2470 - The Proven Strategy for Contractors to Generate More Qualified Leads with United Foundry's Matt DeLong

0:03Welcome to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If you're committed to growing your business by serving audiences with generosity and real expertise, you're in the right place. This is a daily 15-minute show featuring leaders who believe real impact comes from generosity, not hype, which means as a listener, you're going to get the good stuff. In fact, we created podverified.com to give thoughtful leaders like you free tools to show up better on podcast stages like this one. That includes your free podverified score, free podverified guest training, a free media kit builder, and so much more. It's the first ecosystem of its kind built by podcasters who genuinely want to help guests thrive and grow in podcasting.

0:46Visit podverified.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, Matt DeLong. Matt, you are the CEO of United Foundry. You're found on the web at unitedfoundry.com. Matt, it is great to have you. Hi, thanks for having me. I'm super excited. Yeah. Hey, before we get going, you'll always love hearing what leaders are into when they're not at work. and boy, you and I started talking about this ahead of time and it's like, oh man, we got to save this for the podcast. So tell me what you've been doing for fun lately. Yeah, so I've actually been kind of learning using AI, learning a little bit about my neighbors, using some Claude code tools, just kind of looking through like public records, trying to find out to learn a little bit more about my neighbors, who they are, what they do and kind of cross-referencing LinkedIn.

1:47And then I'm also like super excited. We're planning like a family trip to Costa Rica for Christmas. So super excited about that as well. So, yeah. Okay. So, you know, I've got all kinds of like little pet projects I'm doing with Claude Code right now, which is like, it's so fun. Like I've got a, I don't want to talk about mine right now. I want to explain yours because that is, I love that because I've got, you know, in our neighborhood, you know, and we've got the bigger development, but all I care about is like my local neighborhood. You know, we probably have about probably about 45 homes in our kind of neighborhood.

2:20It would be so awesome to have a map, their name, the link to their profile, you know, their LinkedIn profile if they're on there. Because like I have all these neighbors, some of them I'm, you know, pretty good friends with, you know, certainly know what they do and professionally and stuff. But how cool would that be if I had an interface I could pull up on my phone? Oh yeah, there's, you know, 1138. Oh, that's, you know, that's Roy. He works over at, you know, Northrop Grumman or something like that, you know, whatever. And now I have context, you know, for a little bit about them, but, you know, based on what I'm able to learn.

2:55So then I can kind of go from small talk to, hey, I noticed that you, dah, dah, dah, dah, you own this company or whatever. That would be amazing. So can I just, I'm sorry, I'm kind of going, I'm going on and on about this. I think the thing that excites me right now as of when we're recording this is using AI to be more human. So for you, AI, do what AI is going to do. But, you know, what I want to do as human is do more human things. I want to stop doing the AI things. And I want to just spend more one-on-one time with people and conversation. And so, you know, to the extent that AI can allow us to do that, that's exciting.

3:31So that's why I'm kind of really getting a little bit too excited about your, your cloud code project. But I will, I would love to know any, I'd love to, I'd love for you to share any ideas afterwards. You could send those to me. So what a cool, what a cool project, Matt. I'm not going to get into like the projects I've done. I've already been blabbing on enough. But I think one thing that you found is, you're just like, wait a minute. I actually have some customers, potential customers in my neighborhood. And it became like a business thing. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's going to happen. Well, Matt, tell us, I'm sorry, I'm going to stop talking quite so much because this interview is about you.

4:08Tell us about United Foundry and the work that you do. Yeah, so we're a digital marketing agency. We were launched in 2020 out of Fort Myers, Florida, and we pretty much have clients in all states now. And what we do is we work almost exclusively with builders, remodelers, contractors. And what we do is we focus a lot on lead generation. So whether you're a builder or a modeler or roofer, anything that has like a high ticket item, we don't work as well with like, you know, something like a handyman or, you know, lawn care, something that's a lower ticket item. But, you know, we work with fencing companies, roofers, anything that's like a higher ticket item, pool companies, excavation, all kinds of things that we do.

4:54And so the problem that we solve is actually more business. We help provide more business. and the the interesting thing about what we do is like we have lots of conversations with builders or modelers and what we do is we actually help generate leads and we have a bunch of different things that we can do mostly google ads or google local service ads or kind of what we kind of start with but the number one thing that we do that really helps people improve their their presence online is actually rebuilding their website and the reason that that is so important, a very first step is if you can imagine being like a custom home builder, and let's say you do homes from a million and a half to$3 million in that price point, and people come to your website, and it looks like Josh built it in Wix by himself on a weekend, right?

5:41That doesn't give the image and the perception that you want, but it looks like this guy's a cheapskate. And if he's a cheapskate with his website, what else, right, would he be a cheapskate with? And as you know. And these kind of building relationships or contractor relationships is a lot about trust. And so the homeowner who's looking at what you do, they're going to click next. And so you're never going to get that phone call. And so having these conversations, we just launched a company in Austin, Texas last week, and they do homes from the$2 to$12 million range. And this is the exact conversation we had with them just two months ago when we very first had this conversation.

6:20And so the idea is, hey, you're missing, you're like leaking traffic because someone is not calling you saying your website is terrible, but I want to do business with you. They're saying, hey, your website is terrible. I'm not going to call you. I'm calling the next guy. Right. So that's kind of what we do. Yeah. Yeah. And Matt, I'm sure that, you know, I want to acknowledge this because there are probably some founders or business owners are hardworking. and they might say that having a pretty website, it just feels so superficial. It should just be my work, the quality of my work that should be able to get me all of the business that I want.

6:58Help us out. Well, in a perfect world, great. But if I go to your website and that's my first impression and it looks like Josh with a truck and a trailer, not Josh, the professional remodeler, you tell me, right? Which one, like, how do you want your projects priced? You want it, you want it priced at, you know, like on a lower end because you're, you're Josh, the guy with the trailer or your professional company who stands behind his work. And so we've talked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these companies and their clients. And essentially it really comes down to trust. So like the homeowner is going to hire a contractor based on trust.

7:36And as you can imagine, most contractors, that's a huge hurdle to overcome, right? And then the second thing is what we call the TQB, trust, quality, and budget. So they need to be able to trust the contractor. They need to make sure that you can build quality and they need to make sure you can stay on budget. Those three things. And if my very first impression is you're a giant cheapskate and your website says copyright 2008 from years and years, decades ago, I don't know. my first impression is next like scroll thank you next right yeah yeah it really is just it's just the way that people buy and you know it's like you know you listen if you go into a restaurant and it just feels really crappy um and and it's the experience just it just doesn't look very compelling um you don't do a very good job of communicating your customers stories which i have But can you maybe let me just pause what I'm talking about.

8:34Can you talk about how important it is to relay the stories of your customers when you're in the service industry and those testimonials and those reviews? How critical is that today? Oh, absolutely. That's huge. And things like reviews are one of the main. It's not the only, but it's one of the big signals that Google uses to even give you some kind of elevation in your rankings on Google, right? So if you think about, let's say, a custom home builder, and you're searching custom home builder, Austin, Texas, for example, and you get six results, one has 15 reviews, one has two, and one has none, which one do you think is most likely to get to traffic?

9:17Now, obviously that alone is not the only signal, but that is one of many signals, right? Obviously you have to, you know, be in the right ballpark and the site has to make a good impression. You have to be able to deliver on, you know, what you say you're going to do. There's lots of factors there, but as far as traffic, getting that very first phone call to me with the homeowner, the very first time that that's obviously very, very important, but also there's little things like we have some clients who've won numerous awards. And I don't mean like in the eighties. I mean, in the last year or two or three, that's huge.

9:50We put that in the footer of some of their emails, like reminding people, hey, you know, this isn't just your average, you know, builder. They've won awards. Like, this is a big deal, you know? And so all of those things obviously build trust and also kind of squash those opinions that this is just a guy in a truck and a trailer. No, this is a professional company. Even things like when you have builders, it's like Josh at, you know, Josh built the builder at gmail.com compared to Josh at, you know, my company.com, whatever the domain name is, even little signs, signals like that are super important as well.

10:27Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And so Matt, for a friend that's been listening here and, you know, maybe, you know, maybe they're in the home services company, you know, maybe they're a home services company. maybe they used to get um i hear this a lot you know it's like man there was a time i just we were turning business away it was just crazy and you know they we it's it's it can be both um it could be secular you know um like they're just they're good times and then there are bad times the bad times kind of stink um you know maybe um our friend knows that and and um you know they know, Hey, things really slow down in winter and I'd really like to keep the lights on.

11:10So, uh, Matt, what, what should they do from this podcast? Like in terms of engaging or reaching out to you or, or, you know, I don't know if they go to United foundry, what they, what they should look for there. Yeah. So we actually have several things that we can do for them. Uh, obviously just have a conversation with us. Um, we like to understand like if we can actually solve their problem. So the normal story that comes to us is someone has been around five, 10 years, and they used to rely heavily or almost exclusively on referrals, word of mouth, and maybe that's drying up, right? And so building some kind of a pipeline of consistent leads over time takes a little bit of effort.

11:52And a lot of times people are like, their pipeline is bone dry, and then they call us and like, why am I not getting leads on day one? And this takes time, right? Like if you meet with a homeowner, if you sign an agreement with us on day one and day two, I put a lead on your plate, the homeowner is like, okay, let's meet next week. And then they're like, okay, let's start in in two months, right? Like work is there's a, there's a process here, right? And so typically we engage with them, try to understand what they're looking for. What is their ideal client? what are they looking for you know if they're specializing in kitchens or bathroom or a whole whole home remodels if they're in california and they specialize and we have clients outside of of san francisco who all they do is adus which are these kind of like tiny homes and they have certain counties and cities that are pre-approved pre-approved like zoning kind of plans that if you do these they're pretty much going to rubber stamp the approval and so like they can crank those out pretty quick.

12:52And so that's a pretty interesting, like, sweet spot where there's lots of demand. And the county and the cities are fast tracking the approval process, right? So there's all kinds of things like that, that we just need to understand what they do, how they work, what kind of client they're looking for. And then also like what service areas, like how far are they willing to drive? You know, are they looking in a certain county, a certain city, certain zip codes? If it's a custom home builder, are they looking in certain neighborhoods? Where does that work? So we can, on the local service ad side, we can narrow down things like a zip code, a county, or a city, and we can include and exclude certain areas.

13:35So we can pretty much target certain geographic areas as well. So to answer your question, the short answer is we were able to just book a discovery call and kind of assess their needs. Yeah. I was just looking, you have some really good client testimonials here on your website as well. Listen, you know, to our friend right now, you know, whether you're hearing Matt and like, okay, I need to go check this out or just go listen to all these other contractors, man. You got some great stories here. They're all, I like it. They're all YouTube shorts as well, which is that that's, that's clever. I like that.

14:12So excellent. Well, unitedfoundry.com, Matt DeLong. Also, Matt, I just, I got to, if you got one more minute here, you have a TED talk, you have a TEDx talk. Do you mind just kind of sharing that a little bit? Because I'm really intrigued by the title. Sure. So this is something I delivered in January, I see it was January, February, no, March of 2024. And it was basically, I'm talking about the story of like, what happened to a software company that I started and founded years ago. And it was, it was originally titled the learning how to dream again, or in TEDx actually ended up renaming it, but it's basically this process of, I was CEO of a software company and we got hacked and 250 ,000 credit card numbers got stolen.

15:02And you know, it was just a huge process for a year and a half of cleanup and death threats and um like just craziness staff leaving all kinds of crazy things happening and oh my god imagine uh just one thing after another and it was like just when you think it couldn't get worse it gets worse and worse and worse and you know people quitting the team leaving like just a giant mess yeah at the end it's like the world is falling apart exactly and after like a year and a half, I'm like, I like, there's no like reason to even get out of bed anymore. It's like, welcome to another sucky day of your life, Matt, you know?

15:41And so I'm like, it doesn't have to be like this. I have to internally make some changes and decide where I want to go from here. And so I tell the story of learning to dream again and like how I thought my way out of that ended up kind of internally making some changes and kind of like some steps to like, if you're struggling with any kind of either internal, external trauma, how to like dig yourself out of that. And I just kind of tell us some practical steps on that. Oh my gosh. Well, I'm going to watch this right now after this podcast recording here. So it's called Learning to Bounce Back After a Crisis.

16:13Matt DeLong, we've got the link in our show notes for that as well. But again, start at unitedfoundry.com, grab a quick call and kind of see as a services-based company, what you might be able to do to kind of keep the engines running and really, you know, maybe eventually work yourself out of having to work quite so hard to keep business going. So, which I'm sure that's been a part of some of the clients you've worked with. Matt DeLong, you're the CEO. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh. Yep.

16:51Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If your goal is to grow your business, increase revenue, and build authority without gimmicks, this show is designed for you. Each episode gives you practical insight from leaders who have turned trust and credibility into real business results. If you value short, thoughtful conversations that respect your time, make sure you're subscribed. We publish daily 15-minute episodes focused on growth that actually compounds. And if you're interested in being a guest or you want to turn podcast appearances into measurable business growth, visit podverified.com.

17:26You can start for free with your pod verified score, along with free podcast guest training and a free media kit builder. These tools are built to help you get booked on better shows, deliver stronger interviews and convert audience trust into revenue. No more desperate sales. You truly can enjoy all the business you like by generously sharing your wisdom. Everything we offer is built by podcasters for guests with a focus on trust, organic growth, and long-term business success. Thanks again for spending your time with us. I'll see you next time.