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How to Make Your Business Stand Out from the Competition
91 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of The Better Contractor, hosts Brent Oberlink and Travis May delve into essential strategies for distinguishing your business in a crowded market. They discuss the power of a unique selling proposition and how it can be the cornerstone of your business identity. The hosts explore effective branding techniques, emphasizing the importance of creating a memorable and impactful brand that resonates with your target audience. They highlight the critical role of high-quality equipment in enhancing your service delivery and building a reputation for reliability and excellence. Tune in to scale your business.
Click here to tune in: https://linktr.ee/thebettercontractor
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Transcript
Introduction and Passion for Quotes
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to another edition of The Better Contractor. Today, as always, I am joined by my awesome co-host, Travis. How are you, man? Fantastic. Good to see you, Brent. Hey. So um some of you know him as a quote master, so I'm sure he's got some some stuff in queue here. Right? You better. It's got to organically come out, otherwise it seems rehearse I am impressed by what you have memorized. I am too.
00:00:48
Speaker
It's those things that I don't know. I was always, we've talked about this before, but I was always into quotes and like, I like snippets and it definitely either can help define something that maybe is more abstract, something that you do, or it gives color to it, or it shapes your thing. Like, ooh, I've never thought about it like that before. and So I've always loved the quote. That's a good, it's a good nugget to take away from something. That's why I like it. It's a one, usually a one sentence, easy to remember, sad in a memorable way. They've been impactful throughout my life. And I think I, I told you before that I, I used to keep them digitally on on my phone and less so these days, but um I started putting them into like a little journal for the boys, but it legitimately is something that I have throughout my life.
00:01:38
Speaker
looked at and maybe that's part of where they're they're back in the subconscious bouncing around and every now and then they just come out. So we'll see what surfaces on this one. Yeah no I like it. It works good for the podcast.
Standing Out in Business
00:01:54
Speaker
So today we're going to talk a little bit about making your business stand out from the competition. So kind of a broad topic but if you think about business and what makes business successful It kind of is that. If you don't stand out, especially in 2024, it's tough immediately. you know If you're not standing out online, if you don't stand out in the experience with the customer, if they don't drive by and see your crew or your business or whatever, and it doesn't stand out, nobody's going to remember your name when they need whatever service you're offering.
00:02:30
Speaker
So to me, this is one of the key things and there's different ways to do it from marketing to the equipment you use to your online and presence. There's all these different facets that come into play for this specific topic.
00:02:45
Speaker
And earlier, Travis, we were talking a bit about marketing before we jumped on this recording. um And one of the things we talked about a little bit was your unique selling proposition. And to me, that is you need to define in a nutshell who your business is and what makes you unique. And from there, I think you build out your marketing strategy, at least for me, but you have to start with that core.
Using Video for Branding
00:03:11
Speaker
Um, you know, with the better contractor, we started doing some more video stuff lately. What originally got me into video was, and we created this video for our Atlanta, Atlanta Corp website was basically this brand story and
00:03:26
Speaker
being able to tell the story of you. So what is your business? You know, who are you? Who are the owners? What is it that makes you different from the other 99%? But the ability to tell that compelling story I think is so key in businesses and marketing. ah You're either managing or it's managing you. And in this day, and it can be negative or positive. And and there used to be an old adage of ah no publicity is bad publicity. I think that's not- I think that's outdated. with bad
00:03:58
Speaker
yeah and And with what you're saying with equipment, and and it's subconscious versus conscious maybe. So the subtle things such as your equipment, the way your your crews handle themselves, the way they function, and the way they present themselves, and the way they look, and if your equipment's clean, and if it's branded appropriate, like some things like that, that And obviously, if you've got your name on the side of the truck, that's deliberate branding. But they may be less obvious ones of the way your crew
Crew Presentation and Reputation
00:04:30
Speaker
presents itself. Is it uniform? Is it professional? Is it crisp? How are they interacting with the public, even when they're pumping gas? And they're nicely out on the job site. How are they conducted? I mean, they're representing you and your company. But just the little things can
00:04:45
Speaker
gain business or take business away from you or keep them from ever engaging you and them telling their neighbors never to if you ever see this crew or this company. Yeah, I had a bad experience them with them at the gas pump. They're rude to cut me off, did whatever. It's all marketing. It's all branding. It's not what you think necessarily is the core things that you would do, but it's all positive. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and I think, you know, if you're a young business owner just starting out, a lot of times it may just be you doing the work. So some of this stuff sometimes does not happen like it needs to, you know, and if you kind of break down making your business stand out and you look at marketing is number one, you look at team and culture is number two, then equipment and service is number three. Those are kind of the three key points I feel. And obviously Travis, you were talking about a little bit of the
00:05:42
Speaker
the appearance of, you know, look at equipment. Arrow Valley, Tucker, who we've had on the podcast before, a mentee of mine, we recently, we shoot some video stuff for him. And we, I noticed about a year or two ago, he started talking to me about wrapping his equipment or wrapping his trucks and his trailers and, you know, really branding everything and upgrading so to some newer equipment. And we went last week and actually shot on one of his job sites. And I remember when we rolled up, What stood out immediately was that there was two brand new trucks, a brand new trailer, all fully wrapped and huge difference then versus several years ago when I remember our first time I went to one of his job sites.
00:06:28
Speaker
But that is the power of having the newer equipment. It is the power of having it wrapped. It all takes a lot of money. um But you know he was working in a nice residential neighborhood. Truck is parked on the side of the road, doing a huge retaining wall and staircase system down to a lake is what they were working on that day. And I look at that and my immediate thought was, wow, I will remember that company name. But then I thought, OK, you've been parked at this house for a month. Every single homeowner up and down that lake has now knows the name of your business real well. You've got a reputation that you've built that's positive because of the equipment, you know, that's sitting there that looks professional. Um, and then when the job is done and it's almost done, the job looks completely stellar. So he will sell more clients in that neighborhood eventually because they're all going to need that work. Go ahead, Travis.
00:07:26
Speaker
and And what's what's the the counter to that? So I've seen a lot of trailers, the open air trailers. And I get there's different business objectives and price points and things that might drive the selection of one or the other. But the open air trailers where all your equipment's just thrown in the back there, I want to say the majority of the time, they're not necessarily cleaning that equipment up and it's just spotless and when they're done with the job, and nor maybe would they, even if they wanted to, just for the time and effort that it would take. So it's all going to get ah messed up the the next day, but versus an enclosed trailer with a wrap on it and branding. but We're trying to leave a lasting impression that's a positive one. yeah And so it's not that you get one chance, maybe you do, out to make the first com impression. But ah we're all trying to be memorable. And we're all trying to stand out. And you have that opportunity. And it's truly an investment. And especially if you're you're monitoring the metrics on the backside.
Marketing Essentials
00:08:23
Speaker
And I think it's we talked a little bit at this on the marketing topic on one of the other podcasts. of A lot of times it can get relegated into a nice to have in that it's our slush fund for setting money aside from marketing. It's our slush fund that it's nice to have marketing or put money into marketing. But in in reality, stop putting money on the table or stop putting food on the table. directly. And so it's easy to take that away. But I think for most people who and and it might be if you're doing substandard marketing, if you're doing things and it's not really having an impact, it probably is throwing money away. And maybe maybe that's what needs to be addressed. But ultimately, you're trying to stand out there. There's other unless you're super unique. And it's a niche market, and everybody's vying for your services, and you're the only one in that market.
00:09:18
Speaker
you're competing with somebody, you're competing with probably several people and how do you stand out if you haven't had the opportunity to contact them, it's going to be in your marketing and it's going to be at how you present yourself and ah and and being deliberate about it. If you're just kind of watered down or run of the mill or you haven't really shown the value differentiation as far as what they're getting this different or why would they choose to to go with you if you're more expensive, yeah
00:09:48
Speaker
Then the competition, why is that? So that you don't get beat on price all the time and that you can actually pay your cruise. So so there's a company that we use that that for our house that's a have franchise and they're more expensive than, I easily say more than half, maybe 75% of them out there, but I pay it because I want professional. I want them right. I want to know that they have higher standards. They have a wrapped trailer. They have a great looking presence. They always do a a great job and that's actually promoted them within the community as well by them being out here and doing a great job and their work stands for them.
00:10:33
Speaker
But you have to be memorable and put the money and put the effort into doing things right so that you're memorable in a unique and positive way. yeah That makes me think of
Branding and Customer Service
00:10:42
Speaker
two different companies. So the first one will be in the good sense. So one of the largest lawn care landscape companies locally, and I won't name drop, but they've been around probably for 20 years if I had to guess, maybe 25. But I've remembered their vehicles for years. And the reason being is every single thing they own is like a burgundy color. So trailers, even the not enclosed tracks, the flat trailers, the trucks, lawnmowers, um their outfits. Like I saw a crew working the day they were doing a landscape bed by the entrance to a subdivision.
00:11:17
Speaker
white button-up shirts like the burgundy style like it's everywhere and i've never seen one of their trucks dirty i've never seen a bad job site um and so there's somebody that comes to mind that like and in they're the largest in the region so they are a good example of executing on all those fronts, executing on quality and safety, executing on the product, giving a good service, and then also we're the largest in the business now. I think of another one who does an insanely good job at marketing. This is in the HVAC industry. um But if you jump on a local forum or something like that here locally, I've never seen such hatred for a company online ever. I actually didn't know some of your reviews could go to that low of a star. Most companies have at least a four, even if you kind of aren't that great. Theirs is low.
00:12:15
Speaker
and how How low of a star are we talking? one time what i loved is like a warner two i didn't I've never really seen that. oh yeah But you should see the hatred on some of the forums. But the point is, they're doing something wrong. They got the marketing down right because they're memorable. But the customer service is off big time somewhere. you know So I look at some of these companies where maybe they do the marketing really, really well, but when the crew shows up, it's not that great. you know or there's or there's Or there's not a consistency. Maybe crew A is good, but crew B and C were okay. Crew D was terrible and crew E is awesome. you So you see some of that as well where there's just not that consistency amongst the crews. And I think that goes back to training. It goes back to onboarding.
00:13:01
Speaker
So when you think stand out, it can't just be a visual thing. It can't just be an appearance thing. It also has to be when we show up to your job or when our management staff visits you or sees you or you interact with them on a billing question. All of those different areas are all top notch. It's marketing. Every touch point that you have is marketing. It's branding. It's every interaction. ah But that brings up another point is the reviews. That's also marketing as well. So you say, so what can you do about that? One is you could correct bad behavior or whatever's leading to, and then sometimes you you can get where maybe there's trolls or somebody who, a former employee that ah is on there, but that's also, you need to take control of that. you You need to get, get out there and respond back to those questions. Try and make it right. If to figure out what's going on and get a presence on there. I know that I've seen.
00:13:55
Speaker
This industry and others, yeah and it it's always a testament or it tells me a little bit about the company. When you see reviews out there, good and bad, and you see somebody from the company out there responding to it. im really and And it's not just cut and paste form factor of like, it's the same response. Really glad you had a great experience. Sorry, you didn't have a great experience. um ah That you might as well not do anything because they're not very genuine. But For those that are taking the time, it is going i mean that's going to cost you. It's going to cost you somebody's time. It's going to cost you payroll or maybe it's you, but that's that's part of your marketing. that is part of what That's a unique way of establishing yourself, your brand, what you represent. Are you honest or genuine? Do you want to make things right? That is a unique branding position for you to go out there and address reviews.
00:14:47
Speaker
Try and get good reviews, solicit good reviews. If there's bad ones out there, go try and make it right. And it's going to be public when you respond and people will see that. And when they see the bad reviews and you out there trying to make things right or understand or addressing that in a professional manner, that speaks a lot about you and and that's what they can They're there. they It's making an inference that you're going to provide that type of yeah service to them. that If they're unhappy about something, you're going to try and make it right. And that's a value statement. It's a character statement about you. Yeah, I like that. And some of the companies, especially in the long term business, and I forget what software it is.
00:15:30
Speaker
Man, I'm drawing a blank, but anyway, it does a very good job of soliciting and and reminding the customers, Hey, give us a Google review. Give us a Google review. I think it stops it. There's so many attempts, which can be annoying. I struggled with that a little bit, but at the same time, you know, I know some companies will give a little bit of a reward. Like if you do this, Hey. There you go. But that's what I was going to get is, so how many of those have you actually responded back to? you Only people that I know them personally or they completely killed it so well that I'm like, I i owe you you. You've done so outstanding. I feel like I need to actually actually do this for you. So it's either someone I know or you really did that great. Mine probably fall in the same area in that majority, probably 90%. I just ignore. And especially if
00:16:17
Speaker
This will only take five or 10 minutes. I'm not going to sit up here for 10 minutes and fill out like random questions. There is a bit of an arc for the reviews. If you're going to ask for reviews, make it simple. Make it easy. like There was one. and And sometimes, yeah, some sort of incentive will get me to to do it and other people, but if it's $5 into a drawing or something, I don't know, unless it's something major or something that
Handling Customer Reviews
00:16:47
Speaker
I'm interested in. So so that's almost cheesy to you. But if if you're going to go out there and solicit reviews.
00:16:52
Speaker
can make it easy for them to participate in. So there's one, it was literally like yesterday or the day before, it was, this will be five or 10 minutes and it was asking crazy questions that I get why it would be nice for them to know this. Because it's intrusive about my family, how many people live in my household, what are the break, they're like, but I'm sure they'll be great and useful data for you. But yeah, I don't know why you need all of this and I don't feel comfortable. So yeah make it easy and make it relevant. fight Find the the data points that are really important to you and and make it easy for them to to provide the review.
00:17:34
Speaker
Otherwise, you're going to get the fringes. Most of the reviews are the extreme in that. And it's going to overwhelmingly skew towards negative because more people will do more to warn other people or vent off frustration to write a review about negativity or things that didn't go right than those who ah things went really well. And so understand that that's what's going to be representative on you is the fringes and majority time of time, if it's just um left unattended, it's going to trend towards negative unless you knock it out of the park and crush it every time. But that takes away the genius. One thing earlier I was thinking about when you were talking was making from a marketing standpoint is one of the things we're doing a little bit with TBC on the video shooting. Highlighting your after products. You know, I'm surprised how many companies either have like those bottom images, which you can always tell when they are on their website. I'm like, that looks terrible number one.
00:18:31
Speaker
But number two, if you're doing like a bigger landscape or bigger tree jobs, or you have some cool equipment, gosh, make sure you are putting that on your website or putting that on social. Because what you're doing is establishing that you have that ability. And people are also looking at your work and saying, hey, that's actually more complex than what I was going to have done. And that looks amazing. So they can definitely do what I'm doing. Or if you've got some huge projects, which is some of the stuff we're getting ready to shoot, Highlight that so people know a that great big project that most people cannot do or we don't trust to do That company there has done it. So make sure you guys are taking the time to go out there and Actually take some good quality photo video of those type of sites so you can build that trust online On social on your website stuff like that. I love seeing the before stuff. Oh, yeah really helping you so I don't maybe the OCD part you love seeing the
00:19:27
Speaker
the the closure in whatever whatever was wrong but I like seeing this so there's a trend to you there's a couple guys that go around on on YouTube for like lawn care and they'll go find a property that's just overgrown and offered to do it for free and those are always just addictive to watch too. You want to see again closure. yeah it's It's the OCD you see like half done lawn or you get sucked in that unique marketing. Yeah. um When you were talking earlier too it made me think of on the reviews the customer service. So I feel like a lot of times the reviews most likely something happened
00:20:09
Speaker
There's some people are just dramatic, and you're not going to make them happy. But a lot of people, it comes down to there was an issue. They called texted attempted to contact. Someone blew them off a little bit or did not handle it quite well enough to diffuse it. And then it went to a post because they didn't feel it was dealt with. That goes back to the customer service and having a good customer service team people who will you know, who can handle that without getting emotional in their response back. um People who can walk through it will take the time to actually gather facts. And I'm not saying when you have, because we've had these before, not necessarily with Landicorp, but another business of their own. Where you know is complete bullcrap, the review. It's just someone that's just, anyway.
00:21:01
Speaker
I don't give into those though. And I'm not saying to do that. Look for the facts and make your decision based upon that. But if the customer is right, then you owe it to them to make it right to them. Um, so do that, make sure they feel heard. And I've seen on, on some of those where they seem really emotional and it's probably not completely factual, but the, the owner, somebody will respond back to the hate really started to happen, please give me a call. Please email me. I'm sending you my contact information I'd like to learn more about. But we'd like genuinely seek first to understand and then handle it professionally. yeah If it's just outlandish, yeah, there's not much you can do about it. But if we take it for face value, seek first to understand, take it for face value. If it truly is a potential customer or maybe a repeat customer that had something wrong
00:21:58
Speaker
You kind of do need to fix it and then you should probably go to find out facts and fiction what's going on. You should take a chance Travis and the other company we own that's not in this industry at all. You should ah read some of the bogus review responses I've written. You'll like them. Okay. i say I remember years ago some of this. I have fun with them. I knew what was going on behind the scenes. See, here you go. Unique marketing. We've actually had clients come in because they liked that I stood up because for the most part with those reviews, most people know this bogus when when they read it or is someone that's overly dramatic, they know it when they read it. So they know they're not taking it at that much value anyway. But then they loved the response and and how I stood up to it. So
00:22:46
Speaker
Anyway, one thing we've done at Lantern Corps, but I think when you think about the unique selling
Unique Selling Propositions and Technology
00:22:51
Speaker
proposition. So one, two of the things for us was safety. So our industry is in oil and gas. We do tree work, but we're in oil and gas. So safety was everything. And that's how we built the company. That's who we are. That's how we're known. The other is customer service, like our management staff to field staff ratio. We we have a lot of management staff. Some people would say, Hey, you should cut them, bla blah, blah, blah. but that's not who we are. So part of our deal is we're not gonna be your lowest bid and we don't really want to be because that's not who I wanna be as a contractor. I want to deliver you an experience in contracting that you're not used to. And a whole lot of doing that in our industry is having the office staff to be able to do what we call value added services. So like we use so much more technology. We record so much more data. We do so much more than just what we're hired to do.
00:23:41
Speaker
And the customers that use this are those who who want that. Because the fact is most of our customers will never make it to a job site. They'll never see the work we do. They're paying bills from an office in usually another state. So when they hire us, they can go in, we give them a login. They can view so much data and mapping and everything else from our job sites. But that all takes customer service and time back in the office. And then we have good people running each account they're likable that that do a good job, that follow through, that get back with you. That is who or what we are known for and that's what we market. You know, are we good at other stuff too? Yeah, there's some stuff we got to improve upon as well. But those are our main value propositions and that's what we push. But anyway,
00:24:32
Speaker
The customer service is one that's big um big to me because even when I hire people like for our lawn at our house or stuff like that, man, I will get pissed off faster than anything if your customer service response time, if you don't do what you say you're gonna do, if you don't follow through and do a quality job, that stuff rhymes on me more than anything because I don't have the time for it. I don't have the time. you know We actually, but again, won't name names, lawn care company we had this year, I've never seen such terrible quality of work. Like literally we trimmed down desirable plants and left grass completely untrimmed, like logical places you would trim grass, like around a tree, around a plant, around a landscape bed, edge, left all of it, left skips in between, and we trimmed down flowers that were clearly desired flowers. Unlike, like my mind's blown.
00:25:30
Speaker
And then I, what was the response? They came out, the owner came out, looked at it, basically apologized, acknowledged several things. Crew comes back out a week or two later, does the same thing again. New crew, ah high turnover. I think high turnover because I recognize none of them from last year. Um, but I think it's a passion deal like watching because my office, my home office, you can see the entire yard. I think it's a passion deal. You know, the owner seemed fine. They have the marketing down. They have a lot of the stuff down, but when the crew showed up, it just wasn't it. Um, and I get that. Like we've had some experiences where some crews are better than others and you work through that. So I was trying to be understanding, but when it kept happening, I'm like, man, I did a better job going along when I was 12. Like, hey but, but, um,
00:26:21
Speaker
I realize we cut down these flowers. I'll give you I'll give you 25% off of flower installation program that we have. At least try to sell me new flowers. I was like that would be a shady way of doing business. and and good night It would be a shady way of doing business, but it seemed like there was a purpose behind it. You know what I mean? Ah, drives me nuts.
Company Culture and Training
00:26:46
Speaker
Anyway, think I think at least to the third point here, which is company culture training and branding of employer, you know, that so, which we've talked about that a lot of podcasts, but we talk about a lot because it's actually that important because you can do the marketing, you can have nice equipment, you can have an awesome management staff, but if your people in the field don't deliver, it does all of that really, really quickly. And we've we've got, so you know, where we live, we live on a corner, it's highly visible, people drive past it, we've got a lot of trees in our backyard, kind of the evergreen,
00:27:22
Speaker
And so it's it's not a fun one. You can't get the mower right up underneath. You you have to do some edging around the trees. And so we've had a couple of times where the crews, they just... I get the benefit of the doubt the first time, like, hey, I mean, I get it. They could have overlooked the second time. It just looks like, man, they were running out of time and it was a time saver to not do those. It ended up getting corrected, but for the time period that we had, two weeks worth or a week and a half worth because it it rained a few times in there and they couldn't address it for a week. So now you got three weeks worth of like weeds growing up pretty significantly, three feet tall now around that. And they see the neighbors and everybody see your truck out there branded and represent and I mean, it's marketing and not necessarily in a positive way.
00:28:13
Speaker
back to what we were talking about before. Well, and that's the thing, the campaign I'm talking about with us, we live at the end of a residential area at the end of the cul-de-sac. And I'll put it this way, none of my neighbors use them for some reason. I don't know why. So so here's another marketing thing, like maybe unique is cross industry deals and partnerships. cross-pollination essentially so yeah come across it so
00:28:47
Speaker
A lot of communities like ours, you have the developer, you have the builders, you have the property management. So there's even there's deals that you can make where property management companies and developers and things, and sometimes they'll use the larger accounts, but if you can do a value proposition, you can make deals to where they're helping promote you. So so looking so we're just thinking just unique marketing avenues of assuming you've got everything else, Right, incorrect. You get customer service, good branding, whatever. Look for those unique opportunities to to make partnerships where they'll help promote you in unique ways as well. Oh yeah. And there's several too. Like I've seen several of the people i I mentor like locally and just know locally who
00:29:35
Speaker
One might be in a tree business, one might be in the lawn care, one might be in landscape, you know, and the one may have done lawn care before, but now he's focusing on landscape. So he gives his lawn care business up to someone else and feeds that business there and feeds this business here. Those relationships are so important too, you know, and and and having, having those contacts, you know, but making sure when you give that, that you're giving someone who's actually worthy of your, you know, saying, Hey, I, this is my dude that I use. You should try them. That would be a another form of market. One, you're marketing to the person who's also going to give you business or recommend you. um But then it's also the referral. So that's the, the holy grail of marketing is to get a word of mouth referral. So it's basically you're double dipping in that is if you can get somebody who's in an adjacent business to go refer you to a client that they're already working on.
00:30:32
Speaker
One, you have to market yourself well, represent yourself well. Your crews have to be professional. it has to You have to be worthy of them referring you because if you burn them, they're not going to and do it again. but But then you're also getting that holy grail. of it's It's a mouth to mouth referral. which which is really tough to get what you're always with, but a unique marketing tool, but it, it gets back to. It does. yeah boy Yeah. Yeah. The other thing too, when you kind of talk about word of mouth is also the employee stuff too. You know, like over the years, you know, we've had ebbs and flows obviously with employee stuff, but there's been times where, you know, you get a lot of referrals from the employees too. Like, Hey, I've been I like it here, all right? This line of work is cool. And they bring people on. And I think with the employee stuff, you know, we've talked so much about culture on here, which is hugely important. It is complex, because it involves the hiring process and involves onboarding. But it's basically in a nutshell, hit to summarize it, it's making people feel valued.
00:31:38
Speaker
making them feel wanted, making them feel like they're at a place that there's advancement, that they're at a place that upper management, management cares about them um and that they're learning. if If you hire the right people, they actually will want some training and development because they will want to keep growing in that position. They don't want to decide just be a laborer their entire life necessarily. Some people are fine with that and they like it. but most people want to progress on up that ladder or get better at whatever skill does they're doing. So having that training program, that development, some sort of HR system to where you're giving raises routinely or evaluating and coaching them. Most people think, you know, when we when you do an employee review that it's just simply, you're telling them how they suck. It's not really what you should be doing. You should be actually telling them, here's what you're doing well. Here's what you're not doing that great. Here's your goals that you tell me you have.
00:32:35
Speaker
Here's what you need to do to get there. You need to fix this. You need to continue to advance on these things that you're already good at. All of that goes into your culture of your, of your employees. Do we do it perfectly? We do not. Do we try? We absolutely try, but it has to be decent pay. You know, and again, to do the decent pay though, you've got to charge more for your service. You can charge more for your service if you bring on a good quality product. So it's all so related and intricate as well. But anyway, but you got to pay well. You've got to treat them well. You've got to train them. You got to onboard correctly. And if you get that bad Apple, you notice that one saying, you know, slow to hire quick to fire.
00:33:23
Speaker
For the most part, you know, when you have that bad Apple that's the cancer inside of a crew or organization, the whole other aspect of it is to remove that when it happens. so and And the training thing that sometimes gets overlooked. So talking about areas that maybe get relegated as nice to have training, marketing, but not understanding how impactful they can be if they're done right. how it feeds into all other things of your business. But in the training aspect of thinking in terms of a lot of times when we think of training, we'll think industry specific or skill set training specific in that chainsaw safety, fuel management, storage, equipment. But there's a a ah in the learning industry, it's typically segmented into what people refer to as hard skills and soft skills. So scar soft skills being
00:34:20
Speaker
maybe there's less tangible ones, but it's personality traits, people management, negotiation skills, effective communicating, tough
Soft Skills and Holistic Training
00:34:31
Speaker
conversations, all of those things that that will permeate everything, how they're how the team dynamics are working internally, how they're communicating up and down the leaders channels across to their teams, how they're communicating with customers, How confident do they have the skills to deescalate a conversation and give feedback appropriately about it? Like all of those things, the they'll use probably just as much if not more than the individual skills of operating the equipment or on the job site. So don't discount those, but all of those, and those are skills that they can take into every aspect of their life as well. So yeah looking at holistic training or building the people holistically,
00:35:13
Speaker
um It can go a long way for that company culture, but then also impacting in a positive direction, your crews, your staff, how they interact as a part of your business, which all of them feeds back into the marketing and brand. It does. And I don't know why it seems like some of these contractor industries, not all, but a lot of them, especially smaller companies, that is something that's overlooked as the training. Obviously we're TBC, better contractor. So obviously we value training as part of who we are. But I think what a lot of people don't realize is that number one is safety, then that does matter. All of you guys out there paying workers compensation insurance, or if you ever do a state, federal, local bid, you will understand exactly real quickly how important that safety rating is.
00:35:57
Speaker
If your work comp go up costs go up, $5 per hundred of labor costs, you'll feel it real quick. And all of a sudden, training like this is really, really cheap. So it's safety, which also shows you care about your employees. It is the development portion. Employees want to know, what do you expect from me in this job site? How can I move up this ladder? Can I do this training to get a 50 cent raise? Can I do this one to get a $3 raise? Whatever that is for your company, it gives them a path of upward mobility. And three, We talked about earlier, different crews showing up at the job site. Training gives you uniformity in most crews. So if crew A shows up or C shows up, if you've done your training and onboarding correctly, it should look the same. It's just a different face. The quality of work should be the same, with the procedures, the practices. Everything should really be pretty similar if you've done the training and onboarding correctly. And I think that's something a lot of people overlook, thinking, oh, this is a simple industry. You you know how to run a zero-turn ride, Travis. Yeah.
00:36:57
Speaker
it still needs to be done in a uniform way, no matter what crew you got showing up.
Mindset for Improvement
00:37:01
Speaker
What in our life stands still? Like nature doesn't allow anything to stand still. It's all progressing, regressing, dying, getting more beautiful. You're understanding the world around you in a positive manner that's helping improve the things around you or you're not. And so that's every skill that's the cultures, the brands, it's the marketing. it Nothing just sits still. So It's that constant evolution, innovation, refreshing, looking at everything that ties into the training, the the skill sets amongst your crews. You might have hired them. um And unless they've got that that drive that they're constantly doing self-improvement, which some people do, others, it's inertia. And it's it's probably regressing. And so they might have had amazing skills or assets
00:37:54
Speaker
when they they got hired, and then it's just been kind of naturally just morphing, but maybe not in the direction that's positive or that what you would want to constantly looking for ways to offer opportunities for people to improve in manners that would improve themselves, the business in the direction that you would want them to in a positive direction. So the training component being super important.
Conclusion on Business Strategies
00:38:17
Speaker
Oh, yeah. And really all this stuff we've talked about applies to all businesses, you know, the marketing strategies, your online presence, your visual identity, the storytelling, your website, all of that, the culture, your team and culture, you know, that matters no matter what business you're in.
00:38:34
Speaker
Equipment, that can vary by business obviously, but does your company deliver quality? Does your company deliver customer service? All of those things are for any business that exist. But let's look over about 40 minutes in Travis. I just want to see, giving you final thoughts to kind of wrap things up. Yeah, I think we're good on this one. Cool. Cool. Guys, if you're, and I'm assuming if you're listening to this podcast, you're trying to improve your business. You're trying to grow it. You're trying to do it. All of this, you absolutely have to be doing these things. You have to stand out from your competition. If you're in a humongous city, depends on where you live, size of the city you're in, likely depending on what business you're in, you have a hundred different competitors locally. You have to stand out if you're going to be the larger one in that pool. You know, I think of the companies here that are the larger ones that I would hire to do mine. They're doing all of this stuff to some degree, maybe not at a hundred percent.
00:39:32
Speaker
They're all trying to get 200%, but they're executing on these things we've talked about today. And if you're serious about it, you'll do it too. So if you like the podcast, please share it. If you don't, you don't have to listen. We'll catch you next time.