Welcome to the Painter Marketing Mastermind Podcast. The show was created to help painting company owners build a thriving painting business that does well over one million and annual revenue. I’m your host, Brandon Pierpont, founder of Painter Marketing Pros and creator of the popular PCA educational series, Learn, Do, Grow Marketing for Painters. In each episode, I’ll be sharing proven tips, strategies and processes from leading experts in the industry on how they found success in their painting business. We will be interviewing owners of the most successful painting companies in North America and learning from their experiences.

In this series titled ZKS Words of Wisdom, Zach Kenny of ZK painting will be discussing how he has overcome mistakes, best practices for serving high end clientele and social media marketing greatness.

In episode one, Zach discussed the many failures and subsequent learnings and adaptations he has had to make on his journey to over $3 million per year in revenue. In episode two, Zach dove into how to best serve high end customers, given their somewhat unique needs and expectations in this episode. Episode three and the final episode, Zach will cover his keys to social media marketing greatness and how your painting company can begin implementing these tactics today. If you want to ask Zach questions related to anything in this podcast series, you can do so in our exclusive painter marketing mastermind podcast on Facebook.

Just search for Painter Mary mastermind podcast form on Facebook and request to join the group or type in the URL facebook dot com forward slash groups forward slash painter. Marketing mastermind. Again that URL is facebook dot com forward slash groups forward slash painter. Marketing mastermind. There you can ask Zach questions directly by tagging him with your question. So you can see how anything discussed here applies to a particular painting company. What’s going on Zach? Hey Brandon, how are you doing? Well, brother episode three. The final of the trifecta, excited for this one.

Social media marketing. I think it’s something you like a little bit, a little bit passionate about it. You could say that, talk to us about social media marketing greatness however you want to start. Yeah, I mean, I think uh I’m pretty passionate about it because it’s changed my life. Um and my business and I was very anti uh social media before. So I think anytime you sort of have had AAA history of being on one side, having your mi mind changed and then having your mind changed, pay off the way that it has.

Um I’m a passionate person generally, but it’s pretty easy to be passionate about it. Um because of just the results are there, you know. Um So yeah, I mean, I think I started social media, my ex was like, you should start social media and Instagram account and I was like, why would I wanna do that? Um I started it and it’s, it was a game. I played the game. I tried to gain followers, likes whatever, um made a million mistakes. I had no work and no following.

So you could really like, try a lot of stuff. Um And so I was able to really figure out uh through trial and error, what worked and what didn’t. Um And I think at this point now I have a pretty sound understanding of, of social media marketing organically. Um I, I’ve not, we don’t pay for ads. So I don’t really, that that’s a whole world that’s, there’s experts in that. Um And it’s a, it’s a great way of, of very predictably generating leads from what I understand.

Um But it’s not my world. Um It’s, people are far better than that than me. And so I, I’ve, my success has come from the organic slow um build and it’s been an ex exponential growth curve that way. It’s, it’s been uh the, the cost was my time. And uh I think I’m, I’ve taught a number of people, I’ve built a number of businesses, social medias. I consult with people now on building their plan. I think that it’s something that can be done by anybody. Um like all business and in all marketing, like uh start by being especially I think social media, organic, social media is, I mean, you have to be the real deal to start like first things first you have to have a great product.

Um Not, you don’t have to have a great product, but man, does it help if you have a great product? Um And I think I was very much of a marketing for bad products so that they could sell. And businesses had marketing businesses that did marketing, especially in the painting world or businesses that didn’t do great paint jobs, but ran a business, understood marketing and marketing was a hack to get crappy paint jobs sold. That’s what I thought because if you were just really good, you would just always have a bunch of work. Exactly.

I was this idealist in business that like, if you build it, they will come. If you have an amazing thing, the world is a bunch of rational computers out there and everyone’s just gonna obviously do what’s rational, right? This is the best value. Duh. This guy is the best for all these reasons and like the world would find me. No, I’m sorry. But if you’re an amazing painter and you have, or you have an amazing business, uh not doing marketing is not the answer. Uh I think a lot of guys, I was one of them was very proud to say I was only referrals, man.

I’m, I’m referral. Only love to say that man. That is some 20 years, you know how many zero? And I was that guy. That’s why I can make fun of that guy because I was that guy. And if you are that guy message me, I will challenge you all day long that it’s not the way to go and I have enough data to, to win that argument in a very sound way and, and please, I would love to be challenged. But uh we talked about this in past episodes.

I’m very passionate about a very simple econo microeconomics equation, the supply and demand curve and you can look it up and the supply and demand curve are two things and where they match where they cross, that’s your price. But when the demand side increases, the price goes up, right? The same supply, the demand curve goes up, the price goes up, right? So we want to always be increasing demand. I don’t care. Don’t anyone who says I’m so busy or I’m too busy doesn’t understand business and doesn’t understand supply and demand and isn’t you?

They’re not raising their prices. There’s a simple way we can reduce our overwhelming the the overwhelm in our business. It’s raise your prices, you get some more nose, get comfortable with nose. I had to get comfortable with no. Um And I think that that’s really when you’re a painter like, I was for so many years I didn’t study business until the last five years. And it’s like when you study business it’s like, yeah, that, no business in the world was sad that they had too many people who wanted to buy from them because you couldn’t raise your prices.

But I’ll talk to painters who were like, oh, good. I could never, I could never do social media. I don’t want to do social media marketing. I, I’m so busy as it is. Well, the basic supply and demand curve, it’s a, it’s a law. This is not something that’s like I’m making this up. And if the demand increases and supply stays the same, you can raise your prices and still every and it all works out. Right. So I think that the big thing is like you wanna raise your prices 20%.

Well, you’re gonna need a greater demand or you may be so low that you raised 153% and nothing changes. Well, then you were just leaving 20% on the table. But the game of business is to charge the most amount of money that people will pay and smile in my opinion. Right. We’re trying to get people, we’re trying to, to, to make a gr great living. We’re not nonprofits, we’re not charities. There are people who need our charity, right? They are not people who can afford paint job. If you could afford to pay someone to paint your house.

You’re not someone that needs my charity. And so my job is to charge the most amount that you will smile and tell your friends that guy was amazing and I wanna hire him again. Right? And I think uh the demand side of the equation is something that um Rick Holtz was on my podcast years ago and he said my, my dad’s marketing strategy was praying for the phone to ring. and I love that. Like, I think that’s, that was my strategy forever. I was just like, I hope the phone rings like that was marketing um prayer and, and you know, believe whatever you want to believe in prayer.

Like I, I’ll tell you right now, there are a lot better marketing strategies than prayer. Um So, yeah, I, I think social media marketing is one of those things that I think I hear a lot of people give me push back on, especially established businesses, the businesses, the pe the businesses that would do the best with organic social media are the ones who aren’t doing it. It’s why all the guys who’ve gotten good at or organic social media are all the guys who were young, hungry and desperate and ran small pro and a lot of us ran pretty poor businesses.

But we understood that we didn’t have a lot of resources and, but we had a phone and we figured out social media and then we increased demand. Now, if you were the guy who has a successful painting business who has uh systems and processes and, and all of these things in place. These are the people who need to be using organic social media more than anybody because they can actually capture and harness all of the amazing benefits that come from organic social media. Um We are the hardest part.

So, you know, I’m I’m now, I’m embraced the term. I’m now a social media influencer. II, I love it. I will smile and say I’m an influencer because I, I have no more head trash around it for a very long time. I think influencer has a connotation, whatever. Um but it’s like marketing, if you’re, it, it’s if you’re marketing a great product and marketing is awesome. And if you’re influencing in a, in a way where I stand behind what I my message is and what I’m saying and what I’m doing and I have, I have values around what I do.

I have, I don’t feel bad about calling myself an influencer now I’ve embraced it. Um that took many years. But I think um most influencers in non painting space, they have their hardest part of their job is creating content, right? They have to go make up, I come up with ideas and shoot videos like that is the hard part is like coming up the ideas and shooting the videos. Every painting business is creating content 24 7 or not every day you go to work, your business is creating content.

Just the question is, are you putting a camera on it or not? And so what I figured out how to do is just put a camera on what I was doing that. Simply what I’m doing is a documentary of my company. And I think great social media is authentic, right? All the, all the great big influencers, the large accounts, I invariably they’re authentic, they’re authentically, them, whatever they are, whether it’s authentically fake. Ok. But that’s like, that’s them. Their brand is this and they’re, they’re doing it all day long and authenticity wins.

Humans like real and social media is a world where a lot of people go on there and they fake it, they put on like a fake. Here’s the best of what’s happening. Here’s like, and it, and it, we can all read like this isn’t real, this doesn’t feel right. And so I think a lot of my success has come from just making a documentary of my company. Here’s what we’re doing and honestly the the the big takeaway, like really what great social media does and great marketing, but great social media marketing is it, here’s what it’s like to hire me before you hire me, right?

70% of I’m making this, somebody in some place said that 70% of the sales process is done before the client ever picks up the phone, right? And that’s really what it is is I’m giving people the ability to lay at home in bed and research and learn passively without any interaction with me or my company. What is it like to hire us before you hire us? And, and if you’re the real deal, then that’s a great thing. Right. I want people to know what it’s like to hire my, to work with my company. Right.

And I think one of the big problems that people have when they, when I tell them this and here’s the strategy and here’s what I want you to do is like getting out of the experts head, like when you are in your business and you’ve built your business and you’ve run your business, like you just take a lot of things for granted. You don’t see it from a layperson’s perspective. And the best, the best social media is we’re talking to the layperson, the person who doesn’t know what it’s like to hire a paint contractor or ZK painting.

And so I need to create content and it’s still a struggle. I’m not perfect at it, but I work to create content that speaks to my ideal client and tells them what it’s like to hire me before they hire me. Uh I think really that’s what it boils down to. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. And it’s um this concept of edutainment, you know, people getting educated but entertained at the same time is so big now. So you’re essentially meeting the market where it already is, how it likes to be educated, how it likes to be essentially sold to the super passive sales process.

They’re getting to know you and come to you on, you know, when they’re ready. Uh, is genius. Yeah, it’s, I stumbled upon it out of pure desperation. Um, to be honest, I, I didn’t have anything else to do, so I guess I’ll create content. So the 70 the 70% thing is interesting, you know, 70% of the sales done before the sale. It, there’s so many concepts that are similar to that, you know, there are that people need to know I can trust you before they really want to do business with you, that people need to be touched between five and nine times before they’re comfortable making a major buying decision.

And all these things are sort of phrased differently, but it’s all tied into the fact that they need to trust you really before they’re willing to make a high ticket purchase from you and by you getting out in front of them, that trust is already established before you even start whatever your official sales process may be. You know, which we’ve talked on this podcast, plenty about sales processes, but you’re starting it on the, on the front end, you’re also casting a wider net because it’s also a lead funnel.

So you have this top of top, top of your funnel, you know, which marketing terms, which means all the people who are basically engaging or looking at your company now and you’re educating them, they’re gaining trust in you and now, and they, when, when those people do come into the, again, the funnel or into the sales process a little bit deeper, they’re already more prepositioned to buy because of the way that they came in because they didn’t come in through a paid ad through a, a Google ad through such sponsored.

Oh, well, this is a painting company. I’m looking for a painter. Let’s see what they got. They already know you. And they’re like, man, you know, this guy seems pretty cool. This company seems pretty cool. So they’re, they’re prepositioned your clothes rates probably gonna be better. Like you said, the supply demand curve, the, the wanting to charge the highest price that you can while they’re still happy and they still want to recommend you. You’re probably gonna be able to charge higher prices for people who come in that way and the, the, the lead quality and everything and, and the lead um location from which the lead comes all affects how much you can charge, how much profit you can make per customer.

There’s a lot that goes into what you’re doing, man. Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. So let’s talk about, you know, backing up, you, you weren’t doing it and then you started doing it because you were desperate. You had a phone, didn’t have that much money needed to, to consistently generate work. How did you start doing it? How did you learn? Um, so Gary V was, uh my initial influence. Um, he wrote a couple books. It’s been years since I listened to him or read his books, but I, they were good.

I don’t remember what they’re called, but he’s got a couple of books. He has some foundational stuff of like give, give, give um Jab Jab right hook. I think he calls it. Um I just jab jab jab all the time. I just give, give, give, give, give. I I, we don’t have a call to action anywhere on any social media platform I’ve ever like that doesn’t work. I, I just don’t think that’s not the system, right? People if you add value to their life over time will want to give back, right?

People know how to hire how to call you. Let’s not, I mean, put your contact info on your Instagram but like I don’t need to say here’s my phone number. Call me for a free estimate. Like if you want an estimate, you know exactly how to do it. And me saying call me for a free estimate is not gonna induce any new part of the video. They’re just so confused. Like what do I do? I would have used them. I can’t imagine what to do. Are, are you kidding me?

I get bombarded with people all the time. It won’t leave me alone. Like, oh, I, you know, so I think the first thing is like, it is a social media is II, I was lucky enough to, to go to Germany with some big influencers. Um And not, there’s not an influencer that I’ve met yet. Especially these big guys they don’t appear to, but they take this stuff very seriously. They t they take every, if you don’t become a big influencer without uh sorry, I just got a call.

You don’t grow a large following without like seriously knowing what you’re doing. It’s not a fluke. Anytime you see someone with a large following that’s creating their own content um that it’s not a fluke. Um Sorry, I lost you. There you go. Um Yeah, I just lost you were, you were in Germany with these guys? Oh, yeah. And these guys and I’m learning from them about how seriously they take what they’re doing and how much they’re going to iterate and try things and, and get feedback and then try things and get feedback and the, the understanding of a lot of there, there’s kind of two different um le like lenses.

I see social media from and Gary V used to talk about this a lot and, and, and it’s like all of your content needs to either educate or entertain and if it can do both, then that’s the holy grail, right? Um I think the first thing when we look at like when I consult with people, it’s like the first thing is what are we trying to do with social media right now? What is the metric we’re gonna track? Is it revenue? Is it followers? Is it a new employees?

There’s a guy um This company is called Dirt something. Oh man, there’s a, there’s a dude, Aaron Wit, oh it’s called Wit Marketing or something. Aaron Wit on social media on Instagram. This guy is a genius, young kid loves the heavy machinery world and he has built a massive marketing company for heavy machinery, heavy like companies that move dirt that pave roads, huge companies that have never spent a dollar on marketing in the history of their companies because they’re all government contracts, lowest bid. There’s no reason to market, right?

He built a massive marketing company and is growing it crazy doing marketing for these companies and their metric is we need employees. We are companies that are struggling to find people and they’ve hired marketing companies and are doing social media marketing to attract employees, right? So that’s probably more like the commercial world, the commercial world. If you’re a commercial painter, you probably care more about using social media to bring in employees. But the first thing is like, what are we try? What is the metric we’re going to track that we care about at the very, at the the most important.

And I think from there the strategy on social media is gonna change. So I recently was trying to grow my following. I found out I’m an as an influencer. I can sell my influence. My following is valuable. OK? I was like, well, I’m gonna grow, I wanna get to 100,1003 followers. All right. Well, there’s a way to get to grow a following and it, it is not the same as growing revenue, right? I, when I first started, I was trying to go following and I figured out kind of how to do that.

I got to 20 something 1000 followers. I remember somebody was like, why are you doing this? What’s the point? And I was like, yeah, that’s actually, I think about it was like, that’s a really good thing. Like why do I care about having a lot of followers? Um And so I changed my, what I was trying to do, I, I was like, oh, I need, I’m gonna track revenue now. Well, the types of content I was gonna create that were gonna drive revenue are, can be very different than the types of content that’s gonna drive followers, right?

I mean, I, I, during COVID, I started a Tik Tok and in under six months, I had, I had 550,000 followers on tiktok and they make a dollar off of it and I stopped and I think I checked the other day um down to 520,000, I’ve just been losing followers for like two years straight. And it’s like, why am I doing this? What am I doing it for? And that’s gonna drive the strategy. So I, I recently I changed my strategy. I grew following, we grew about 25 30,000 followers in like a month and a half.

I got to 103,000. And then I was at this networking, I was at this big gala meeting all these big time fancy designers and I was like, wait a second, like with this new designer I just met, it’s gonna go look at my social media and they’re gonna go see content that I’ve been putting out that was to drive following follower count. And it’s not necessarily the same content I want this designer to see to educate them about what it’s like to do business with me. And so I’ve changed my f my content now going forward for a while.

I’m changing my content to speak to, to drive revenue and it’s gonna be not a lot of, a lot of this stuff doesn’t get a lot of views. And so, I mean, if you want to grow following you create reels for five weeks straight, you put a reel out every single day, right? The algorithm rewards uh 4 to 6 weeks straight. Unclear exactly what, but about 4 to 6 weeks straight of constant posting every day, we’ll get you to the other side of the algorithm and you will get preferential treatment and that’s the only preferential treatment there is on social media algorithm.

It pretty much from, from what I learned from some people who really know what they’re talking about. Um But you will see if you create content, especially reels, reels last for extended periods of time. If you again, all the content has to be good. You can’t just put out crappy content but still it’s more lean toward volume over quality, to grow a following. But to grow revenue, I care way more about quality over volume, right? I who cares? Mrs Jones, who comes to my page to find out what I’m about?

She doesn’t care. She’s not looking at the dates that I posted, she just sees the last 10 posts. So what do last 10 posts say? Right? So when I, when I talk to people who are starting social media and are looking to grow revenue, I’m we’re gonna say like don’t even do video, right? Video is gonna be way that that’s like two levels up. Too much time, too much energy, too much stress, get out of it. We’re just gonna take some photos, but we’re gonna write really nice captions and we’re gonna speak to our ideal client, we’re gonna educate them.

So that and all we care about is our client today, the early early Instagram stuff, all your revenue is gonna come from strong referrals, right? So Miss Jones hired you from some other marketing source. Who knows what she loved you. She thought you were like, oh, follow us on Instagram. You can follow along with your project Miss Jones is at a dinner party. She’s telling Miss Johnson about how awesome it was. And in the past maybe you get a business card and then they forget about you next week.

But she goes, hey, let me show you the Instagram post of my project, Miss Johnson’s like, oh, this is cool. They have a good bio. Everything’s very, I don’t want to forget about this. I’m having a dinner party. I’m having fun. I follow next week. She completely forgets about you. But then your post comes up and then your post comes up and your post comes up and 34, like what you said, 5 to 0003 touch points, you know, 5 months later you get a call from Mrs Johnson and when you get this call from Mrs Johnson, this is not, yeah, I’m looking for painters.

It’s, hi Zach. I’ve been following you. I hope you don’t mind. I’ve been stalking you. I really love your work. Would you mind coming over and looking at my project? That’s, that’s really what we care about in early stage revenue based social media, organic, social media marketing. It’s a really great portfolio and insight into what it’s like to hire you. So we’re not just gonna take pretty pictures and say another one in the books. II, I don’t like what? No, I’m gonna tell the client, I’m gonna do a description of like client came to me.

They really didn’t like their brick. We brought him a few different options. We have a couple, you know, we couple different coding systems. We landed on this, we use this product and it turned out like this and it’s gonna last this long. All right. That’s a tell me what happened in this picture. And the hard part is as a, as a, as an expert in what we do. How do we tell me what happened in this picture that speaks to a layperson? What do they care about?

Well, think about your sales process. What are the, what are the questions clients ask you answer those questions through your posts, right? They’re boring, those answering those sales que the questions in the sales process through posts is not gonna get you very much likes and follows. It’s gonna be very boring content. You’re gonna get very low likes. If you look at some of my posts, they could perform like, I mean viral if, if you take out the viral content, but with the viral content, it’s hundreds and thousands of times worse performance.

If you take away the viral stuff, there’s still an order of magnitude, at least difference between some of my content. And that’s because a it’s talking to the masses. The other stuff is talking to my ideal client. So I think you only need to understand when you’re creating content. Who are you creating it for and why, how important is it? So, you know, people have this idea, this concern that they need to have a certain minimum number of followers of their page. Um you know, their profile, how important is it to have a certain minimum before I guess you get started with this, with this approach that you’re talking about right now?

Or is that just a completely irrelevant? It’s I think it’s irrelevant. I’ve I coached up a couple of 50 year old dudes started their Instagram account. They were 1500 followers and sold over half a million from Instagram. Um I think what’s important is like there’s no 21500 posts, the 22.5st 210 posts, there’s no 215 posts that we could put out that are gonna change. They’re gonna do much, right? You can’t, you just because you do 2100 amazing posts to start your feed. There’s the whole thing of what we’re trying to do here is build trust and like 210 posts is not gonna build trust.

And, and on Instagram today, if you see an account with 503 posts, you’re like, where is this a Russian bot like what’s going on? Right? So I, I, what I would say to people who are starting is like, you’ve got to build a framework. That’s what I’m mostly I work with people is like build a framework. Uh uh, here’s what we’re gonna post, how we’re gonna post who we’re gonna post it to. Let’s really hammer this out and then you’re gonna start posting and you’re gonna suck, but no one’s really paying attention.

It’s fine. And like you’re gonna get 250 posts, let’s say enough where, like you scroll a couple times and you, you, you don’t get to the bottom. I don’t know what that number is. You’re gonna have a great bio. That’s very like bullet points. Here’s what makes this company awesome. And it’s like, ok, now, now we have something, we have a base now where like if Miss Jones sends this to Miss Johnson, she’s gonna go through this and be like, yeah, this is a company, right? There’s no red flag, it’s a company, it’s real, they’re real people.

And I think you can’t underestimate consistency over time in, in, I mean, in all of life, let’s just say like, that’s just a thing that I’ve, as I’ve grown older, consistency over time is the secret to life like that is it. There’s no no great success ever happened from some one big massive thing, right? It’s consistent effort over time and that’s what social media pays off. But so I think the thing that people struggle with is like, what I try to help people with and at this point if you don’t have it, I mean, shame on you.

But like it’s faith this stuff will work like you have to have faith this is gonna work and it’s gonna be worth your effort. You can’t way too many people try to hire this out. I, I’ve, if you’re not paying 2000-K a month, plus you don’t hire this out, but it’s not something that you can get results, paying someone $2100 a month to do. You’ll get results in that you paid someone to make posts for you, but the results of sales won’t be there, right? So, I it’s consistency over time having faith that this is actually gonna pay off and then putting in real effort and iterating and getting better.

And to you, go ahead. Oh I was, I, I was just gonna say you, you consult people for this. Yes, this is a business that you have. Yes, I was, I almost started a my second social media marketing company. I was a partner in one and sold my steak years ago. Um And I, I was going to start a second one where we’re gonna be a full service, do all the work for you. Um But again, 10-K minimum would be what we would have to charge. I’d have to hire a bunch of videographers, editors, all these things.

It was like, I don’t have the bandwidth for any of these things, but I’ve, I, I can consult and give a 50,000 ft view of like, let me build a plan for you on how to do this yourself and that is much more cost effective and it brings much better results. Um How can people or how should people contact you if they’re interested? You can send me ad M you could send me a message in the, in the group. Um you know, and, and DD MS on Instagram are the best. Yep.

Um And I, I think there’s a thing that like, it’s hard to see this, It’s, this is such a new and novel way of marketing that like most books you read about marketing are gonna fly in the face of everything that’s brought me success, right? The calls to action, the whatever this, like it’s just, it’s different. This is a, a how do we make a documentary of ourselves and say the right things in the right ways that gets the certain results that we’re after and a, a big part of what I have learned to do and what I consult and coach people on is like, how do we make this effective with the least amount of effort possible?

Like I have to run a painting business. I don’t have time to do full time social media for my company. So how do I with the least amount of effort, get the best results? And the number one thing is like, you have to have a framework if you are just shooting off the cuff today, what are you gonna post? It’s so mentally draining. It’s it’s, it can be de demoralizing. Honestly. It can overwhelm people, people start, they don’t get results and then they stop and they’re like, oh, I just wanna hire somebody.

Well, hire me. I will teach you how to do this in a way that’s actually reproducible and gets real results. It’s, it’s really not rocket science. It’s just not common knowledge and you kind of briefly go into this idea of a framework because some people might not really understand what you’re talking about with that. Yeah. So it, it, let’s let’s start with, if you don’t have a framework every day you wake up and you’re like, I have an infinite number of things I could post about, right?

And, and we don’t do well with large like millions of options, right? Our human brain doesn’t. So I what I what we a framework is going to put guardrails on your content, right? Because a also that not having a framework leads to lack of consistency in posting which people don’t like and it’s not gonna drive results, right? It’s like the person who shows up and every time you meet with them, they’re like in a different mood and mindset and they’re like, they’re like, they’re, they’re all over the place, they’re erratic.

You don’t trust people who are erratic, it’s just like subconscious. We also don’t trust social media that’s erratic, right? When you start to see people who are posting like one type of content and like one type of messaging and voice and then like another and then another and another and it’s like this, what is this? This is all over the place. I can’t even put my finger on who is this person? And what are they like? I don’t get it. But the more you can be like in under a minute you could put your finger on exactly what this company is and try and be like, yeah, the better.

And that’s really what we’re trying to do is like capture attention quickly and go because the only reason anybody follows anybody today is because of FOMO and then like it, you gotta go like, OK, this is such a, well, it’s just like your elevator pitch, like just like any sales process. Like if you can’t, if you have 30 seconds to talk to somebody at a business networking event, you better be able to like pitch your company. Well, right? Or you’re gonna watch their attention like cross the room and think about something else.

It’s the same with social media. You, you have to be able to just like bang bang bang. Here’s what I am, here’s what I stand for. So the framework is what puts the guardrails on all of these things. Um invariably all great businesses like just business in general have competitive advantage is derived from tradeoffs, right. Tradeoffs are the secret to all business. If you’re all things to all people, you’ll never make any money. But when you start to make tradeoffs and serve certain people better than other people, that’s where great businesses are built and understanding Michael Porter, I talk about it a lot.

It’s the best business book I’ve ever read. Uh I highly recommend it. Uh It’s not an easy thing to read and it’s taken me many times to read it. But as you understand where competitive advantage comes in, in the business model, um the marketing is then just like beating the drum of your business model. And so oftentimes this is through marketing is when we start to like, find out people don’t have a great business model, like anyone who needs a paint job. Well, that’s not, I’ll tell you, II I doubt that’s gonna be a very profitable painting company if your client is anyone who needs a paint job.

Um And so figuring out who are you talking to? What are you saying and why? And then how will you go about doing that and doing thought experiments? And like in the beginning, you’re gonna refer back to your framework quite a bit and it’s gonna like guide your thinking and it’s gonna guide your posting. But eventually the framework becomes second nature and you’re like living your life. I’m going to job sites and I’m like, oh, that thing I just saw happening is fits in my framework as one of the things that we wanna talk about.

Oh, I’m gonna make a post about that. But if one day we post about our dog or our favorite football team and then the next day we’re painting about posting about a project, a a and then the next day we’re posting about like roofing. It’s like what the what is this like? We have to have clear messaging and, and without a clear framework of what am I gonna say? It’s like, it depends on what mood I’m in and man go look at all, watch how many social medias are gonna be like, wow, you can just tell this guy was in the mood to post about this today and yet he’s in the mood to post about this now and he’s just like, it’s like based off of their mood of consciousness.

Yeah, whatever you feel like, yeah, so the this and this goes so deep to this framework because I mean, you’re talking about a company’s really fundamental mission, their values who they serve, right? That’s one piece of it because if you try to be all things to all people, then you’re basically nothing to, to anybody. But then then OK, so, you know, you serve, obviously, you serve super high client clientele, you’re very focused on the quality of the craft. Um someone else might, you know, be more middle of the road and they’re focused on efficiency and customer communication.

That’s really what they’re focused on whatever. Um But when you have that dialed in which a lot of people don’t. So a lot of people listening, you know, if, if you ask yourself who you’re serving, if anyone needs a paint job, you already have a problem. But once you have that dial in, then you have to choose how you’re gonna portray yourself and what your own. It’s your ego, but almost your alter ego. What, what is your public persona? What, what is your public persona? Does it involve your dog or does it not?

Do you do any like personal stuff or do you not? Right? Because you’re saying you don’t wanna one day you want to take a picture of your dog or a picture of this or that? And then the next day you wanna, I mean, God forbid this would be a disaster but go rant about something, you know, have a good time. You don’t want to do that. Have a good time. Yeah. The more that’s your brand unless it’s your brand, right? Unless that’s your brand. But the thing I see the worst, I’ll tell you I have a pet peeve when people show their injuries, when, when painters show their injuries on social media.

And I, I want to know the guy might fall off the ladder at my house. Then I wanna hire my uh I don’t, I don’t need to see your bloody thumb ever. I, I didn’t sign up for this and the second you show me your bloody thumb I’ll, I’m unfollowing. You know, it, it, it’s just like understanding why are people following you. And honestly, I, I see a lot of people on social media who are doing it for themselves, they are posting because it’s what they want to do and it feels good to post about the shit that they like cool.

But if, if that means when you came to me and we consulted and you were like, my metric is I wanna feel good about, I want to feel good. Feel good. All right. Well, you don’t need me post whatever you want every single minute. That’s, that’s cool. Right? But like our marketing is not about what makes us feel good, it’s about what gets the results that we’re after. And so yeah, what, what do you think about that? You know, because this is something that comes up, this personal versus professional and, and sometimes people have been, you know, posting stuff about their company, especially earlier on through their personal account.

They say, well, do I need a professional account or sometimes I like to share personal stuff in their professional. How do you view that? It’s 100% selfish, foolish and not the way to go, right? It’s all it feels good. You, you need a business account and treat it like a business and if you are posting political, confrontational in any way, types of product, types of stuff. Um II I just, how is that helping drive sales. I, I, it’s just when I show up to a client’s house, I am whatever political leaning that they are.

I don’t say I felt like I lie but, like, oh, yeah. Yeah, totally. Oh, definitely. I, you mirror people in the sales process, whatever, you know. Like, why would I write off half of the country one way or another? That’s a, doesn’t seem like a great business model. Yeah. Um, yeah, I just think that people need to take it seriously. This is a very, very lucrative and very powerful tool. It’s a megaphone. Be careful. What are you putting on your megaphone? Right. And I think the best social media people are at a political, yeah.

Same with the best businesses. Except for a very few, few businesses who really can make a living by serving one group, one political group. Ok. Well, I, I mean, it would be a hard argument to make that a painting business is better off by alienating half the population. Yeah, because you’re unlikely to, to have the other half hire you just because of your political leaning. Exactly. It’s not gonna drive much like black rifle coffee. I get it. Right. That’s, that, that worked out really well for them.

I think that’s an example of like the opposite where, like, they kind of took a lens. I don’t know a lot about them but, like, they kind of took like a, a side and we’re like, especially it was an untapped market. Like Starbucks is pretty one leaning, one side. Black Rifle coffee was like, we’re gonna go the other side. There’s a vacuum and they crushed it. Yeah. Like, there’s not a painting company who’s dominating your market because they have one political leaning or another. So, like, it’s not, I don’t, I think it’s just crazy.

I think it’s all self serving to feel good and if that’s why you’re creating social media content, great, moving on. But why are we doing it? It has to be the first question. Sure. So you are serving this ultra high end clientele, you know, w which some people would say maybe lends itself especially well to social media organic um content. I know Juan Vasquez, Jose Hernandez illusions painting. They’ve, they serve very high in clientele. Uh They are also have done well with social media organic. Do you think that it is more difficult to do it if you are, let’s say, doing kind of more middle of the road like you get in, you provide affordable quality paint projects and you move.

Yeah, it, it’s, it’s no, that’s a big myth that I think people just now. Is it gonna be more difficult? No. Uh So in, in every way that is complete head trash and there’s no evidence like literally, there’s no evidence that that’s the case because honestly the largest following for social, for paint contractors in the country are middle of the road paint companies if, and, and I challenge anyone to look at the companies. I think it’s like I want, I don’t know the name because I don’t consume much content, but it starts with a P and it might be Pereira or Peralta.

There’s a painter. It’s got couple 100 maybe 0003,000 followers. Um I don’t think the guy would say they’re not doing super high end work. There’s a guy in um is it Thomas? Maybe there’s a guy in Connecticut just banging out exteriors, like just banging them out, rough scrape spot prime, banging them out. Guys got a massive following. It’s not about that. That is some head trash shit but we’re, we’re not talking, I like for most people listening, dude, stop like you’re, you do not need tens of thousands of followers to do millions in revenue.

You just don’t, right. But so if I’m like, let’s take, I’ll, I’ll pick on Paris painting because I haven’t followed them on Instagram. But like they’re a massive company and their Instagram. I would, I would just, I would be shocked if he told me that their Instagram is driving much revenue. But you know, I, again, I’ve, I’ve not looked at their social media lately and I’ve not talked to Jason about this, but he’s, I love Jason. He’s one of my favorite people and I feel like I can pick on him a little bit this way because he, I would guess their average job size is probably five or $6000.

They’re banging out exteriors. Their, their competitive advantage has nothing to do with like the quality of the painting or the aesthetics of the painting. I, I’m guessing again, I’m not gonna speak for him, but like, I doubt that that’s what they’re hanging their hat on. But man, are they gonna be fast turnaround? They’re gonna have a, a amazing, like customer service experience. They’re gonna have quality control. They’re gonna have a bunch of business structures in place that are wild like God to do the number of paint jobs they do, they just have their shit dialed in.

Well, that’s why people are hiring, buying from them. So their social media content should just be all stuff that highlights that right? That is gonna drive revenue. But man, that’s boring content to the most to the average person. So you might only have 1500 followers, but those 1500 followers might be all your potential clients in your market because who in Texas is gonna follow Paris painting that’s talking about their sales process or their, their back end or wall or all the things that they do that are really special that are only special to the person who’s gonna hire them. Yeah.

But man, that stuff would drive revenue, the referrals, that strong curl we talked about. That’s, that would drive revenue. Yeah, like like showing why the project went well or why they were able to do what an interesting point because I think so often painting company owners are thinking the only kinds of content they can put out is their work, you know, the before, after whatever they’re doing, maybe video, the guys. Um But you’re essentially saying, go show how the sausage is made. Hey, how can, how are we able to keep your ass?

How are we able to get it done in a timely manner when we’re completing on this project? Well, we actually have this CRM system that our team developed in house called Wall and, and do like a little real show on that. Like this is how we keep everything straight. This is how the sausage is made. There’s no other painting company, at least that I’m aware of that’s gonna put something out like that. You, have you ever seen II? I feel like it’s there. Have you ever seen or can imagine what a Google map with every pin of every job they’ve done would look like I would be posting that every week if I was him.

Are you kidding me? He’s got like thousands of projects they do every year. If they fill up a Google map, you could, you could create out of that. Oh my God. It’s wild and talk about building trust. Talk about putting your on the table like that’s wild that if you were to be able to pull up. Hey, I, I work in this town, here’s, here’s the pin. The picture would just be a screenshot of a Google map with all the pins in the in in an area and they could do it.

They would literally do it town by town by town. Hey, in this town, we did this many projects last year. How much trust does that build? This is the thing that like this is why I think I have why I consult and I don’t do because I can see things in that way of like this is just basic marketing. Why do your client hire you? Well, educate them in that and all of us if we have a successful business are doing something special. So, yeah, I, I get a lot of people who are like, and sorry, Jason, if I’ve offended you in any way, you know, I love you.

Um And, and he, they run such an amazing business that again, like I was saying, they’re one of those businesses who probably don’t, they don’t feel like they need organic social media because they have this system and reproduce what they’re probably one of their big problems is not leads. I don’t know. I’m just guessing, but like production may become more, I don’t know. But like we don’t talk about that. We could talk about any painting company if you are, if you are working in a town and you have done X number of products in that town, show that off Right.

And there’s just so many creative ways to highlight this stuff. Like I just came up with that on top of my head, there’s, there’s a millions of ways to highlight and that’s, that’s where it takes a little bit of creativity. But if you don’t have guard rails, it’s impossible to be creative. Right. There’s too many options. Your creativity has no guard rails. You need some guard rails. That’s what the framework is. Um Yeah, there’s a um there’s a term called cognitive dissonance um for people listening. So when you, when you present your company, let’s say one way and then your sales process is may be different and then the estimator shows up is there and you, you’ve confused people, people immediately lose trust any trust that you’ve built because they come to dissonance.

Mean means you don’t seem consistent like like that, like you said, with the people showing up in different moods, we just immediately are, are kind of on edge red flags up like we don’t trust this person, cognitive distance with a company’s image, brand messaging uh form of communication, don’t trust them. So that’s where the the guardrails. If you’re shooting from the hip all the time with whatever you feel that day, you’re not building any kind of whatsoever because you look super erratic and no one wants to hire a painting company that’s erratic for what they are hoping will be a quality controlled project that goes according to plan and if anything does happen, it gets rectified immediately.

It’s not a shoot from the hip. Well, this will be interesting. Hey, I’m gonna sign you up. You know, I want you to paint the house. I just kind of want to see what happens. Let’s just see what happens. You don’t wanna, let’s just see what happens. Kind of, kind of image of your company. Yeah, I think every, it’s, every business has something that there, there’s a reason that people buy from every business. And it’s if you don’t understand why that is, you should do some work and ask all your best clients.

But once you do, then you need to start beating the drum and that’s so that’s the next part is sort of like we need to beat the drum of these, this message, right? We cannot say it one time people have no attention span on social media. They’re in their most basic primitive animal states just scrolling, right? Scrolling like that. Everyone’s so self absorbed like, dude, no one’s paying attention to you. So you have to say the same things many, many times. That’s what I mean, like from Paris, I’m, I’m putting that picture up of the pins every other week because you have new followers.

You have people who knew now they’re paying attention to you when, before they weren’t thinking about a paint job and then they’re like, oh, you know what, I kind of want to paint something and then they start paying attention more to your content through a new lens. You never know. But like, the problem with social media is like, we know we’re so hyper aware of what we’re putting out there. We know every word I know every, I used to know every post I’ve made every word I’ve said.

And you’re like, well, no, I’ve said that. Check it, check the box. No, they all already looked at that and read that like 2.5 months ago. There’s no, it would be redundant to put it up again. Exactly. No, no, no. That, that’s just, it’s the same challenge of, I am an expert and I don’t see my company through a layperson’s perspective. It’s like, oh, I’m such an expert. I said it one time and obviously everybody heard it. No, you gotta beat the drum for months, years. Whatever it is, it, it’s, it, it is different.

It’s not normal. It’s not intuitive. I think a lot of what the great stuff I found on social media is not necessarily intuitive. Let’s talk about this timeline. So for people who are just getting started out and we all want instant gratification, right? It’s big in the culture. You know, I think a lot of reasons entrepreneurs, businesses fail is because they quit too early. Like you said, stay in the game long enough and you’ll be amazed. But how long should somebody expect it to take let’s just say from ground zero till they start actually getting a return on this investment of time.

I would tell, I would tell everybody to give, to commit to a year of doing it six or even six months. Um within, within, I would say a few months, you’re probably gonna get a little bit of positive feedback. Um If you’re doing anything right. And you’re like iterating, you’re not just like doing it. Oh, like one way forever. And like, I think way too many people to go for a month or two of doing this don’t get results and stop. Yeah, I think it, I think a year is generally for most things, the, the timeline.

I remember it was like two years ago. I, I watched a video was gay Gary Vanner Chuck also and I think it was about cold calling or something and, and some lady had, had basically said it’s not working, doesn’t work. And he asked, how long have you been doing it? And it was not, I mean, it was a respectable time. I it was three months. So she said three months, he then said I can’t say but is fucku and I was like, that seems aggressive. But he said until you’ve been doing something for at least a year I don’t want to hear about.

So that was interesting. People just think it’s going to happen way quicker than it’s typically going to happen, especially today. It’s, we I mean, he coined, I, I don’t know that he coined it but I heard it from him. We are in an attention economy, right? Your attention, a human’s intent, uh attention is the most valuable thing that they have. That’s what all of our data, all of our also social media is billion dollar companies because they were able to capture our attention and then sell it like it’s all about attention and if you don’t keep doing things and, and iterating and like first of all, like I said, it has to, you have to start with faith, you have to believe you can do this if you don’t believe it’s a four minute mile.

If you don’t believe it’s possible. Yeah, you’ll never freaking run it. No kidding. It didn’t work. You didn’t actually believe it. I think I see a lot of people who like go through the motions of doing social media or I know I’m supposed to, I’ve been to conferences. Everybody says it. I know it’s supposed to. So I’ve kind of went through it and it didn’t work. I like, yeah, man, I think of course it’s not gonna work. You didn’t think it could. I, I guarantee anybody there’s no one out there that this wouldn’t work for.

It’s basic business and saying here’s what it is to hire me. I don’t care who it is. What’s your metric? I guarantee you. I come up with 10 reasons why your head trash is head trash and I challenge anybody. You like, let’s go, send me a message. Let’s, we’ll go at it but there’s just not, I, I’ve yet to come across somewhere where I’m like, yeah, you know what? I don’t think social media is gonna work for you. But man, do people have a million reasons why it won’t?

And, and like right there it’s like situation is different, right? Everyone’s their own unique, unique little snowflake pebble, whatever. And, and there’s a reason why it might work for everyone else but not for them. You don’t know, man. You don’t know. I oh my market, my market, this my sla I can tell you everyone’s got that my market, my market or my desk or my desk. No, no, no, no. This is a, this is universal. I mean, there, there’s cleaning companies, there’s, you name it, there’s a company that’s thriving on social media doing it.

I’m working with a, a hard money lender like the guy loans money to people like no one in his, in his world believes this shit’s gonna work and watch. It’s working. Hey, social media is a megaphone for marketing and all you gotta do is go, what do I want out of this? And now we can reverse engineer a way to get those results. I, I just don’t, it’s just that simple. It’s the most powerful tool. I go to a networking event. I’m gonna meet, I’m gonna meet maybe 15 people.

I’m gonna have real conversations with three I could and it’s gonna take me how many hours I, I used to go to B and I, and it was like, how much time am I spending? And who am I? If I spent that amount of time on social media, you know, how many people I could talk to? It’s exponential and, but it’s different. It’s, it’s uncomfortable. It’s a lot of screaming into a void. It’s a lot of failure. You’re not gonna be good at it right away. Right.

And I think that that’s the hard part for people as they start and then, then they stop because they don’t give it 100%. They, they don’t hire me or someone like me that understands and has proof of this working. I think a lot of times people hire a marketing company to do this and they’re like, the metric is like, did you post three times a week for me? I, I could go right now on social media and tell you every single company that’s paying for their social media.

It’s so obvious because I did this. I ran a company doing this. It, how do I get a person working for a social media marketing company? Probably fresh out of college. How do I get them to write a detailed caption with the voice of my company? It’s hard enough for me to do it. Right. It’s uncomfortable for me. I that takes, so that’s a muscle I have to gain and I know I eat sleep and breathe my company. Ok? So now I’m gonna take, I’m gonna have like, I’m a simple one or two meetings with the marketing company.

I’m gonna tell them here’s what we my company stands for and they’re gonna like all of a sudden be able to just like that’s why I say $10,000 minimum. Like on a lot of that time is gonna be the comp the marketer spending time with the company understanding the ethos, the like all understanding their model, their competitive advantages, their voice. Like you gotta really like Vanner Chuck’s done it. Like Vanner media does great social media for businesses. You know how much he charges, I think $50,000 a month is the minimum because they have to go and like dive in a marketer has organic marketer has to dive into your company deeply understand it and then be able to portray it in a clear way that’s time consuming.

But, but or I, that’s why I realized the the way is like coaching or I can like very quickly go, hey, here’s the things you already know who you are. I like the time consuming part is like here, let’s build a framework over the course of eight hours and you have a framework now go work on your framework for three months and then we’ll iterate, you know, and I think it’s a great, like, it’s an investment, right? It’s an investment in a long game. You, you can’t, this is not, you know, paper click google ads.

All that stuff is, there’s amazing businesses proof right here. Like there’s great businesses built around that. I like, I don’t know that world, that’s not my world and there’s people that do that great. And that’s fast. Right. This is a very different thing. Yeah, a lot of ways to skin the cat man and and and great business should have multiple revenue streams, multiple marketing things like, you know, you can’t rely on one thing. Yeah, especially with the, with the way that tech companies change their algorithms and stuff, you cannot be a one trick phone 100%.

But I think the core of all of this is is universal, like have a great business that serves people uniquely and then let everybody know about that. Yeah. Yeah. The social media organic is, is a free platform and it’s an excellent platform for getting your messaging out there. But if you don’t know your target audience and if you don’t know the messaging that you want to convey to your target audience, then it’s not going to work. Yeah. Every, every contractor that’s been on a TV show or that’s had their own TV show.

Massive demand increase, right? The holy grail. It would be to be the painter for this old house. I I would love to be the painter for this old house. The guy in my backyard that is that he’s killing it because he’s, this old house is painter and, and people get to watch him and all the trust he’s built. Well, you can do it. You can make your own this old house every single day through social media. Now. It’s crazy that this has been amazing man. ZKS, words of wisdom.

I think this is, this is about the fastest, you know, you and I lined up the eight episodes almost back to back. It’s about the fastest that I think we’ve ever run through a series. Yours was a bit more varied too. So we covered a lot of different stuff in your three episodes. But as we wrap up, ZKS, Words of wisdom, is there anything else you wanna add uh to the tail end of the series here? Um I mean, I think it’s like, well, like summing up what we’ve said, I think I had to learn the hard way that it’s slow, consistent effort over time.

Sorry, I’m getting a phone call. Most of my successes come from a staying alive. So like a lot of this stuff we’re talking about is like best practice stuff. And I think I talk about a lot of stuff like both best practice, like you have to stay alive and you have to eat in the meantime and I, I don’t ever want that to go um without being said, I think that I assume all that stuff and I often times I don’t say it, um, there’s a lot of stuff that I’ve done on that I don’t post on social media because it, especially in the early stages, it wasn’t driving where I wanted to be, but it kept food on my table. Right.

So, like, don’t let social media get in the way of you making a living. That’s the other thing. Like I people come to my school all the time and they’re like, they see my stuff on social media and they’re trying to meet those standards. A we’re getting what we have much larger budgets to do a door than most people are gonna have. And like also like, I’m not showing you the imperfections on a door. Like I don’t want to take a good photo. I show my clients, you know, samples that and like it’s not gonna be perfect but like social media isn’t real, even though the great, my great successes have come from being honest.

Social media is not real and like it’s a tool and nothing else. And so if you’re like a small guy out there and you’re comparing yourself to guys like me on social media, stop like compare I, I try every day to compare myself to me and hey, am I doing? Am I trending upwards? I fail all the time. I’m constantly worried. I’m not gonna stay in business. I’m like, I’m a piece of shit every other day. You know, it’s the roller coaster of, of running a business and probably living life but, like, don’t quit trend upwards, you know, ask for help.

I think I’ve done a good job of learning what I’m good at and coming to terms with what I’m bad at. Like, being able to see honestly. Like, it’s, it’s ok to say I’m, I’m not good or, I don’t know, I’d say we’re a company of, I don’t know, like I want my people to say, I don’t know unless they actually really know. It’s, hey man, no worries. You don’t need to know everything. You don’t need to be perfect. Social media has this way of making people think and, or like it’s, it’s fake in some ways because it is, it’s most of the time now.

Do I post my mistakes? Yes. But like for the most part, I’m not gonna show you everything that doesn’t go well. Yeah. So trend upwards don’t be afraid to fail a lot. You are who you surround yourself with. Like I have constantly ratcheted up my friend group who I spend time with. I read a lot of books. I’m, I’m constantly trying to get better and like, you know, I’m just a dude II I found a little bit of success and I’m trying every day to get better.

Um But, you know, just don’t give up, keep working and like, yeah, send me ad M if you have questions, I love it, Zach, I appreciate you, man. Thank you for making the time. Thank you for sharing all this brother and I’m sure people are gonna be following up with you. Thanks, Brandon.

Keep growing.