Navigating the Digital Marketing Landscape with KickCharge Creative

What this episode is about

KickCharge Creative, an award-winning branding agency, is enhancing its services to include digital marketing as part of its core offerings, addressing the needs of home service businesses. Founded by Dan Antelli, the agency has a strong focus on helping these businesses develop unique brands while Ryan Reading, the CMO, brings expertise in SEO and digital strategy to drive measurable results.

Key takeaways

• Branding is the 'magic sauce'—to stand out, your voice must sing in a sea of sameness.
• Kick Charge's acquisition of Leveragy is a game-changer, merging aesthetics with data-driven digital marketing strategies.
• Measuring results in marketing isn’t an option; it’s the lifeblood that feeds business growth and trust.
• The new norm? Customers demand a cohesive brand experience—one that resonates across every touchpoint.
• In a world of cookie-cutter solutions, true value lies in bespoke branding and in-house expertise—no outsourcing alchemy here.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Tommy Melo (Host) · 24 min speaking
• Dan Antelli (Guest) · 18 min speaking
• Ryan Reading (Guest) · 18 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Ryan Reading, Google LLC, Dan Antelli, Kick Charge Creative
2. 5:00 – 10:00: SEO, Google LLC, PPC, Angie's List
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Google LLC
4. 20:00 – 25:00: Branded Not Blanded, Amazon
5. 50:00 – 55:00: Dan Antelli, Purple Cow, Amazon, Ryan Holiday
6. 55:00 – 59:11: Facebook

Notable quotes from "Navigating the Digital Marketing Landscape with KickCharge Creative"

• Today, I got a couple buddies in town that I owe a lot to. I got Dan Antelli and Ryan Reading here. They're experts in branding, marketing, SEO, graphic design. Ryan is the CMO at Kick Charge Creative. Dan is the founder, CEO of.

  about Dan Antelli · at 0:03

• The reality is like from the marketing side, right? It's so important because Google's such a big gorilla to make anonymous companies kind of stand out if they're all look the…

  about Google LLC · at 2:31

• Pride on is we took we take a lot of time to educate the companies we work with on what they should expect with PPC, what they should expect with SEO.

  about PPC · at 5:23

• Ad spend is 20% 20% 20%. I'm talking to these guys and I said, how do you get overall down to 10%. They said SEO and ranking our Google My Business pages every time. It's that…

  about SEO · at 6:27

• Yeah. It's a really powerful weapon. Yeah. Purple cow's another good book. Purple. Yeah, it's a really good book. A lot of our philosophy is rooted in that notion of disruption and standing out in a sea of sameness,.

  about Purple Cow · at 53:17

• And I just want to bring this up because it's funny. I posted something on my Facebook page and you actually shared it on the home service page where we had a bunch of stats for a client that had rebranded and we were.

  about Facebook · at 55:49

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Dan Antelli — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at 0:05
  Featured expert on home service branding and founder/leader at Kick Charge Creative; discusses why branding drives lower acquisition costs and higher conversion/average ticket.
• Ryan Reading — Person · Main guest · 2 mentions · first at 0:07
  Digital marketing leader (SEO/PPC/LSA) presented as the measurement-and-ROI counterpart to branding; explains transparency, education, and long-term SEO investment.
  And Ryan Reading here. They're experts in branding, marketing, SEO, graphic design. Ryan is the CMO at Kick Charge Creative. Dan is the founder, CEO of Kick Charge Creative as…
• Ryan Holiday — Person · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at 53:34
  Mentioned as an author whose books are recommended for marketing/strategy thinking; used as a credibility reference for reading list.
  Any book by Ryan Holiday on marketing is pretty good, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Books & papers

• Branded Not Blanded — Book · Primary recommendation · 2 mentions · first at 0:41
  Dan Antelli's Amazon bestselling book on home service branding.
  With several books on branding to his credit including Building a Bigger Small Business Brand and his new amazing Amazon bestselling book Branded Not Blanded. Then I got Ryan Reading here.
• Building a Bigger Small Business Brand — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 0:36
  Another book by Dan Antelli on branding for small businesses.
  Brands. Dan is nally recognized speaker and an expert on home service branding with several books on branding to his credit including Building a Bigger Small Business Brand and…
• Purple Cow — Book · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 53:19
  A book recommended for its insights on standing out in marketing.

Companies & orgs

• Kick Charge Creative — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 0:12
  Award-winning New Jersey-based brand agency specializing in home service businesses.
  And Ryan Reading here. They're experts in branding, marketing, SEO, graphic design. Ryan is the CMO at Kick Charge Creative. Dan is the founder, CEO of Kick Charge Creative as…
• Google LLC — Company · Referenced expert · 5 mentions · first at 2:36
  Discussed as a major platform for digital marketing and SEO strategies.
• Amazon — Company · Referenced expert · 3 mentions · first at 0:39
  Mentioned as a platform where Dan Antelli's book is a bestseller.
  With several books on branding to his credit including Building a Bigger Small Business Brand and his new amazing Amazon bestselling book Branded Not Blanded. Then I got Ryan Reading here.
• Angie's List — Company · Case study · 1 mention · first at 6:40
  Mentioned as a platform where home service businesses can be listed.
  Ranking our Google My Business pages every time. It's that pulls it down so they're they're on Angie, they're doing PPC, they're doing mailers, they're doing all this stuff…
• Facebook — Company · Referenced expert · 1 mention · first at 55:50
  Mentioned as a platform for digital marketing.

Concepts & topics

• SEO — Concept · Core topic · 1 mention · first at 5:29
  Search Engine Optimization as a critical component for digital marketing success.
• PPC — Concept · Strategy · 1 mention · first at 5:27
  Pay-per-click advertising discussed as a key digital marketing strategy.

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 All right, here we go, guys. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert podcast. Today, I got a couple buddies in town that I owe a lot to. I got Dan Antelli and Ryan Reading here. They're experts in branding, marketing, SEO, graphic design. Ryan is the CMO at Kick Charge Creative. Dan is the founder, CEO uh of Kick Charge Creative as well. Dan is the president, chief operating officer of Kick Charge Creative, an award-winning New Jerseybased brand agency that specializes in helping home service businesses refine themselves and stand out with disruptives brand disruptive brands. Dan is nally recognized speaker and an expert on home service branding with several books on branding to his credit including Building a Bigger Small Business Brand and his new amazing Amazon bestselling book Branded Not Blanded. Then I got Ryan Reading here.

0:46 He's an expert in SEO, PBC, LSA, web design, and digital strategy. Ryan has built a reputation for delivering real measurable results in an industry where marketing is often misunderstood. He's been an instrumental driver of multi-millions of dollars for businesses across US and Canada and is a trusted voice on marketing, leadership, and operations of the home service industry. It's a pleasure to have you guys in studio today. Thanks being here, bro. Good to be here, man. Yeah, I'm excited. This is uh I love like there's nothing better on the planet than talking about marketing and branding. Like for me that's the favorite thing. And you guys got a pretty big announcement here. What why don't you tell the uh listeners what's going on um with Kick Charge and some of the new updates. Sure. Yeah. So we you know for I mean this is our 30th year so we have been doing branding for a really long time. Branding traditional

1:40 graphic design services. Um, and you know, the missing piece of our puzzle was really digital marketing. Um, and we wanted to um, really have that as part of our core offering so that we could really truly offer something that was allin-one. So you could get your branding, you get your trucks, your brochures, your billboards, your vals, and then also have a killer branded website that not only was beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, but also functioned well from a digital marketing perspective. And Ryan comes from Leveragy which is um really well-known and respected digital marketing company that specializes in home services. So for us it was a natural acquisition to really complement our services and now what's beautiful about is you know soup to nuts we can handle everything. I love it. Ryan, what are your thoughts? I mean it's okay I guess. I I mean the I mean the reality is like uh from the

2:33 marketing side, right? It's so so important because Google's such a big gorilla to make anonymous companies kind of stand out if they're all look the same, sound the same, are named the same. So anytime we would have the chance at ley to join with a kick charge brand, it was just so much easier to get the lift we were hoping for. So now that we're actually pulled together, it's just a game changer. It's been a ton of fun to do this. Yeah. Yeah. So again, it was just nice to instead of having like a generic website where someone just literally slaps your logo on the top of it and it feels kind of like everyone else's website except maybe changing the color of the buttons and things like that, now like the brand that we design can live and breathe in that environment and not only just the aesthetics, but the voice of the brand is something that we can build into the websites as well.

3:19 So super excited about it. is just, you know, really something that I think doesn't really exist right now as far as having that cohesive, you know, uh, look of all the touch points. So, everywhere that customer is interacting with your brand, they're getting the same message. They're getting the same story. Yeah. I mean, you guys did ag.com's website and um, you know, it's killer and I know that you kind of used other companies to help with that and now it's all inhouse, which is huge. What I like about what Ryan does is you measure everything. You got all in-house people. You don't most I'd say 90% of people are subbing out to India. You're sub out to the Philippines. You got an in-house team.

3:58 You care. You understand not only organic, which is important, and what people view your brand at, but you understand all the other elements, PBC, LSA, Google My Business, and you guys are a one-stop shop, and you know, you put your name on the line, and you're willing to deliver and you show the results. And guys, if you want to, we're going to give you a link in here to go look at all the different companies that have worked with Dan over the years. And really, you add Ryan to it and these numbers will double. Not only does the conversion rate help, but the average ticket goes up and the cancellation rates go down and people will apply to you that you didn't think would ever come. Like you nor your door will be knocked down. But here's where Ryan comes in. Your cost per lead will go down exponentially. And that's where you win. A lot of people, if you got one van, no one's ever going to really see

4:53 like you can't be everywhere with one van. So, you got to be digital marketing. Ryan, what do you think separates the marketing you guys do from, you know, there's a lot of big companies out there. I'm not even going to name them, but I've never there's not a lot of happy clients from them. There there's not. And I think I think in part because for a lot of people, digital marketing feels like snake oil. Like you don't know, you get missing information or wrong information from bunch of different people. There are bad operators. I don't think they all are.

5:21 Uh, one of the things that we've taken pride on is we took we take a lot of uh, time to educate the companies we work with on what they should expect with PPC, what they should expect with SEO. So that there's just uh, I want them to know more from a managerial level. I don't expect them to manage an PPC campaign on themselves. Like that's not fun for anybody. But I do want them to understand it from a managerial level how to make decisions about it. So that when we come back in three months, six months, 12 months, 24 months and go look, hey, we have an 80 to1 ROI that we can mathematically demonstrate here, they understand what goes into that and actually trust the numbers. So it becomes one of those things where when you're honest, when you're transparent, you pull people along, it makes it a whole lot easier to not feel like you you're in the dark, you don't understand what's happening. Um, so yeah, being

6:08 able to stand behind those results and upskill the knowledge of the companies and process is really really freaking important. You know, I I've made it a a habit to call smarter people than me on a regular basis and I've been talking to a lot of CMOs lately for multi-billion dollar companies and there's one common theme. I'm like, your rorowaz return on ad spend is 20% 20% 20%. I'm talking to these guys and I said, how do you get overall down to 10%. They said SEO and ranking our Google My Business pages every time. It's that pulls it down so they're they're on Angie, they're doing PPC, they're doing mailers, they're doing all this stuff, radio, TV, billboards, and then it pulls it down from the SEO and GMBB. And I think that's the one thing that no one's talking about. It's like what are you guys spending on uh your your SEO? Well, 500 bucks a month or it's combined with PBC and someone's throwing and they got

6:58 no leaks. I go to ah rifs, I look them up, they they they're not even found anywhere. They're not on the first, second, or third page. What are your thoughts on that? I think it's I I get it cuz I a lot of guys are addicted to like like pulling a lever and getting something. You pay for this lead, you pay for this click. They like that instant gratification. And SEO sucks for people who aren't willing to make a long-term investment. So, I'll tell people like, hey, month one, you can expect to lose like 5K. Month two, you're going to lose 5K. Month three, you're going to lose 5K on SEO. You're going sometimes it's a year. Sometimes more. And if you and a lot of people quit, they punch out. They're like, I can't keep writing these checks. But the ones that stick it out, like month nine, they make 2K. Month 12, they make 45K.

7:40 The companies we've been working with for four, five, six, seven years, without exception, are making in excess of 80 to1 rorowaz without exception on organic. Those are not year one results. And I think a lot of people don't want to put themselves in that delayed gratification. uh PPC for all the things I hate about it, it is really good about targeting people, right? So, you get this instance thing that's happening, but all you're buying is clicks. There's no loyalty. There's nothing there. It's just very very high cost of acquisition, very very low ROI. Uh that's a that's a like a rat race I want to get people out of fast. I got I got a lot of questions for Dan here, too. I I was looking at my numbers last Q4 of last year, and I was spending 800K a month minimum on PBC, and I looked at my SEO, which you guys are going to be helping with dramatically.

8:32 Uh, and I'm sitting there going, I'm only spending 10,000 a month now. I'm spending 25,000 a month. I'm going to start spending a lot of money. And people are like, I know I'm not going to get instant results, but do you understand? Even 25,000 is what, one to 32 times? Because if you go to 800,000, like people understand, and I know AI is changing, but you got to be everywhere. Like, if you're going to build a big business, if you just want to get your business to $500,000 profit, just do paid. Like, if you just want to be ordinary and never build anything worth anything, um, because I guarantee when I look at your business and I find out you're not paying yourself and not what you're you're underpaying your managers, your business is worth nothing even at 500,000 of like when I walk through it.

9:13 But Dan, tell me a little bit about why branding is so crucial. I I believe this. I was 30 million when I found you. Now we're 300 million, 10x since I rebranded. And that wasn't It feels like it was six years ago. Yeah. But talk to me about why branding is so crucial for the home service industry and home improvement. I I think again I love making pretty things, but it's the numbers that matter, right? So when you look at the benchmarks, you look at the KPIs, you look at the cost per acquisition and how much people are having to overspend on their marketing because their brand is unremarkable. And at the end of the day, you want to distill branding into one simple idea.

9:50 It's how do I live in someone's mind rentree, right? So, what are we doing so you have a brand that's memorable? What are we doing so that when they see the truck, when they see the site sign, when they see the website, and then it's a few months later that they actually need your service, they're going into Google and they're typing in your branded name, not air conditioning repair near me or not plumbing repair near me. And now you're fighting to be relevant to Google and you're paying to be relevant to Google. So think about how much cheaper it is to have branded keywords. Yeah.

10:20 And how expensive it is to pay for those same clicks, right? So all the things that we are doing is trying to make a brand that lives in someone's mind that they remember that they feel something and they connect with and not only that they feel like there's a reason why they should choose you over a competitor and why they should even pay a premium in the process. Yeah. You know, I um I wrote down here like some brands that I think of now. They're national brands, but they're easy. They're color. Like I've never really saw a brand that I appreciated that wasn't simple. That you know so many people they put everything they do on the side of the truck. Yeah.

10:57 Like you told me like we're not putting Angelus, we're not putting the BBB, we're not putting anything. You got to have a little ROC. That's it. There's a lot of companies out there like I'm a garage guy. So Chamberlain, Clope, Amar, they'll pay for my rap. They want to own half of the rap. Look at Neighborly. We've talked about this. Yeah. Like, why would I let them pay for my brand and then own half my real estate on my vehicle? How big of a mistake is that when you put all these accolades and no one even knows what your brand is? Yeah.

11:24 I mean, people forget that when you're thinking about the truck, you want to think about it as if it was an actual billboard. So, if it was a billboard and you're driving by that billboard on the highway at 60, 70 miles an hour, how much time do you have to process? What you're being presented? Couple seconds. So, what can I put on there that is sticky that they will remember? And that's most important. And that's the the single most important thing is your brand name, right? Because it's easy for them to contact you if they know your brand name. They're going to find you on Google, right? They're going to just type in your name. That's why people get hung up on, hey, I need to have a big phone number on my truck. And I always laugh and I say, you know what? Listen, the bigger your phone number, the weaker your brand is. Yeah. You know, because really, when was the last time you took your phone out and you literally dialed

12:05 digits to contact someone? You don't do it that way, right? So half the reps that we do today don't even have a phone number because it's not relevant. It's not really that important and it's not a call to action that truck. It's something again meant to live in someone's mind for when they need service later on. The best thing you do the the only thing I've ever done is snap a picture real quick and either way I'm going to look up the company, see if it's good on see if they got good reviews regardless. Exactly. That's right. People say, "Hey, let me put my QR code on the side of my van." Really?

12:32 So what? I'm driving next to you and I'm going to scan the the QR code. Oh, well, it's for when I'm parked. Again, how many people at that very moment need your services? So, we don't believe in huge QR codes putting them on the side of vehicles because it's not it's not a call to action, right? It's meant for being building your brand. It just takes up the real estate. So, yeah, you've worked with a few thousand companies to to brand them or rebrand them. You know, how do you identify and implement the key branding elements that align with each client's specific audience and values? So, you know, research is a big part of it, right? So, what are your competitors? What does the market look like, right? So, you look at what's happening already in the marketplace.

13:14 How long does that take? Um, I mean, it takes it it's not it doesn't take a long time, but you have to really go in and look and see where the opportunity is, and that's where the thought process comes in. So, you plan confusion. Yeah. You want to look and say, "Okay, there's there's there's here's my top 10 competitors. Out of the top 10 competitors, five of them are using red, white, and blue." So red, red, white, and blue is already off the table. I can't use red, white, and blue because there's no way I can own it, right? So you start identifying where are the opportunities for us to build a brand that I can own the brand colors, right?

13:41 So sometimes it's hard to even just to do that. So you think about what are the three colors maybe that I can put together that I can own because maybe I can't own red, maybe I can't own red and blue, but maybe I could own teal, red, and blue or something like that. So you start thinking about creatively what what you can do. So you want to look at what strategies are they deploying. Are there a lot of mascots in this marketplace? Well, if there's 10 mascots in the marketplace, I don't want to put the 11th one out there. Okay? So, I want to think about a different strategy that no one else is doing so that I can be again ownable, so I can be remembered, not confused with somebody else. So, you definitely want to do some research and even for the any anyone who's listening again, print out a picture of your van, right, and compare it to the 10 people that you compete against and tell me where you live in that that, you know,

14:25 does it look like the other 10 or does it look like something that's completely unique? And if it feels similar to what everyone else is doing, change it. Then yeah, change it. Then then why would Mrs. Jones ever remember it, right? And I think that's the other thing too to always keep in mind is who are you marketing to, right? Always keeping in mind that Mrs. Jones, she makes up 80 to 90% of the home purchasing decisions. So does your brand actually communicate to her? Does it actually something that she might connect to? Something that she might remember? Something that if she called you, what does she expect she's going to get? Because she's already afraid of who's coming to her home. How does the brand actually communicate to her and make her feel confident in who's going to show up at our house? Yeah. No, I agree. I think a lot of people they think having black with big muscles on

15:06 the side and like this really disruptive, it's cool. I mean, if you like heavy metal and like Led Zeppelin and like, you know, um, walk us through the process. So, someone calls you and decides, look, I I think I'm going to pull the trigger. It makes sense, you know. And by the way, the best time to rebrand was 10 years ago. the next best time same time to plant a tree was today. Yeah. A lot of people they hesitate and I just don't understand. They're betting the future of their family and they're so hard to pull the trigger and I understand they don't have money but there's a reason they don't have money is because their brand does not stand out. So they're paying and everybody calls me. I'm not getting leads. I'm not getting leads. We are got more leads than we can handle. I mean we got and and here's what's cool.

15:47 When they call up A1 they're like it's okay if you guys can't get out for a couple days cuz we're going to use you no matter what. We see you guys everywhere. We love you guys. They got to know me. I put out But I've spent money in marketing. You know, I'm not I'm not afraid of that. But give me give me like the the process. Just sum it up soup to nuts real quick. You know, we're going to look at your competitors. We're going to talk to you about likes and dislikes that you like, but also with the notion of keeping in mind that who we're building a brand for isn't necessarily you as the owner. It's for the people that you are trying to sell to. Right? So, you want to think deeper along the lines of what is the actual brand story that we're trying to communicate and how does the brand support it? How does the brand visually tell that story? You think about the brand that we did for Amanda at

16:29 Grasshopper. You know, her tagline is forward is a way of life, right? So, you have the grasshopper. Grasshoppers can only move forward, right? They're the only in insect that actually can't move backwards, right? So you have a message that goes along with that visual that connects to that consumer that has them understand that we as a company will do everything in our power to make your home comfort solutions you know work move forward right and the same thing is what is the message to the actual employees that we as a company are going to do everything and we can to propel you forward in your career right so you have a brand that not only speaks to the customers that you're trying to attract but also helps attract the a players that you want to work for you in that company. So, Amanda doesn't have a recruitment problem. You hear so many people talking about recruitment problems, they can't find people that

17:15 don't want to work for you. A lot of times people don't want to work for you because you don't look like a company that you want to be associated with. You know, you think about your branding before and your recruitment challenges before versus what your recruitment looks like now. You think people look at your brand and say, "Hey, I don't I don't think I want to be a part of this." Right? I mean, you're gonna get brand new equipment. They're going to get brand new trucks. They're gonna get training, you know? So, so the brand goes a long way long way to support the notion of why people want to be associated with it. I think that's so important. You know, a lot of people don't bring the brand like they get they go branded by you and then they get the rap company that changes the colors. It doesn't fit right exactly. They didn't get the right vector files and then then they didn't do the interior of their

18:00 building and warehouse and showroom and they don't bring the brand inside. And that's a big mistake. I always ask how many people I'm on stage quite a bit and I say how many people got branded by Dan Antonelli. A lot of people do. I'm like how many of you guys have the brand living within the building all over the walls that Dan actually created. It's like very little and I don't understand that. Yeah. And it's so simple to do it. And I think it's a it's a big deal. I mean I just had yesterday just yesterday I had two clients sitting in my showroom and the brands inside of the showroom.

18:27 Yeah. Uh, branding has become a buzzword these days and I want Ryan, maybe you could answer this and then Dan could could give some context. What do you think the biggest misconception people have about what branding really means? Oh, I think people think branding is a logo. Yeah. Like I I think they just stop there. Yeah. And branding is so much bigger than a logo. It really The thing just This is a true about marketing in general. I think people forget that marketing is about psychology and persuasion. It's about nudging people to do something, right?

18:59 And so when if you just think it's a logo, cool. Just have your teenage daughter do something. Like that's fine. But that's not persuasion. That's not nudging. That's not Dan always describes as like living rentree in their brain. Like that is that is a really powerful effect that not just anything does. So I think a lot of people stop short at just the logo. They don't really incorporate in the culture. They don't really incorporate in the marketing message, the brand promise in the actual experience that customers have. Yeah, I think that's probably one of the biggest misconceptions I'd say. I think when people say or they hear how much it costs to actually get a real brand and they're like that much and they'll say something like for just a logo and if your mindset is it's just a logo, then you really truly have no understanding of branding and what that will do for your business and how will it affect

19:48 everything across your channels. That's why you you mentioned earlier about the lifeblood of your business, right? And this is the area that you want to save the most amount of money when this is the area you want to skimp on is your brand really. And then these are the same people that are really upset with how much it cost them every month to buy leads on people. So, and these are the same people whose booking rate sucks and their close rate sucks and their average tickets suck and all those things are related to brand. It's all all connected. So it it's kind of uh I think that misperce misconception about what a logo is and not understanding that a logo is just a piece of that brand. It's the foundation for it for sure. Like you get that piece wrong and none of your marketing channels are actually going to perform well. Yeah. I sometimes like when I'm talking with clients or people at a show I I'll usually ask the

20:40 question like okay close your eyes and think about a luxury car. Yeah. Right. What is it? So and for them they'll name someone like BMW or Mercedes whatever. doesn't matter. Cool. What does it feel like? What does it smell like? And every time these people can like recall these sensory expenses, like expressions, right? Even if they don't own a BMW, even if they don't own a Mercedes, they they can recall what it feels like, what it's what it makes you feel like. Yeah. That is the power of brand. Yeah. Right. It pulls all that out. Uh, and when people like cut corners on like, well, they don't want to invest in that for their own business, you're like, oh my gosh, that's that's a powerful powerful force that they are taking off the table. They could work for 100%. You know, here here's the thing. When I rebranded initially six years ago, I didn't change my email signature to the brand. Uh, different colors. Uh, the

21:36 Valpack didn't match. You got mad at me. You said your billboards don't even they're not even the same color palette. your yard signs are off. So, it took me a few years of you just you're like, "Dude, the spacing's wrong." Like, you must have probably three messages a month for the next three years and it still comes here and there. And now it's just like everything has to follow these brand guidelines everywhere somebody sees you. Reminder, reminder, reminder, reminder. And you know, we've got the whole characture Yeah. of like the A1 guy on the side of the truck, which is me, but it's a caricature. And then we've got a jingle and it it all goes together into the brand. Yeah. And if you reinforce this brand all the time in your trucks, one of the things you recommend is your trucks are driving around all the time. Put them somewhere on your website near the top because that's what people recognize. That's

22:21 another great tip. Why do you Yeah. Because sometimes people don't even know what your actual logo is, but they know what your truck looks like, right? And and if the truck is done in a distinctive way, again, that repetition, they keep seeing it. They saw it on their neighbor's driveway. They saw it driving down the street. Now they actually went to your website. Oh, is that the same company that I saw my neighbor using? Oh yeah, that was that's their van, right? So, it's really important that the vehicle gets featured in a lot of your advertising because it's often more recognizable to them than your actual logo. That's interesting. I think a lot of people need to listen to this and do this. Uh, I'm going to go back and forth here. So, Dan, you authored several books on branding. What motivated you to write Branded Not Blanded, which I'm in the book twice. Thank you. Uh, what do you hope readers take away from it? So

23:07 listen, I I wrote the book because there's just so many common errors that home service companies are making with their branding. And I thought, why are they making these errors first of all, right? And part of it is because they just don't know, right? So you don't know what you don't know. So even from day one, you start the business and you name it. And that's often the thing that gets done wrong literally from day one, right? So the biggest chapter in the book is actually on naming like how to name your home service company. what are the things that you should be looking for when picking a name and choosing a name. So, I put the book out there because I'm like, "Hey, listen. Not everyone can be a kick charge client, right?" But if they read the book, they would really better understand how the psychology of branding affects consumer spending, how it affects everything about their marketing channels, and how

23:53 to leverage a brand as best they can in their business. So, um, listen, it's it's a it's something that I'm really proud of because it's helped so many people. I get so many emails from people like you could read the reviews on Amazon and it's just just so gratifying for me because like I said, not everyone can can can work with us and that's okay, but I wanted people to have the most information possible to understand how this works, how this is supposed to function because there's no there's literally no other information about it specific to home service branding that you can find. Like where what other books are out there about home service branding? There isn't. There's none, right? Right. So, I said, "Let me put what I've learned over the last 30 years into a book, and hopefully it helps a bunch of people." That's a great book. I really enjoyed the book, and it's really high quality. It's got the colors,

24:35 really, really the right, you know, page stock, and just it's it's just well done. Ryan, given your extensive experience in the trades, what are some of the most common challenges you see contractors facing when trying to grow their businesses? Oh. Oh, there's a long list here. Oh, there is. This is only an hour long show. I I'm I I'll probably make the point of for the companies who struggle, they they kind of fail to grasp the importance of ops, right? It's almost like they think, hey, I can do more PPC and I could run more calls and I can do more and more and more without actually doing any of the hard work to actually make the business a better business, right? I think I probably say 80% of the people who struggle, that's where they struggle. They struggle knowing, hey, when the phone rings, you got to answer the stupid call. When you answer the stupid call, cool. You got to book the

25:25 stupid job. You actually got to get it. You got to actually price yourself that you can actually have the business make money and do this thing thing again. You have to be able to train and have SOPs to be able to have other people follow. I think a lot of people really find themselves in this. They think the path to being building a city is just having a big small village, right? That's not the same. It's not the same thing, right? So uh yeah I think the uh doing the op stuff doing SOPs that's hard. Leadership development is hard. It is like focusing on culture so that they work in the same way with the same values that you find important is hard.

26:02 Uh and that's where the growth is. I was just in a meeting right before this and we were going over our deck that we present with our partners, our sponsors and there's just so many opportunities. the bigger I get, you might and it does get easier, but the more opportunities I find like I find a million dollars there, a million dollars there, $2 million there. Yeah, we all have that problem. And it's like, look, it falls between mostly really great recruiting, really good training, and making people feel loved. You do those. Well, I I look, marketing has always come easy to me, but marketing is really easy when you got a high conversion rate, high booking rate, high average ticket. Yeah.

26:36 It's easier to spend money. Plus, we got the brand and the jingle and the the the caricature. And I I just I try to stand out as much as possible. Like we're going to get really creative. But the fact is A1's able to hit 25% of the bottom line. And as we continue to grow, I think it's possible to hit 30 just because economies of scale. So a lot of people want to stay small, they don't want the stress. Well, why'd you get into business? Like if you don't want to brand, right? You don't want to answer your phone, you don't want to get financials that make sense, you don't want to buy new vehicles to make your people feel welcome. Some people say they have a business, but really they have an LLC and an EIN number. They don't. They own a job and that's 100% the case. All right, Dan, can you elaborate on your mantra? Design as if lives were at stake. That's a good one. Yeah. So, listen, that's that's um that's a big

27:26 part of our core philosophy. You know, you are playing with someone's livelihood when you design their brand. Uh and you need to treat that responsibility as such. So for everyone on the team, they certainly recognize that the work that we do has the potential to change lives and that we need to really really carefully accept that responsibility and hold that responsibility sacred to us. So um I love you know sharing the feedback from our from our clients to our team like when they tell us about how their brand has impacted their lives. It's something that's always front and center about much of our culture is the impact of our work. And a lot of people that work for us came from environments where they work for bigger ad agencies and they never got to get a sense of accomplishment. They never got to really see the results um of their work. It's really cool. We're actually doing a wall wrap in our office that is featuring we

28:26 have like a hundred photos of all our clients in front of their vans with their team. Yeah. and the the headline is our brands change lives and like just a a continuing reinforcement. So, anytime we get feedback like that, we're sharing it with the team. And I think that that's the part that makes me a little bit sad about, you know, some of the stuff that we're seeing happening in the industry as far as branding or people that are that are that are selling branding services is they're some of them just are not qualified to be doing it. And it's really upsetting to me to see because again, you're playing with somebody's livelihood. the person that wrote that check to you is expecting you to know how to do your job. And if you don't know how to do your job, don't get in the business because you have the potential to really affect their business negatively if you do it wrong. And the one thing I hate to

29:12 see is when someone's gotten a brand done by someone and then I have to go redo it because it wasn't done right the first time. And I think about all that all the effects that that's had on their business. And um it's definitely something that that makes me sad to see when when someone doesn't treat it with that same care that we take. And you know, I think that you know, if people respected that responsibility that are performing these services, they would look at that differently. That's why it's so important that when we partnered with with Ryan, um that we partner with somebody that shared that same philosophy as far as understanding that the work that he does in digital marketing is that same exact philosophy.

29:52 And you're going to get results. I mean, what's what I like about what Ryan does is he shows you the work and it's not that there's so many ways to look at something and disguise it. Like, I can show you you rank for a keyword that's a longtailed keyword very quickly that no one's searching, but you know, it's resultsoriented, reverse engineering, how to get huge results. All right, Ryan. Um, as a marketing consultant, what are some of the most impactful decisions you've helped contractors make that have significantly improved their bottom line?

30:21 That's a good one. I think uh this is going to sound uh contrary to the question right which is helping people know how to adequately spend money on marketing because I think there's a risk sometimes where people want to under capitalize and there are some channels where that is a really bad decision so they end up bleeding cash just because the channels can't mature billboards comes to minds comes to mind if you don't invest in those channels well they just don't produce well so uh help helping people see the math that fully invest in the channel you're trying to allocate and then you can actually start getting the return back. Once they see that happen, it's fantastic. There was uh there's a guy actually it's it was a mutual client of ours before like for years. I mean, five or six years. Um and I remember he was a oneman shop at the time and he was really struggling investing in SEO like and I want to I

31:11 don't remember how much he was paying doesn't matter but he was struggling because he was just like I need calls. I need stuff today. and he cash flow today and was really struggling and I had to keep pushing through of like you're in a market stupid competitive where he was. You can't cut corners. You can't under capitalize. You have to dig in. You have to go through that. I think now I don't know he's under 50 trucks, but he's he's not at all the same business he was then. But that first year of hell was awful for him because of that stress, but he had to push through that discomfort to get there. So, I think that was I mean that's probably I don't want to say everything is solved by spending more. That's not the lesson.

31:47 The lesson is you don't win big unless you risk big and at some point you have to be able to put yourself in those positions so those channels can do what you want them to do. Um being cheap on it. Well, yeah. Well, well, I'm all about Look, I'm all about marketing. I mean, there's nobody a bigger advocate, but if you're not answering your phone, if you're not open nights, if your GMBB doesn't say open 24 hours, like there's so many simple little things like you're booked out three days, but you're spending a fortune at PBC. You got to lower your like and I'm not saying turn it off, but understand capacity planning. Like, yeah, that's a whole thing. I could give a clinic on this stuff because I see like it's like it's it's so common sense for me, but I've been doing this 20 years. I I think also Tommy too, one thing to make note is I think the home service owners today have access to so much data at their

32:34 fingertips. The problem is is they don't know how to leverage it. That's a thing. So you you look at the people that are on, you know, great CRM and the data is literally right in front of you telling how to set it up. Yeah. Well, but if you know looking at the data saying, "Well, what is our booking rate? What is our close rates? What is our acquisition cost?" And if those numbers aren't in sync, well, why do you think they're not in sync? what's the underlying reason. So sometimes the data is literally right there telling you what you need to fix and you just have to know how to fix it at that point. Like it's literally saying well your booking rate is 80%.

33:06 Well why is it why isn't it at 90? You know well is that because of the CSRs? Is that because of branding? You know, the there's all these things that it could be from, but the data is literally right there for you to analyze and and a lot of people just ignore the data and then they wonder why average tickets are low, why booking rates are low, why the close rates are low. And even the people who are always screaming and saying, "Oh, my digital marketing company sucks when then you look at how many open estim estimates are they have, right?

33:30 So, why aren't we rehashing? Why aren't we going after the open estimates?" So, like sometimes too, it's not that you need more leads, you need to do a better job with the leads that you're actually getting. Absolutely. you got to have a rehash team and you need to be closing. Um, you know, this is a common thing I see. You know, I know a lot of the clients that come to you, they just don't have the money. Uh, they're underfunded. I mean, when you think about the first five years in business, I didn't have the money. I couldn't get an SBA loan. I just had to go out there and work. In fact, I was bartending and busting tables for four of the year. I still have my landscaping business. I did them simultaneously because I needed to make money while investing in this garage door business. And some people are like, they go all in, they quit their job, but they don't have any savings. You know, I I would say this,

34:09 they're underfunded 100%. And when you're underfunded, it's like you're gonna have to put in 10 years of sweat equity. And I'm sorry. Like, look, if it were me, the first thing I would do is get branded correctly and start my digital journey, and that's SEO. that's getting a lot of reviews with pictures and I'd have the the client write a really sincere review and I've got enough time to like, you know, squeak the wheels with them to like just say please like I'm I'm early in this business. It means a lot. That's where it's like David and Goliath. The big companies don't have the time. They can't do yard sign. They can't knock on the doors around there.

34:43 They can't make it to the chamber meetings. They can't go to BNI meetings. Like there's still an advantage from being small. And sometimes people tell me like, "What would you do if you were me?" I'm like, "If you're not working, you need to go be meeting people. You need to be talking to realtors. You need to be talking to designers. You need to be talking to builders. They just say, "Well, I want what you have." Everybody wants the views, but no one wants to make the hike. 100%. Yeah. And I think to that point, Tommy, you know, you talk about the grassroots efforts that are required. They're not just for the guys that are just starting, you know, and that's when you get bigger sometimes you ignore the grassroots efforts. You don't go to the community events. You're not in the parade. You're not helping the community. You're not sponsoring the little leagues. All those things do not cost a lot of money. But those are the

35:22 things sometimes that the PE backed companies can't compete with. They're not they don't do any of that stuff. So becoming that notion of five mile famous within the community. So everyone within five miles know who to think about when they need that particular service. A lot of those efforts are not just specifically happening online. They're happening legitimately in person. Right? So what are we doing to put our brand name in front of the community on a regular basis? Are we are we going to the fourth of July fourth of July parade with a branded truck that's rolling at 3 miles an hour and the streets are lined four deep with people in my community that I'm trying to sell? How much do you think that costs? Like literally like one of my clients did it the other, you know, last year for Halloween. They were throwing candy out from the from the truck. Yeah. And it was a mile and a half of three deep and the car is moving

36:09 at 3 miles an hour. You can't look at anything else but that branded truck. So how many impressions did we get? and the cost was like $150. I'm like, are you kidding me? Where could you have advertised for $150 and had that many eyeballs on the exact demographics that you're trying to reach at that parade? I'm totally doing that. I'm still in that with my, you know, my big showroom. I'm totally doing that. I'm still in it. You know, my buddy Travis Ringy sold for north of $30 million in six zip codes. That's all he worked. Yeah. In north, north part of uh Phoenix. And so many people, that's another big mistake is like Yeah, you're right. buy a billboard for two months. They do a radio commercial for two weeks. Like I I you got to run radio solid for like 18 months before you really see a big effect. Yeah. Minimum. A lot of people are like, I'm going to try everything. I call it spray and prey. Yeah. They're

36:57 just trying to see what'll work. Like just do PPC. Do anything paid because that does work, but it's the most expensive form of marketing you're ever going to do by far. Paid ads versus organic and getting reviews. um as an expert logo designed for small businesses, what are the essential elements that you believe every effective logo should possess to resonate with its target audience? So definitely looking at the logo as something that is communicating some type of feeling, some type of emotion, some type of promise. Um that's why naming becomes so critical as well. What does the name itself communicate? But when you look at the logo, if I had no other context except seeing that logo, seeing that truck wrap, what do I feel about what I might get if I chose to hire you? Right? So, I think that people again are misunderstanding how the logo is supposed to function and what it really is meant to do, but it's meant to

37:51 make people feel something. It's meant to make people expect something, right? So, the more generic you are with your brand, the more it looks like everybody else's brand, then I think you're just like everybody else. and there's no no real logical reason for me to choose you over someone else at that point. But if I can look at a brand and I have a high expectation of what I might get as a service, that's when you know your logo and your brand is doing what it's supposed to be doing at that point. So, you know, with Kick Charge, you guys do the logo, the brand, the color pallet, the tra talk to me a little bit about the trademark and the uh copyrights because this is something that my lawyers I I spend a lot of money defending, but I'm winning every time.

38:26 Yeah. So, it's, you know, listen, you you you invest in your brand. it's something that is your intellectual property and you want to take the steps to protect it. So, we always recommend our clients uh file a formal trademark on their logo. Uh submit it to the uh you have people that help. Yeah, we have lawyers that that work with our clients that handle it. It's, you know, it's not even a lot of money. It's like 1,500 bucks to get it all set up. But that means that literally no one in the country can ever use your branding or your brand elements or take pieces of your brand and and basically try to steal it and use it as their own. I mean, it happens sadly quite often.

38:59 probably most to me. Yeah. I mean, we saw we saw yours recently get done um and we've had a lot of our clients unfortunately um get sold um or have their brand sold to other people. Like imagine that. Like imagine someone sold your logo to another company, that other company didn't know it. They wrapped five trucks and then they get to cease and desist. You know, think about how expensive it is to fix that, right? So people sometimes say too again, "Oh, let me let me get a logo on Fiverr. Let me go on a crowd sourcing site and get my logo." Well, when they rip off someone else's brand and then you start using it and putting on everything you own, you think Fiverr is going to reimburse you?

39:36 No. So, again, there's risks in doing some of those things, but it is really important to pro protect your intellectual property. I see all these wannabes that have tried. Look, I love the people that come for shop tours and at least they did something. I just don't think there's a substitute for, and I say this because I like, dude, I've been talking you guys up since the day I got rebranded. Um, the employees have a pride, and I call them my co-workers, but they show up, they walk in differently. Uh, they show up to my client's house differently. Uh, they ask for reviews differently. People apply differently.

40:13 like for what I paid and it's just I just don't think people really understand until they do it. And you've got you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to do a second podcast. Jason Buer, some of the people, Amanda, Ken Goodrich, uh Ken was really one of the first people that I that I saw because I'm local here. He's local here. Yeah. Um but I want to hear, you know, maybe have some of your clients give testimonials of what the difference was because Jason's story was amazing. Yeah, I think it's just transformational what it does to the business and it's nerve-wracking and it's tough and I I know that probably people almost go through divorce trying to get this done because it's like no I don't want to do it and we don't want to spend the money but my question is how can you afford not to like I really think that and if you don't like if you had asked me what's more important the right CRM or

41:05 the right brand I'd say you need the right brand to make the phone ring enough to even use a CRM you know what I mean it's like and everybody asks me like what's Yeah, I did have a guy that used you guys that said, "Okay, what now? I got the brand. I got my one truck. I'm out of money." I'm like, "What do you mean? What do you mean you're out of money?" Like, it doesn't even make sense to me. Um because look, I think everybody should have $250,000 to go into business. That's enough for marketing. That's enough to get into a good lease. That's enough to buy your first couple trucks. That's enough to get a good brand. It's enough to weather the storm for a few months. That's enough to put some one ads out. like if people don't have access to a couple hundred grand. Um, and I understand because I was there and I'm not talking down to you guys, but you get a job and you work your butt off and you save and

41:47 you might have to do both at once. You might have to work at night and and do two things at once. I'm sorry. Like that's just the way it is. If it was easy, everybody says, "I want that job because I want freedom." The problem is it takes 15 years to get the freedom and then everybody says, "Oh yeah, these businesses making all this money." You think they were just like there's always that you know Ryan this brings me to my next question you segue you emphasize the importance of grit and strategy and business growth. Can you share your personal story that highlights how perseverance played a role in your journey? Oh gosh. Yeah. I'm going to I'm going to go back actually to the the very beginning here because this is this is fun. So my dad uh had a pest control company in the 80s and early 90s and that dude worked harder like he demonstrated what hard work was like. We were in dirt poor in rural Oklahoma and

42:36 he would go six, seven days a week, wake up early, leave like before I went to school as a kid and then end of the day he'd come back like after little league baseball games I'd see him for like 15 minutes and then like he was gone. Like he just worked harder than anyone I ever saw. And that was back in the days where all you had to do to grow your business was get a big ad in the yellow pages. Oh yeah. Yeah. The double truck. That's all you had to do is just like get the biggest ad in the biggest city and the biggest local number and you're you're great. And then the internet happened and he struggled to pivot. He struggled to learn what is AOL, what is email, like so his his business cuz he couldn't mentally get his mind around that change. Like I saw a guy who knew how to work. The dude knew how to work. He didn't understand how to adapt with changing times and trends and tech. Um so that's that's to this day that's a

43:28 lesson that I have learned. That's the lesson I teach my kids is like the power of like grit and work. Um because that's I think that is one of the most important and underrated skills just in the workforce at large is like working through adversity. Things are hard. Get over it. Um so like I'm going to tear up proud dad moment. My son uh last summer like has he's always struggled with like work ethic and last summer he set aside two months to like work and pull people's weeds out of the rock gardens in our neighborhood. Like hard work for two months to raise money to go on a trip to Costa Rica he's there right now.

44:05 Oh, cool. And it's like the dude paid for his trip by working the weeds. Yeah. Like it was grueling labor and I've got photos of him like covered in dirt. like the the power of what that teaches him as a human, as as like those character principles, they're going to serve him the rest of his days. Yeah. You know, I want I want to say something that's really important that I've had an epiphany on, and some people have heard me say this, but I haven't been overly outward. I used to think, and in the beginning, it's still true. I used to think everyone other people that work for me, their butts and seats meant success. If Luke was not here 70 hours a week, he was taking advantage of me.

44:47 Whether it was Adam, Luke, my CFO, anybody. And not because that's what I relate to myself. I was here weekends. I'm here nights. I work the time. And now I go, you know what? Let me tell you guys a little secret. If your kids are getting a 4.0, they don't need to do homework for eight hours and study a day. If they're getting a 4.0, they could do whatever they keep doing. They're getting the result. as long as they're keeping the information, they're staying sharp or they're, you know, taking tests, right? They're, you know, if you want them to get into college, but that, you know, I I'm going after results now. And I'm like, because I had to change my identity because I want to be I want to have kids. I want to get married soon. And that means that I can't work 80 hours a week, but I could be way more efficient with my time in my 168 hours a week. I could have meetings that matter. Less scrolling behind the

45:34 desk because just because I'm here doesn't mean I'm productive. because I could probably do a more 30 hours of focused well-slept time when I'm exercising and I'm making decisions because I'm getting the right nutrients than being here 70 hours trying to drink coffee, stay awake and staying focused and like barely able to type or retain information. So, I stopped that that idea. By the way, hard work is important. I'm not trying to belittle that. But now I'm like at my position where I'm at today and where my seuite is is hours don't equate to results.

46:02 When anybody tells me in my teams, dude, I put in 60 hours. I go, I don't care if you work 20 hours. I don't care if you work 80. I'm resultsoriented. I stopped thinking about how Don't tell me how hard you're working. Give me the results that we sat down and we discussed that you were going to get me. Yeah, that's actually it's funny you say that because on on our team at ley for the past couple years, we we moved to outcomesbased hiring instead of inputs. So the whole point for us is like we're not going to track time coming in. We track the impact you make going out, right? So it's all outcomes based. I love that. And so when that happens, if they get 60 hours of impact done in 30 hours, congrats. Enjoy your extra weekend, right? Like they just earn their way to have some space to use it.

46:42 The the outcomes still happen. The impact is still there. If they find a smarter, lazier, more efficient way to get it done in a fraction of the time, you you've earned that margin back, right? It's been a fun transition. We we just got back from our Pinnacle trip and Ashley, one of my EAs, was with us and she's like, "Hey, we've got a lot of stuff to do today." I said, "I'm really sorry." I said, "I think I'm just going to take the next four days off. If something's important, I'm like, I'm going to tequila. I'm going to play volleyball and just f off a little bit."

47:13 And I got to tell you guys, I felt a rebirth when I got back. And now I'm going to make vacation time to turn off mandatory for everybody. Like, your PTO must be used. And I want you to shut off and get a reset because when I came back, I mean, I started that fast. I'm like, man, I'm going to go 150. Like, all of a sudden, it was clarity. Yeah. And I think I just I got sick of be I got out of the bubble for a little bit. Yeah. Our bodies need rest. Yeah. Yeah. They really do. Yeah. I love it, man. Dan, I got another question here. In your opinion, how can small businesses leverage branding to foster customer loyalty and create lasting relationships with their clients? And what role does storytelling play in this process?

47:54 So you know storytelling is a technique that you use to again create those pathways to their mind. You think about ways in which you create empathy how you can actually build brands that connect to them in a meaningful manner. Again Roy Williams you know who Roy Williams is talking to KG yesterday and um you know he has he has a great quote that just says something to the effect of uh overspending on marketing is the tax you you pay for being unremarkable. So building brands that connect to that key demographic that you're most interested in attracting, how does your brand speak to them? And then the the voice, the words that you use on your your website, the words that you use in your social media post, how do they also speak in a language that connects to the people that you're trying to sell? So, one good test that people can use if they even thinking about wording and and the messaging of their story and how that

48:50 story line reads is if you went on your own website and you literally changed the name of your company every time it's referenced to your biggest competitor, would the words on your website still make sense or would it be only applicable to you? You can't go to Amanda's website for Grasshopper and replace her name with someone else and have it make any sense, right? So thinking about what is unique about the story of your company and how that story affects that consumer. Yeah. The origin story like like here's the deal. What do people think competitive advantage is?

49:20 Every one of the listeners I want you to listen to this. 24 hours background checks, work nights, weekends, holidays is not a competitive advantage. In fact, the competitive advantage Janie Smith talks about historical data. Out of our last 24,000 jobs, 23,998 started on time. The other two were rectified within 48 hours. That no one else could claim that. Right. Historical data is a great way to do it, right? And then also the brand story. I talk about my mom a lot. She moved in 2010. She was born in 1954, the same day I was in 1983. She decided to up leave her whole existence to come help me run this business with my stepdad in 2010. Yeah. And I'm listening to Ken and Ken's like, "Here's the deal, dude. I'm sitting down with you in the next two weeks and I'm going to teach you relationship marketing and we're going to tell the best stories ever. And I'm gonna tell the story about my grandma's may tags, how they never

50:09 broke down and they're still around today at my uncle's. Like they just keep going and going and going. They're 50 years old, the yellow ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like so I thought about when I came up with Max Life, like that a part that'll never break cuz I'm so sick of replacing my phone every six months. I'm so sick of this stuff that's built to break, even your appliances. So I'm like, listen, we're going to create parts that no one else has and we're going to put a trademark on it called Max Life. Um, listen, let's do a couple final questions here.

50:39 Uh, I do think that you throw the brand with the right digital marketing and some conventional things. I do Valpek, I think Clipper works. I think what I do very well is I look at last month's issues and I make sure that I'm not apples to apples. If they're selling springs for this, I'll sell springs rollers quiet special with this that I'll it's completely different or I got to beat them on price because they're discount shoppers are looking at the coupons. Right. Right. But I want I I want to get different. Uh and by the way, Joe Cosar's books around here and you know I do think you got to give options. Yeah. In sales. Uh I think it's always good to give options because if you're not giving more than one option, you're giving them an ultimatum to say yes or no. I think every business should have two or three options.

51:25 Um, but listen, I think you guys are going to be amazing together. I don't think people understand this about you, Dan, by the way. They think it's the Dan Antelli Show. You got so many good people at that company. I mean, you're on the stages. You do a lot of the podcast, but those people are at home working right now. They're grinding. There are so many good people behind what Kick Charge does. It's not one or two or 10 people. There's And it's more of a family than anything. And you want to take care of everybody. And you do too, Ryan. And Ryan, you've got what, 25 people hustling. So, listen, both of you guys have been super successful. Uh, I'll give you guys a chance to close us out, but first and foremost, Dan, if they want to get a hold of you, what's the best way to do it? Uh, they can go to kickcharge.com or just send me an email, dan@kickcharge.com, and uh, happy to help them. Cool. Yeah, I mean, same

52:13 for me. Same website, ryankickcharge. We're also on all the socials. So, yeah, social media. Um, and um any books for marketing that stand out for you, Ryan, that are like must readads. Oh gosh, there's there's so many. Um, uh, not to plug my own. I did write a book several years ago. It's literally called the book on digital marketing for plug. It's literally the book. The title of the book is its own punchline. Um, and it's on Amazon. People can pick it up. So, look up the book writing ready. R E D I N G the book on digital marketing. Yep. It's there. Uh there's there's so many good books. I I will I will maybe plug also Donald Miller's the story brand. We talked about story.

52:56 There's this idea because for people who get confused, someone texted me about this the other day about why does story matter. Like people talk in story. That's our native tongue. Yeah. Right. They remember stories forever. They stick. That's what we sing songs about. Like that's the thing. So that book is a really good outline of like introducing the customer psychology and how they talk in story. Um and then we couple that with like a kick charge brand. Yeah. It's a really really powerful weapon. Yeah. Purple cow's another good book. Purple. Yeah, it's a really good book. A lot of our philosophy is rooted in that notion of disruption and standing out in in a sea of sameness, which is why we hate the white vans and a lot of that generic stuff. For sure.

53:34 Any book by Ryan Holiday on marketing is pretty good, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right, guys. So, look, I can't emphasize this enough. I was $30 million. I don't know. Have you ever rebranded a company bigger than me at the time? At the time, no. You Now you got some PE type companies. Um, I would say Aaron Gainer from Aaron was massive. Eco plumber. Eco plumber, I think, was started doing HVAC and electrical. 41 million the year that we rebranded him. A year later, they were at 60 million, which was pretty which is pretty cool.

54:08 Yeah, healthy bottom line, too. That's what's important. Remember, revenues for vanity, profits for Exactly. Exactly. Um, listen, Ryan, give us We talked about a lot of stuff here, man. Um, give us, uh, anything you want. Close us out and then I'll have Dan close us out. Anything you want. Uh, so I'll stick with marketing because that's kind of the seat that I'm sitting in right now. Like, when when one is choosing to market their business, make sure that you're a brand worth marketing. So, be marketable. uh and then actually be able to know uh and allocate resources accordingly and then measure those results. If you have questions, ask uh people can ask me questions all the time. Like people always hit up Dan about like, hey, what do you think about my logo? Um people do the same thing with me. I'm I am always wanting to help make the trades better.

54:55 So people have questions about like I don't understand this about SEO or PPC. I'm happy that like however I can help. Um when when you have a good grasp on what works and what doesn't work, cool. do more of those things. Use math to make decisions. Don't use emotion. That's a big one. Uh yeah, that's yeah, there's probably a lot in there. The data make decisions. Yeah, which means you have to have data to make decisions from, but that's a whole other thing. Data integrity. I mean, we have a whole team evolved around data integrity. Data integity. Yeah, it is really big freaking deal. And then data literacy, I'll also say this is Dan's point earlier, right? Yeah. Having having numbers on dashboard doesn't mean anything if you don't understand what those numbers mean or what levers to pull with them. All right, Dan, what do you got, brother? So, the one thing I want to say is we talked a lot about

55:41 metrics. We talked a lot about KPIs. The one thing we didn't really talk about is is the mindset change that happens after rebranding. And I just want to bring this up because it's funny. I I posted something on on on my Facebook page and you actually shared it on the the home service page where we had a bunch of stats for a client that had rebranded and we were comparing the three months pre-rebrand and postrebrand and and the the KPIs associated with it and someone someone in the comments said something to the effect of well um that's great but you know a rebrand will also totally re-energize the team and re-energize the ownership and things like that and I'm like absolutely that is totally true what happens but people don't look at that as a something that they understand fully until they've gone through it. So, so they go through the process and they're like, "Oh my god, I so much Yeah. so much more energy about my

56:32 company, where I'm going, and then the team is more behind you because they recognize that you're investing in branding because you're trying to build a better future for them. You're trying to create something that's going to have a lasting impact on their lives as well. So the mindset that mindset change that happens is really interesting to see how some of these owners that have been running these businesses for 10, 15, 20 years that get rebranded. It's almost like they're reborn. Like they're they just get so excited. They're super proud to be putting on that new uniform with that new brand and wear the branded apparel and things like that. And I think people underestimate what the value of that psychological shift that happens after rebranding. So we don't we don't do enough actually talking about what happens to the owner's mindset.

57:16 Exciting management and what that actually does to re-energize the internal team. We you know we talk so much about the metrics for marketing but what happens from a cultural standpoint and what happens to that owner's mindset is something that's really amazing to see. When we were at the home service freedom event in San Diego Yeah. there was company after company after company kept coming up. We were eating dinner outside at this table and they're like got their new shirts on, their new hoodies. is this? I got the new logos.

57:40 Like people had tears, like legit tears in their eyes. Yeah. Of like how they felt sporting the new brand. Oh yeah. Like totally a cool moment to to be able to watch. And it happens all the time. You know, I don't think I've maybe two or three events out of the 50 I've done that I haven't had this exact A1 shirt on. And it's it's just because I'm proud of my brand. It's like, yeah, people are always like, "You're a garage door guy." I'm like, "No, I'm the garage door guy." Um, well, listen, I really appreciate the listeners out there and you too for coming out here. Um, it's amazing and I think everybody should at least give you a phone call and see what see what it looks like and hear your ideas. Yeah. U, it's never pressure. In fact, I think you guys are the worst closers of all time. Um, you because you got so much business. You're so booked out. You guys are high high in demand. You don't need

58:31 anybody's business. You you get it because you're referral only. I mean that that you don't market. You don't do any marketing. You're on a couple stages in podcast, but uh you don't need your product stands alone. So, uh listeners out there, listen, I totally appreciate you guys. If you like this episode, share it, please, with somebody that needs to hear this message. Uh don't be afraid to leave me a review. Uh that's the be biggest and best compliment I could ever receive. And look out for a part two where we're going to hear some people that got affected where their lives changed because of uh Kick Charge and what those uh those guys do over there. I'm Tommy Melo and thank you for listening to the Home Service Expert.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "Navigating the Digital Marketing Landscape with KickCharge Creative"?

Tommy Melo (Host), Dan Antelli (Guest), Ryan Reading (Guest).

What is "Navigating the Digital Marketing Landscape with KickCharge Creative" about?

KickCharge Creative, an award-winning branding agency, is enhancing its services to include digital marketing as part of its core offerings, addressing the needs of home service businesses. Founded by Dan Antelli, the agency has a strong focus on helping these businesses develop unique brands while Ryan Reading, the CMO, brings expertise in SEO and digital strategy to drive measurable results.

What is mentioned in this Home Service Expert episode?

13 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Dan Antelli, Ryan Reading, Kick Charge Creative, SEO, Branded Not Blanded, Google LLC. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Navigating the Digital Marketing Landscape with KickCharge Creative"?

The episode runs 59 min; the transcript is about 12,783 words in 85 timestamped sections.

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