contracts for corporate entities.
And the Lord was very kind to us. And I remember I got my first retainer account ever. It was a little art studio in town.
And they paid me 150 bucks a month, which is nothing.
But I was so excited.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: I was so excited.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: I was like, that's a. They're going to pay me this much money every month. Babe.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Yeah, we've made it. Oh, we had. Hang on. We may need a little bit more.
That's right.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: And then, I mean, from there it really just was. The Lord every step of the way, you know, he appointed people that I could hire to come and work for us. He appointed connections that we could solicit our first, you know, out of state contracts.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: We started making more and more inroads into other states and in international areas. And just, you know, here we are ten years later.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: With a company that, you know, we run five full time employees.
Somewhere between 10 and 15 part timers, remote employees. Like it's, it's crazy man. But at no point did I sit down and was I like my five year plan is this is to run a marketing business.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. You're like, yep.
[00:07:23] Speaker B: But it was, it was awesome. So we're still just blowing and going. The Lord continues to be kind to us. New contracts keep coming in and awesome. In fact, literally yesterday I just had to move another employee full time. So it's just, it's growing, man. It's very, very cool.
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Definitely the Lord.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: So six full time now. Six full time.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:07:45] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:07:45] Speaker A: That's such a blessing. Yeah. The Lord is good to us. More than we deserve. But yeah, if you don't know page 50, go check out their website.
Pretty legit. I have to say.
They are an awesome crew.
You're treated like family.
Yeah, they're just a really, really good bunch of people to work with. So kind of on the marketing front, obviously, you know, we're saying you guys are really good at marketing. There is good, there is obviously bad.
What's the difference in your opinion between good marketing and bad marketing? Especially for say, like a business who's. They're just trying to get off the ground. They're trying to, like, you know, promote themselves a little bit. What would you say is the difference between the two?
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Yeah, I would say right now the big differentiator is going to be remembering that marketing requires a human touch.
You need to.
The way that your business needs to represent itself to the world is not as some cold, sterile product photos, wheat service lists, venn diagrams, like, that's it needs to be human.
One of the mantras that we say around our office all the time we work in social media. It's just one of the things that we do. But we say social media is social.
So what that means is there's humanity behind it. Sometimes people will start businesses and they make this odd assumption that the way that they're going to advertise their business effectively is by only talking about the services that they provide, only talking about the products that they sell, when really they have far more that they're actually doing. What are you doing in a business? You're solving other people's problems. Other people's problems. Right. So that means that there's humanity there. You need to be able to talk to people as though they're human beings. Your company should be able to communicate like a human.
And you need to be able to tell all those stories from. From that point forward, like talk about how you're serving people, tell their stories about how they've been served, and continue to lay that out. That's what I would categorize as a good marketing strategy.
[00:10:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:07] Speaker B: The mistake that people would make would be to avoid that bad marketing is. Well, I went into chat GPT and I asked it to write me 20 posts about my business this week. And then I scheduled them and I got some cool AI images. You just took the humanity out of it, man. Totally needs to be.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah, there's gotta be interaction. And not to plug this podcast, but to plug it.
Going back, if this is your first time listening, but going back over, I would pretty much say all the podcasts that we've done up to this point that the human aspect, the communication, the interaction, the physical handshake when you do a deal, the picking up the phone and talking with each other is I would say a great theme throughout all of it.
So go back, listen to them, and pick that up. And if you are a person who's very quick to text, because we live in a day when it's a quick text rather than a phone call, challenge yourself to cut your text in half and call people more. People's voice, their tone, their dialect. All of that is when you're doing business is so needed. That's something that my boss, who's a great teacher, taught me at the very beginning.
Pick up the phone and talk to people.
An email or a text. We've done it in our marriages. We've sent a text, and our wives or our husbands are like, what did you mean by that? Are you mad at me? What's going on? And you're like, no, sweetheart, it was just a text. But that's how it can come across. So the more that someone can hear your dulcet tones, the better it is. And if you've got an Irish accent, hey, you're on till a winner.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:11:51] Speaker A: Okay. Moving on, moving on, moving on. You've worked with businesses across different industries.
What's one thing you wish more business owners understood about branding?
[00:12:05] Speaker B: Oh, man. Okay, so brand.
This is one of the things that we get calls for all the time. Somebody's starting a company, and they're like, hey, would you help me establish my brand? Yeah.
And my next question is, what do you mean when you say that word?
[00:12:22] Speaker A: Push it back.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Because they might mean something very different.
A lot of times they mean, well, I need a logo and some colors and a typeface. And I'm like, okay, well, we do that. But a brand is actually much, much more than that. A brand is the way that the world perceives you. It's your reputation. Right.
It's.
It's the. The look and feel. Sure. But more it's the. It's the feeling that people get about you and about your company. So one of the things that I kind of say to people is, you need to have a great product and perform excellent customer service if you want to have a good brand, a respectable brand.
[00:13:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Buying bulk exports from China that are garbage products that aren't going to perform well. You've already lost your brand. Unless your brand is just to be. We're to be the cheapest guys on the market, and we know our products break in six weeks. Yeah, but we're cheap.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Yep, exactly. Yeah.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: So I would just say guard your reputation. Think of brand is more of. When people think of me, they think of whatever it Is. And for most people, that means you want your services or your products to be excellent and you want your customer service to be excellent.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: 100%. Yeah. How many times have we called about, let's just say our Internet, we want a different Internet, or we have issues with it and we get a call center in the middle of a different country and it's hard to understand.
You feel like you're basically a number and you're not really taken serious. They push you through.
And I know for you guys and for us as well, the person who picks up the phone is our first line of contact with whomever that might be.
So that person is, in my opinion, one of the most important persons in a company.
Because it's make or break.
It kind of delves into our next question. When we're in a world where people judge your company by your website, by Instagram, by your customer service, you as a marketing man, how should a business think about its first impressions today? Should it think about it? Should it put emphasis and tell it, or do you just kind of throw it up in the wind and hopefully the chips fall in the right place?
[00:14:48] Speaker B: Well, so first impressions matter. That's true. And when we first started our company, I did everything. I made the website, I made the logo, I took the pictures, I did the video, I did the social media posts. It was me. It was a one man shop. Just like I think most small businesses when they start, they start as one man shops.
And so your aesthetic impression is going to be what it is.
But the place where you can't negotiate is your human impression. Like, how are you going to serve these people? Well, first impressions are huge, huge deals, don't get me wrong, but you should invest in those accordingly with the budget that you can afford at a particular time. I mean, assuming that we're talking about primarily aesthetics here, because I've seen plenty of people make the mistake where they. In fact, I had a young lady come into my office not too long ago. She was looking for a new brand. As a matter of fact, she was like, yeah, can you help me get my brand and things put away? Yeah. I was like, sure. And we start assessing the situation and we came to a price on it. I was like, this looks like it'll cost you about $7,000 or something based on what you want. She was like, okay, great, I'll, I'll get you a check and I'll be right back. And then I sat there for a second and I was like, wait, do you have customers yet?
[00:16:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yep, exactly.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: And she was like, well, no, not yet, but I will eventually. And I was like, oh, no, please get that sort of, please go get customers. Go get customers and make something on, I don't know, Microsoft Paint or something. Make something and just throw it up and go get you some customers. And then when you've got proof of concept and revenue, then come back and talk to me, then we'll visit some more.
Your first impression of a human, human being is going to be worth far more than an overextended, beautiful aesthetic brand. Totally. It does matter. It does matter.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: It does, it does.
You know, we're in a day where human interaction is at an all time low.
All we see now is the top of people's heads.
And it's something that I know I instill in my kids. You instill in yours is even manners goes a long way, like a simple opening of a door or a thank you or a please.
You kind of stand out a little bit. And it's the same in business. If you go the extra mile and you follow up with people, it's huge. It actually reaps benefits. It's a little bit more effort. But the camaraderie and the relationships that you build, you can't.
A website doesn't get you that, Instagram doesn't get you that. It's the, hey, look me in the eyeballs and let's figure this out together and we'll get through it somehow. So, yeah, no, that's really helpful.
[00:17:42] Speaker B: There was a great book. I can't remember who wrote it now, but it was called Unmarketing. And it was about the very beginnings of this particular movement where people were moving more and more towards. They wanted a human touch.
[00:17:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: And I think the argument could be that it's a response to the social media movement and now the AI movement. Like we're moving more and more away from humanity. And so people wanted that. And his basic advice in the book was exactly what you just said. He would find companies who would go the extra mile to really make their customers feel loved. Why? Because now you've converted that customer into your marketing department.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:18:23] Speaker B: And you don't even pay them.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: No, you don't. They're free.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: But people are scared to do that because sometimes it means that you, you make a pretty considerable investment into that person. Like, so, for example, I know of one company, they found out one of their customers was going through a hard time. I can't remember the details of it, but they found out who his favorite sports team was.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:48] Speaker B: And they found that sports team and the lead player autographed jerseys shipped to this house.
[00:18:53] Speaker A: That's such a.
[00:18:54] Speaker B: Guess what they got out of that.
[00:18:56] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: They got a loyal customer forever. And he guarantee advertises that business harder than any marketing person would pay. $50,000 a year, too. It's. It's a whole new game.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Word of, Word of mouth can make or break you. And so, you know, stone tiled, glass, whatever the industry might be, take care of the customer. And I know sometimes customers can be difficult to deal with.
I had a. I was talking. I was talking to a guy yesterday, and he was like, if it wasn't for people, this would all be easy. But his thing was that even though just talking to the customer and giving a point of view, listening to the customer and giving the clear expectations of what can happen was such a blessing, at the end of the day. It was difficult at the beginning, but at the end of it, they were able to get along. But I guarantee you, they were in a pretty big housing development.
That person told the next person, who tells the next person, and guess what? One job gets you. Four, five, six jobs. So important.
Just take the time. And I know people get frustrated and sometimes rightly so, but keep your mouth shut, be patient, and just.
Yes, dear, what would you like?
Let me give you the services that you require. And that can be very difficult, but it does go a really long way. So.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, one of the things that we see often in our space is this idea of your customer service falling flat.
In other words, like, you try to grow your business too quickly.
And what happens sometimes is that folks now, they lack the bandwidth to be able to really discover what their customer needs are and meet those needs. And guess what happens as a result of that negative priority. Now you're. Now you're going the wrong direction.
You need to be careful and mindful of that as a business owner. Like, don't. Don't try to take the quick road to a million dollars, man. Take your time, get the right people, and slow and steady. You're going to be okay.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: You'll be fine.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: It's fun to make a ton of money, sure. But just relax, just chill. It's going to be all right.
[00:21:08] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: So there's been a handful of clients in the past that I remember being like, I think we bit off more than we could chew. We moved too soon.
We moved too soon into this space, and we shouldn't have done that. Just take your time, serve people well, and you'll be glad that you did.
[00:21:24] Speaker A: My mom would always tell me, patience is a virtue. Possess it if you can.
And we need to be a patient people. We live in a day when everything's gotta be instant.
It's like we have our phones. Well, guess what? The iPhone 17 just dropped. And everyone's scrambling because, well, it's got a better camera and it's faster. And you're like, but it still takes a picture and makes a call and a text, but it's faster. Okay, cool. I don't know how many milliseconds it's faster, but sure, if you want to fork out two grand for it, be my guest. But that's the mindset where, like, my boss, fast is slow and slow is fast.
And that has put me in really good stead throughout my time, even here at Omni Cubed, where, like, learning and growing, take your time, learn it well. When you're teaching others, same thing, Take your time. Because at the end of the day, if you slow down and do it right, it actually benefits in the end, it's faster rather than having to, like, rush through it and then, oh, I have to retreat these people and whatever. But on that note of teaching mentoring and young people, I know this is a passion of mine and yours where we're trying to get that next generation to indulge in work and be workers and to be craftsmen and women wherever the Lord would place them. If you were mentoring, if you were mentoring someone fresh out of high school or college, what's one skill set or one mindset that you would try to help them develop no matter what career they would choose?
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Well, you're 100% on my hobby horse. Like, I, I love to hire fresh out of high school people. And I tell them, hey, if you come work for me, I'll pay you to learn. Yep. You don't have to, you don't have to pay anything.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: And by the time you leave, you'll have a skill set where you could make six figures if you wanted to. Like, I just. And it's, it's a great pitch and they, they love it. I have, I have an 18 year old and two 19 year olds inside of our business right now that are taking me up on that challenge. And they're growing awesome, crazy, crazy fast.
[00:23:41] Speaker A: That's so cool.
[00:23:41] Speaker B: And I'm, I love that stuff. So the advice that I would give them right now. So given our current context, given the AI revolution that's happening in the world, the advice that I would give is to never stop innovating.
[00:23:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Okay, so don't, don't stop learning, don't stop growing. Don't get to the place where you look around, you say, this is, this is good enough, I'm done. Because the moment you do that, especially today, you're dead. Yeah, done, you're toast. If you go to a company and they've standardized all their policies and procedures, they've got SOPs for everything and they're done changing, they're done innovating, you need to start looking for another job because they're not going to last much longer. No, it's a.
I have.
One of the things that we do really well that I like is I try to give my guys the bandwidth where they can do that. My full time guys, I tell them, I'm like, hey, you need to have time every week that you're setting aside just to innovate, just to figure out what's changing. Because we work in digital marketing, man, every hour changes. It's different every week.
[00:24:53] Speaker A: Yep, totally. That's crazy.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: I send emails out about digital marketing updates whenever I see stuff like that come through. That's profound because it really does change, like every week. Every other week.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: Oh yeah.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Google releases a core update that just breaks everybody's websites once a quarter. You know, like this is just the world that we live in. And so if we don't innovate, we're dead.
[00:25:17] Speaker A: You'Re left in the dust.
[00:25:19] Speaker B: You could probably run your business for another 18 months, another two years. But, but we have to be. And you guys know this, you know, like we've, we've changed things and done new things and made adaptations inside of Yalls systems and we've been working together for what, four months? Yeah, yeah, totally.
That's just how it cuts. We have to be able to do that. So if you got somebody new green who's coming in, I would tell them, I guess a way that you could just say it if you wanted to say it, like a 90s kid is never stop learning. Never stop learning. Always be instructing, teaching yourselves, innovating, creating something new and go from there.
[00:25:56] Speaker A: I think one really, one really cool thing to see.
And I see it in your company and I see it in ours as people inside the company teaching others inside the company. And what it does is the teacher then becomes really in depth and really knowledgeable. If you have to teach something, you have to know it. You can't just wing it and so like teaching the next person. So we have one employee who has pretty much done every job within this facility.
But what an asset to the company.
Willing to learn, willing to grow.
Doesn't say no. Maybe sometimes they should. Cause we're like, hey, we have this over here. What do you think of this? And they're like, yeah, I'll give it a go. I think it's the mindset as well of just go with the flow. So many people like to just. There's people who like to clock in, do the same thing every day and clock out, but there's other. And we need people like that. We need people here just get everything done. But then there's those people who are thinking outside the box, who are not afraid if they feel they're going to fail, and they're not afraid of the ramifications of it. We all feel. We feel every day.
But in business, taking that sometimes jump and that leap of faith sometimes is like, do it, try it. What's the worst that can happen? It doesn't work well, we'll tweak it and go a different direction. So constant innovation is huge within a company. If it's not innovating, it's dying.
[00:27:35] Speaker B: Yeah. In that vein, there's a great book by a guy named David Bonson. It's called Full time, easy Read. A lot of fun to read. And it's about, you know, it's about work. And one of the things that he says in that book. I think it's in that book.
One of the things that he says is, don't ask for more money. Don't ask for a raise, don't ask for more money. Ask for more responsibility.
Because if you're just coming along and saying, I need to get paid more, I need to get paid more, I need to get paid more. What you actually need to do is make yourself indispensable to that company.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Make yourself to the point where that business looks at you and says, we.
[00:28:15] Speaker A: Can'T do it without them.
[00:28:16] Speaker B: We can't work without you. Yep. That's exactly right.
[00:28:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:19] Speaker B: Get it. You have to. If you think that way.
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:23] Speaker B: One of the things that we say in our office a lot is money follows fruit. If you think that way, then more money comes.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:30] Speaker B: You know, you're. You're going to get a raise. Exactly. You become indispensable.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:28:34] Speaker B: They're going to find a way to keep you.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: But if you only go around and say, oh, man, I really. I need a raise because of xyz. Nah, nah, nah.
Make yourself indispensable. Ask for more responsibility.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: Totally sweet. Well, you hear it here first. Go and do it.
Moving on.
What's a marketing trend right now that you're totally on board with? And what's one that you're like, ah, that is so overhyped. Move on.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: Oh man. Okay, so one of my favorite things to do right now is businesses that don't have basic discoverability systems on their website. I like to go in and fix those things first. So like for example, if you are a E commerce provider, okay, a lot of folks don't know that you can go in and turn on a program called or turn on a connection called Google Merchant center and get all your e commerce products listed through Google so that they're now searchable and indexable.
And you can also do that. Little known fact, you can also do that with digital products. In fact, we have a client who sells specifically, they only sell digital products. I think it's like books and audiobooks and things like that.
They had 19,000 product listings. Okay, 19,000, wow. And they didn't have a single one of them indexed inside of Merchant Center.
And so we went in and swung the pickaxe.
But actually what we did was we built an AI automation.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: And we told them we were going to do this. We were like, hey, we're going to build a robot to do this for you and we're going to turn it on and it's going to run for a couple of days and then you should be done. Now we had to do a lot of customizations with their products and the listings and how it was going to work. But sure enough we got their products listed and guess what happened?
[00:30:34] Speaker A: The flood can't open. Yep. That's awesome.
[00:30:38] Speaker B: You know, that's just how it goes. That's just how it goes. So that's probably, that's probably one of my favorite things to do with people right now is to just go in and assess things like that. Like with an E commerce target, find the low hanging fruit and then give them some opportunity to push for it.
One of the things that I'm moving away from more and more right now is putting a ton of emphasis on professional pages like inside of Facebook or inside of Instagram or LinkedIn.
So other people might refer to these as brand pages. I still think that the brand pages should be kept alive. I still think you should put stuff on them. I still think they should be active. And there's a way to do it correct and there's a way to do it very wrong.
But the success that you could have on a branded page five years ago is just Not. You're not getting the same ROI anymore.
And so folks come up to me often and they're like, man, I gotta get better at social media. One of the things that I like to ask them first is why? Why? Yeah, why do you think that you'll get more customers through there? Why do you think you're gonna get more customers through there? Because most of the time they won't. Actually. Folks are gonna find you on social media, they're gonna find your website, they're gonna find you on Google. The thing that they're verifying is, are you a real business or not?
[00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Are you legit? They're not really going to discover you organically through those platforms, right?
[00:32:05] Speaker A: Nope.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: They'll discover you through search engines, they'll discover you through your website. They're not going to discover you through social media platforms. Not as actively as they did five to ten years ago.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Correct? Yeah. Agree.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:32:19] Speaker A: For tre. One more.
[00:32:20] Speaker B: Can I give one more for free?
[00:32:21] Speaker A: Well, let me think. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: Okay. I love free advice. So the last one is this Owned media is back. So owned media, like what we're doing right now, like podcast formats, email subs, like email lists.
[00:32:39] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Those are big right now.
And so I would advise people, hey, if you don't have an email list, if you don't have some type of content that you're creating on a weekly or fortnightly basis that you can distribute to your people who might be interested in your services, yes, you should get to work because that's big right now. Very, very effective. So I would advise that. For sure. For sure. Yep.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: That's why we're doing this podcast. Whoa.
[00:33:07] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:08] Speaker A: Let's go, let's go, let's go. They're a lot of fun.
The Irish like to jibber jabber, where you have the gift of the gab.
I didn't kiss the Blarney Stone, but a relative of mine must have because that was given to me.
But what I really enjoy about these podcasts are you learn more about individuals and you learn more about companies, but you also learn stuff that you can take for yourself.
So if you're listening, like the things that we talk about on here, try to drop those into your company, into your lifestyle, into, like, all of those. And some of them, it's like pistachio nuts. You never eat the shell, you always eat what's inside and you spit the rest out.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Do that.
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Some people do it with sunflower seeds. I'm not a sunflower seed fan. I like pistachio Nuts, Hence the reference.
But do that.
Take these nuggets. So for me, training young people, take that information and run with it. If you want any more help on these things, I know Stuart, myself, email us.
We're here to help people. That's one thing that I'm very passionate about. This man's very passionate about this next generation. So if you're a business owner going, where do I even start? How do I do it? You have resources. You have us two. There's other people that we can point you in the right direction. You're not alone, is what I'm trying to say, because we are in a vacuum of employment right now that we have to try to fill and encourage our young people into these things. So, yeah, just these podcasts, I hope they're enjoyable and fun and you laugh and whatever else, but. But they also are a good tool to take that jigsaw piece and put it in your own business and be like, okay, I can take X, Y and Z. Let's see, we can run with that and then go with it.
So moving on.
So I don't bore you all to death and you all fall asleep for trade, specifically.
So installers, fabricators, will even throw in shop owners if you could give them one simple marketing tool today, if they've gotten this far in the podcast to take away with them and implement, what would it be?
[00:35:27] Speaker B: I would say, get your story straight.
Why do you do what you do?
What's the big motivator behind it?
Figure that out and then get good at articulating it to people.
Hey, look, we're here because we want to do. We want to serve people well. Hey, we're here because we're trying to be the best at install, like, granite installations in our county, in our whole state. We're here because. Figure out what it is that's special about you. Figure out what your story is and then just figure out. And then say it.
[00:36:04] Speaker A: Tell it.
[00:36:06] Speaker B: Practice.
One of the things that we talked about often was you need to have an elevator speech and a stump speech ready to go. Whenever somebody asks you what your business is, why you do what you do, an elevator speech is like, I can say everything I need to say in 15 seconds. That's an elevator speech. A stump speech is. It looks like I might have a couple of minutes here so I can get a little bit longer. But you as a business owner or as a salesperson or as a customer service rep or whatever, you should have that cold. You should have that cold.
Being able to just go in and pop and say it and know what it means and how to articulate it. Well, yes, that's the best thing to do. So if you can get that loaded in, because you're going to get opportunities to talk to people. You're going to be a podcast guest, you're going to meet people on the street, you're going to have your company shirt on. They'll be like, oh, what are you doing? Such and such installers. What do you guys do? Boom. You got 15 seconds. We're the best granite installers in our state.
[00:37:00] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:37:00] Speaker B: Like, boom.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: Let's go.
[00:37:03] Speaker B: Now you got somebody's attention. Oh, really? What do you mean you're the best ones? I mean, I go to every trade show and we're better than them. Yeah, you know, like, I mean, exactly. Just go. Go for it. Yeah, go for it and go strong. So figure it out. Stump speech is good. Elevator speech is good. Have them in your pocket, know I'm cold and go.
[00:37:19] Speaker A: Good.
There you are. You heard it. Get them written out, get them on a piece of paper.
Business owners, they have a lot of weight to carry. Obviously in these days, volatile markets, there's pressures upon them.
They've got perhaps limited crew members.
Do you think that every business owner needs to be a content creator or is there still a smart way to grow without being on camera, so to speak?
[00:37:52] Speaker B: It depends on the size of your business.
So if you're what the federal government would consider a small business, which is less than 50 employees, which is every business pretty much these days.
[00:38:04] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: But if you're less than 50 employees, you kind of go through phases. So when you start your business, at first, you're most of the time you're going to be the one man shop where it's you and you do everything.
In which case content creation is pretty easy because it's literally pictures of you doing everything and meeting people while you do everything, do it.
[00:38:29] Speaker A: Awesome.
[00:38:30] Speaker B: Right? It's.
It's not a lot. It's pretty simple.
But then as your business starts to grow, you're gonna start to move more into what I would call like the sage stage as business owner.
And what that means is you're going to content create, but you're gonna do it in a way that you're not just the boots on the ground anymore. You're the expert, you're the.
You're the guy who knows and has mastered your field.
[00:39:01] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:02] Speaker B: So I've got one particular client.
He works in the health and safety space.
And one of the things that I had, I Had a consulting call with him relatively recently. His business is growing. He's got new employees coming in, new contracts coming in like crazy. And so I told him, I was like, you have to.
You have to read and study now.
[00:39:22] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:39:22] Speaker B: More than you ever have before. And your employees that you oversee need to be the primary ones that are doing the work.
[00:39:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: They need to be the primary ones that are fulfilling the order. Because what that's going to do is two things. One, it's going to make you more and more of an expert, which matters on all fronts right now.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:40] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:39:41] Speaker B: Expertise in your field is king. The more that you know about what you're doing, the more that you innovate, the more that you're researching new methodologies, the more that you're understanding the tools and the technology that you utilize and master it as the business owner, the better you're going to look not just to your customers, but to your potential customers as well. On the Internet, when this guy talks.
[00:40:01] Speaker A: You want to listen.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: He knows what he's talking about. Yep, that's right.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: You want to pay attention. Yeah. So it's going to do that. It's going to make you into the expert and into the. Into the master, but it's also going to give you an engine and a mechanism to now generate content that's going to fire well on the Internet.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: Okay. One of the biggest things going on right now with the search engines is what's called your eat rating. That's experience, expertise, authority and trustworthiness. That's big. That got rolled out in quarter four, I believe, of 2024. Huge change to the game in the search engine indexes because of the AI revolution that's happening. Anybody could make garbage content. Yeah. Anybody. Hey, I write me an article, whatever.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:40:44] Speaker B: Yep. And you could throw it up.
So Google releases a core update and other search engines as well, where now the search engine indexing tools can smell it.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:40:54] Speaker B: They can tell that this is just some AI article that's riffing.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Speaker B: But real expertise, a person speaking with real authority and real experience who is trustworthy, they can smell that, too. You want to be that person because over time. Yeah, over time it's going to raise your reach, it's going to raise how far you can go. It's going to raise your indexability, and you need to spend time doing that. That's not something that you're just going to do overnight. No. You know what I mean. It's going to take time. You're going to have to Innovate. You're going to have to push. You're going to have to grind to do it.
I advised one of my clients. I was like, you need to be reading and writing for about half of your workday every day.
And he was like, what?
[00:41:41] Speaker A: He's like, what are you talking about?
[00:41:44] Speaker B: Yeah, but this is the space that we're moving into.
Develop and cultivate expertise.
[00:41:50] Speaker A: It's funny you say that, because I was talking to our people today because I'm taking a trip to a trade show in Europe, and I miss the good old days of handwritten things, like a handwritten note or a handwritten letter and something that I'm trying to do myself as each day, keep a diary. Like, just write it out how my day went, but write it by hand.
We're all too.
We're really good at typing these days. We can probably type a fair bit at a fair rate. But I guarantee if you go to handwrite something, it's like, oh, I'm not really all that good at that anymore. What's going on here? My handwriting kind of sucks, but it's one thing.
[00:42:37] Speaker B: And then do it in cursive.
[00:42:39] Speaker A: Okay, you've gone too far.
Or do it in calligraphy format, if you're really in for that with a fighting pen or a quill. But no, writing something out by hand.
That's how I memorize things, is I write it by hand. And I find that a great tool to memorize or if it's a passage of scripture, to like, there you go. To meditate upon.
It's sad because it's like, we kind of got to go back to the good old days.
These tools are great. But it's funny that you say that you can sniff out when it's AI you really can.
You're like, that's not a human, that's a bot.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Come on. And everybody, the threat is, AI is coming to take our jobs. And my rebuttal is, no, it's not.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: It's not. Don't panic.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: It's coming to take the jobs of the people who are at the very, very, very bottom of the employment ladder, but it's not taking the jobs of people who are genuinely experts in their fields. Not even close.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: No. We got to keep those creative juices alive and not lose them. Fight for them. So, Kay, let's flip it. We've talked about wonderful marketing things. We've talked about how good marketing can be.
What is one absolute disaster that you've seen that makes you absolutely cringe? And it's kind of eating like a green banana that you should never do.
And you've maybe looked at it and laughed at it as well and thought, oh, boy, what a disaster.
[00:44:21] Speaker B: We would call it design by committee.
Or our expression would also be, uh, oh, they're making a camel.
And what that means is sometimes we get hired to do jobs, and we'll perform the job, whatever it might be, and then we'll deliver it to the client, and they'll say, okay, I'm gonna send this to my team, and then we'll come back to you with notes. And that's fine. They can send it to the team, and we can see some notes on the other side.
But sometimes we get involved in that process, and the feedback is, well, this person said they like this, and this person says that they don't like this. And this person says, can we add this? And this person added, can we also have this? Yep. And so the joke is, they're making a camel. A camel is a horse designed by a committee. I don't know if you've ever heard that expression before.
[00:45:11] Speaker A: No, I haven't, but I have.
[00:45:13] Speaker B: That's good.
We've seen it happen plenty of times. Like, one time there was a logo project, and I can't remember the context, but for some reason, it came up that somebody was like, can we put a horse on it?
And the guys in the office looked around.
[00:45:31] Speaker A: They were like, what?
[00:45:33] Speaker B: And we were like, why?
And the joke is, well, because they liked horses. Oh.
[00:45:40] Speaker A: That happens. That's real for people. Oh, it's so dos. It's so does.
[00:45:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So you just don't design by committee. Don't make a camel. That would be the way that I.
[00:45:51] Speaker A: Would advise a camel. Good stuff.
A little bit about you.
I've gotten to know you fairly well, but when you're not marketing guru and the Yoda and all things marketing, what helps Stuart to recharge, to reset?
What's. What's fun in your world?
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Being with my family. Boom. Like, I just. That's. That puts gas in my tank harder than anything else does.
[00:46:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:22] Speaker B: I go home like, the. The Lord's day on Sunday. Like, we. We make a point to lay low, and we don't do much. My wife and I go take a nap.
[00:46:30] Speaker A: Nice.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Take the kids down to the pool. We go swim. Awesome. We have this thing that we do called Sunday Sundays, where on Sunday we go get ice cream. You know, the kids all love it. You know, last Sunday Sunday, you know.
[00:46:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:46:43] Speaker B: Like, they excited about those kind of things. It's just. That's my.
That's my sweet spot, man. That's why, like, most recently, when I came to visit you guys, I had my daughter with me. You know, I want to.
I want to be with my family as much as I possibly can be. We have. We're working to train in a high degree of. Of family culture into our household.
[00:47:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:07] Speaker B: And we're training. We're helping raise our kids kind of in that mindset. Hey, you know, we're. We're amadons.
[00:47:12] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: We're. We're building something together. We're here to do this thing.
[00:47:16] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:47:16] Speaker B: It's really exciting to see it happen.
But that's really. If I've got opportunity to have downtime, that downtime for me is with the family, with my kids. Yep. 100 wife.
[00:47:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:47:28] Speaker B: You know, that's how you recharge my batteries.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: Yep. Likewise. Yeah. Being with family is.
It's vitally important.
It's a real blessing to have a family that you want to go home to at night. But it takes work. It takes effort. These things just don't happen. And so.
Yeah, that's.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:47:52] Speaker A: We're kind of similar.
Kind of wrapping this all up. He's got a better beard than I do. Um, but that's. That's okay. I'm. I'm growing mine. I'm just. But a little boy.
Um, if page 50.
Final question. If page 50 had a sort of mission statement for people, what would you want them to walk away with after working with you?
[00:48:19] Speaker B: After working with us? Yep.
What would I want them to walk away with after working with. With us?
I would want them to think about their business as two things. So can I say two? Let me say two. I'd want them to be able to think about their business as two things. One, Andrew Krapichet said this.
He's a business owner up in Moscow, Idaho, and I think he's right over the target. He says business is serving others at scale.
[00:48:49] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:48:49] Speaker B: I would want them to.
To know and remember that after working with us, I would want them to feel served. And I would want them to have a paradigm shift in their mind.
[00:48:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:48:59] Speaker B: Where they would look at their business as an opportunity to serve others on mass. Awesome. Okay. Yeah. So that would be the first one. And the second one would be. I would want them to look at their business as a mechanism of leaving a legacy of being able to build something bigger than they are.
So we, you know, we've been in business for almost a decade now, and the Lord has turned this into a mechanism where I've got 15 to 20 families that are just in the employee space that are blessed by what we do here.
And now they have opportunity and capacity to do more for others than they could have before this existed. You know, they have an opportunity to leave a legacy that they couldn't have left before.
And so I want to be able to do that same thing for them. That's awesome. I want them to know that in the depths of their heart. And that's what, you know, that's what our whole company is about, is about legacy leaving. So if I can translate that to them.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:49:59] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:49:59] Speaker A: Good. What a way to end. What an inspiration. So that's a wrap on this episode of the Cutting Edge Installs. I really hope you've enjoyed it. If you have any questions or you want to reach out to us, you can find
[email protected], you can go on page50.com, leave a comment there, please. If you've enjoyed this episode, follow it, subscribe it, leave a quick review, share it with whomever, wherever, across the world.
And I really do hope and pray that people listen to these things. Take them to heart and plug them in where you possibly can.
Thank you for listening, for watching, whoever you may be, and until I see you again, take care, God bless and cheerio. Bye bye.
