Unlocking Marketing Mastery: AI, Lead Generation, and Brand Growth with Matthias

Unlock the secrets of effective marketing and strategy with our special guest, Matthias, as he joins us for an insightful conversation on the Shed Geek podcast. Matthias shares his fascinating journey into the marketing realm, emphasizing the critical balance between understanding human behavior and leveraging analytical tools. Together with Dylan Street, president of Shed Geek Marketing, we dissect the evolving role of AI in marketing, and how an art-plus-science approach can propel businesses to new heights. Get ready to explore the psychological underpinnings and strategic frameworks that make marketing not just a function, but a powerful business driver.

We tackle the perennial disputes between marketing, sales, and operations teams, shedding light on how platforms like HubSpot can streamline lead management. Discover the nuances between Google ads and Facebook ads, and why understanding these differences can drastically improve your marketing efforts. Our discussion goes beyond just generating leads; we delve into the financial implications and the necessity of educating clients about modern digital marketing strategies.

Transform your approach to sales and marketing by adopting subtle, value-driven techniques. As businesses pivot from hard-selling tactics to more nuanced methods, we highlight the importance of loving your customer more than your product. Learn practical strategies for building brand awareness through digital advertising on platforms like Google, Facebook, and even Pandora. We also emphasize the significance of consistent branding and a centralized corporate SEO strategy for distributing leads effectively. Join us as we champion collaboration and open communication within the marketing industry, advocating that a rising tide lifts all boats.

For more information or to know more about the Shed Geek Podcast visit us at our website.

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Transcript

Shed Geek: 0:07

Okay, welcome back to another episode of the Shed Geek podcast. I'm waiting for Dylan to start laughing, because it's rare that he does it when it's in person. And I do that, Matthias. Welcome to the show, sir. It's a pleasure to have you on. Do you care for those that don't know you? Just to sort of introduce yourself and a little bit about what you do, your company and that kind of thing.

Matthias Miller: 0:35

Yeah, absolutely Happy to.

Matthias Miller: 0:37

So I think one of my favorite things to do which is business in a nutshell is looking across the broad spectrum of a business and looking at different, how different parts of the business are performing, and then drilling down into the, into the weeds, and finding the, the needle movers.

Matthias Miller: 0:55

One of the things that I say is you know, we all have needle movers. It's about finding that lever, finding the right lever to pull, and then you pull that thing just as hard as you can and that's going to get you to a different place and you rinse, rinse and repeat. And that is what I love to do. And I think the second part of my job description often ends up being the distraction fighter, and I think we all face that. I love working with businesses to help them find that focus on that, fight off distractions and really build out the business that they enjoy. And along with that, I've got a fair bit of experience in marketing, both from a variety of standpoint working with media buyers like yourself, working with copywriters doing copywriting, doing marketing analytics and I think the plan here is to geek out a little bit on on marketing.

Shed Geek: 1:53

Yeah, absolutely Well. That's why it just made a lot of sense to have my friend, trusted partner and president of shed geek marketing here, Dylan Street, my friend, trusted partner and president of Shed Geek Marketing here, Dylan Street becoming notoriously famous Per the Shed Sales Professional page. Dylan seemed to be an all-star Awesome guy. Believe it or not, you're in Colorado, we're here in Illinois, and me and Dylan actually live just a few blocks from each other, so we might not be as far away as you think, but Dylan himself has a passion for marketing. I have sort of stumbled into the marketing arena but I'm loving all that, I'm learning and I'm understanding it at a new level. That's not just for sheds, but sort of marketing for any company. And yeah, Dylan's been very, very successful in that in his own right. So I thought, man, a couple of heavy hitters here today talking about marketing. So, Dylan, do you want to start with any questions, man, Anything that immediately comes to mind, or you want me to run with it?

Dylan Street: 3:03

No, I mean Matthiasias. I'd love to know. I mean, I think I see what you do now um digging into businesses, getting in the weeds like what is your marketing background? What'd you do? How'd you get there? What was your favorite part?

Matthias Miller: 3:17

well, let's talk about how I got in marketing. Um, I kind of had the same story of stumbling into marketing. Marketing wasn't something that I was like i'm'm going to get into this it's. I got into business because everything prior to that was so bad that business was the only option left and the only way to make business work was to make marketing work. So here I am how many years later.

Matthias Miller: 3:37

But I love, I love the, the parts of marketing that I've done. It's been, it's been a variety of, again, a variety of things you know. At the core of marketing that I've done, it's been, it's been a variety of, again, a variety of things you know. At the core of marketing is finding the right people to sell to, who have the need that you look for, that that you can solve. In this case, they're looking for storage they're looking for, you know, fill in the blank and and and connecting with them and getting them to the point where they can pick up the phone and have a conversation or shoot off an email or a message, whatever it is.

Dylan Street: 4:11

It sounds like maybe you started marketing because you started a business and then you kind of got acclimated to it. Am I hearing you right?

Matthias Miller: 4:20

That's right. So I got into marketing because I needed answers. Fortunately, I found a great tribe of marketers to hang around, some really smart people, and one of the things that I've done for as long as I can remember is let's go down to the fundamentals. What is the foundation? Because there's a million and one people who are selling the latest and greatest in marketing. Marketers are marketers. We know that. They like to sell you on that stuff. But let's get down to the fundamentals.

Matthias Miller: 4:45

And so I'm fascinated by people, fascinated by business, um, and I think that's that intersection between what makes people move, um, kind of the psychology behind it, but also also practically speaking, like what, what is underlying business success. That's that's really what's grabbed my attention, um, and more lately, what's taken me. You know, if you want to get even more nuanced than that, what's really lately captured my attention has been, um, the human component of marketing, the storytelling, the putting yourself into their world, helping, helping them to see, see themselves in your world. That's been part one. Part number two that I've really enjoyed as well has been the analytical side of marketing, because there are numbers, it's art plus science in how you look at that. Of course, there's this whole other side of marketing too, with the advent of ai, and? And how do you really integrate that which can be a completely different conversation as well?

Shed Geek: 5:52

so when you say art plus science, uh one, I like that comment. But I want to go back a little bit further too. Because I found business. I had to find a way to market and I think, because we're on the Shed Geek podcast, that's a commonality for those in the shed industry. I started building sheds do some sheds out by the road. That became fairly successful because people stopped by and and seen it. So like this, you talk to your fundamental marketing. You know better traffic count probably equals better sales because more eyeballs get on it. The next thing I know I got 20 lots and now you've got the dot com boom that comes in the in the 90s and all of a sudden now we have all these social media apparatuses, widgets, smartphones, all of these fancy terms and things, and now people are saying, wait a minute, I'm getting drug into the world of CRMs and SEO and every other acronym that you can think of, and I'm not really comfortable here.

Shed Geek: 7:01

Has that been your experience in sheds and just business in general?

Matthias Miller: 7:07

I'll be honest with where I'm at.

Matthias Miller: 7:09

I've got a lot of experience in tech, but for myself, I can relate to that with the speed of iteration when it comes to things like AI, and I see the same type of thing with you know, same thing, different way when it comes to shed companies.

Matthias Miller: 7:23

Yeah, like, if what you love doing every morning is getting up, moving around, you don't want to feel trapped in an office. You want to be swinging a hammer or working with people or doing all the stuff that you're doing, it feels like a prison when you're sitting in an office needing to figure out how to point and click and get Facebook or, you know, even sometimes even thinking about some of this stuff. So, yeah, absolutely, I think that's, that is a commonality, and I think I think it's one of the things that I've seen people repeatedly kind of struggle with as they're looking, as they scale. Either that's one of two things One, either the next step requires them to show up doing something that they absolutely despise doing and don't want to do, and so they just put their foot on the brake, or they stomp down on the gas pedal and they wake up in the middle of having grown to wherever they've gotten to and they hate everything and want to burn everything down and, um, it really is a challenge for uh, for folks.

Shed Geek: 8:26

So, like, what type of approach do you take with a customer Whenever somebody comes to you, especially from, like, the shed industry I'm assuming you do some work in the shed space what's sort of been your approach and what's some of the more surprising things that you found? Like, what are some of the value props that you put out there to say, hey, you really need this. Or do you get in the weeds and you're talking about ads and you know a content copy and, like you know, dylan Dylan's using these, all these words that I like, uh, love to say to make myself sound smarter? You know, like I frames and GA four tags and I'm a student. I'm just sitting here listening. I'm like, ah, ah, yeah, that sounds really good. Next thing, you know I'm seeing this in other business, I'm seeing this in the real world, not just in sheds, and I'm starting to understand a bigger picture of it all. But what's sort of your value prop? What's some of the things that you've experienced or found? Hello, shed sellers, let's take a moment to discuss the shed customer and meeting their expectations.

Matthias Miller: 10:52

Yeah. So in my experience, there's an increasing number of folks who work with shed companies, who are really good at running Google and Facebook ads, and I just haven't really made up my mind that I want to run a media buying agency and want to do that for people. My value prop is taking a step back. So there are all kinds of questions. Let's just talk about the arguments actually that happen, because I've been around these. So here are the people who argue in the marketing space. So you've got the marketing agency, you hired this company. They're really good, they help such and such, get amazing results. And so you're like I'm going to write them a big fat check and I'm going to do whatever it takes to make this thing work and it's going to be awesome. Three months later, they've done all this work and you're looking at them and you're like that's when the argument sometimes starts.

Matthias Miller: 11:48

It's like um, from the agency standpoint, sometimes there's this argument of like what are you guys doing with these leads? Like, why aren't you happy? Like we're, we're doing everything we possibly can and you guys still aren't happy. And on the other side it's like hey, we're not sure if you guys are sending us good leads or not Like what's up with you guys. So that's argument number one and argument number two then. Oh and by the way, you guys probably have. I would be surprised if you guys haven't been part of these types of conversations. You guys don't have to, you know, throw anybody under the bus. I think we've all been in situations where we're like we don't understand what's going on on the other side of the table. Argument number two is you've got the sales team and these leads are coming in and all kinds of stuff. Like I keep talking to these flaky people who fill in the blank, or you know why are the marketers not doing their job? They need to give us better leads.

Matthias Miller: 12:51

And again, the marketers are like sales is such an easy job Like I know it's a lot of work to get these leads. They should just show up and close these leads. And that's argument number two. There's argument number three that I get to be part of as well, which is there's the guys back in the shop and yesterday we had 105 degree weather and they're out there sweating like crazy putting stuff together. And there are these sales guys who they got this posh job. They're sitting in their chair. They're just talking to people. They don't actually have it that hard. Um and so argument number three is man, if the guys back in the shop could just get their act together, they get these things built on time so I don't have to deal with upset customers and the guys in the shop are like if the sales guys could just stop selling these crazy contraptions that customers want, then we could have a life that we're happy with.

Matthias Miller: 13:48

So, looking at this from a marketing standpoint, there's a lot of what I do in helping business owners take a step back, look at these arguments, figure out how to bridge the gap, figure out how to really actually understand what's going on. Is this a sales problem? Is this a marketing problem? Is this an operations problem? And what do we need to do to fix it. So that's really where I come in, and I love coming alongside great agencies, marketing agencies, because many of them are doing exceptional work. But there's a scope problem. You were hired to get leads and if there's something else broken in the business, that's. That's really beyond what, what they, what they hired you to do.

Shed Geek: 14:37

Yeah.

Matthias Miller: 14:37

Dylan's got some thoughts on it.

Shed Geek: 14:39

So I'm just going to be quiet for a minute I can. I could go here, but he's got some thoughts I could tell.

Dylan Street: 14:44

I'm thinking the same thing you are, Shannon. We go a little bit deeper. So you know, you look at, you know there's a big difference between like Google ad style leads, or leads that come from Google, and like meta ads and things like that. It's like disruptive or search.

Dylan Street: 15:03

And so it's a little more expensive for Google leads, but they're a little more qualified. Facebook is disruptive. They've been interested in the past and you're serving them these ads, you get their information, so on and so forth. So what we've helped do is we identify the leads that are just lesser quality, just a little bit of colder leads, and then, once we do that, you know, we can kind of help down the pipeline a little bit. So, for instance, was on with a client this morning and we were. They use HubSpot.

Dylan Street: 15:38

So specifically for Facebook leads, we created automations. We created all these automations so instead of them having to physically, you know, interact with all these leads 20 a day, 30 a day we've created automations for every structure style that they offer, where you know, as soon as they submitted 30 minute delay, sends an email, one-page flyer, very personalized email, and then, if they don't respond a day later, they get a text message personalized. If they don't answer a day later, then it prompts the deal owner or the contact owner to call that person. So I think we try to go a little bit deeper, but oftentimes yeah, I mean it's like, and we tell people it's like man, we can't determine the data we're leveraging data that Facebook and Google have, or also data that we've collected from people that have shown interest, and then we're just using and really trusting them Right.

Dylan Street: 16:37

And so, like you get, we hear complaints on Facebook. Leads are just colder leads, you know, you hear, you got hear. You got to fight through eight to ten of them to get one sale, ununderstandable. But you also think of the psychology, that it's a disruptive ad. And so they were scrolling, they see it, they're like, oh yeah, I really need one of those that horse barn or whatever, and they're willing to give their name, phone number, email, their zip code to kind of get a process started of some sort, even though they may not know what it looks like. And then you just don't hear from them for a while. So, like I think we try to help a little bit beyond just getting a lead by offering like automations inside of CRMs. But then, secondly, sometimes I'll tell, I'll tell some of these sales guys, or sales manager maybe, that you know I'll be like, well, when are y'all reaching out?

Dylan Street: 17:29

And they're like, well, between like nine and five, we'll give them a call and I'm like, oh, what do you do after that? And you just kind of get a feel for what their team's doing, and so then we'll start having them just switch up different things, and it changes across the the country like just the way people do things, the way clients do things, like the Midwest is different from the west coast, so on and so forth.

Dylan Street: 17:51

So you don't start having a text first and then just try all these different type of text scripts to try to get a response, and then are you texting from an iPhone or an Android. You know all these things come into play in order to get the sales. So I agree with what you're saying. I can see the two arguments. So then you have to figure out, as an agency, how far are you willing to get in the weeds with them?

Matthias Miller: 18:22

That's right. I think this is something good to riff on as well, because which is better paying 50 bucks a lead or two bucks a lead? The answer is it depends. It depends on whether those $50 leads literally have high buying intent. They're ready to go. It depends on how much your total lead flow is on your sales team. Are they exhausted, overwhelmed with all the lead flow? Do they have time to go follow up? Do they have automation in place to follow up on those low buying intent leads, the $2 leads that come in more rapidly?

Matthias Miller: 18:58

I think sometimes where people get distracted is they look at that upfront number of the cost per lead. Sometimes where people get distracted is they look at that upfront number of the cost per lead and it can get really easy to get distracted and say, man, like, who doesn't want a $2, you know $2 lead. You have to take a look at what happens with those people once they, you know, once they move through the pipeline. And it might be that you're better off paying 50 bucks a lead and you can save stress on your salespeople, or it could be better to, you know. Well, let's just break it down. Let's say it's 50 bucks a lead, you, you close one out of three of those leads, that's $150 for every every building you sell on a on a $2 lead If you're sorting through let's say you're sorting through 10 of those to get to each conversation and only closing one of those, that's 10 leads to get to a conversation 60 bucks to a conversation. Closing one of three conversations on that, that's $180 for each building sold.

Dylan Street: 20:00

How did you come to that? If you said 10 leads at $2 a piece and closing one, was that what you were saying?

Matthias Miller: 22:37

Let's say that you get okay, these are all made up scenarios, this is not meant to represent real life. But let's say that you pay $50 a lead. They're super responsive, you get to talk to them. You talk to all of them and for those folks you're paying $50 to get on the phone with them, with somebody who wants to buy. Then you've got the $2 leads. You have to talk to 10 of them. You have to talk to 10 of them to get one of them to buy. So you're paying, you're paying. Tell me I did the numbers wrong. You're paying 20 bucks per conversation. And let's then say that you, you know, let's, let's stay on that front. You got to talk to five of them. I'm changing the numbers, I know, but you have to talk to five of them in order to get one sale. In that case, $20 times five, you're looking at $100 per sale.

Matthias Miller: 23:24

So, yes, the $2 leads at the end of the day are netting you more, lower cost of acquisition, but then you have time and if you're flooded with leads, are your sales people dropping really good quality buyers who would buy bigger buildings if if you weren't tied up with lower quality leads or buying smaller ones?

Matthias Miller: 23:46

Um, there's also the broader question of sometimes I see folks wanting to go for the the lowest possible acquisition cost and I think you have to remember that again, it all depends on what your business goal is.

Matthias Miller: 24:00

If you want to scale your business, then it all depends on what your business goal is. If you want to scale your business, then the question isn't what is the cheapest way to get a lead. The question is how much can I afford to spend to get a lead? Because the more that you spend, the more that you can eat at market share and the more that you can scale your business. The more you eat at market share, the more pressure it puts on the rest of the folks around you. But if your goal is just more of a lifestyle business, I just want to get it on autopilot, have it be a cash cow. Well, in that case you might want to optimize for what's that happy place where I'm spending just right about average, maybe a little below average cost per lead, I'm getting the most ready buyers and we're just going to coast along here.

Shed Geek: 24:44

Two things certainly come to mind for me. First and foremost is probably half the audience that's paying for marketing or doing some kind of digital storefront is interested right now and they're listening to this. And then there's another half who's kind of like what are they talking about? What are they talking about whenever you know these leads and this and, like I, we had a, we had a client contact us. This is a great client, but it spoke to sort of the nature of where they were and they said you know, I want a website, but I want a mediocre website because I don't need it to be high traffic. I just needed to give some basic information. But I understand that it needs to be there. And, of course, you know it's 15 years old. They paid for it whenever it was you know pennies on the dollar, and so there's sticker shock of you know what I mean. Like, like, oh, just a basic website now compared to what I paid 15 years ago.

Shed Geek: 25:43

And at the end of it he was like, oh, if it's not too much, by the way, that website, make it show up on first on google. I know that's really important. And we were like oh, we see, sort of like where you are now. If you insult that because you're oh, you didn't come prepared to understand sort of how this entire process works, you're not just going to alienate your customers, you're going to alienate the future customers. So we were like, oh, we need to increase our customer acquisition time. We need to spend time educating, because one of the biggest areas is, like we, it doesn't work that way, right? So you can't just like flip a switch and be like, hey, by the way, make that show up on on the top. I know that's important. So we had to go through the education process. So that's something that we've done. That's been a little bit different. That we found to be successful is we're willing to spend the time with them necessary so that they understand what they're purchasing, because it's a trust factor too. You know, if they trust you, uh, some of the details that they don't quite understand yet, that they may come to understand in six months, they will appreciate that in six months. You know, and sometimes you just got to get them to stick with you long enough. We've been lucky. So far We've only lost one client that's actually running ads, and I think we're. You know, ironically, it's the only client that doesn't have a 3D configurator too, right, dylan? So, and I think he's closing this week on that, so maybe we'll get back onto the ads then because we can show some of the value in things like 3D configurators. But yeah, I think there's two audiences out there right now.

Shed Geek: 27:25

That's like okay, break down this lead generation, what you're talking about. Cost per lead, why it's more. You could deliver a guaranteed lead that was going to be a sold building marketing. Companies would start selling sheds right, you know what I mean. Like you would have no, no need for the middle person. You would just sell sheds because you would have it figured out. There's still a sales process. There's's a sales cycle in everything, correct, that's right. How do you educate them on this? How do you explain that? I mean, this is sort of why we talked about Chet University at one point and kind of trying to go down that road and see what others are doing with sales training and sales coaching, and sometimes the lines get blurred between consultation, sales marketing, advertising which which one are we talking about and when? But do you think it's that people just need more education on the sales side? What's your experience been?

Matthias Miller: 28:33

anyway, I've seen gaps on both sides. I've seen gaps on both sides. I've seen gaps in understanding marketing and I've definitely seen gaps in sales. I feel like one of the blessings of being in a situation where there's consumer demand, for which you have, is that you can get by without marketing. If general demand outpaces supply, people come beating down the door looking for you and especially coming through 2020 and some of those crazy upticks. There was a little bit where you could just ride and didn't have to think about much, so it's a little.

Dylan Street: 29:32

Say it. No, just say it.

Matthias Miller: 29:35

There's this reluctance to Listen. I've been in other industries. I've been in tech. I've been in other industries. I've been in tech. I've been in around some of the internet companies. Um, I'll just tell you straight up, most, most, most internet marketing companies or digital companies in general.

Matthias Miller: 29:53

I recently had a situation where somebody was looking for podcast guests and, uh, I got on the call and had a brief conversation. It was telling her a little bit about my experiences and she just told me she's like well, I'm sorry, I don't think you're a fit. I'm, I'm looking for experts. I'm like okay, fair enough, you get to, you get to define that, not a problem. Um, and then she's like but I, but I have this program that I think you'd be a great fit for. And I'm like no, thank you, I'm not looking to do that. That's not why we have this conversation and you know, I don't really think that's great sales.

Matthias Miller: 30:33

But if you want to talk about a culture that has cultivated a high value for sales, like there it is. These folks, they value it. We're going to play to the highest ability possible. We're looking to beat numbers. I don't always see that same hunger or value on, you know, within some of the shed companies that have that within the industry it's sales is something that happens as an afterthought. We don't want to be thought of as a sales organization. We want to be known for our buildings. We don't want to be we don't want to be marketers.

Matthias Miller: 32:32

I think one of the things that's underneath this is we've all had negative marketing and sales experiences. I think the best marketing and sales experiences are practically transparent. You barely understand that you're being marketed to, you barely know that you're being sold to, but you're drawn in, you're supported, you're understood and it takes you to a sale and, especially in this climate that we're in, it's a very effective way to sell to consumers. Consumers are past the hard sell for sure. So building a value of saying I'm not scared of marketing, I'm not scared of people calling me a marketing company, I'm not scared of people calling me a sales company. I'm willing to jump in and play this game and and perform the best of my ability in the marketing and sales front, I think absolutely can be a breakthrough for folks who are listening right now.

Shed Geek: 33:26

Do you think I'm curious what you guys experience is but uh, do you think it just comes down to, like, different personalities. You know, like, even within the same family, certain guys like, yeah, my brother, he really took on the sales and marketing roles, so he just kind of jumped into that, whereas I, I kind of like to be behind the scenes a little more and I just want to be back building and overseeing the shop and overseeing the haulers or that kind of thing. Um, I agree with you. I think that they want their shed to be the purpose of their company, the rest of the stuff that comes into into play, just because we're, it's impossible I mean, that's a strong phrase it's impossible to be relevant and have a strong business plan that offers for expansion without investing into a proper sales and marketing conversation and having a plan, I can you make it?

Shed Geek: 34:25

can you just throw things out by the road and make it? Absolutely? Of course you can. I mean, prove me wrong, right? So many have like that's the way business has been done for a long time, but we don't get to dictate how the consumer decides to purchase. And that's the part where I think there's angst and anxiety. It's kind of like, well, this has always worked, it'll work, and it's like hmm, I mean, the customer dictates really how it works.

Shed Geek: 34:55

So we have to be flexible at least enough that, if you want to make your shed the hero, learn how to go from a brick and mortar like hero to a digital storefront hero. You can still make them the hero. You just have to expand with the customer or at least keep track with them. And post-covid shoppers are even more online than before. So, like we, if you're seeing a lack in sales, you're likely not, possibly not at least aggressive online as well. Is that fair to say? Would, would you agree? Don't, let don't leave me hanging. Don't let me get in trouble by myself.

Matthias Miller: 35:32

Oh sure, let's everybody like here we go, I'm going to leave you. No, I'm not. Um, I think, if I had to reframe what you said in a single sentence, I think it's the shift of what are you going to fall in love with? Are you going to fall in love with the sheds? Are you going to fall in love with the customer? And if you can fall in love with the customer, with the people that you're serving, and go meet them where they're at, adapt to the times so that you can meet them where they're at and you can give them what they're looking for, like that's the shift that's needed. And yeah, it's uncomfortable. You might be drug along, kicking and screaming because I really don't like this digital and tech thing, but if people are going online, I like them well enough. I'm willing to go there and to help them with the products that I have.

Dylan Street: 36:20

I ask, you have the secret sauce. What is the best to lead? What's the best digital lead for all of the shed folks?

Matthias Miller: 36:30

I don't think there's that many surprises. We see consumers responding well to 3d builders. You've already talked about that. There's a lot of high intent traffic on Google and if I decided tomorrow that I wanted to go into the shed business because I'm tired of the rest of my life, I'm not planning to do that by any means. But throwing up a website and running ads on Google could get those things coming in very quickly and very, very affordably.

Dylan Street: 37:06

What do you think about? You know you've got yeah, so you've got Google and your 3D builder, your funnel and traffic. What do you think about dealers utilizing marketplace boosts, like marketplace in general, boosted marketplace posts? What's your thoughts? We don't do that, you know. We know a lot of dealers and stuff that do, but yeah, there's mixed stories on this.

Matthias Miller: 37:30

I think, geography and willingness to invest time. I think some of this comes down to a time and money question as well, as well as geography. I've I've had, I've heard some folks who have had amazing success with it. And then I look at other folks and I look at the amount of time they're investing to get leads off of marketplace and it does kind of leave me scratching my head, like if you do have time but not money, like sure, like go there, like it's an inexpensive way to get leads and get some traction, but as soon as time becomes more valuable to you than money, I um, you know my, I love the three questions that you proposed. Obviously, we're working to go out and like capture people through their data in Google, in Facebook.

Shed Geek: 38:44

And there's other social media out there and there's more than just Google, right. I mean you know Microsoft Bing, I mean DuckDuckGo, I mean that all kind of leads back to the same place, right. But you know Google is just, you know Google's just. You know and, and I know you know Dylan you've talked about, you know, like, even running ads for, like you know, local customers on on, uh, what like Pandora to be. You know some of these, yeah.

Matthias Miller: 39:11

Yeah, I brand stuff yeah.

Shed Geek: 39:16

Um, but I mean, like what, if you can build a brand that's so well, so well known, you can sort of cut back on your SEO and your ads, right, but like we, we can probably name those brands. I mean, simon Sinek talks about it and find your why a lot, right, you know Apple. Find your why a lot, right, you know apple. I mean when, when you, when you and and we do this a lot whenever we, when we did shed university, we were a guest there and we talked about, we talked about buckies. You know, uh, you're in colorado. I don't know if you got buckies out there, but you know, out here they're growing like crazy. I guess they're down in texas, so, but I mean, when you just say bucky's, what is it? What does it say?

Dylan Street: 40:03

glory most glorious gas station ever created. Bro, the bathrooms you can get excited. You're gonna have a clean bathroom. Your children are safe in the throne room next to you. You got all the food you know. They got make all their jerky. I know a little bit about Bucky's. They make their beef jerky fresh at a Bucky's facility and then they hand deliver it to every location. Like Bucky's is top notch man.

Shed Geek: 41:37

When you go to Bucky's what do people do when they walk in? Hello, welcome in, welcome in, welcome to bucky's, welcome in. And now, all of a sudden, and you see sort of the aftermath of, like, the service of the other locations when you go in. Now I go to other other gas stations and they're like hey, welcome, welcome. And you're like, ah, don't even try it, don't try welcoming me now. You ain't been welcoming me for 15 years. You know you ain't Bucky's, I just didn't have gas to make it down the road. So it's just as I'm not kidding, I don't say that, but it's.

Shed Geek: 42:08

It's one of those things where, like you know, certain brands do the same thing. John Deere, you know what I mean coca-cola, kleenex, weed eater for the longest time. Now, of course, weed eaters become synonymous with what it is. It's a trimmer, you know, and now it's steel or shindawa, or you know what I mean, uh, echo, or whatever. You know, but those are the, those are the brands, and once people know the brand well enough, they don't have to ask. They know what it means. What's craftsmen say for american craftsmanship, you know, like take it around here A cook building.

Shed Geek: 42:39

Yeah, absolutely, it's just a shop for a shed.

Dylan Street: 42:42

Yeah, has nothing to do with the brand.

Shed Geek: 42:45

Yeah, so now you can cut back on your SEO and your paid ads because you've marketed well enough that people understand the brand, so they sort of know what it stands for. But if you haven't developed that, would you agree, matthias, that like you're gonna have to invest into some brand awareness and that might be through seo and and some ads? That's just getting people to understand who you are and what you do billboards.

Dylan Street: 43:11

there's something I pulled this up. It's called the seven mountains of influence. If you want to influence every sector, you want to touch every soul. You do it through business, arts and entertainment, media, government, family, education and religion. I always thought that was pretty neat. You can find a way to support all of those. You will touch every person. Everyone falls under one of those categories or is part of each of them. But doing that, you know you're talking a big budget. You're talking charities, you're talking billboards, it's everything. You're sponsoring school events, you're having family events. You know you're somehow serving the government. You might be giving them a building for the local police department or the fire department, sponsoring some sort of program at your local schools, supporting businesses.

Speaker 2: 44:07

Yeah, but it's a lot.

Dylan Street: 44:13

You would have had it already bootstrapped and you're at the point, place of excess, and you're you're not really after necessarily the money anymore. It's more like power, brand recognition, um, you know, just household name. But I always thought that that, um, this teaching, there's a book on it's pretty interesting dylan, did you see uh, have you?

Shed Geek: 44:34

I don't know if you watched any local news lately, but the uh is it? The is the St Jude Dream Home giveaway that they do. They do like the giveaway on News Channel 6 every year here local in Paducah, I think it's St Jude that does it $100 a ticket. They give away about a $250,000, $300,000 home. Storm War is actually on that and is offering to give away a free building to the St same Dreamhouse giveaway and I was like, oh man, that's pretty neat, like to see that on news. I was like that's a, that's a brilliant marketing move.

Dylan Street: 45:07

We are genuinely me and my wife just thought about it. We're thinking about giving away a slingshot at the end of the year, but it's whoever, whoever signs up to do it, you have to put your hand on the slingshot at the end of the year. But it's whoever, whoever signs up to do it, you have to put your hand on the slingshot. Whoever stays there the longest gets the slingshot nice, that's mr beast move yes, in order to enter in, you have to have rented one and then if you want to, you can be part of it can I just sleep on it?

Shed Geek: 45:35

can I just like fall asleep as long as my hand stays on it?

Speaker 2: 45:38

As long as your hand's on it.

Shed Geek: 45:42

Matthias, you're going to have to come to Kentucky. Buddy, we're going to have to go slingshot riding. I'll tell you what.

Matthias Miller: 45:49

I was going to ask you if you're going to start a slingshot rental company before you make this offer.

Dylan Street: 45:55

I have one.

Matthias Miller: 45:57

Oh, you got it. There you go, there's the missing piece I'm not well researched enough.

Dylan Street: 46:01

That's awesome, yeah it's called street slingshot rentals. Uh, this is our fifth year, but yeah, we're located here in paducah he went out to branson and, uh, he rented one.

Shed Geek: 46:13

And he came back and said, hey, I think I can do this. And he did. And then all of a sudden it was a. He'd started doing a masterclass and teaching other people across the country how to do it. I was like, man, go get it. That's awesome, I've rented one. It's fun. Time you come, you guys come to Paducah, rent one.

Dylan Street: 46:29

It Every time. Yeah, they, they get them every year. Yeah, yeah.

Shed Geek: 46:36

Try to get at me If you're listening to that.

Dylan Street: 46:38

We try to get at you. We wouldn't do it.

Shed Geek: 46:42

Um, Matthias, uh, time goes by so fast. I wanted you to take the reins. Uh, play the role of host. Whatever you want to do, ask me and Dylan some questions, see if we can answer a few before we get out of here. Uh, you know, long form content I guess medium form maybe is what we do. It goes by quick and people say can't talk about sheds or shed related stuff for an hour and man, it's just easy. Like these conversations are, they need to have this kind of like attention and and whatever to detail. But ask some questions, man, to us, shed related, marketing related, life related, it really don't matter. Pull on all seven of those things Dylan talked about and give us a, give us a question.

Matthias Miller: 47:24

I would love to hear you guys' thoughts, because you have a unique perspective on oh yeah, time out commentary. If this is a repeat question from podcasts, you're just going to have to call an audible. We'll just do that. One of the things I'd like to hear from you guys is kind of you guys have a unique perspective on the trends. So where are the trends? What if I'm the owner of a shed company and I'm looking to be be at the top of my game five years from now? What are the things that I have to have to have to be paying attention to that? Most people aren't, but the guys who are doing it, who are doing it at the best level they're. They're doing right now. What are you guys seeing?

Dylan Street: 48:06

Are we starting from scratch? Matthias, you're a brand new shed company. You're starting from scratch.

Matthias Miller: 48:12

No, we're. We're established at some level.

Dylan Street: 48:15

Well, we would have to dig in and see how you're established Shed companies, and that's the first thing that we do so like. If you're the owner, then we like to figure out like how many dealers do you have? How spread out are you? What's the population density? Are they wholesale buyer dealers? Or do you just drop sheds off on their lot and it's Big Bad Brad's sheds and then you got sheds of you know Wichita down the road and then you know what I mean. Or is it all branded under your name?

Matthias Miller: 48:51

So like I guess let's frame up a business real quick and then work towards the glory man.

Dylan Street: 48:54

I don't know. There's no wrong thing. I mean there's no wrong thing. I mean there's no wrong thing. But if I were a newer bustling shed manufacturer and I wanted to kill it in sales and grow the team, I would keep it all branded. I'd keep it under one brand, right? I do think that, like how Dirksen and Old Hickory and Graceland, how they did it, like they were just light years beyond, they had, you know, deep pockets, they had all types of inventory and you know they're just able to drop it off on an acre or two across the country and like go sell sheds.

Shed Geek: 49:33

You know, do your best.

Dylan Street: 49:35

So, but yeah, I feel like that has changed. You're not seeing those models being birthed anymore. Like I know a shed company that does 10 million a year with one and a half sales guy and an owner, and then I know another one that does 10 million a year and they've got like eight locations. You know what I mean. It's two completely different business models, but they're both working. So then you just have to identify. But what I would do if I was wanting to grow, I would. And things are getting a little more difficult, man, if you want to grow, people like, well, why don't we just open a digital location here? It's like well, google, my business man, they're tapping down. You almost have to have a location anymore to do all this. So, like I would do it where we kept it branded it's, it's the, it's the branded company.

Dylan Street: 50:23

um, you know, and I definitely want to make sure all my lots and stuff are clean but, like I would do seo from the corporate perspective, um, you know, you have your corporate website and you're doing SEO, running ads for your whole service radius and then, whenever those leads come in, instead of corporate hogging all them and telling all of your dealers to go fight on Marketplace or use your paycheck to run your own Marketplace ads or Boosted Posts, we distribute those leads to all the dealers via zip code. So you carve out a dealer's territory and you give them 100, 200 zip codes and you distribute leads based off zip code to their territory. So corporate starts supporting and I think you just start building out bigger, bigger, bigger. And once you feel like there's a slow spot, you put in a good spot and you want to keep going your radius. I put another dealer that's how I would do it from like a high level

Shed Geek: 52:32

Are you saying, Dylan? Sort of franchised the company internally? You know like does it matter if they're an independent dealer and they choose to be Big Bad Brad Sheds and then Big Brad's?

Dylan Street: 52:47

Park yeah, we are.

Shed Geek: 52:48

Yeah, we're going to be Big Bad Brad. And then you've got some shed company of Wichita and then you got, you know know, the same thing of new jersey. Now what happens if you're like building a website out and you're trying to organize seo for a dealer as opposed to pull it on that corporate account to do it, and and a follow-up question of that would be like what if your dealers don't trust the manufacturer to disperse those leads fairly to their given, like agreed upon, a service radius?

Dylan Street: 53:26

I'd say that there's already like a cancer somewhere. You know if corporate can be trusted you know what I mean Like. But I think that the dealers should you know if you're doing it right right and you're doing sales trainings every month that they all should have a tight relationship and also trust the corporate location, because the fact that they're giving you the leads and not taking them on themselves, where they could have an in-house digital salesperson, one or two to the 10 dealers or whatever it may be like that shows a lot right there, they're trusting you with the leads they're paying for. Yeah, grow the whole company. You know what I mean. What was your first question, though?

Shed Geek: 54:04

I don't, I don't know if I caught it um, like, are you saying like franchising, like, does it need to be? So? Let's say it was, uh, matthias's shed company and he's got a hundred dealer lots? Does it need to be be Matthias of New Jersey, matthias of Wichita, matthias of Chicago, or is it okay to be Big Brad Sheds that sells Matthias' sheds?

Dylan Street: 54:27

I would stick with the brand name and grow the brand recognition. So you know what I mean. Like Texas Roadhouse here in Paducah. I was just in Indiana's Texas Roadhouse in Bloomington. You know it's not part of the name but it's Texas Roadhouse in Bloomington and I understand it does kind of look like a franchise. I mean technically it's not but, that model to grow the brand. It's going to do better SEO wise altogether.

Dylan Street: 54:53

And there's still things that you can do beyond that, If you have really successful dealers and they want to run paid ads, but they don't want to run them on that side of the state because the wrong dealer could get that lead that they paid for you could create landing pages and things. There's all kinds of things that you can do, but that's how I would do it.

Dylan Street: 55:11

I don't think, unless you've got big boy deep pockets to just find people that have an acre or two. Drop off 200 grand in inventory and you can do that. Uh, you know, 10 mil in deep and you ain't gonna feel nothing, you know, until you hit 50 mil. Yeah, you know you could probably grow pretty fast, but like it's just unreasonable.

Speaker 2: 55:32

So like and we're starting to work with.

Dylan Street: 55:34

There's a lot of people manufacturers that are moving away from these bigger companies that they've been manufacturing for. This is what we're consulting, this is what we're telling them. Hey, this is what we do, based off all the companies we've worked with and all the different ways we've seen it done. And just all of the different types of campaigns we've seen work and not work. I think it's the best model.

Matthias Miller: 56:00

One question I've got on the dealer side is when you've got, let's say we've got this company, we're billing it out. How do you deal with the situation where dealers are like, hey, look, free leads and corporates. You're not caring enough about these leads that were given you. What, what are accountability measures that you?

Dylan Street: 56:22

build a healthy relationship? Great question. And then we've got clients that do this, and so I see it every day. Yeah, no, absolutely so. The way that the CRMs are transparent, like you can see everybody else's transactions you can't intervene, you can write them a note. You can be like hey see, you haven't followed up for two days. You know they could have forgot or whatever.

Dylan Street: 56:45

But I think it's the transparency and what I found is that the dealers like watching how many leads each other get and you know you'll notice it is semi somewhat fair and then you'll see how much they're following up with people and like then that inspires them. It's like dang it man, freaking that guy. Ah, gotta do better.

Shed Geek: 57:07

I like the transparency method me personally that guy's always following up with his leads quick and you know what he's always first in sales it's. It's really aggravating me. Oh enough, so that I'm going to follow up with my leads. From a company perspective, matthias, wouldn't you also agree that it's probably frustrating to pay for those leads and not see a quick follow-up and like they don't know how to approach it, because they really care about their dealers and some of them have been with them for 10 years and they're like man, this is just the way business works now, but they don't really understand tech or they don't want to understand tech.

Shed Geek: 57:44

Essentially, that's making a decision in some ways, isn't it To say like, hey, I value everything you do, but I'm not interested in learning this new way, but I'm also going to leverage our relationship to maintain being a dealer. You can't just drop me. I mean, I've done a lot for your company and it's kind of like, yeah, I mean both of those things, both. Both can be true at the same time, but it's like man, this is just the direction that they're moving, and I do think that you're finally starting to see some manufacturers maybe, I hate to say, drop the hammer. That sounds terrible, but like, just be a little bit, ask for a little bit more accountability, because because financially, if not, they're going backwards, like by putting these leads out there.

Dylan Street: 58:31

Well, yeah, that in my opinion, like if it was my company. You're funneling the leads, but they just hate online sales, you know. But you have a 10 year relationship with them and be like man. Okay, you can get all the online sales. Make sure you don't miss any of the online sales, and then we'll take digital marketing for your location on in house.

Shed Geek: 58:51

Yeah.

Dylan Street: 58:53

I wouldn't, but I think I think, man, you're. I think the cancer will spread when you start doing things like that. Just assumptions and thoughts, and you're like you know, so I can see it going bad.

Shed Geek: 59:05

Well, or yeah, that dealer came. He, you know that customer came to my lot about three months ago, but then they reached out online, so you sold it to them. Is that my lead? Because technically they came to me me first and you got to have all these different conversations and it negates a spirit of cooperation. Let's call it what it is. There's no longer the spirit of like we're trying to figure this out together. It's kind of like we're trying to play gotcha, you know, to some extent and it's very challenging. I mean, we this is kind of our world, you know you try to navigate relationships.

Dylan Street: 59:39

We've experienced it together. We started having all these other side deals and stuff and eventually I was just like I don't have time for none of this. You know what I?

Speaker 2: 59:48

mean.

Dylan Street: 59:49

I'm going to focus on what. What Matthias said pulling the lever over here, that's you. I'm good, you know what I mean.

Shed Geek: 59:58

Yeah, that's the. The. The biggest problem with opportunity is, uh, whenever you have so much of it, you don't know what to do with and you're not prepared for it. Um, that sounds like an arrogant statement, really off the cuff, doesn't it? But I don't. I don't mean for it to be, but it's.

Shed Geek: 1:00:12

It's cool to have so much opportunity, but I have found that it's just as dangerous to not be prepared for success as it is to be prepared for, unprepared for failure. Like, if you're unprepared to succeed, what good does it? Do you know? I mean, we're, you know whether marketing rto, we've been overwhelmed and and it's kind of like, wow, well, we want to do a good job. So it's better for us to like step back and work within our capacity instead of working outside of our capacity. And, yeah, me and Dylan have. We've experienced that.

Shed Geek: 1:00:43

We've been here in my office and been like, okay, what do we do? How do we? Well, step back and focus on what you, your primary things, what you're good at, what you do, and keep a spirit of cooperation and doggone it, it. We're killing it. I love it. I mean that's again, I don't mean to say any statement of statements of arrogance, but I love what we do and I wake up every day enjoying working with this guy and working with other people in the industry. It's been great, man. It's been great. We're guys. We're coming up on an hour, I know it yeah, it happens.

Dylan Street: 1:01:16

Yeah, it's friday, it happens it happens so fast.

Shed Geek: 1:01:20

Matthias, is there anything that you want to share with the audience? Contact information? If somebody's wanting to get a hold of you, uh, if we can lead them in your direction, I probably need to to get a website or facebook or something so that we can uh lead the direct the listeners towards you on our, on our, newsletter.

Matthias Miller: 1:01:39

Yeah, absolutely so, either this way. Shoot me an email the letter M at code house C, o, d, e, h, a, u Scom and shoot me an email If you want to chat. Something resonated happy to help out in any way I can If I can't. I love sending people in the direction where they can be helped.

Shed Geek: 1:01:59

We should just follow up in general, maybe not just for a second episode, but maybe we should just follow up in general. I'm sure I'll run into you whenever I'm out there in August, but me and Dylan always like having these conversations and we like being friends with other folks who are in the marketing space. And you know, hey, it's the same thing with RTO. I say all the time like RTO, companies are welcome on the show, you're welcome to advertise. If you're not here, it's because you don't want to be here. Because you're welcome, you can come talk and we'll even discuss difficult conversations if that's what needs to happen in order to see growth. I feel like they're necessary. So you're, you're all welcome here. And oh no, if you get business and we don't get it, we'll be okay, it's going to be fine.

Shed Geek: 1:02:42

Um, the way I look at it is a rising tide lifts all boats. That's uh been the standard for the show. Uh, credit goes to tyler mayhand on that and, honestly, man, we just keep trying to move the industry forward, even through difficult conversations. So it's what it takes Good stuff.

Dylan Street: 1:03:00

Matthias, it was good to meet you, buddy.

Shed Geek: 1:03:03

Yeah, good to chat with you. Appreciate you being on here today. Hey, this is Mo Lunsford in sunny Union Grove, North Carolina, and we want to say thank you to all the guests and listeners.