Ben Landers is the President and CEO of Blue Corona, a data-driven marketing and analytics company. Ben has been building, growing, and leading the Blue Corona team for over 10 years, landing them on the Inc. 5000 list nine times. Blue Corona is an industry leader, helping home service companies grow through measurable marketing solutions that increase sales, reduce costs, and differentiate brands online.
Ben is a Houzz Certified Marketing Consultant. Before Blue Corona, he was the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for DrinkMore Water, the Regional Sales Manager for Windy City Publishing, and an Account Executive for WorldCom/MCI and HotJobs.com.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Ben Landers talks about Blue Corona’s work in the home services space
- The current COVID climate in Maryland, North Carolina, and California
- How Ben got into marketing with Blue Corona
- Should your marketing team be in-house or outsourced?
- Ben breaks down the process of call tracking and describes the generational differences
- Ben, Greg Owens, and Katrina Stephenson talk about podcasting and relationship building
- The value of learning from other companies and leaders
- Ben shares some examples of how his team creates content
- EO, YPO, and other industry organizations
- What Ben and Greg have learned from their mentors
In this episode…
How can your business take advantage of the many resources available in your industry? When should you keep your services in-house, and when should you outsource?
According to Ben Landers, small businesses often need to outsource work; that way, the team can stay in their zone of genius. In Ben’s field, most small business owners don’t accurately track their advertising and marketing campaigns. It can be difficult to afford in-house marketing — especially when your employees already wear many hats. That’s why it’s Ben’s mission to provide service companies with cost-effective, outsourced marketing efforts.
In this episode of Watching Paint Dry, Greg Owens and Katrina Stephenson sit down with Ben Landers, President and CEO of Blue Corona, to talk about hiring and learning from other companies. Ben discusses Blue Corona’s services, outsourcing versus in-house work, and the lessons he learned from mentors along his journey. Ben and Greg also talk about the organizations they’re a part of and how they support industry leaders and business owners. Stay tuned!
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Greg Owens on LinkedIn
- Katrina Stephenson on LinkedIn
- McCarthy Painting
- McCarthy Painting Contact No.: 415-383-2640
- McCarthy Painting Email Address: info@mccarthypainting.com
- Ben Landers on LinkedIn
- Blue Corona
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO)
- Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO)
- Vistage
Sponsor for this episode…
This episode is brought to you by McCarthy Painting, where we serve commercial and residential clients all around the San Francisco Bay area.
We’ve been in business since 1969 and served companies such as Google, Autodesk, Abercrombie & Fitch, FICO, First Bank, SPIN, and many more.
If you have commercial facilities in the San Francisco Bay Area and need dependable painters, visit us on the web at www.mccarthypainting.com or email info@mccarthypainting.com, and you can check out our line of services and schedule a free estimate by clicking here.
Episode Transcript
Intro 0:03
Welcome to the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we feature today’s top facility managers, property managers and property owners talking about the challenges and opportunities of managing hundreds of 1000s of square feet of real estate and how to beautify and improve their properties. Now, let’s get started with the show.
Greg Owens 0:32
Hello, everyone, this is the another episode of the Watching Paint Dry podcast where we’ve been interviewing facilities, managers, contractors, business owners, and lots of people related to the facilities facilities management industry, and then all the support services of that entire industry and others at times when and this will be this, this upcoming interview will be really fun. It’ll be a little bit different than what we’ve done in the past, and we’ll see where it goes. This episode like all the episodes is brought to you by my company McCarthy Painting, we’ve been in business since 1969, painting homes and commercial properties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. Lots of lots of different types of companies we work for, including spin SMG carpet, we just did a bunch of work for them, Chase Bank, Autodesk h&m, and many, many more, you can find out more about us at McCarthypainting.com. And I’m really excited to have Ben Landers, the CEO of Blue Corona, which is a data driven online marketing company, which will definitely find out more about Welcome to the podcast, then. Yeah, thanks for having me, Greg. Katrina. Yeah, and we also have Katrina Stephenson on and Katrina is part of McCarthy Painting and likes to chime in at times and add color to these conversations when she can. So Ben, tell us a little bit about yourself your win where you’re coming from and those kinds of fun facts.
Ben Landers 2:14
Yeah, sure. So you know, I’m the CEO of Blue Corona and in English we’re you know, we’re a digital marketing company, we really help home service companies is our is our kind of our bread and butter. We help Home Services companies increase sales, reduce costs, and differentiate their brands online. So basically, you know, they’re sort of their digital marketing partner, as a, as a business owner, you guys know, all that goes into that from having a, you know, an effective website, managing the website, getting more traffic to the website, converting that traffic into leads sales, and trying to figure out what’s working what’s not. In terms of where you’re investing your money, that’s sort of what we do for, for mostly Home Services. Companies, we do have, you know, maybe 30% of our customers are our contractors that have a commercial component, we have a lot of fire protection. clients, we have had some commercial painting and facilities companies in the past so but you know, ever really kind of developed a sort of a niche and a reputation in the Home Services space. And so, so kind of focused there. I am in I’m in the DC area, I’m in Rockville, Maryland, which is a suburb of Washington, DC, and our clients are all over the country. But we have before COVID, we had two physical offices, the office where I was in Maryland, and then we had an office in Charlotte, North Carolina, we still have the office in Charlotte, but we’ve been operating remote since March 13 2020. And I think everyone misses each other and being in the office, but we’re the type of business that, you know, everything we do is sort of in the cloud and, you know, in the digital world, so we’re we’re sort of fortunate, you know, we don’t have trucks, we don’t have equipment, you know, the stuff that, you know, real businesses have to, you have to deal with. So we stayed remote.
Greg Owens 4:08
And I love getting my news, sort of, from people I talked to on these podcasts and that kind of thing and, and finding out a little more and how are things in, in your part of the country. As far as COVID goes, you know, San Francisco here we kind of like shut down a bit again, in some ways where people were just wearing masks every everywhere and that kind of thing. You know, it’s uh, it’s interesting.
Ben Landers 4:33
So I’m in Montgomery County, Maryland, Montgomery county is probably the largest county I think in Maryland. terms of population. historically has been pretty affluent area a lot of businesses and stuff that are in Maryland or are sort of located in McComb County. And so you know, that counties is, you know, it’s very, you know, I guess forward thinking so, we were very our county was quick to live down
you know probably a lot of people in the county could work remotely you know and so but there were certainly plenty that you know restaurant owners and stuff like that they were really you know had a lot of issues with county executive and stuff in terms of sort of the lockdown policies and and how many people how about you know one point you could be in a restaurant for like 45 minutes and then you had to be out so you sit down you know order your steak wolf it down and then you gotta go you know you got to get out of here so it Magoffin County is pretty pretty, pretty tight still mass mandates. It’s interesting My son is in eighth grade and has been sort of going to see different high schools and we had sort of this weird conundrum where he was going to visit a private school and they make the mass optional I guess it’s private and small enough or or they’re just going on their own where they’re not following the county whereas the school he goes to everyone wears masks they follow the county protocol and so my wife finds out that this open house is option is either will be the only kid in the school, probably in a mask. With kids, he doesn’t know you know, like an open house for shadowing kid for half the day or, you know, go without the mask. But then when he comes back to his school where the expectation is that if you’re in an indoor you’re wearing a mask and he’s potentially exposing other kids so anyways, so so that’s how Maryland is and then North Carolina, Charlotte is is a, you know, mixed bag of knots, lower vaccination rates, you know, they’ve they’ve gone gone real restricted, open, restricted. I’ve got fatigued from the whole thing. I see Katrina laughing there because because she was born there. And Asheville. Yeah, but
Katrina Stephenson 7:00
I’m, I’m super curious. And I’m like around the vaccination cards. I was just talking with my co workers and they just experienced here in San Francisco, we have to show proof of vaccination. Literally, you have to show your vaccine card I’m wondering Is that like that over there in Maryland? I’m not I’m going to go ahead and say no, Carolina, but I mean, I can be wrong.
Ben Landers 7:23
In Maryland, I haven’t experienced that. I have not experienced that yet. I mean, our county has a extremely high vaccination rate. It’s a it’s kind of funny, because again, the county executive, you know, came out at one point and said, because we’re not at 100% we need to stay, you know, really, like locked down and, you know, data driven, you know, sort of this common sense, like people are like, what way to say that he just said that, like 100%? I mean, I don’t know what our vaccinate vaccination rate is, but it is, you know, I would if I had to guess I would say it’s, you know, north of 60%, maybe maybe even higher, other people that can be that, you know, can be vaccinated. And so, you know, yeah, I haven’t had to show a car to anyone. But I also, you know, sort of oddly I don’t I, my wife is the extrovert of the two of us which is a little bit weird. I mean, I started my career in sales and I run a company but I’m not you know, I’m I enjoyed, you know, communicating with people stuff, but I don’t recharge like in a group of people. I go off you know, hike alone and in kind of recharge. So. I guess I guess that’s to say that, like, I don’t know, a whole lot of places I don’t really, I don’t really care. I gotcha. So it’s possible that people are getting carded. And I’m just not one of them. Because I only got like four different places. given month.
Greg Owens 8:54
Right, right, right. Yeah, we got we’ve been experimenting, Katrina made some badges for my, for my employees, where, where it’s got like, they have sort of official McCarthy Painting ID on the front with their picture and everything. And it says official, right, and then you flip it over, and it shows their backs card with the QR code and all that so that way we can. Hopefully, what we’re going to be going to see is like when we’re going through building security, because that’s where we’re getting carded, or like even restaurants and things like that. If you want to sit down and you can order your coffee to go but if you want to sit down and have your coffee, you’re gonna have to show your backs nice nation come down and
Katrina Stephenson 9:30
take it very seriously. Yeah, yes.
Ben Landers 9:34
Yeah, I’ve watched a handful of we have clients in California, and you know, and I have some some friends out there and yeah, I’ve sort of experienced just the touch of how, you know how much different it is through, you know, again, social media and, and that kind of thing. And it’s, it’s, it’s interesting.
Greg Owens 9:55
It’s an interesting world we’re living in, right because there’s part of me that pushes back against it. There’s something and I can’t I cannot articulate this very well but I don’t like the whole concept that all right, yeah, it’s kind of like when the politicians are saying like they’re saying or following the science and I’m kind of reading the science but I’m no scientist but it’s like, looking at it. It’s like 100% really like, that’s like, just seemingly wrong.
Ben Landers 10:22
I mean, I go I go back and forth. I mean, you know, I feel like almost, you know, like, sort of just sort of, it’s one of the challenges of the pandemic is this sort of like this almost like bipolar you know, like being excited enthusiastic about business, but you don’t want to be too excited because there are a lot of people that are having a much different experience through it and so I don’t want to come across as insensitive Yeah, you know, you go through and kind of say you know, like my grandfather was a farmer and you know what I think of my life versus his I’m like, nothing I’ve ever done has been a sacrifice compared to his life. And so you know, when people like complaining about wearing the mask or being locked down, aside from those who you know, effects or live with it, but for people like me where it’s like I can work from home and you know, have food and stuff delivered to the house, you know, I can do all that stuff. And when people like me were complaining, you know, I would think to myself, like, give me a break. Like you have the internet that you can’t be bored with the internet. I mean, you have like the world’s largest library at your fingertips, you know what I mean? And so give me a break but and screaming screaming anything at the moment? totally totally like if you’re bored then like you’ve got you’ve got issues then on the on the flip side Yeah, then you get you get to where I go into certain stores and someone’s got you know, the they got a mask on, but it’s like down here and they’re like moving it around, and it’s like you realize that does nothing, right? Like I get that your employer requires that but like you’re doing, you know, and so I think of all the people that you know, that wear masks but not real masks or wear them that were made correctly. You know, at some point I just sort of like find myself laughing kind of saying like, this is all a little, a little nutty, but
Greg Owens 12:16
I love it. I love doing that. And because we’re reminding people in perspective, right? Right, when they’re complaining about things like that, and then I say something like well, you know, yeah, at least we didn’t have to get like drafted for World War Two, right?
Ben Landers 12:31
Yeah. Yeah. That is exactly or like I remember my college apartment. I remember I went to school in Athens Ohio and one year I had this apartment that was in like an attic basically and there was no air conditioning and in growing up in the DC area I remember calling my dad and saying like, I’ve been duped you know like this is this is like I can’t live here there’s no air conditioning and he’s like I grew up in Marietta Georgia. Boy, like like we had dirt a dirt floor in our bathroom. They’ll be fine he’s got a shared bathroom my sister had a dirt floor so no air conditioning I’ve had an air conditioning until after I was out of the Air Force you know and X number years I was like, okay
Greg Owens 13:16
yeah
Ben Landers 13:18
thanks, man. I was like it’s not that bad to just sweat yourself to sleep it’s not too bad.
Greg Owens 13:25
I want to do it but back back to your company Blue Corona a bit so like walk me through how how you help a company like ours a painting company on our residential side, right? Like cuz I think I have the concept down. And, you know, your data driven marketing’s you really sort of analyse what I guess a lot of what we’re doing currently, but then also can’t be able to quantify what we’re doing and how it’s working. That Yeah, that’s
Ben Landers 13:51
that’s a that’s 100% correct. I mean, you know, I started the company, I’ll kind of answer your question through the, you know, sort of how I ended up here. I had worked for a couple big companies, hot jobs, calm, publicly traded, I worked for WorldCom which is a huge telecommunications company. And then I kind of pivoted and I went to work for a small business and then another small business which was a bottled water delivery company and half of that bottle water delivery company’s customers were were residential so you know, they’re dropping off these big five Gallon Bottles, you know, at people’s houses and then half are commercial. This is low tech, super low tech. Yeah, well, purifying water. Yeah. Depending on the level the I went up by you know, can be a little bit more high tech but but yeah, very low tech. And, and to be fair, I went to work for the founder of the company like specifically for him, he had a bunch of different businesses, the bottle water company was kind of the one that he was running, but he had spun off all these other companies. And, and I remember he, I was, I had a sales and marketing background. And I said, We talked like most marketers like oh you know like of course you need to do advertise marketing look at Nike look at McDonald’s look at you know and failing to appreciate how ridiculous that sounds to a small medium size you know business owner and so when I’m when I met Bob my my business partner Blue Corona and again the guy who was he still runs DrinkMore Waters name of the company but Bob’s thing was I’m an engineer and I hate marketing people like they’re almost almost like offensive to me because they tell you to spend money on stuff that they would probably never do if it were their own money in their own business and then when it doesn’t work they tell you didn’t spend enough and and the pitches the flashier the pitch the better looking the sales rep guy or gal you know it’s like it’s just comedy The whole industry as a whole comedy and this was my first mme even before I went to work for and and I’m like I’m like going through in my head I’m like yeah there’s some truth to that. But anyway the long and short of it is that when I when I went to work for him we set out to build a system to track to accurately track all of his advertising marketing investments which ranged back then from the Yellow Pages, direct mail, TV, radio, the internet and so we built a system software platform to track all that and so we were doing that for his business and for the benefit his business and then I had started an office coffee business I guess it was going to be a separate company through that and I was out doing a demo for a plumbing company residential Commercial Plumbing company. And the owner shows up and I’m kind of demoing this Keurig coffee machine and and I say to the owner just kind of building rapport I said you know I do all the advertising marketing for DrinkMore and you know you plumbers do like a ton of advertising Yellow Pages and all that kind of stuff well I’m just curious what what results are you seeing from the Yellow Pages because our leads are going like that and because the reps haven’t lower the cost the cost per lead is going like that. And he’s like how in the world would you know that? Like how could you possibly know how many leads are coming from each different yellow page book print versus web and I’m like we have the system to track it all. And I remember he called over his head of marketing was like tell her what you just told me I told her and she was like I said to her well how do you decide what to do when the Yellow Page rep comes out and says you need to renew and she says we always they tell us what our competitors are doing and then you know we have a big competitor and like there’s just smaller than us and so if the big competitor did like full color two page ad you know we’ll kind of go Alright, we’ll do one colour full page. We’re not quite as big as them so we can’t afford that but but what’s the smaller one two other two and a half page black and white. Like we want to be bigger than them but small and I remember running back to Bob you know from all my coffee demos to the day running back Oh, we’re in the wrong business. I’m trying to build this coffee business for you. I got a different idea. I don’t wanna do that anymore. You know I want to sell the tracking system to you know all these business owners because they have no idea you know, what’s working and what’s not it’s all it’s sort of like this the customer service rep says how did you hear about us and they say like well the yellow pages but you don’t know is it print is it digital or your your website? I found you through your website simple, right? How did they actually get to the website was from Facebook was from Google. So
Greg Owens 18:41
it’s so true because I remember the days the Yellow Pages and what you were just saying about like
you know the they’re trying to sell you these ads, but they’re comparing you to your competitors, right? And then you’re doing I’m remember going through that going like well, that company they’re really big. They can’t afford that. That 18 $100 a month for the half of each right? little corner and then you see like, Oh, look at those guys that are gaming the system by being like a triple A painting, right? painting. Yeah, yeah. Trina’s Katrina’s are going like what are the Oh, yeah. What’s the yellow
Katrina Stephenson 19:17
time the last generation who remembers no internet, so I know exactly what you’re talking about. Okay. And I just saw a plumbing company a one plumbing Yeah. up to them. Oh boy. Go and I was like yellow pages first and
Greg Owens 19:37
then we’re talking about plumbing and Katrina’s husband is a plumber.
Ben Landers 19:41
Okay, yeah. So, you know, going back to your original question. I mean, I think what we found when we were starting the business and the same thing I think is more or less true is that, you know, a lot of small business owners don’t really accurately track all the advertising market investments. It’s kind of a pain. There’s a lot of There’s a kind of a net that you have to wrap around everything keeping track of it’s time consuming so you know the owner kind of says hey you know I got a right hand gal Katrina Katrina let’s track all the advertising marketing it’s like you know add that to your list of 50 other things that you do for the you know, for the company and something’s gonna something’s gonna kind of go ball is gonna get dropped right and then the other issue is um, you know, digital marketing like to do it well, you sort of want this team where you’ve got design creative types. You want people who can write you know, compelling content either for the website or social media need someone who’s got sort of this promotional like I’m going to share the content that we’ve got you need analytical people technology people and then all the technology the call tracking and the analytics and and so on, can you do it in house absolutely lots of companies do on but to do it really well. You got to get pretty you got to get pretty big you know to afford that kind of team and then the challenge I mean with everyone has labor issues these days and we’re no exception one of the ways that we’re able to keep people is by involving on like they might have a simple account over here and then they have this enterprise big hairy wow how am I going to figure out how to do this account here? Um, if if you got someone who’s a rock a rock star and they go to work for like the $30 million you know, commercial residential fill in the blank you know, roofing contractor you know, again if the business is growing really fast and it’s really forward thinking you know that I think it’s you can you can hang on to some amazing people for a while but what you tend to find is you get someone who they say oh you know, I want to go work for like, you know, they’re on or you know, DuPont in their marketing barn because they’re using this Adobe platform that we would never buy because it’s too expensive and it’s it probably would be too expensive for the $30 million folks so i think you know, we’re a cost effective alternative to trying to do you know, some or all of it in house but yeah, so and then the tracking component has been sort of our special sauce so we have a big website a big software platform or pulling in and aggregating data so you know, it’s it’s really interesting to see how things change in different industries so I joke a lot about the plumbing businesses because on the one hand plumbing it not that I can do any of it but on the way in plumbing is like pretty simple. It’s like pretty simple business. But But some of the marketing digital marketing techniques employed by the cut the cutting edge or larger pom poms is way out way out on the spectrum as compared to say like, you know, commercial like a b2b lawyer be the lawyer is like way behind plumbers in terms of digital marketing, you know, tactics and strategies and so we take the data and we go, gosh, you know, like, yeah, commercial painting company resident pending looks different than plumbing, ah, back lateral, it’s different. Yeah, but there’s an awful lot of things that these folks are doing that we should test over here and then we have a great platform with a number of customers where if we test it for three or four in one market and start to see traction and it’s like why don’t we roll this out
Greg Owens 23:41
because your customer database is pretty big and you’ve got a lot of different types of businesses in there you’ll you’ll test some things over here and you’ll be like oh, it’s working really well for plumbers How does that work for them roofing contractors, painters that work for whatever other industries and then you’re able to sort of like hey, this is best practices we’re finding here and then you can help scale it to other companies.
Ben Landers 24:05
Yeah, like when I was working for that water company one of the biggest challenges that I had was I had a testing environment of one right and the one business that I was kind of playing around with and then I would go to conferences and I would I would try to find you know the owner the want the guy or gal that ran marketing for fill in the blank, you know, Deer Park Arrowhead and a lot of them are like, I’m not talking to you, you know, you’re the competitor and it’s like, come on, it’s a big industry but it’s not me versus you, you know, like sure let’s let’s get to know each other a little bit. Um, so there’s that. But then you still are in one, you have one industry so if you happen to be in an industry that’s like, like bottle water, which was kind of a dinosaur, um, you know, it’s like I found when I would go to a conference and again, meet someone who was like in personal injury, like doing digital marketing for a personal injury law firm. They were talking about stuff where I was like, you’re doing what Like you can do that like how do you do that? It’s like oh we use this software it’s like jeez all right and then I look and it’s like there’s not one bottle water company in the country using that software yeah you know and so you start to get a sense of balance between if you go to we have competitors that are super high volume like you know the yellow pages is a good example or like when reached local I don’t even think that’s a thing anymore but it used to be that they go they have like a zillion customers but they are doing the cookie cutter yeah 299 a month will do your SEO and what do I get from it all right now on the sales rep and just sign up it’s a great deal
Greg Owens 25:41
a little granular with this because this is certainly something that we were you know we’re we’re doing mostly yeah we’re doing it all in house Katrina is in charge of it within our company you know and we have we still have like it’s it blows me away as much money as I might spend on like Facebook or next door or Google you know in that way. And postcards right we still actually do poker cards right for the residential side commercial is a little bit different a little bit more targeted and but so but what blows me away is like how much it is our job science and our bands right? And we started playing around with using call rail right because I really wanted to start seeing what in call rail is for people out there that don’t know what it is it’s like a you can get a phone a dedicated phone number for like this marketing stream this marketing direction and we can start this at least has some quantifiable information but still challenging because you know there’s still a lot of times a match at all Yeah, or go ahead and Katrina you know,
Katrina Stephenson 26:49
well the most difficult thing about it I found the like the number one downfall with that is it confuses our customers and our potential customers are like which number am I calling? Like, that’s their biggest and you would be surprised how many people say that when they call the call rail number.
Ben Landers 27:07
Yeah. confuses them. Well, it’s funny when when I started Blue crona was I kind of we, the official was 2008 but I was sort of in beta in 2007 and that was one of the biggest hurdles was people business owners kind of thought of their phone number like it was their social security number like one 800 commercial painter or whatever it’s like you want you want me to have a different nenana this my branded phone number like one 800 Ben’s plumbing or whatever it’s like no, no, no one not gonna have another you know, phone number and, and you know, we were in Gaithersburg, Maryland, that’s where our headquarters was. So for me to go around to people and say this tiny little company in Gaithersburg, Maryland we are doing something that has all this value but it involves you kind of thinking about things differently like more than one phone number multiple websites websites filled with informative content that yes your employees your prospects could use to do it on their own you know and but they’re not going to who wants to do it on them you know they’re so all these different things that you know if I let the only regret that I have and I think back to the whole journey is like I was very doubtful because you know again customers but that to phone numbers that’s not and and yeah I would say like look at all look at all the benefits that comes from it. And this is what we’ve done it at this company that I used to work for that or that or that but I still could have been even more like I was I would doubt when I would leave those if I got rejected I would leave and be like gosh maybe they’re right you know maybe you shouldn’t have that’d be confusing
Greg Owens 28:48
How many do cuz this might be fun for Katrina to hear how many like within your customers how many phone numbers do they have
Ben Landers 28:58
I mean a decent like a $5 million company might effectively have hundreds of track phone lines right now because will will even track what’s called we do session based tracking which means like we can tell you which page of your website the person was on when they call and to do that if you you know if you’re trying to get at that level not everyone does but if you’re trying to get at that level you know the phone numbers changing during the same visit now what’s interesting too
Greg Owens 29:28
that that really confused me a little bit but really confused Katrina you know Yeah, yeah, this this was walk us through that.
Ben Landers 29:35
Well also you know, so again what and and I’ll also say at this point, you know, we have a call 110 employees and and they’re, they love pointing out when I say something that’s wrong, right like and that’s not the way it works at all right? So this might be one of those examples like maybe it’s maybe it’s not different phone numbers on that on the different pages but
Katrina Stephenson 29:57
that caveat Yeah,
Ben Landers 29:59
yeah. But But the bottom line is that to Katrina’s point. You know, I think there is a, there’s one sort of, I don’t know that it’s necessarily generational. But there’s one type of person that doesn’t even like you call the number 11 look like, I couldn’t even tell you I know my wife’s phone number, right on my phone, but barely, because I just say call back, you know, or just click her name? Or how long anyone’s phone?
Greg Owens 30:27
I don’t know anybody? I don’t know, I don’t know, company’s phone numbers because I incorrect, right? But use my email id and click the button that says phone call them.
Ben Landers 30:36
That’s right. That’s right. So so there’s that group. And then there’s the group that associates the phone number, there’s a trust component, right? Where?
Katrina Stephenson 30:44
Totally, you’re totally right. When you said generational, you had me right there, because it’s totally the older generation being like, which is it sets the tone? Or when we talk because they’re like, is this even McCarthy Painting? Like,
Ben Landers 30:58
yeah, yeah, you are? Yeah, I mean, it’s also especially true where, like, if they’re making a decision, and they’re choosing you, and it’s like, I want to know, something goes wrong. I’m calling Greg, you know, like, and? And is Greg in like, 16 different locations where I’m never going to be able to find them? Or is there like the bat phone that goes to Greg, you know, because that’s what I want, you know, and I’m just picturing some of our clients, like on a rotary phone, you know, why is this different? I think one point, I had a Blackberry, this is, again, years ago, I’m kind of dating myself, but I remember, we had a client where they had a new, you know, it’s like, like property management, you spelled it out. And I went to call the number on my, on my Blackberry, or whatever device I had at the time and you could no longer figure out which number corresponds with which letter so I had a picture of old school like, okay, when ABC that’s one of it, and like, I had to kind of do that and then I told the client, I’m like, you got to move away from that, because all these digital devices, no one under x age is going to remember how to, you know how to do that. But the one thing I don’t want to lose in this whole in this whole kind of this whole segment is a big thing for us is is of course, like being objective and data driven. And the one thing you always need to think about is any decision you make for your business there’s going to be some percentage of your customers prospects, etc. employees that have an issue with it. And it just comes down to what’s the benefit who’s going to be upset by it or what are we going to lose by doing it and then we make the decision because yeah, yeah, if you have a phone number if someone writes down the track phone number the the phone line that you’re using for a test on Google and then you months later you you let that number go and and have like a, you know, you’re the main Google number or whatever, and they call it you know, for some time period, you can have that number routing, that this number is no longer in use. we’re transferring you to McCarthy but um, but yeah, there is always that risk and you just have to sit there and say, is it worth it? And I would say that that knowing what marketing investments are actually putting dollars in the business’s pocket you know, is worth like when my grandma calls and slide now I don’t understand why this is not the phone number that I have on the refrigerator. That’s exactly what you would say I have a magnet on the refrigerator in this number is different. Did you sell the company? Like No, no, we have lots of phone numbers.
Greg Owens 33:51
It’s so true. And I tried to remind our team that you know, for some reason, the 1% of criticism, right 1% of all our clients all the work we do right is this sort of like you know a little bit out there a little bit on you know, spectrum something like that. And and and but they’re the ones that get a tremendous amount of attention, right? Yeah,
Katrina Stephenson 34:13
totally true and it is like a 1% problem and we’re very grateful for my grandma’s
Ben Landers 34:19
Yeah. Passed away so I say that I’m like, sorry.
Greg Owens 34:28
I told my mom like a kit, please don’t make any more decisions with contractors before talking to Yeah, yeah. And sold a few things that I’m like, Yeah,
Ben Landers 34:40
well, I guess I’m just I don’t want to I again, I’ll take this wherever, wherever, you know, wherever you want to go with it. But you know, when we were we were introduced by john and I have been talking to john about, you know, I see lots of our competitors and frenemies and stuff. You know, when the pandemic hit You know, sort of doing the doing the podcast thing or kind of these zoom interviews and you know, and I thought, Man, this is a really great way to connect with prospects with partners with with business acquaintances and all that kind of thing. And, and I sort of kicking myself I had I felt like I had enough going on that I didn’t, you know, didn’t jump on that and and i would say you got you have to be in the I would say, probably super forward thinking universe someone in the contracting space. I know there are folks doing it, you know, having podcasts and creating content like this, but not like marketers or you know, the velvet the whole self help industry. So what what prompted you to, to start it and how’s it going?
Greg Owens 35:48
Yeah, I mean, in that in, and for those of you out there John Corcoran owns What’s the difference? Five, Rise25 Rise25 my brain sometimes, man. And so he and I shared a ride. We’re both in eco entrepreneurs organization. Okay, that’s right. I remember that. And we went to a meeting together and I was riding with him. And I mean, of course, I, I, I’ve watched like Gary Vee and different people talking about this. And I was I was like, that’s a such a great idea. I get it, I get it from them. I mean, I was a little bit like, in this camp of, like, who’s really gonna listen to this kind of a podcast, right? And John’s like, Greg, no, that’s not the point. Right? demands it’s gonna it’s a small niche, right? We’re talking too small, a small niche of the entire we’re not going to be Joe Rogan out there right? Ever. And, and that’s okay. Because within this niche, we get to build relationships over that having these conversations right. And rather than me getting in a car and driving out to a facility and meeting somebody and just spending a little bit of time kind of chatting with them, it’s really highlighting what they do how they got there and what they’ve learned and at the same time, I learned a bunch of things along the way right and so that’s been really super beneficial and so I pulled the trigger on this before COVID but during COVID it turned out to be perfect because I had more I had more time right and at first I was hoping like somebody within my company could do it and but John convinced me that no it needed to be me and and and it took a little bit Katrina knows this because she was the one trying to find people to be on it to get number one person right because they’re gonna search it and be like wait a minute, there’s nothing on this podcast like how am i right that took some time so once we built up and we got more and more notoriety let’s say within this industry people can go and they can see there’s like 50 people that have been through it been on the podcast and they can listen to it and they can see what it’s about that kind of thing then it’s easy it’s become easier to get people I I’m a lot like you and what you were saying earlier about not being an extrovert right? I mean, I get my energy from doing things on my own right and and until there’s a little bit of a what I don’t look forward to doing having the conversations like it’s when it’s in my calendar I’m like, oh, man, I got to be in a good spot I need to be set up I need to you know, be ready to be thinking about this whole process, but every single time afterwards and Katrina I think says this condone this too is is it’s it’s been a great opportunity to meet somebody and talk to them and find out what makes them tick.