177. Marketing Strategies to Get you to $4M/year

0:00If you've been kicking around the idea of starting a business for a while now, but just haven't taken the first step. Today, you're going to be inspired to do so. If you want to start a home service business this year, you need to first learn marketing and sales. I scaled my business to$700 ,000 per year simply by getting in front of people who were searching for the service that I had to offer. Anyone can do this. All you have to do is start. This is Ryan Atkinson, and you're listening to the Upfoot Podcast, where we uncover the secrets of building and running successful businesses. Our guest today is Tyler Link, who took a weekend side hustle in Concrete and scaled this to$700 ,000 in his first year.

0:35Tyler knows what it takes to get started in home services, and he's here to share his secrets with us today. From mastering marketing and pricing to realizing that busyness doesn't equal profit, Tyler will show you how to attract the right clients for your own business and the mindset shift you need to just get started. Tyler, I'm so excited to have you on today. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, heck yeah, Ryan. Thanks for having me, man. I'm super pumped. Yes, and we're gonna talk about a lot today. Margins, revenue, marketing, all that stuff, but we got to rewind the clock and go to the very early beginnings.

1:04How did you join your father-in-law in the concrete business? Man, it's kind of funny. I don't think anyone ever like is growing up and is like, I'm going to be a concrete business owner. Maybe some people, but that was like absolutely not me, which is like so funny. Basically, long story short, I was like the kid that was like always selling stuff. So I used to like basically steal my dad's energy drinks because he worked for an energy drink company. I would take them and I would sell them at school. And I always knew that I wanted to be in business. But the thing is, like, I watched Shark Tank and I was like, man, but I don't have any ideas.

1:33Like, I was like, I don't know anything. So I did basically like the second closest thing you could do. And instead of starting a business, I went and worked for a marketing company so I could help other business owners scale. And then one thing kind of led to another. And I met my then girlfriend, my now wife. And I remember because like after like six or seven months, I was over at my girlfriend's house and her dad had like just gotten home and it was a Saturday. I was like, oh, what were you doing today, Cesar? He's like, oh, I did a patio. I was like, what do you need to do a patio? I was like, oh yeah, I have this little side business and I do concrete on the weekends.

2:02And I was like, me being my fascination, I was like, whoa, that's pretty dang cool. I was like, do you mind me asking? I was like, what did you charge for that patio? And he was like, 6 ,000 bucks. It was like, 6 ,000? And I was like, why don't you do more of those? And he's like, I don't know how to get the work. And so basically, long story short, over probably the next six months after that, I was just constantly in his ear. I was like, hey, I could help you get more work. Let me come into the business. I could help you get more work. Let me come into the business. So six months after that, finally ended up partnering together and the rest is history.

2:33So yeah, it's been a journey. Yeah. Let's talk about that though. So we're going to be talking about concrete today and this is going to be new for the episode. So listeners, stay dialed in for this one because this is going to be a good one. But I want to talk about like, what is Contractor CEO? I see on the hat there, you got the great background. I'm sure you come from marketing, so you know the branding, but like Contractor CEO, if you had to sum it up, like what do you guys do? Yeah. So Contractor CEO, that's my marketing agency to help other concrete companies scale. So because I got into concrete and like I love concrete, don't get me wrong, but that was like my entry into the business world after I started figuring some things out about marketing and sales and pricing.

3:07You know, it's a lot more fun for me to sell a business owner to help them grow and scale than it is to sell a driveway. So there's nothing wrong with that. That's just like it fits me. So I'm kind of a serial entrepreneur myself. And it's a way for me to like basically practice what I absolutely love. It's like my passion is all business. It's like, how do I lead? How do I take those leads? And how do I sell them? And that's what Contractor CEO allows me to do, not only for my own business, but for others in concrete. I love it. I want to jump back to joining because it took about six months.

3:37You know, you're in his ear. Hey, I can help you. I can help you. I mean, for you, like, what was the biggest mindset shift you had to make when you joined the business? Oh, man. I mean, for me, it was about just about income, right? Like, because I had saved up a little bit of money as an employee. But it was like, I remember because, you know, my girlfriend at the time, I like, remember I called her up one day. I was like, Hey, like I'm actually joining your dad. Like we're going to do this. And she was like, what are you doing? Like, you don't even have any jobs lined up. Like, cause I had a house, I had a car and I had bills and I just like threw myself at it.

4:10Basically the second that my father in law, like, I think he had a bad day at work basically. And he called me up. He's like, Hey, are you sure we could do this? I was like, I'm sure. And so we both put our jobs the same day, walked out with no stable income and we just like sent it. So it was a very stupid, but you know, we made it. So it's okay. Oh my God. All right. Well, let's talk about that then. Let's go to like day zero, essentially of quitting your job, no stable income. You guys are like, screw it. Let's do it. I mean, what do you do next? Like you guys obviously have to get leads. Talk to us about how did you guys get leads in this business and talk a little bit more about what the services you guys were providing as well.

4:45Yeah, sure. So as far as like the services, when I say concrete, it's more what we call flat work in the industry. All that really means it's like patios, driveways, sidewalks, and we sell it to residential homeowners. So we don't do too much like commercial or anything like that. But yeah, as far as men, when we left, I mean, luckily, I mean, and that was like one thing that really helped me is because I worked at a digital marketing company and I already was like there witnessing other businesses grow. That was like one of my superpowers. So for me, it was about like, okay, I need to get a website and I need to release ads as soon as possible.

5:17So like the whole first week, it was about getting a website, launching Google ads, launching Facebook ads. And I just went around like blasting everyone. I mean, trying to create as much noise as I possibly could, whether it was friends and family, going to networking events. I just realized that because my father-in-law, he knew how to do concrete in my only job, which I was lucky with that, was go get us work. Like that's my 100 % focus. And that's what I did like basically all day, every day. Oh, that's so cool. I want to talk about the lead generation part of this because that's what our listeners love to hear.

5:47cool. You can talk about finance. You can talk about opts. At the end of the day, what we care about is lead generation here. So you're running a lot of Google ads. You're getting the website up. I'd love to hear how long did it take for you guys to get that first lead in? Man, I got my first lead, I'd say about a week and a half after basically going full time. And the way that I bought my way into the business was I had about, like I said,$10 ,000 saved up, but I had really no way to pay bills. But I basically said, hey, because we didn't really have any equipment or anything, I basically took all of that money and I dumped it into ads.

6:17and all at once. But I think right away, like we were spending like$3 ,000 a month on Google ads. And yeah, just like a week and a half in, we started like basically getting leads, which was basically like a couple days after I launched the campaign. That's so interesting. So basically, the leads you handed over to Cesar, who said his name was? I did the sales too. So I would like customer acquisition. So I was in charge of like getting a lead, selling the lead, scheduling the lead. And then at first too, because it didn't take all day to sell stuff. When I would sell stuff, I would still go with Caesar to the job site.

6:49And because I didn't know how to do concrete, I was just a laborer. So yeah, I was doing a little bit of everything. Nice. That is so cool. So you're like really ingrained. I'd love to hear like what that sales process was through. Okay, someone's interested from a Google ad. What happens next? I want to get like really tactical here for like our listeners. Like, what did that sales process look like? Yeah, sure. And maybe, and I'll tell you how it started, but then we might want to talk about how it progressed because - Yeah, I'd love to hear that. Because we started somewhere, it was not technically right.

7:16Because it was funny because when I got the first lead, you know, they filled out a form and I like called Cesar. I was like super excited. I was like, oh my God, we got a lead. And I was like, so what do I do now? Because I was just like, oh, he's like had his business. He's like, okay, well, what you got to do is you just like go look at it. You measure and then you multiply it by the industry standard, like cost per square foot. And that was literally it. So I like went out there. I didn't really give a sales presentation. I just went out there. I would be like, okay, customer, you know, what do you want?

7:42And they're like, oh, I want, you know, a 10 by 10. And so I'd measure it. And I'd say, okay, it's a 10 by 10 times our square foot. Your price is gonna be a thousand bucks or whatever that was, which come to find out was like very, very stupid. But that's like how much I knew when I first got started. So there really was no selling. I would just provide a price and then look at them if they would want to do it. That was my sales process. Interesting. Why do you say was it stupid? Were the prices like, were they so low? Or like, I love to hear like, why was it stupid in Tyler's eyes? Well, you know, I really learned a hard lesson because one of the very first jobs that we sold was this like big staircase going down the side of a hill.

8:16And I went out there and it was like 40 feet long, but we had to go down like 20 feet down this really steep hill. But I was like, oh, 40 by three. And I was like, that seems a little bit harder. So maybe I'm going to raise up my cost per square foot a little bit from six to like 10. So I charged, I can't remember what it was. It was like 1500 bucks. And that job literally took us a week. And that's when I really realized because I went, Caesar's like, well, hey, I did exactly what you said. like what happened because we got killed on the job and he's like oh well i guess we have to charge a little bit more and that's when it really resonated in my mind that there has to be a different way other than just pulling out like a cost per square foot because jobs are so different right because some job that are super big might only take a day and some jobs that are really small like that one because they're so nuanced and detailed it takes forever and so i had no idea how to actually like price anything but i learned the hard way after like doing a couple jobs and realizing that we just lost bad.

9:13Interesting. Yeah. What does that process look like today? And to get tactical, like how do you guys price projects today? Yeah, sure. So long story short, what we basically do is I have a spreadsheet and I know my numbers really well, but I take what's called business overhead, which is basically what does it cost me to run my business? And for me and my business, it's about$1.2 million. So it's basically, you know,$100 ,000 a month. That's what it costs me to run my business. But then what I do is I take how many people that I have working for me and I figure out how many hours that they're going to have to work.

9:42So I look at my business kind of like a rental business because I'm basically renting out my skilled labor to my customers for a price. So what I do is I take all of my guys, I multiply how many hours they're going to work for me. So for me, I have about 20 ,000 hours to sell per year. I take that, I divide that by my overhead, or I take my overhead divided by those hours. And now I know how much overhead costs me per man hour on a job. So when I go now, Now I estimate based on basically how many man hours I'm going to have on this project. What's my labor cost? What's my overhead cost? And then I put my profit on top of that.

10:14Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. No, that definitely makes sense. It's interesting like how companies like how they get to that number that they do. It sounds like you like have a whole like technique here. I'm like how exactly you do it. I want to ask about margins here or numbers here in general because you just said about$100 ,000 per month. but you scale this business from about$70 ,000 to$100 ,000 per year to just$700 ,000 in one year. How did you make that happen? I'd love to hear more about that because that's quite the jump. That's a 7x growth essentially in one year. Yeah. So basically before my father-in-law, he was doing work just on the weekend.

10:47So it wasn't like a full-time business. But the one thing that was holding him back was like, he just didn't have the work in the volume. And then basically what I knew about marketing and how I knew how to go create noise in a market, which was everything from Google ads, SEO, reviews, referrals, Facebook ads, etc. Basically, we had more work than what I could even possibly know what to do with. So the only reason we only did 700 ,000, I'm not trying to say that to brag, it's just because that was kind of like what I knew. I think at one point that first summer, I had us booked out for like three months.

11:17And I like went and told my father and I was like, you have to stop whatever you're doing. Because we actually have to like go do all the stuff that you promised we're gonna do I was like, oh yeah, I guess that's true. What? So, I mean, it really is like once you understand, right, how to get leads and how to sell, for the most part, at that point, you're gonna have a different bottleneck, which is like, oh man, now we actually have to go produce all this stuff that we promised people. That is so crazy. Yeah, so it was basically just turning on the marketing and the sales fountain was the key.

11:45Guys, if you're enjoying today's episode with Tyler, you're gonna wanna check out his course in the Academy. Here he dives more into the marketing, exactly what you need to get starting in a very engaging way. If you're interested, click the link in the description to join for free today. I'd love to hear about the market you guys are in here as well. Like there was there a lot of competition in your guys's area? So funny story about this. So when we were about to start the concrete company, my father and like, he pulls me aside. And he goes, Tyler, I don't think we should do concrete. And I was like, what do you wait?

12:15Why? I was like, you already know how to do concrete? Like, what? What do you mean? He's like, I don't think you understand. He's like, there are so many concrete contractors in our area. He's like, I think we should start a moving business. And long story short, I kind of like convinced him otherwise is like, no, no, no, it's okay. It's not a bad thing that there's competition. Actually, sometimes it's a good thing when there's competition, because what that means is there's a market for it, right? Oftentimes, if there's no competition, that's actually a huge red flag that no one wants what you're buying.

12:41So that's kind of how I looked at it. I was like, man, just because I think just in my area, like for sure, there's 50 to 100 other people at minimum of what I can do. There's probably a lot more than that because a lot of people, because they don't know anything about marketing, they're not known, but they probably still have a concrete business. How do you stand out in the competition? Was it truly like the marketing that got you guys there? Or like, how did you stand out in such a competitive field? Well, you know, a lot of it is just speed and action. And yeah, I mean, it's marketing, it's whoever can generate the most noise and the most tension almost always wins, right?

13:12So it was just about like, okay, how many people can I get in front of? And then I was always about speed because I had no type of sales process, like literally none. I was basically a McDonald's drive-thru window, except instead of that, I would do that at my customer's house. Like, hi, what would you like to order today? Here's your price. Like that was my sales process. But I did that super fast. And what's nice about in the home service industry, like I would encourage if people are on the fence, take the leap in the sense that like at the end of the day, we're not competing with Apple. We're not competing with Microsoft.

13:43Like we're not competing in super professional people. So if you could just like look like a halfway, you know, put together person and you just do what you say you're going to do, that's like 50 % of the battle right there. You know what I mean? So it's actually not that complicated. It's pretty simple. Yeah. That's what I love about the home service industry. We've heard so many times in this show is like to really stand out here, just have like some pretty good marketing and show up on time. Like that's how you really stand out in the field. It sounds like true to even what you're saying here as well.

14:10Yeah. Just realizing that it's not like you have to capture the whole market, right? Because I mean, how much concrete is done in my area? I mean, even now we're doing $4 million a year, but I guarantee you there's at least$100 million being done in my local market. So even me being like a basically still a small fry in our industry, it's like just realize you don't have to be a big fish in a big ocean. You could be a tiny fish in a big ocean and you could still have a very good business and a very good life. So just realize you don't need all of the work. You just need some of the work and you'll have a business and you'll be up and running.

14:44Ah, that's so good. And you just hinted at it. So you guys are doing about$4 million a year. You're overhead to what? 1.25. So these are like pretty incredible margins that you guys are like dealing with specifically for this business, it sounds like. Yeah, because we shoot for about 45 to 50 % gross profit, meaning that that's how much our labor and our materials cost us. So say, for instance, just for simple sake, if we have a great year and we estimate properly and we stay efficient, then out of that$4 million,$2 million of that will be gross profit. My overhead is 1.2 million. So in theory, if all things go well, and in reality, there's going to be things that happen where it's not probably going to be that good, but we could net like 800 ,000 from this business.

15:22Oh, dude, that's so, so crazy. Yeah, I love that. I want to talk about, obviously, though, you don't want to be working on the business, I imagine. You don't want to be the one having to do all the concrete and stuff. So hiring is an important part of that. How did you guys hire? What's that process look like? I'd love to talk about that. Yeah, very important. And a lot of people, when they actually ask about my overhead for my business, comparatively to my competitors, it's actually extremely high. And that's for the exact reason of what you're talking about, is because we have a back-end team, right?

15:49I have a project manager, an office manager. I have three salespeople. I have people that are helping me run the business, which is very expensive compared to when you're just starting out. As far as I went about hiring, again, I don't know if this was the right way. It's just what I did. I've since changed my model a lot. But when I first did it, I just wanted people that I could trust. So I looked more for people that I could trust and that I wanted to work with them over their talent and their skill set. The very first person that I hired was actually one of my best friend's wives and she's still with me today.

16:19So man, she's been with me now for like five years. That's nuts. And for me, I just literally went out to like friends and family. I was like, hey, I need someone who could do this. Is there anyone who's interested? And because I already had that connection with someone that I personally knew, at minimum I felt like I could trust them which for me was like half the battle now a little bit more complicated than that but that's the thing is when you're first starting in business you don't need to be perfect it's more about action and speed over basically being perfect if that makes sense so for me it was literally just about who I knew and if I could trust them and if we could basically come to an agreement like hey this is how much money you're gonna make and this is your rough responsibilities and if we just went at it I love it I'm literally taking notes during this, the action is beat over perfection, especially when you're starting out is so important.

17:04Like some people get so caught up in like the business plan, like, oh, we need to do this, this, this, this is how it's going to work. A lot of times you just take action. That's like the first step and like truly getting a business off the ground. But the hardest step to take is actually taking action. It is. And I don't really like doing that because I think what a lot of people don't realize if you're trying to start and let's just say if you're creating a business plan, and you're thinking about steps like A all the way through D. You're like, okay, first I'm going to do A, and then B, and then C, and then D.

17:32But oftentimes what happens is in the middle of step A, you realize that step B is actually wrong, what you were thinking. And so oftentimes, and this is why they call like, imagine running a marathon in the fog, and you could only see like 10 feet in front of you. But when you go 10 feet, well, now you could see the next 10 feet. And then you do that 10 feet, and then you could see the next 10 feet. And what I've realized is if you just start going, the path will make itself clear and you can't actually see what's in front of you 10 feet past in the fog. But when you're at that 10 feet, then you can.

18:06Oh, so good. Yeah, that is great advice. I haven't heard that analogy before though. So I really like that. We've gotten super actionable here and I want to keep going down this trend of actual advice here. So let's talk about marketing avenues right now of what you know, been in the industry, whatever, five years now, I mean, you know digital marketing, you know it all. What marketing avenues have you found to be the most effective in your industry today? So yeah, it depends if you're going to go paid or free. So the way that I like to think about it is if you have money, you could basically pay to gain back your time.

18:37So if you were going to pay, I would say at a minimum, you want a foundation. And what's nice is I'm in concrete. So for all my concrete guys, they're going to understand this. But if you're going to build a house, you don't just build it on dirt. You build it on a really solid foundation first. And that foundation to me is things like reviews, website, branding, logo. And that is the type of stuff that you want to have as a foundation to then leverage into things like Google ads, Facebook ads, SEO, email, text marketing, etc. But for a lot of people who are just starting out, even that might even be a little bit too complicated.

19:11And for me, one of the ways that I learned how to do marketing when I first started beyond just like the money side, because I didn't really have that much money. So for me, like I had to figure out other ways. And so there's a couple different strategies that I love to recommend. And one is called my referral partner strategy. And so that's something that I'd love to share with the audience because this could honestly be like out of my$4 million, I get about$800 ,000 of revenue just from this and it's free. But what I basically do is I will call people who are in opposite markets, but we're around the same type of customer.

19:43So say, for instance, I'm in concrete and I would call a pool builder. And what would be nice about a pool builder is they would go and install this beautiful pool for this customer who just spent like$60 ,000 on this pool. Well, what's next after they need a pool? Well, they need a nice pool deck or a nice pool patio. And so I would call these pool contractors. I'd say, hey, my name's Tyler. I'm with Caesars Concrete. We love doing pool decks. We can do beautiful pool decks. If you send me some jobs with pool decks, well, then I'll throw you a referral fee. And so now we have like pool companies.

20:13We have landscaping companies. I have pergola companies. I have GCs. I have all all these people who are out there selling their own work and they're around my dream customer and then you partner with them right and all that takes is effort and not necessarily money so a lot of people if they're starting they don't have money you would be surprised how much work is out there if you could already like think about it like a train all of the energy that it takes to start a train so that's kind of like your own marketing but there's other trains that are already running and you could literally just run next to the train and jump and hop on it and catch some of the things that they're leaving behind that they don't do.

20:46And so no matter what market you're at, right, if you're a painter, then maybe get around a window washer or vice versa, right? Or if you are doing siding, maybe get around a roofer. There's so many different businesses where they coincide together. And it's just about going out and building that relationship with other people who are already running. You're basically jumping on their marketing engine. So that's one of my first ways to start if you don't have money. That is very, very good advice there. So thank you for breaking that all down for us. I want to keep like going off of that though.