Welcome back to another episode of Freedom Blueprint Podcast. I'm your host Justin Deese and if you're watching us on YouTube you can see that we got Tyler Williams hanging out with us in studio all the way in Florida, all the way from Alaska, all the way to Florida.

Yeah. I broke

that trip up by like three weeks.

Yeah,

so ⁓ we're gonna dive in a little bit about your journey today and about how you even got into trades. It's a really cool story. A lot of people might know your brother as well. ⁓ You're in town because we're doing, your brother's having an event, the Wealthy Plumber event, so we're both gonna be hanging out there and we're probably gonna be shooting some cool stuff there too.

I

so. Every time I do an event, it's like, jeez, this is unique. I gotta milk it.

Well, it's fun. You get so many people in one room. You know, we live in an online world to where there's so many times with people that you probably work with and have for years that you've probably never even met that you'll get to meet.

I'm excited. There's definitely a number who are coming that I'm like, I finally get to get in a room with you. Yeah. We've had so many zoom calls. Yeah. I can see how tall you are.

I don't know. Don't judge me. Don't judge me. It's funny. A lot of times I meet people and they're like, I thought you were taller. I'm like, the camera's above me. I don't know why you...

I always think it's funny. Some people think I'm shorter. Some people have been like, I thought you were thinner. And I'm like, well, thanks.

But yeah, so we're gonna find out a little bit about his journey, ⁓ his business, how he helps trades businesses, and yeah, that's just kinda what we're gonna do today. So thank you for coming and hanging out, and we're excited to learn a little bit more. So tell us about your business now.

My business now is a marketing agency and we serve plumbers. Like that's the shorthand of it. We made that shift four or five years ago. I mean, really it was right after COVID that I decided, okay, we had good experience with my brother's plumbing company in Fairbanks. Guess what? There's plumbers everywhere. So let's niche in and see if we can diverse. Well, you know, because we were, we were statewide in Alaska. Right. And even then we got capped.

It was like you either get capped on how many businesses are around or how many different methodologies you can duplicate. And so it became, well, it's too hard to have all businesses of all types. Let's narrow in and let's make a larger focus on digital versus traditional as we did that. so, yeah, and so here we are today.

We've got like 75, 80 clients now. We're somewhere in there. We onboarded one today and I'm like, I don't know what count we're at. yeah, so it's been an interesting like journey. I love it so much more now.

Well, definitely being able to kind of dial in a little bit and focus on the one trade, you get to spread that out. I know that that's a nice thing.

you get to go deeper. That was the struggle when we had flooring stores, like outfitting stores, hotels, it was like we could only understand so deep. Now you can go deeper and you have a greater sense of what they're dealing with, because you've seen these problems or successes before. So it changed a lot for us, as well as on the back end, like running a team. Now they have specialties inside of home services,

plumbing and so it's easier for us to communicate faster inside because all that's sort of mapped out.

I

mean systems make the world run. I that's how McDonald's has become the largest restaurant in the world is they, one dude does the hamburgers and there's a certain system on how they operate it.

Okay.

I mean there's certainly, when you think about in terms of even plumbing companies, know, when we talk about systems a lot of times, you know, the question comes up, well what size do I need to be when I create systems? To me, I think if you're in a truck and you own a business, you need to be doing it now, but you can be a little bit more nimble when you're just you.

You can I think it comes down to your intent right to like if you're like, I'm it's just me But I'm not gonna stay here, which hopefully you go into business with the goal to get like beyond that, right? But like start building out those systems and understanding that you really do have a system it's just not documented. Yeah,

Otherwise, just go get a job.

throw those frameworks together, even if they're kind of haphazard, way better the first time you bring somebody in. I wish I was more intentional on it when I first started with the business and like, well, I got these people here. Probably should have been like, this should be step one. It wasn't. I was like, I'll just do what he did.

Yeah, there's systems in everybody's business. That's good point. It's either intentional or you're intentional about it or someone else's haphazard system and that never works out for the owner. Ever.

Never, I was on the short end of that stick for a long time. Where I was like, why is this so hard? How can I keep, there's no, I'm tapped. And now the things happen without me and now I have, this is in general business, this is all business, it's not just marketing agencies, but now the systems are actually being created by other people and then I go like.

This system is done, right? I don't have to make the system. I just got another system is done, right? Yep, it's ready to go. Okay, cool. Let's see how it runs

So how did you even get started in the, because you said now you focus on digital, before it was more just an overall marketing, right?

Yeah, marketing and advertising are kind of a blended term these days, right? Yeah. So we were an advertising agency and I'm still very ads forward. ⁓ I started, so I graduated high school and didn't know what I wanted to do. was ripping windshields out of cars and replacing them. ⁓ It was a job. no, I hated the job, but I was the only one who was good at admin and like doing all the insurance paperwork and stuff. So the owner really liked me.

is a job.

My parents were a little worried. ⁓ And then worked there for a while. That company got bad out, became another company. I went freelance. Then I started freelancing for the other agencies in town, which is Fairbanks, Alaska, so tiny. There's like three, only two of which were worth working for. I worked for both of them. And then ⁓ eventually, my wife started at the agency that I quit.

⁓ I went full freelance. She started about a week later and that's how we met. It's because I was still contracting out their work.

You did that so you wouldn't break any rules. That's what I...

Yeah, I

read the handbook and was like, oh, I gotta go. know eventually they'll hire a good secretary. And then I ended up with one of the biggest agency in town going like, hey, my videographer left. Do you want to come aboard? And I was like, yeah, but I don't want to just do video. That's when I started learning about everything.

sounds like a great Alaskan name. Did that and right around about five years in, it was a little bit before five years, three years in maybe, my brother calls me up and he's like, hey, I'm gonna go out on my own. And I'd been in business land for a long time and he was like, what do I need to do? And I was like, well, I think number one is don't be like anybody else. And because the market just had a bunch of plumbers,

It is a great.

and they were exactly bog standard plumbers except for one company. And even they didn't break the mold that much. ⁓ looking back, yeah, they were still pretty average, but they were just a step, just a smidge above.

Like instead of white vans, maybe they had wrapped vans and guys in uniforms, you mean.

That's a big thing. I'm a huge advocate of get a good quality brand. Yes Because that is your landmark and yes, you can overcome a bad brand but it costs you a lot more it takes you more time It's nothing but an uphill battle ⁓ until you're like five seven years in it seems like and so and That also depends on how aggressive you are with advertising. Yeah build that familiarity but like so He had this van

Yes.

And I was like, I don't want you to look like anybody else. I've seen that done. You have to pop. You have to be loud. And that's something I've always liked about advertising is when my clients would be like, what are we going to do? And I'm like, I don't want you to wear pants in this ad. True story. an owner to do an ad in Cookie Monster Boxers. And it's still on YouTube somewhere. But I was always trying to push the envelope of humor, trying to push the envelope of just being worth remembering.

Yeah. And it's because I want to make Super Bowl ads like everybody else, right? Right. he said, OK, cool. Just tell me what I should do. And he put his trust in me, which I'm grateful for. And now he is, yeah. The thing is, now he's learned all this stuff ⁓ and he's adapted in new ways, of course, like Jared's whole system. so it was Jayrods Plumbing and Heating. that was his nickname, right? And so I was like, all right, cool.

I bet he is too though.

Let me take a photo of myself on a view like this. Thumbs up. And then I put it on my tablet at the time, drew a cartoon version of him, and was like, cool, here's step one. And we threw that on his van, and he went ahead and ran that around. And so it had like, mean, was in retrospect, bad logo. It was my first brand, give me a break. But like, so.

He eventually needed to rename as he grew and things hit and became Prospector Plumbing. And then we were like, we got a chance to revitalize this whole brand. Actually, it happened before. Jay Rods also went through another iteration where we were like, let's wrap the van. And that's where I was like, let's emulate cereal boxes and let's emulate sports logos because there's tribalism around sports logos. cereal boxes were coming into the home already. And the middle-aged woman.

like suburban America, that's who we were trying to get. So I still call it the cereal box approach. And in the plumbers, the free prize inside. So anyway, he went for it and we created this big, bold version of the van. At some point he took three months off, drove around the country and was getting calls out of communities that he's hitting. And I was like, there's definitely something to it. But then...

And that's your avatar for sure.

Absolutely.

He grew the company and then we ended up rebranding as Prospector. We took the same methodology, same colors, made the vans that they have today and that is kind of what put him on the map. And I will clarify, he was aggressive in marketing, but he was developing and eventually developed the business acumen to be able to support the marketing. And I saw growth I had not seen to that point.

with other clients because they weren't as aggressive and they were scared to take some of those leaps.

I mean, I've seen a lot of businesses where, you know, there's always that question of how much, well, first of all, people ask how much should you spend, which you'll probably agree with this. I don't think it's how much. I think it's what percentage. Like that needs to be your question.

Yeah, so there's your it's

funny if you talk to Jared he's like well how much does it cost to get a customer and I'm like no put a percentage on it like yeah and so there's this there's I think there's multiple schools of thought different ways to skin the cat I like the percentage model yes it forces people to put in as like an operational expense instead of right well I'll just shave some of my profit that's what my market

Did really good

last month. I'm going to drop my marketing budget to 2 % instead of 10. And now you're like, then the next month they're like, well, nobody called.

Click

It's like you're not supporting yourself forward. You stop rolling the snowball forward. I say time and consistency is what ⁓ builds momentum in marketing and a lot of people because they're looking at it at the last minute instead of like, okay, this is just part of the structure of my business. So it's like, ⁓ But when we have clients who really go, okay.

This is, it's just, it's like an employee. It's something that's just here all the time. I like to look at marketing as like a big project inside of your business. It's never done, it evolves, it changes. You pivot. Like, I do it the same for me. Like, at the conference, I'm launching just weirdness, like something new. And I'm like, cool, let's put this out there. And so, and I think every company should be using their marketing budget.

consistently and trying to inch forward in a series of experiments. I mean, I would love it if I could say, yeah, you just turn on the faucet, there's a little leaps. But that's not the way psychology works.

Which,

you know, it's been an evolution just in the last five years. Well, I'll say 10 years. I can remember the other plumbing company that we used to have. I remember PaperClick when it was like becoming a thing. It was like four bucks, five bucks. It was great. You just threw money into it. then, because nobody in town was doing it but us and we were able to grow. then...

then there for a minute, LSAs were like that. It was like a gold mine. Like if you were first in, the phone would just ring and it was great.

LSAs and Fairbanks LSAs were just dead Nobody was doing them except for prospector when Jared was running and they did nothing and then one day it was like I was picking up my god, this is now becoming way more powerful. Yeah but yeah, no watching the evolution of Okay, so I have a theory on like the the path of marketing let's miss so okay, so Digital marketing comes on the scene. What do you hear?

Do it, I love it.

Dude, get on PPC, holy cow, I'm customers left and right. Work on, actually first it was SEO. Do your SEO, like wow, you rank number one, people just fall in your trap, right? And then, but what happens when everybody's doing SEO?

And what ended up happening is everybody took all of the money that was on print, radio, and television that used to be my bread and butter and it went into the digital realm. And now it just spread all that out. Now you're back in competition land. So SEO is harder than ever because now everybody's doing it. And your efforts of SEO are always right neck and neck with somebody else. Google's an auction. So it's not like you go, boom, look at this. It's really hard to gain all the traction ahead. ⁓

And so then PPC, same thing. Early adopters, gold rush. Yep. Awesome. ⁓ Then more competition comes in and we saw markets swing from cheap to super expensive, then back to cheap and super expensive and somewhere in the middle of the road as more companies are entering and being like, I just want to own the search engine. Right. And then private equity comes in.

I was just about to say, you're not going to outspend those guys.

No, then Google, this is where think LSAs came from, is Google's looking at us like, crap, these companies that aren't good are commanding all of the attention on our search engine because we made it an auction where anybody with a budget can come. So then they introduce LSAs, and LSAs are performance driven. They're like, okay, you have a budget, that's great, but that's not the only thing we're measuring about you. And that's... ⁓

That's because they want the retention of the user. So that's why what they measure is your pick up rate. They measure your reviews. They measure how many times you ask for a review. I think they're also, if they aren't measuring, it's very possible that they are thinking about measuring whether or not you fill out the form on the back of LSAs. It's like, what's their name? What's their phone number?

We

were very methodical about that at the beginning. Even now, like it was, that was just part of what they did every day was fill that out because Google's in the information business. So they want the information. It's like, well, let's just be their bestie. Even if it doesn't matter, we'll be their favorite.

Yeah.

Exactly like their data broker. Yeah, like and so if you give them data Mm-hmm. There's a higher chance of them smiling down upon you for that

That's

how we always looked at it, like, I don't know, maybe it works, maybe it doesn't.

Well,

and that's the thing, because it's Google and Facebook and all this stuff, it's always changing. So those algorithms, they're pulling levers all the time behind, seeing if they can optimize. The computer's pulling levers, we're pulling levers, and it's just like, it's this big fluid mass.

And typically

they call it user experience. But obviously I think it's about maximizing their ROI as well. And so I just saw something the other day and I don't even know where I saw it. Maybe it was on social media somewhere, but I don't remember what area. I'm gonna guess California, but it was in the LSAs and they had a button about click to get for.

More messages. Yeah. Yeah, so I posted like very I Posted okay, I saw it somewhere else or actually it was my it was my PPC guy who like threw it on our chat and I was like I'm posting about this Yeah, but yeah, so now if you Like one of the prompts is get four quotes from companies near you and you just send the same message to all of them Like Google's not and they don't want any one company

Like very Angie's List kind of thing. Did you post that?

to command their search engine because then they lose control. And they also want to make sure they're not on your side, they're on the customer side, which makes total sense. Like, I'm not going to fault them for it. ⁓ But I think that's one of the problems is the narrative around marketing became dominate Google. And there's some truth to that. the expectation became you just do these simple steps and within

a short amount of time, you're gonna be number one, you'll be flooded with leads, and the narrative in marketing hasn't changed enough in my opinion. It's starting to, and people are heading back to brand building, and more awareness, and more like build the relationships with the people through other modes of advertising. Remember I'm asking you. Yep.

Like home shows and

local events and dog walking events and

So there was a brief period where you could build a company on digital alone. now it's more expensive and there's more competition. So your impressions get spread out. Everybody's fighting tooth and nail there, which means that you got to go back to where other people aren't. there is something about being super tangible. I mean, that's events. You're no longer this ephemeral thing on a phone.

You're a physical thing. They've interacted with you. They've seen you.

I mean people do business with people they know, like and trust. And when they meet you, unless you're a jerk, typically they like you, right? You're at a home show and you're like, you know, here's a widget or piece of candy or something.

I like to run by the drum of digital marketing and physical marketing. You cannot ignore one for the other on either end. They complement each other. And this is something that I learned from my predecessor. we ran TV ads and radio ads, you had greater adoption for the business and the market. Those efforts stack. And I think it's the same on digital.

But I think if you run Facebook ads, your PPC has a tendency to do better because people see you on PPC. I remember them. Now you can be number four instead of number one, which could be the difference of like 60 bucks a click, right? So all that, you start going, ⁓ okay. But in the physical world, you still stack. If you show up in the neighborhood with the yard sign,

If you show up with some door knockers, if you show up at a community like a sponsorship, and I tell people like if you're gonna sponsor, don't just be the logo on the back of the shirt. Like show up. Go do something. Like give back. ⁓ But like all of those start creating a whirlwind. And that's what you want. You wanna be the talk of the town. And the other misconception around marketing, I suppose, since that's kind of what we're dealing with with the digital stuff, is like that takes time to build.

It's not overnight. That's where the consistency about the budgets comes in.

And

you know what, I want to add this too. And actually I want your opinion of this. And I think that when you do the things you just talked about, being at the events, making it part of an entire process, so you're at the events, you're doing the baseball game, you're doing the radio ads, you're going to the events, to me I think the smaller mom and pop businesses, and mom and pop these days could be a $50 million business, but that's how they can win against the larger competitors that have budgets to throw whatever at.

the PPC in the

So I think, yeah, they do the things other companies are slow at. by their nature, the bigger the company, the slower they're going to move unless they're really tuned. And most of them aren't, right? Which means there's room. There's room for you. And if there's not room against that particular company, there's usually room among all the mom and pops, right? Because there's mom and pops that just won't work at it. But if you do, I do too. What are you doing?

still talk to people that don't have websites.

Go

where do you have to? don't even have a website.

GoDaddy

as a builder, just go put something up. Put your phone number, get a photo, like don't worry about a form, just get something. Like I don't want to see this page still, you know, is hosted, is parked by GoDaddy or whatever.

But I

will say this, none of those are new businesses. Those are old businesses, guys that have been 30, 40 years.

Yeah, those are older.

I mean I've met a couple new ones. ⁓ is, it's like you guys are behind. ⁓ Here's the steps you need to take before you can jump into my world. the, man, you said something, I had a thought in my mind.

They didn't have a website? Yeah, I That's gotta be a rough start.

I

was talking about just the private equity, the way to win is I think these community events and being in front of,

The other thing is, like the smaller companies, when we talk to them about their service areas, they're like, well, I serve Atlanta. That happened to the other day. I'm like, okay, cool. How many people you got? we got two technicians. thinking about hiring a CSO. Yeah, and I serve Atlanta. And I'm like, mm, okay. ⁓ Well, it's like, yeah, dude, why don't you laser in? like, well, what about all these other people? And I'm like, we can't create, you don't have the budget to sustain a whirlwind over four million.

We're covering seven million people.

You can take one zip code.

right? But when it comes to advertising...

And there's a difference between PPC and lead gen, but when it comes to the brand building and the events and the presence and the boots on the ground efforts, if you focus in, look at the small community in your big town, right? In your big city. And then you start making traction there. What I like to think of it is you build empires of influence. you have, it comes from playing at risk as a kid, but like you, okay, all my troops are here and I'm going to,

like make sure that I hold the line. Your small budget can go just as far as a big company who's spreading out over the entire city, If you just focus in. And then when you win that and you start getting the jobs from it, now you have more resources.

Some of that came from the marketing, some of that came from more word of mouth. It's a mix of everything, right? And then you go, okay, we're doing good though, let's move into another. And then what ends up happening is those grow even as you're doing it. And next thing you know, you're like, we own like all of the south side of this quarter of this major metro. And it's like, cool. But.

When I'm looking at Google business profiles or ad spends and I'm looking at somebody with like, I have a thousand bucks and like you put it over all of Atlanta, you're a whisper on the wind. Nobody remembers you because you showed up once. so.

Like trying to hit a target with a shotgun shell.

And what's funny is like that's what people used to claim TV was but with TV you would still go like nope What we want to be on ER we want to be on this network at that network We want this many spots because you need frequency That's another thing nobody talks about is like if you're gonna run Facebook ads make sure you have frequency look at impressions reach and frequency Yeah, and if you're just trying to saturate a market

Pick up your reviews. Nobody knows you're a five-star plumber unless you tell them enough times. So pick them up, cast them out as ads, and boom, you start influencing the market. There's your empire.

I think

that's great advice and I think that that's a challenge that business owners have simply because they're entrepreneurs. So they're like, want to take over the world. That's great. Take over your backyard and then spread like locusts.

Yeah.

You

could say I made the same mistake when I first took over the agency or the previous owner did and then I just perpetuated it which is like I'm a statewide agency in Alaska and I didn't narrow down I didn't focus and We were okay. Yeah, right So but we we weren't great and we weren't known. We definitely weren't known. Yeah that point so it was like I Always think about that who one client I was on a call with him

and we've had him for years. I had him on my podcast, Nate Santos.

Oh I know him. He came to our event that we had in May. I love that guy. I always had the cowboy hat on. I gotta remember to tell him so I was kinda giving him a little bit of crap from the of room about the cowboy hat repair shop. And what's so funny is that happened and a week later we had a boot barn open. And now our boot barn has hat repairs so I gotta make sure and him. Good dude. Good dude.

Dude, I love me.

You

He and I didn't say this but he kind of reflected my sentiment back and I and it's it's not rocket science He's like well you guys keep telling me the best known plumber is the one that gets called it and I was like, yep I don't think I've ever put it that way, but you're right like that is what I think and I'm like to work on being known. Yep, and it's That there's actions you can take to get there and there's measurements you can put in place to get there and but it's it's

I don't want to say it's a slog, but it is, people definitely undershoot the amount of time it takes to make that impact. Like, you're trying to shift the psychology of thousands of people to Google you instead of plumber near me. That's really what you want. But that takes time.

And

not to mention the windshield time for your technicians when you cover a giant area.

I'll

talk to people and they're like well we got this market here, but we really want this one. I'm like that's Like way too far away You can't do any jobs in between you realize that right? Like I don't I mean we're remote. I don't have to deal with that, but I know you do Yeah

It's an hour away. ⁓

So let's shift gears a little bit. ⁓ Obviously, AI is growing in size. ⁓ What impact do you think that is going to play in the future on advertising?

This

is super good timing because that's what I'm planning on talking about at the welcome. Perfect. This will be my beta version of my speech. Ultimately, I think it's going to impact a number of things. There's the backend stuff, it's totally going to impact that. There's the research and data that we get out of your CRMs and all that, it's going to impact that.

What I think it's going to do for advertising platforms is it's going to remove the complexities and technicalities of them that we've been having to deal with. Google PPC is an incredibly complex platform. And Google's been leveraging their AI for ages. But it hasn't been great. But it's definitely getting better. And so what's happening is placement is getting easier.

And it reminds me of when we did TV and radio. Because we had a representative where we can go, hey, this is our target demographic. We've got the production done. This is the message we want to cast out there. And we need to find the audience. Please help us find the audience. And they were our Google algorithm, right? Is those representatives. And then they got a commission. So that's how we worked with them as an agency at that point. ⁓

think is gonna happen and Facebook's already done this. Google I think is following suit and starting to with their AI max and their performance max campaign and all this stuff. what I think is happening is we're seeing the commoditization of the technical knowledge of placement. So now we're getting to a point where we're saying this is the intent. Now please go make it happen to the platform.

So we still have to be like you see with prompt engineering and things like that. You still have to be methodical about what information you give Google, what information you give Facebook. And so that way, you know, pick the right leads to send them as conversions, not the duds, things like that. And what happens is they're building an algorithm on your behalf to go and find the right customers for your business based on the information they have about your business. And this is where I think marketers will still end up in

is we have to become masters of understanding like how do we speak to these platforms in a way that is more beneficial for your business. But I think it's going to become less about like, okay, we need to have these negative keywords in. don't to like don't run broad match keywords, which now you can, you couldn't before. Like all these little changes I think are going to smooth out. And so what does that do?

That means that every company now has the ability to place ads with just as much fury as you. So that level's a playing field. So now your competitive edge is gone.

if you're like somebody who loves the complexity of your campaigns or whatever. And so me as an agency, of course I look at it. Markers are the only ones, guess. But like, so suddenly everyone can buy, everyone can do it, right? And we're already kind of in this world. There's a boost button on Facebook. It's the easiest thing to hit.

And so I could start a plumbing business in three weeks, I'd be bad at it, but I could start a plumbing business and hit that boost button and be like, I'm serving there. I'll make a lot of mistakes if I didn't know it, if I wasn't a marketer. like, so that's all gonna commoditize. Advertising, the barrier for advertising will return to the era of do you have the budget? We'll help you spend it, right? That's what agencies and stations were. Then you run into creative.

And AI is of course influencing creative. ⁓ this is really interesting to me because I got into this field because I enjoyed the creative. wanted to make the fun stuff, right? So I think what's going to happen is currently we're in this era and age of this rapid innovation. And so you have slop, right? And AI slop, for those who don't know, it's like the crap that people just like publish. And I'm guilty of making some.

And, but that's because we have to. And why we have to is because we have to become masters of new tools. We have new brushes to paint with. Yeah. Right? So when I picked up a TV, a TV camera, when I picked up a camera camera, like my first broadcast quality camera, I made a TV ad for a company called Motors Bearings and Belts, worst name ever, in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I made the worst TV ad I've ever seen in my life. But I became a master.

And then I got to the point where I was making things that rivaled national broadcast campaigns. And I think that we're going to see a lot of companies adopting AI to just make whatever creative. And then you're going to end up with, essentially artists again, having to be a differentiator. Because when everybody can make a talking Yeti talk about your heating and cooling company,

Everybody will write so you That's right, and then you'd plan a look-alike contest and so like you have to differentiate and that's what branding is and even now like I've heard some arguments like everybody's looking like a cartoon It's like well, that's still like the top 10 % until until that becomes 50 % I'm not gonna worry about yeah, but that's what I think will happen with AI on the creative side because we're solving the placement problem now then it becomes and

And then it's the same as everybody else.

I think we've already started to solve a creative problem, is, I no longer have to hire actors. I no longer have to shoot B-roll. I no longer have to get a camera crew. And if I want a special effect, like a spaceship flying through the air, which I used to charge like a thousand bucks for those shots, like, give me spaceship. Okay, there we go, right? But then, so what I've told my team as we...

Yeah, the speed and cost.

reach this creative world is companies, if you guys are doing your own marketing, agencies, everyone, you have to be the curator of taste. because, let's face it, there's movies you don't want to see in the theater and there's movies you love to see in the theater. So there's gonna be companies that you don't want to look like and there's gonna be companies you do. So I think it's in the whirlwind right now and everybody's learning how to play.

and then you'll end up with masters of the craft.

When you

think about how much AI changes over the... I was just talking to somebody the other day. It was just a couple of months ago, AI couldn't even spell anything correctly. I know. And now it's doing it. Some of the shots. That's small, but it's a big thing.

It is and it still has limitations but like I'm playing with it all weekend and I can make an ad that people have to look at to know if it's AI and Like they they have to know what to look for They have to see it and then the other thing is even if it's slop, right? You can now craft stories that you never could before. Yeah, like you can take I have like one of the things I'm show it to think because this is what I are after,

Yeah, so yeah.

that I'm gonna show is a guy who could be a plumber sitting on a race car bed in, well, onesie pajamas with little wrenches all over it, and he's holding a stuffed animal, and he's kinda like worried, and he goes, Mom, I'm worried. I'm worried I'm gonna screw up my marketing. Like, this is an ad for me, right? And then his mom is like, oh, honey, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's a conversation I can make in AI. It's not perfect, right?

But it's still telling a story and the minute that you infuse storytelling, whether it's about your crew, whether it's like your avatar having fun or whatever, right? Now you're giving people some intrinsic value again. And like now we're returning to our Superbowl ads, which were all stories, but we became the talk of the town. And that's where I think it is. It goes back to, okay, we have new tools, just like we got Photoshop one day. Now how do we

Adjust our approach so that way we still garner attention Everybody is throwing things at the wall going what's making attention right now and some are rising above and My idea is like well, how do I engineer this? Deeper and go deeper than other people have so that way I can steer the AI into zones other people wouldn't think of so that way we get the attention and it's yeah, I mean it's gonna

I think I'll be doing that for probably the next five years.

I

mean storytelling is one of those things where it is it has always been golden and and

I haven't thought about it that way, so it's cool to hear you say that, you know, really we're going to go back to the storytelling side because I personally very much enjoy the storytelling side of being invested with whatever company I do. But matter of fact, I just ordered a pillow today of all weird things because of a story that I was watching about this pillow and what it did for this person. And it was a story. It a great story. And next thing I know, was clicking by. So I said, did you buy a Story later.

So a

story testimonial like that's yeah, I think it's like I used to make fake testimonials basically, right and everybody accepted them It wasn't like weird. So I did this with a client I grabbed a Google review. I grabbed a AI avatar and I made sure it was one that matched the market fit and then I Tested it and I threw it in front of a bunch of people on a conference call

And I said, hey guys, here's what you need to be doing for your reviews because nobody sees them. So you need to pick them up, get video testimonials, cast them out on Google, hire an actor to say your existing Google review and just talk to the person and say, hey, Janet, do you mind if we have an actor say your thing? Record that on camera, add B-roll, kick it out. Now everybody in the neighborhood knows you're a five-star plumber.

Yeah,

stop being the world's best kept secret.

Yeah,

⁓ god. But I didn't hire an actor. I used AI and I spoke it. I turned myself into a middle-aged woman and I played it and then like four slides later I was like, did you guys know that that was AI? And there's like two people who caught some of the tells because they're deep into it but most of the people were just like, what? I was like, yeah.

If you cut AI ⁓ with real life footage too, it's like your brain just goes, this is all real.

That was pretty cool. All right, so as we wrap, is one thing that you would tell business owners, like thinking about all the shifts and changes, what is one thing you would tell business owners to really make sure they're paying attention to, to really win more business from a marketing standpoint?

I think the biggest mistake in marketing is people not doing it enough. I think that, and it sounds self-serving from an agency, but like, I'm talking about everything from boots on the ground, don't be lazy, get yourself out there and plan it. Plan at least one event a quarter that you're gonna take part of where you are showing up to a community. And it should be the same community over and over again for Right?

The other thing is understand that the lower your budget, the longer it takes for you to build brand awareness.

And so now that doesn't mean spend irresponsibly because you need to you need to be consistent but like think about planning for six months to a year ahead of time understanding that you can always spend more later if it works right but if you don't have it as a foundational aspect of your business you're never in PPC SEO LSA any lead aggregator all lead gen is you on your back foot not your front foot because you're waiting for demand to come to you and then

when it comes to you, they have to sift through all the other plumbers in town. That's not where you want the decision to be made. You want to be on your front foot. You want to say, I'm a five-star plumber. I'm showing up before you need me. Look how fun and integrated in the community I am. That's where the gold is. But it doesn't happen overnight. It's planned for a year, two, maybe three.

Can I add something to that? Business owners that are listening to this, make sure your CSRs are answering the phone. Make sure you're keeping up with what they're saying. Make sure they have a script. Make sure they have the tools they need. So when you're spending this money on marketing and the phone is ringing, it's not for nothing and you're not losing money.

Yeah, absolutely.

As a guy

who's listened to thousands of calls now, all my efforts would go to vain if that wasn't taken care of.

That I couldn't answer.

Well, and I think that's part of the And all that's good point, just to tack on to that, anything you're gonna do marketing is gonna start with answering the phone. And ⁓ there's obviously, if you don't have the tools to do coaching and training of it, we've got lots of friends in the industry that do it. There's a lot of really good ones. A lot of them have been on this podcast before, but ⁓ good Lord, get help and make sure that they're answering the phone so that when you're spending, you're getting an ROI.

You can't grow marketing spend later if you don't answer the phone. So you end up in water.

Well, cool, man. I appreciate you coming and hanging out. I'm excited. We get to spend a couple days. It's a beautiful Petsa coli and the weather's perfect. yeah. Yeah. September, October is usually like the best time of the year. September, October, November. Best time of year. You can still get in the ocean.

Yeah.

It's not too hot.

That's it's great in Alaska, so I'll take the green of Pensacola.

Awesome. Well, listen, I'm going to put all the show notes in here of how to get in touch with Tyler if you want to learn more about Mammoth marketing, but man, I appreciate it. Yeah. And until next time, we're having back on and keep digging in this, say, I think a little bit more. Thanks, guys.

Sounds good, love to do it.