15 - Aren't You Tired of Being the Best-Kept Secret? | Stefanie Couch

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hello everyone, and welcome back to another exciting episode of Selling in the Dwelling, the go-to podcast for the in-home selling and remodeling world. I'm your host, Alan Langer, and we're flying along with this podcast, one great guest after another, and that doesn't change today. I've got Stephanie Couch coming up from Grit Blueprint, which is a branding agency and a lot more than that, but we'll get to Stephanie in just a second. First, as we always uh mention at the beginning of each episode, the website is sellinginthedwelling.com. Don't forget to visit that and click on the Ask Allen segment. Give me a question. Send me a question. If I read your question in an upcoming episode, you will get a free Selling in the Dwelling t-shirt. And another Stephanie sent in a great question for later on. So we'll get to that at the end of the podcast. And also don't forget to visit my title sponsor, Paradigm Bendo. It's paradigmbendo.com forward slash dwelling, the best in-home software you're going to find for the remodeling space. Okay. Well, I'm excited today, Stephanie. Thank you for joining me. First of all, that's the best hat I've seen in many, many years. So how are you today?

SPEAKER_01 1:26

I'm doing great. Thank you. Um glad you like the hat. It's one of my favorites too.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Yeah, it's it's kind of like your branding, right? That's what we're going to talk about today is branding in the in the in the in-home space. And again, I always say when when I talk about something that's not directly selling, don't have the sales guys, oh, let me find another podcast. This is going to affect you because good branding leads to good leads, which leads to more sales. So it's interesting.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

I actually consider myself more of a salesperson than anything else. And that is my one first love for sure. It's starting girls' cookies. So I definitely consider myself a saleswoman. So I'm all in on that.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

Yeah, absolutely. So what Stephanie does, it's Stephanie Couch, C-O-U-C-H. And this is in a nutshell. Like I said, her company is grit blueprint. But on her on her website and in her LinkedIn profile, she writes this. And I think this is gonna like for the contractors listening right now, just listen to the what I'm gonna say. She says most companies in this space don't have a marketing problem, they have a positioning problem. Their websites all look the same, their content is inconsistent or non-existent, their story isn't being told, their competitors are louder, but they're not better. I love that. They focus on operations and products, but ignore brand, visibility, and connection, and they are scrambling to add or figure out AI systems. So that says it all, Stephanie. Expand on that. Tell us how you got here and how you help people with all of that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Well, I started in my dad's lumber yard when I was a little girl. So we sold contractors, much like your audience, a lot of remodelers, a lot of new construction contractors in the Northeast Georgia Mountains. So I've been selling windows, doors, building materials since I was about five. I used to go to work with him and just boot people off the counter and said, let me ring this guy up. And uh I've loved it ever since. But that business was mostly word of mouth. We had a lot of customers that were super loyal and we sold a lot of high-end building products for a lot of years. Then I went to two-step distribution and did that and uh sold a lot of doors and windows and products through that job as well and helped scale some businesses there that were green fields. And I kept seeing basically that once people had a relationship with people, once they knew they existed, the really great businesses would stay with the other great business partners. So, you know, a person would find a place to buy doors, windows, whatever they were selling, composite decking, engineered wood. And that person would have that relationship. But when you ask people, how are you getting new business? How are you going to market in certain channels that maybe are different? Maybe it's commercial, maybe it's residential, maybe it's super high-end luxury. Most of the time people say, Well, we have great products, we have great service, we have great people. Yeah, so does every single other person. No one really knows what their true competitive differentiator is. And usually it's a very nuanced thing that is specific to a lot of different things that add up to be your competitive differentiator. And people don't like to brag on themselves. They want the work to speak for itself. But the truth is that the work does not speak for itself. You have to speak for the work because how else would someone know? And then a third party saying that you're great is even better. So using the tools now that are out there and rapidly changing, that's the part I feel bad for people because I struggle to keep up with what's happening today with AI and marketing and sales and the channel. And I do this every day, all day long. And it's still reading every day something new. So the people that are out on a job with their, you know, tools and they're working and they're doing their thing, how do they keep up with what's happening? I think we have a mission as people in this industry, trying to help people grow their businesses to be the signal for what actually matters and what you should be paying attention to and what's just noise out there, because there is a lot of noise. So we are trying to help businesses, small and large businesses in the building industry channel to grow through what has always worked, which is reputation, but how you build that today, which is mostly digital. And AI is, you know, kind of the the weird little thing that's come into the forefront and now is everywhere. What actually can you do with AI that can help you build your business and not lose what truly makes you special, which is what brand is? Because AI just sounds like even more of the same. You know, that's it's taking everything out on the internet and it's making whatever it gives you. It's not truly unique to you. So you got to use your real story and what you actually do best, plus AI, not just AI.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Let me ask you a question about, you know, you talk about differentiation. It's it's a big part of my training. And I tell sales reps, you know, I do a quick exercise to say, oh, let's go around the room. Tell me why your company, tell me what differentiates your company from the other roofing companies. And they all come up with the same stuff. Oh, we've been in business for 30 years. We're owned by, you know, the great, great owners, we got the best warranties, blah, blah. Everyone's saying the same thing. Everyone says exactly the same thing. So, but let me let me get a little granular here. Doesn't it really start? Now I know people are searching with AI, but eventually they're gonna get on it on your website. That's pretty much where they're gonna start to set the appointment or at least look. Every damn website I see for every company looks exactly the same. It's like the same web guy sitting in one room in a basement making everyone's everyone's website.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Well that that is true. Most of them are templates, and so they are using the same template over and over. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

So what do you do about that? Like, how do you tell a contractor, don't look like everyone else? Because I know they're built for SEO and they have to have the words and stuff, but there's got to be a better way, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, I think it starts with really figuring out what are the words that your people actually care about. So one thing I'll go back to, you know, you said everybody says, oh, well, our people and our story, and we've been here for for a hundred years. Listen, that gives you credibility. It gives you authority because you've been there, right? So a business that's been open six months is probably not gonna be trusted like someone that's been there six years or 106 years. But at the end of the day, people do not give a hoot about your story. They really don't. They only care about it as it pertains and helps their business or their problem to be solved. If it's a B2C, you know, consumer, hey, how are you gonna make my home better? How are you gonna make me not worry at night that you're taking advantage of me or that you're not the right person for the job or those products aren't the best fit? They don't want to have risk and they don't want to waste time and they definitely don't want to waste money. And so if you can't help someone understand how you can either make their life better by solving a problem, reducing friction, doing whatever it is they're asking you to do, you're not even gonna be in the consideration because they don't care that your grandfather or my grandfather started a company. I mean, we love our own stories, right? I mean, we love ourselves. That's how we all are, that's how everyone is. But at the end of the day, that is not how marketing and branding should work. It's not how sales should work. And so we do a lot more of that probably than we should because everyone says, well, just tell your story. No, don't tell your story. Tell your story as it helps someone else to solve their problem, but not just for the sake of telling your story.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yeah, absolutely. Because how does how does your story intertwine with their story, which is the problem that they want solved?

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Like if I if I'm just thinking, like if I went on three websites for roofing and you know, the first two are typical best roofing company in North Carolina, and then I go to one and it says, I fix your leaking roof. You know what? I'm probably going on that one because they're talking to my problem right away. So that's kind of what I'm talking about. Is that what you kind of you know?

SPEAKER_01 9:06

I think it's more the colors and the pictures and all that stuff. I will tell you the imagery and the media, which is why we focus so heavily on that on the front end of, and I consider us really a media business in a lot of ways. It's that we do a lot of stuff in this industry that leads to beautiful products at the end, like beautiful homes, things that are aesthetically pleasing, which our brains love pictures. We love uh photos of people, we love photos of places. All of us, most people are visual. So I see that most companies that do these crazy cool products and they sell them to projects throughout the US, they never even get a picture of it. And so they could say, Hey, we've I have a contractor that told me a few weeks ago, we've been building stuff in the Southeast for 30 years, and he's like, I bet it's thousands of jobs, and I don't think I have one picture I could send you. And it's like, wow, let's fix that, you know, because if you show that you fix that problem for someone else a thousand times, I pretty much believe that I probably will be the thousand and one time that you fix that problem. And showing it visually with pictures is a great way. Even with SEO and with searches, you can use pictures to make your website so much better than if you just have a bunch of words. And the way that AI search is changing things, the website still matters because that's where all the information is feeding to that brain. But at the end of the day, clickless search where people don't click on the link to go find out more, that is going to be a big deal. And so social media like Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, all of those things are feeding into AI search. The actual websites, your blogs, all of the Google reviews, everything is now cumulating to feed that summary that comes up when you say, What's the best window replacement person in my area? What's the best roofer in my area? They may never get to those links on the website. They may just read and it says, Hey, it's Alan and here's Alan's company. And then they go right to figuring out what they want to do. So it's really a time in history where I think, do you redo your website to make it AI searchable? I absolutely think you should. Whether you never call me or if you call me, it doesn't matter. The answer is even if you can figure out how to do it on your own, there's a lot of cool technology now that you can do what they call vibe coding, where you're actually doing your own website, but you have to make sure that it actually works for SEO and AI search. And a lot of times those single page sites that you might build on Lovable or somewhere like that, they are not going to be indexing to Google. So you're going to basically do all this amazing stuff. It looks pretty, but it doesn't feed the machine. So the number one thing I would say is make sure you're thinking about that of how is the buyer's journey different? They are searching everywhere. So you can't be everywhere, but you need to be in the places that your clients are really looking. And something crazy happened to me, Alan, yesterday. We were at a job site with a finished home and we were filming. They had done windows, doors, all of that was purchased through one of my clients. So we go out to this job site, and this man and his wife had built this custom home in Northeast Georgia. They did a GC, but this guy had done a lot of his own research. He knew what doors he wanted, what windows he wanted, all of the things. So I started talking to him and I said, Hey, John, how did you go about finding these products? Because you obviously did a lot of research. He was talking about, he said, YouTube. And he goes, and there wasn't enough information on YouTube. I had to really, really look to find stuff. And I wish that more people would think about this. And he had a contractor. He was not building this himself, but he said, I I do all my research. And this guy was a boomer. He was in, you know, or maybe Gen X, and he was not a millennial. He was not a Gen Z. I know that's where I'm going because I'm a millennial. I'm going to YouTube. So you got to think about that is where are you putting information that's super detailed that would answer either a homeowner or if you're in the B2B channel, a person that's purchasing in that business, whatever problem or opportunity you're giving them, how detailed can you be in your content, whether it's on your website or YouTube or LinkedIn?

SPEAKER_00 13:23

You're bringing up an amazing point because you're so right about AI searchability now. Like you can't just have a website. People, I think the last statistic I saw is 78% of people are starting their search on AI now, not even on Google anymore. But I think in this space, in the home improvement space and even in the contracting space overall, YouTube is woefully underused because it's video. So you see a lot of contractors before and after pictures. They're awesome. People love before and after pictures. It's like one of the top two things people go to on websites. But man, if you can do a time lapse on YouTube, like here's Big Joe's general contracting in Georgia, and here are our last 10 jobs in a time lapse. We just build this house. That's unbelievable. You know how many views you would get? And then all of a sudden your credibility goes through the roof.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

Or show in those little fine details that you can't really get in a picture because it needs to move, you know, for instance, on something on a window or a door where you're cranking a casement window out. You can't show that in a picture. That's motion. And somebody might say, well, what's the difference between a casement window and a double hung window? And why would I want one versus the other? And you can show that really easily. Exactly. And listen, these are the things I hear from people. I don't look good on camera. I don't know how to do this. I don't have the equipment. I don't have a $50,000, you know, setup in a studio. You have a cell phone. And if you'll buy a $120 mic from Amazon, there's multiple DJI has some, Holly Land has some, $120 plus your cell phone. If you don't want to be on camera, buy some metaglasses and just start filming and just talk through what you're seeing. Meta glasses for contractors, I think that's one of the most underutilized opportunities because people are not going to set up a tripod and do all this crazy stuff. Put them on. You hit the little button. Ours have John Cena talking to us. That's my husband has his where John Cena's on there. And so it'll be like, uh, ready or something. And then you hit it and it'll either take pictures or you can do video. And we'll just walk through and just narrate. Like, hey, I'm looking at this. Here's why we chose this product. Here's what we did in this area, you know, showing pointing at stuff. And there you go. And then you just post it right on social media. It's already in the, you know, up and down for social media 916.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's I just learned something. I knew about the metaglasses, but I didn't know. So the quality in them is is good enough to post like for social media, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

I mean, YouTube, even YouTube downgrades everything to 1080 pixels. So, you know, we have all these amazing cameras that'll do like 8K. And unless you're doing it on some sort of like movie screen or something, if you're doing it in YouTube's hosting or Instagram or any of those, it's downgrading that footage. So it doesn't really matter how great it is if it's going to downgrade to 1080. And Metaglasses and a phone will do that.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Wow. You just reminded me of something, or just for me to bring this up, because we are selling in the dwelling and we talk about all the success, how to be successful, not only in selling, but as a company. But now I'm thinking of the reps. Like when I was a rep, I would go to as many job sites as I could and I would take before and after pictures. And quite often I started doing videos. And on my own social media, my personal social media, I would say, hey, look at this great house we just installed. So for the reps listening, go get yourself a pair of metaglasses or at least visit your job sites and get a phone and take these pictures and put them on your own social media, not even the companies, but share them with the company. Because guess what? Yeah. People are going to say, Whoa, this is beautiful. I need windows, or my mother needs windows, and they're going to contact you. So now you generate your own business as well.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Yeah, if you are a B2B person, so I'll give just a few tactical tips here. If you're B2B, you should be posting on LinkedIn. 100% for sure. LinkedIn is the platform for you. If you're doing long form, obviously put it on YouTube and then share it on LinkedIn. But LinkedIn is where businesses are already there, people who do business and are thinking about business, they're already in that mindset on LinkedIn. And so when you post there, your people may not comment on it. They may not, you know, go give you a shout out, but they are seeing it. And I promise you, I call it the silent lurkers. They are watching. And you'll go to a show or you'll see something, you'll be like, hey, I haven't seen your post for three years. Like that post last week was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're like, that's weird. I've never even seen this person before. They've never commented, they've never liked, but they are watching. So if you're B2B, that's my tip. If you're a B2C, I would just start on either probably Instagram is the easiest part. Facebook is still, Facebook still slays, but to me, Meta and Instagram, they're all the same. So you can post on Facebook and Instagram at the same time. But you could just get a posting service like Metro Cool is what we use, no affiliation there. You can use any of them. There's 50. But you can post that one video in 10 places with one click. So that way, maybe your audience isn't on Instagram, maybe it's on YouTube, but you're posting it on all the platforms at the same time. And so it saves you a ton of time. And then the other thing that I'll tell people is, you know, you can share your post that you post as a person, as a human being, it will get at least 10x more engagement and more views, especially on LinkedIn, because you're a human instead of your company. So if you're a CEO of a company, the founder of a company, or the salesperson, it doesn't matter. You don't have to be an executive for this to work. Your personal social media will get seen by more people because the algorithm wants people to post. It doesn't want companies to post. It wants your company to pay for paid ad spend on their platform. So I would much rather you not even post on your company page, let your people do it, and then reshare it on your company page because that is what actually will get traction. And tell the story about what, you know, what you did with that customer. Hey, this person came in. They were looking for a retrofit door. Here in the South, we sell lots of 10-inch side lights, which is a weird thing. Maybe they wanted to take a 10-inch, 3-0, 10-inch unit and make it into a 5-0 double unit. We went out and were able to do this with this fiberglass door. It's from Plast Pro. You know, it's painted black. Whatever it is that you're talking about, give some context and some details about how you help that person go from what they were to what you got and that you can do it for them too. I try really hard not to be too sellsy in my post. I just think it's implied that if they want you to solve their problem, they can DM you or call you. You can do a hard sell if you want, but I would keep it like one out of eight posts. You're like, buy my thing.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Um I just think or if you need one more, contact me. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:56

You don't need to be super hardcore selsy. That's another people don't want to do it because they don't want to be pushy. Just share what you're doing. Show your show your work.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Hey dwellers, quick break. Hey, did you know that the closing percentages for in-home sales has been dropping consistently over the last 10 years? It's really crazy, and there's a lot of reasons for it. But one of them is reps have so much to do in the house because there's so many different platforms that you're jumping back and forth all the time. Well, my title sponsor, Paradigm Vendo, takes care of that. In one digital platform, you can go from initial appointment right to final sale and signatures by visiting just their platform. It's amazing. You gotta check them out. It's paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling, P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M Vendo.com forward slash dwelling, because your reps need to give the homeowners a great experience in the house, and jumping around doesn't do that. Visit paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling and take care of the experience your reps are giving in the house. Hey sales professionals. Are you proud of your profession? Are you proud of being in sales? Well, you know what? You really should be, and it's time to start showing it. And that's why I created my new merchandise shop, the sevensecrets shop.net. It's the the number sevensecret shop.net, and there you can find great hats, t-shirts, beanies, water bottles, phone covers, all kinds of really fun merchandise with great sayings like I love sales or sales rocks, or even for your kids, my dad is a sales rock star, my mom is a sales superstar. Visit the sevensecrets shop.net with the number seven, and you can pick out anything you want to show your love of what you do for a living. The sevensecretshop.net. Visit it today. And the other thing is, I learned this a long time ago when I first started posting myself. I I laugh when I think back. Like I remember trying to do the first when I first got on TikTok. My daughter who's 18 now, but she Was 12 at the time. She's like, Dad, you need to be on TikTok. I'm like, TikTok. I'm a sales coach. Why need to be on TikTok? So she was right. So I started doing it. And I remember the first few posts. It took me like an hour to do a two-minute post or a one-minute post. And then a gentleman I know on LinkedIn said to me, He goes, Al, progress over perfection. Stop making everything. Just film it, put it up there. And you know, you freak out. You're like, oh my God, I don't look good. The lighting was off and everything. And then after a while you realize those are the best posts you can have. Just so now I can literally whip my phone out, do a do a post and post it without any editing or anything. That's what I encourage people. When you, if you're starting this, don't worry about perfection. Just get it done. Because the more and more you do it, the more comfortable you get at it.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

Yeah, and I believe now in the AI era that trust is something that is really hard to come by. And so people trust something that looks a little unpolished and more real, way more than some polished thing that looks like you edited it for 17 hours before you posted it. Now, I post edited videos all the time, especially with logger stuff where we're taking 50 things of footage and putting it into one 20-minute video. That has to be edited. But if you're doing a one-minute just, hey, let me show you this job site. Hey, let me talk to you about this thing we did. Here's this finished product. There's no reason for you not to just hit record and then just post it and see what happens. And nobody's gonna care about your first post anyway. They're never gonna see it. So just do it. And I mean, what's the worst that can happen? You you get somebody like your mom that's like, why are you posting on social media? Yeah, well, everybody thinks it's stupid until they all are like, hey, how are you doing this? And how can I do it too? You know, so just know you're gonna get some hate probably from people. But at the end of the day, number one, are they doing what you want to do? So that's what I always ask myself, like when people give me hater comments or or say like you're a show off or whatever it is. Are they building the business that I want to build? If they are, maybe I'll take their advice. If not, no thanks. And secondarily, is are they really thinking about you when they give you that comment? Or is it some reflection on their own insecurity that it's like, oh man, I would never do that because I I don't want to blah, blah, blah. I don't care if I'm not gonna take their advice. So if I wouldn't call them and say, hey, what do you think about LinkedIn? What should I do? Then I'm not gonna take their advice when they comment on my post and say they don't like my pink hat or whatever the heck they say.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Well, whatever. And it's crazy because I remember again back when I was starting, one of my posts did pretty well. I don't know, went viral, but it had, I don't know, 200,000 views, whatever. It was really good, and I got a million likes. But so I was like scrolling through the comments, and every oh, this is great, this is great. I think I had 240 comments, and one, one comment right in the middle was some jerk saying it was the worst post he ever saw, or like, I don't know what I'm talking about. And you know, I like lost sleep that night. I perseverated over that one stupid comment, and then I woke up in the morning like, what am I doing? It's just one jackass in the universe. You can't make everybody happy, but 239 people really liked it, so I'm gonna focus on them instead.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

It is wild though how our brains go straight to the negative, and it does affect you as a human. It's easy for somebody to sit here and say, like, oh, just post, you know, nobody will care. But sometimes it's people you do care about. Like sometimes it's your boss that says it or a coworker that you do respect. Maybe it's somebody else that built their business another way that wasn't social media forward or wasn't, you know, uh digital forward because it was built in the 60s. I would just go back to you and say, hey, what are you trying to accomplish? And if you think that this is going to get you to the goal that you're trying to get to in 2026 or whenever you end up doing this, that is for you to decide and for them to find out. So at the end of the day, go do what you need to do to build your business. And especially if you're a salesperson. People that are not in sales that have never hit a had to hit a number or have never had to feed their family, if they don't close something, if you don't bring home something you are not gonna eat, they don't get it. They will probably never feel that feeling and they will probably never get that. I mean, some of us are crazy and it's like we love that hunt. I closing a deal for me is this high that I I don't even really care what it is. It's like, hey, I just sold this 60 cent pencil. I don't care. I just want to close. But in a way that gives people value, that they come back to me again and say, hey, can we buy some more? It can't just be that weird, you know, we talked you into it stuff. I hate that. But if you are a salesperson, just know you're kind of weird in a good way. And you don't need to expect the person who's not doing that type of role to get it. They're just not going to. It's the same thing with entrepreneurship.

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah. And and especially when you take the sales world, most of the in-home sales world is commission only, which is a whole different animal as well. I mean, you gotta have some alligator skin for that.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

So yeah, and it and you're gonna get rejected so much. That's the thing I think is like, hey, social media is a great little test for how good you are at handling rejection or negativity. Yeah, because you're going to get some of it, or you might just get nothing, which almost is worse. I'd rather have the negative comments because at least it's engagement, it helps the algorithm. But most people, you know, they're not used to getting rejected a lot. And so salespeople have a little bit easier time doing that, usually because they're used to it. And I think social media is just the next step in that, hey, just go get rejected on the internet by people. But everybody else might love it and say, again, it's exactly what they've been waiting for you to post, and you're their person to do whatever it is you do for them.

SPEAKER_00 27:28

Great stuff, great stuff. Okay, so when we talk about branding and and obviously good branding leads to hopefully more leads, but besides social media and your website, what else can a company do? Is there anything else that you guys like talk about, or is there anything else that someone should be doing within this world of branding and and and you know, people finding out who you are and where you are?

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Yeah, I think there's a lot that can be done aesthetically with physical presence. And so obviously I'm wearing this pink hat. I love if you can't tell, I like the color pink. That is just who I am. I've always loved pink since I was a little girl. I've been wearing it my whole life, and I've always liked hats. So it's not something I've made up for the brand. It just is Stephanie, and it's just part of what I I chose to do. Now, you know, I do have a little bit of a thought. Hope I like this when I'm like 85 because I'll be wearing it forever because it's part of my brand. Right. But I think about, especially in service-based businesses and things like remodelers, where they're driving a truck, they're driving a van, they're, they have a work vehicle, they have people out in the field that are doing sales, doing installs, they're wearing a certain thing. How do you not look like the exact same as every other person they've ever seen? And I use the color pink as a reference because pink actually is more one of the more rare color colors that you see in this industry. And so when you do see in Atlanta, there's a pink uh dumpster company and there is a plumbing company that has pink. And I'm not saying everybody go do pink because then it won't be unique anymore. I'm telling you to find something that stands out to the eye. So if you think about in nature, when you look at how birds and and animals and all of those things find nectar, it's because the plants are very colorful. The most colorful plants are either usually really good or maybe they're like gonna kill that animal or or it's poisonous. Even like for birds, a lot of the male birds are more colorful because they need to attract things. It's about attraction and going back to that visual. Humans are visual creatures. They need to see things that catch their eye, stop their attention long enough to say, what is that about? Then from there, you got to do things with your messaging and your what do you solve, all those parts. But if they never even look your way to begin with because you're boring and you just blend in just like everybody else, then it doesn't matter how good your messaging is or how good the actual product or service is. They're never even gonna see you. So stop being invisible and start standing out. I call it being unmistakable. How can you make sure that no one's ever gonna say, hmm, is that Stephanie Couch? I don't know. How do you make sure that everyone says, is that Alan? Uh might not be Alan. You want to be like, that's Alan. I like I'm 100% sure it's Alan. And so that is a way that you can do with your personal appearance, with your cars, with your signage, with your company branding, buying something that stands out. Maybe it's a mascot. Uh, if it if you put a golden retriever on any kind of marketing, it's gonna 100% convert better all the time. A dog is it. I mean, I have a golden retriever, and I'm telling you, this this girl is beautiful. She's per the perfect dog. And if I put her on something, it doesn't matter what it is. People are like, love your dog.

SPEAKER_04 30:48

Dog's so cute. That works.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

So find a, you know, beautiful dog, whatever it is, and just find a way to stand out and look different than everybody in your market. If you're one of 50 companies that has a logo that looks just like yours that's blue, I mean, it it's not a competitive differentiator.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

Yeah, we we've got two things you you brought to mind for me. We've got a uh a septic service company here in Rhode Island. I think I mentioned this on a previous episode that they're pink. All the you know, septic truck is one of the gross, like big tank things, you know. They're always dirty and gross. And this woman-owned septic company, everything's pink and it's all clean. She washes her trucks every day. So that's a great brand. But you you're making such good points because think about it this way. And I just thought of this because this just drove by my window. Every landscaping truck you see on the road looks exactly the same. You don't know it's Big Tom's landscaping, Joe's landscaping, whatever. They all look the same. Imagine if you made your trucks purple or bright green or something, and now everyone sees that one truck. That's the first landscaping company they think of when they actually need landscaping.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

So it's about recognition when you need it. I think that's another thing. We we don't really realize how much goes into a decision in front of the call, in front of the book and appointment or make a phone call or email to that person. When you think about billboards, uh lawyers are the best example I know of this. So John Morgan is a brilliant marketer. He owns Morgan and Morgan, biggest private injury attorney in the U.S. He spends over $400 million a year on advertising. And a very large chunk of that is billboards. Do you think that every single time someone drives by that billboard, they need a private injury or personal injury attorney? Absolutely not. But I have driven by those billboards for years and years and years in Atlanta, Georgia on my way to the airport every day. And I see he is 10 to 1. There's everyone you go by is some attorney, but 10 to 1, it's John Morgan for the people. It's blue and it's yellow. And at the end of the day, I may not call John Morgan. I might, who knows? John, if you're listening, hit me up. I'd love to interview for my podcast. But he is going to come to mind. Like, there's no way. But it's not the day you drive by the billboard. It's the 7,000th time you drive by the billboard, get in a wreck, and need a personal injury attorney. So you've got to be doing this for a long time. True brand awareness is not a one-time effort. It's not one post, it's not one upgrade to your website. It is a continuous living, breathing organism that you're building. You're building a world around your business and hopefully your brand as a person, because I believe personal branding, again, is a huge part we leave out because people trust people and we connect with other humans. So if you have your truck, you have your person branded in a certain way. Maybe you have a certain slogan that is super catchy and people really remember it. Even a jingle. I mean, I I'm thinking of the Stanley Steamer jingle in my mind right now. You know, I want 800 steamer, Stanley Steamer goes, yeah, hungry. Why do I know that? I don't know. But here we are. So that is the thing. Find something that sticks, that stands out, and you have to ride it as long as you can. The Chick-fil-A cows are a great example. They have been using that since the 90s. It's still working, so they're still doing it. Sometimes it needs to be changed. It it just depends. There's not a true science to that. It is an art, but you've got to find something and you got to try something to find it. That's the biggest thing. You can't just hope for the best. Gosh, I hope this big campaign idea would come up where I could just get so cool and everybody would not mistake me for someone else. You got to try some things to see what works.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yeah, and and the customer journey, I talk a lot about the customer journey. The customer journey starts with the branding. It starts with the awareness first. And then, okay, that's going to build the trust. All right, maybe I'm going to visit their website. I'm going to check things now. And I, you know, and now I need a new roof. I'm going to call them because I saw their beautiful light blue, baby blue trucks driving all over, you know, wherever they are. So but that's where the customer absolutely starts.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

And I think we can use different ways to get attention from people. Like obviously, you can play on things like fear. Like, are you scared that, you know, your roof is leaking? Are you whatever? There's a been a bunch of different ways to do this. So with slogans and messaging, you can do that. And then once you do that, they start to think about for the people. I'm just going back to that because I already used it. They are for you when the big insurance company is against you. Like, but that's three words that imply that other stuff. And so you can do this without having a 75-page, you know, here's what we're about. But you got to come to a simple thing that people can remember. And we think about our businesses, and even I struggle with this sometimes. There's a lot we can do. And we try to say a thousand different things in this little tiny time on our website, on our post, whatever it is. Just say one thing a thousand different ways, a thousand different times. So if you really are the best roofer in Northern California, I want you to figure out how to say that where people are actually going to pay attention because every other roofer in Northern California is the best roofer.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

It is the best roofer. And they're saying we're the best roofer, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:20

They found some newspaper somewhere that will let them pay $250 to put best roofer on their thing. And they've got the credential just like you. And it's it's not really a fraudulent thing. No one's doing this nefariously. It's just you got to find something that people actually care about. I do think some third-party awards can really help, and it depends on obviously what it is. But I think about like Car and Driver magazine and cars, you know, there's 75 different best car of the year awards, and they're all just from a different magazine that got the bigger check from whatever car they're talking about. So, you know, maybe do some of that and just see if it helps your business. But the best thing you can do is post consistently and be consistently where your customers already are and stop trying to drive them places that you want them to be. So if they, if you know your demographic does great on Reddit, and that's where like so many people are looking up something on Reddit, you should be on Reddit. And yeah, fun fact, Reddit actually really feeds a lot of AI searches. It's a really high thing, which is interesting because Reddit kind of can be a cesspool. But at the end of the day, that is a big feeder of AI. So, you know, maybe you need to start posting on Reddit and answering some questions that homeowners post on there about whatever you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 37:35

And let me bring this up too, because I I think a lot of home improvement companies get this wrong as well. Here's what I see like let's say you're a company and you're a you're a plumbing company. You're now sending usually you're sending out a service technician, not a typical salesperson, and they're in a truck. They're in a branded truck. But God forbid a sales rep goes to your house in anything branded. They show up in their Toyota Camry to sell a roof. I never I just never understood that. Like, I know it's expensive, but can you get your reps in branded vehicles, make sure they're wearing branded clothing? I'll tell you a quick story. When I was at Renewal by Anderson, I I drive an FJ Cruiser. I love my FJ Cruiser, been driving it for years. And the last, I don't know, eight years I was there, I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna label my own truck. I spent my own money, I put Renewal by Anderson stuff, they gave me permission to do it, but I put my own phone number on it. But when I pulled up to a house, I can't tell you how many times people said, Wow, I love your truck, very professional looking. And I immediately moved myself above everyone else pulling up in their Volkswagen Rabbit trying to sell me some shit. So if you're listening, brand your reps cars if you can. I know it's there's legal stuff and you gotta have commercial play, all that stuff. If you can do it, please. It just the perception is so much better when they pull up to the house.

SPEAKER_01 38:53

I love that. And especially since it's an FJ cruiser, it's different, you don't see a ton of those on the road. And so that in itself is different, right? I actually was talking to someone that had bought a cyber truck, which I personally think are like the most atrocious looking vehicles, right? You could he wrapped it. He wrapped this cyber truck, so it's shaped weird, you don't see very many of them on the road, and it's wrapped. If you see that, you are at least going to look at it. You may not pay attention 100% to what's on it, but you're gonna notice that because it is so different than every other car you see driving down the road. Be thinking about that and your business. What is one just pick one thing, whether it's your vehicle, your website, your colors, you personally, what is it that you can say, this is my unique thing that is me? And it could be again a mascot, it could be a slogan, it could be whatever it is. Pick one thing and start there because you know, we're talking about a lot of things that take work. And if you're not a creative person, you're like, man, I'm just trying to sell roofs, I'm just trying to sell windows, just trying to feed my family. This is gonna help you feed your family. So figure out one thing, and then if that works, I would dare you to start listening to what people say to you. We do a lot more talking and sales than I think we should. So I have a plod recorder, P L A U D. It's in little AI. I love that thing. It's like maybe my top invention of all time that I've had. And I will, if you're in a one, if you're in a two-party consent state, make sure you ask the person before you record them. But I will say, hey, do you mind if I record this for my notes? And then I will go back and I will take moments of what people are saying to me. Like for me, it was, are you tired of being the best kept secret in your market? Like you're you're awesome. And once people buy from you, they love you, but people don't know who you are and you're invisible. Are you tired of being that way? I say that because a hundred people have told me, man, I saw that about the best kept secret, and damn it, we're the best kept secret. And I it just kills me that we are invisible until people know us, and we do such a great job for people once they know, but nobody knows. And after the hundredth per person said that back to me, I was like, well, crap, like I should just say that everywhere. So you have something in your business that people are saying back to you, their problems, what they like about working with you, they will tell you what your messaging should be if you listen close enough. But most of us are too busy what we want to say. And shit, I love to talk, obviously. But we have to listen to what they want from us and they will tell us, and they'll also tell you what they don't want. So a lot of times, you know, when a service-based business, we're offering like a hundred things. I'll give you this package and it has all these things. They care about the four things they care about, and all the rest of it is work you're doing that nobody gives one crap about. And you could just take out of the package and not have to worry about it, and they would never miss it. They probably would be less confused because the package is simpler. So be thinking about that. What are they saying to you? And then what are they not saying that you could just remove?

SPEAKER_00 42:13

The the concept of so there's there's Rilla and there's uh Ciro out there, those are the two AI recording companies that that are in the in-home space. But if you're not doing it, if you're a smaller company, you can't afford either one of them, Plawed is not that expensive. And just recording recording your sales conversation or recording any conversation, business conversation, is the best thing you can absolutely ever do to improve. I did this with my iPhone when iPhone first came out. I started recording, I put my phone in my pocket and recorded it, and I would listen to my conversations on the way home. And I joke with the owner of Rilla, I said, You stole my idea because I was recording long before you were born, buddy. But anyway. So it's a great idea. So plot is out there. There's there's quite a few AI tools that will record, but listening to what your customer's saying is is a brilliant, brilliant piece of advice.

SPEAKER_01 43:00

You can put a template in your plot that automatically, after your conversations, it'll run it through a certain thing. So you could put in there, like, hey, what are the key takeaways that I could use for messaging? What are the things I did worse on than I could have done? How can I improve? You can program it personally for you so that it will give you that report automatically after you put it in into your computer. So yeah, I can't recommend it enough. They're like 150 bucks. So it will be worth every dollar you spend.

SPEAKER_00 43:28

Hey sellers, let me ask you something. Your sales rep walks into a home and pulls up a presentation. Is it dynamic? Is it interactive? Is it built to wow the customer? Or is it simply another PDF from two years ago that looks like everybody else's? Here's the thing in today's in home selling world, your presentation is part of the sale, and that's exactly why I want to tell you about our good friends over at Engage, the sponsor for the Ask Allen segment. See Engage, which is I N G A G E dot Io. Is the industry's leading interactive sales presentation software built specifically for in-home sales teams? We're talking dynamic, engaging, professional presentations that make your reps look like the obvious choice the moment they open their iPads. And the results speak for themselves. So many companies are increased closing percentages, increased customer satisfaction scores. I can go on and on, but you need to check out Engage if you want to really create unbelievable presentations in the home. It's ing-a-ge-e.io, engage.io, because your presentation is everything. Visit them today. Speaking of spending dollars and moving along here, we are now at the Ask Allen segment of the podcast, my favorite part of the podcast, and we've got a question from another Stephanie actually from San Antonio, Texas. So are you ready for Stephanie's question, Stephanie?

SPEAKER_01 44:56

I'm ready. Let's go.

SPEAKER_00 44:57

All right. So Stephanie also spelled the same way as you with an F.

SPEAKER_01 45:01

Oh, with an F?

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Yeah, it's just like you. That's amazing. You must have sent it in yourself, didn't you?

SPEAKER_01 45:08

I planted it. No, but I don't meet very many Stephanie's with an F. So hey girl, what's up?

SPEAKER_00 45:12

Yeah. So Stephanie from San Antonio, she writes, I am a women-owned exterior contracting business. First of all, applaud you, women-owned contracting. Awesome job. Love that. She sells roofing, siding, and windows. I am in my third year and feel I am constantly being bombarded with all the new bells and whistles and platforms to get me more leads. I literally am frozen in place as I don't know if I should be fixing my website, investing in SEO, looking at AI lead generation. I'm just confused. I'm hoping you have someone on soon to give me some direction and clarity. Well, Stephanie from San Antonio, your wishes come true. Stephanie Couch from Georgia is here to answer this question. So how would you answer Stephanie's question?

SPEAKER_01 45:57

Well, Stephanie, thanks for the question. I would love to talk a little bit more so I could get some context around what you're doing that's already working. But I would say you are unique in that you're from San Antonio. You're a female that owns a construction business. So I would say do the free thing that will convert if you do it long enough, and that is build your personal brand. So start posting as you talking about what you're doing, talking about why you're different, talking about what you're selling and how you're selling it. I would start to do that first. The reason is because no matter what changes, if Instagram is not even a big deal in 10 years, you will still have the skills and the personal brand already built to be able to move to something else. So sure, you could spend a million dollars a month on Google ads, but the minute that you turn those Google ads off, they're dead. The minute that you decide, okay, we're well, this website's not working, we're gonna, you know, recalibrate it, redo the messaging, whatever it is, it has to be paid for again. But your personal brand is a compounding asset. It will never not be valuable to you. So you as an owner and a founder, I would absolutely say that the most upside potential you have, no matter what tool, no matter what platform, is to build your personal brand and start posting videos. And I would just get real uncomfortable if you're not already uncomfortable on camera and just start posting. Once you do that, you post 90 days. I would try to post one video a day for 90 days. That is gonna get you out of your comfort zone. It is gonna get you practiced up and you will find that you are getting your groove. And then you can start to figure out which platforms do you focus on, how can you get better? But don't even worry about that for 90 days. Just hit post. I don't care if it's the worst, most embarrassing thing you've ever made on day one, post it. Because if you wait until you're ready, you'll never start. And if you don't start, you will never have that valuable asset that in five years, you'll be like, wow, I'm so glad I did this. Because everything else is gonna change. The platforms that are big right now, they will change. The AI, I mean, it'll change tomorrow, but everything else on the, you know, side of that is unknown. This is a pretty known thing. It's always gonna be good for you as a founder, especially a female founder in a male-dominated industry. You are gonna stand out just by that. And if I can help you in any way, let me know. Hit me up on LinkedIn or or email me. Alan can connect us. But that would be my number one, choose that. And then from there, you know, optimize your Google profile. Those baseline things that are free to do, go do that first. Maybe you need to upgrade your website. I don't know. I'd have to look at it. But the big thing with that is really is it optimized for AI search? So even Google now, even if you're Googling something, it is coming back with AI with that AI summary from Gemini. So really, you just need to make sure you're answering the questions that your customers would ask, going back to that recording thing. What are the 10 questions that you get asked every single week? Go write a blog on that, write a social media post on that, and write it exactly like they ask it. Don't put some VS like super smart answer. If they're like, how do I know when I need a new roof? We had a storm and I don't really know if I need a new roof or not. Some of my neighbors had hell damage. Boom, answer the question. How do I know if I should go with vinyl windows or with aluminum clad windows? Boom, answer the question. What maybe they don't know what aluminum clad is. They don't even know it's an option. So maybe you can say, hey, you think vinyl is your only option? Let me tell you about these other things we have if you want it. If you really like the look of wood and you're trying to look a little more homey inside and historically correct, maybe you want this window that has wood inside. So those questions, they're never gonna hurt you. Answer them on video and then take that video transcript and write a blog with it on your website. Try you, she does not have enough time. None of us do. Like she just said that in the question. So try to figure out how you can do one thing that then you can make into two or three things. So one long video that then goes into small videos using a clipping service. I would recommend Opus Clips is the one I use, it's pretty good for AI clips. And then from there, you can use the transcript from that long video that you make on YouTube. Take the transcript and write get AI to write you some blog. So there's three assets right there. You got long form, short form, and a blog from one video that you make. And then you can just use it everywhere. So save time and use AI, but just make sure you read it first and it's not slop. But if you are talking to the camera and giving it the story on that first piece of content that it starts from, then it shouldn't be AI slop because it's truly from you. That's why I like videos so much cut up into blogs, because it's using what you're telling it.

SPEAKER_00 50:47

Yeah. And the thing I would add to this, because I'm I'm not a branding expert, even though I really worked hard on my branding and and uh every now and then I get a compliment on it because I really try to stay in that lane. I think a lot of us are susceptible to the shiny object syndrome. I think if you got a bunch of people bombarding you, well, you should do this. This is a lead company, it's gonna get you this. Just take a pause and say, look at it really close and say, Will this actually help me? Or is this just something else that I'm excited about right now? How are you gonna feel tomorrow about it or the next day? Sit on it for a week because if you make a rash decision, you're gonna wind up with 15 subscriptions to software packages that two months from now you have no idea what they are. Like literally, you'll go on your bank account, like, what is that? What is that? What is that?

SPEAKER_01 51:28

I know that happens to me every month.

SPEAKER_00 51:30

Yeah, and then you don't even know what it is, and then you gotta find how to cancel it. It's crazy. So take a pause. I don't want you to take a pause and a breath when they see something new because everything new is always exciting. All the salespeople saying they were the best, but take a look at a pause there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

So I would also piggyback on that and just say the first question I would ask, like if Stephanie, Stephanie, if you want to hit me up, love to talk to you a little bit more about this. But I would actually ask, is your problem really leads? Like, is that truly your issue? Because a lot of times I'll ask people like, well, what would make your business better? And they're like, We need more leads. I'm like, okay, cool. Let's go sit down and like just look at some things. And we go and look, and they've got leads that haven't been responded to in like a week. Or they and I'm sure this is not Stephanie. I'm sure this is not Stephanie, but I'm just saying, how fast are you responding to leads? Because if you respond to a lead within five minutes, you're 22 times more likely to convert that lead. 22 times. So, what would happen if you just if you forgot about all the other stuff and I'm unselling my product here? Don't get a new website, don't get it social media, don't do any of that. Take the leads if you're getting leads now that are not converting. Learn how to convert more, so convert higher percentage of your leads, qualify them better, and then figure out how do you go back in five minutes or less, you're responding to them with some sort of response on every single lead. Once you do that to the leads you already have, then go reinvent the process and get more leads. But until you know for sure that you're converting at the rate that you feel like is a normal good conversion rate and you're responding as quickly as possible, then don't even worry about that other stuff. I would still build your personal brand because it's pretty easy if you just start. But man, I cannot tell you the absolute like problems that I see that people think are lead problems and they do not have a lead problem. They have a follow-up problem, they have a problem with converting and sales once they get on the call, they have a problem with their salespeople when they get in the home or underselling or either they're trying everything. But it's has nothing to do with not getting leads. So I would just say before we diagnose this thing and walk in and look like, hey, you look like you got high blood pressure. Let's put a cuff on their arm and make sure that they really do have high blood pressure. Because a lot of times the symptoms of what's happening are they need more sales and more revenue. They just automatically assume they need more leads because it's way easier and more comfortable to say that than you suck at sales, you aren't responding, you aren't doing whatever could be done. So just go fix, figure out what you need to fix first before you start fixing stuff that's not broken.

SPEAKER_00 54:02

Yeah. And most of the time when you hear the leads suck, it's not the leads, it's the conversion of the leads and the sales process sucks. But that's another whole nother podcast.

SPEAKER_01 54:09

So yeah, that's a whole nother podcast. We could get in on that one. I get pretty fired up about that. Because everybody always likes to blame the the marketing and the leads. And it's like marketing, great marketing should make sales job easier. And if it's really, really good marketing, maybe it does the selling by itself without a salesperson. But with a high technical product like this, it's probably not going to do the selling for you. So if I can do my job and get them to the front door, literally to say, hey, I'm interested in this, it's not my job to do it after that. And I mean, I'm still a salesperson, so it is. But most of the time, it's that stop gap between when the lead knows you exist and whatever happens when they're installing that product or doing whatever, all of that gap in between is a real messy, convoluted process. And there's so many places that can go wrong. Way easier to get it wrong than to get it right.

SPEAKER_00 54:57

Absolutely. And here's the final thing I'll say, because if this sounds to Stephanie and anyone who's listening a little overwhelming to do a video every day and all that kind of stuff, I don't have the time. I can just I can see people thinking about this stuff. You know what? Go hire an intern. Go hire someone and pay them a thousand bucks a month or whatever you want to pay them and have them go and do the filming for you. There are college students out there. I go to the same coffee shop every day. There's a girl, there's Barisa that works there. She does social media on the side. She just signed two clients for a thousand bucks each. She visits each client once a week. She spends an hour or two filming, and then she breaks it into seven, eight, nine reels and posts to everybody. And that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 55:38

So so if you The metaglasses are easy too, though. The metaglasses, like you don't even have to do anything. You just put them on as you're walking the job site and just hit record. You don't even remember they're on, and then give it to this girl at the coffee shop. I love that idea.

SPEAKER_00 55:52

Yeah, it yeah. It's it's easy to find these people to do it. They're happy to do it. They know how to do it in their sleep. They grew up with, you know, they were born with phones in their hands. So yeah, so that that would be a way if you're thinking about being overwhelmed, there are people you can hire to do this. And literally, a couple times it you there are even some that interview the owners. Like they'll just they'll they'll talk to them for 20 minutes about a job, and boom, that's three or four posts right there.

SPEAKER_01 56:14

So it's gonna feel a lot more natural if you're talking to another human like we are right now. If I had tried to say all this stuff that I just said straight to camera and I'm just staring at the camera, it would not feel like it felt on this.

SPEAKER_05 56:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 56:26

It wouldn't be conversational. So even if you have someone in your business that can just interview you and you just talk, that's a great way to get these videos without it feeling, you will feel super awkward if you're just talking straight to camera unless you've done it a lot. And so I think that's a great way to do it.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

Stephanie, I really want to thank you. This has been awesome. I hope this really helped a lot of business owners out there figure out, you know, to get their branding in place before worrying about anything else, because it starts there. If they don't know who you are or they don't recognize you, it doesn't really matter. So anyway, Stephanie, thank you very much. I really appreciate it for being here. How can people find you if they want to contact you and and take part in your wisdom?

SPEAKER_01 57:04

So our website is gritblueprint.com, and I also am on pretty much all the social media platforms, LinkedIn and YouTube. We have a YouTube channel, Stephanie Couch, and we post a lot of videos on there, a lot of cool project videos as well. If you've got some cool stuff that you're doing and want to film it, let me know. And I would love to hear from and Stephanie, hit me up. I'd love to talk a little more.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

And Stephanie is S-T-E-F-A-N-I-E Couch. That's right. Like the couch you sit on. So Stephanie, thanks again for joining me. And I want to thank everyone out there for joining us on this recent episode of Selling in the Dwelling. Remember, visit the website, sellinginthedwelling.com, and also our title sponsor, paradigmvendo.com forward slash dwelling. That's it for us today, everyone. Thanks for joining. We'll see you next time on Selling in the Dwelling. Take care.

SPEAKER_02 57:53

Selling in the Dwelling.