Business RadioX ®

BRX Pro Tip: Document How to Meet Every Objection

by

BRXmic99
BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Document How to Meet Every Objection
Loading
/

BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: Document How to Meet Every Objection

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, you know, sometimes, when we’re trying to market our products and services, we get questions, we get resistance, we get outright objections. What are your thoughts on being prepared to overcome objections?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:21] Well, I think objections are a good thing. It helps you build a case for why your service is effective. But something to understand if you’ve been in business for any length of time that you’re going to get similar objections over time. And it’s really worth your time to just, ahead of time, brainstorm every possible objection someone could possibly have when it comes to buying your service and document all of the ways to counter those objections.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:53] So, you have the objections, you have the counter to the objection, and just keep documenting this over time. So, you get the common ones, you get the weird ones, the unusual ones. And when you do that, now, you have something that you can give to your whole team, number one. So, if they ever run into this at, you know, even in a social situation, they’ll have an answer. It won’t be like, “I don’t know.” But also, it’ll help you train future salespeople because they’re going to be ahead of the game. They’re going to really know intimately how to handle kind of the majority of the objections they’re going to get, you know, when they go out there to try to sell somebody something.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:32] Another benefit of documenting it is I’d put it on your website as a frequently asked questions and get ahead of it because most people now are researching you before they even want to talk to you. So, if you can handle most of the objections just as a matter of factly as a frequently asked questions, you know, you’re going to be that much closer to a sale.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:52] So, objections shouldn’t surprise you. And equipping your entire team with the answers to overcome all of these objections will put you in a better position to sell more.

Ron Antevy With e-Builder

by

Innovation Radio
Innovation Radio
Ron Antevy With e-Builder
Loading
/

Ron Antevy, Managing Director, Antevy Capital, LLC.

He is a recognized Software as a Service (SaaS) technology business leader in the field of construction management software. In 1998, Ron teamed with his brother Jon to lead and grow e-Builder.

Under his leadership, the company grew over 25% per year, profitably and without debt, to become the leading construction management software for facility owners in North America.

In 2018, e-Builder was acquired by Trimble for $500 Million and is an integral part of their strategy to transform the construction industry. Following the acquisition, he launched and led Trimble Ventures, a $200 Million venture fund investing in innovative companies that align with Trimble’s mission.

Ron is the recipient of numerous awards for outstanding leadership including being named “Ultimate CEO” and “Power Leader” by the South Florida Business Journal, “Top 50 SaaS CEO” by the SaaS report, and EY “Entrepreneur of the Year.”

In 2020, he was inducted into the University of Florida, College of Design, Construction and Planning Hall of Fame. Ron is a graduate of the University of Florida College of Engineering, with a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering.

He is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Florida. He is also a member of the University of Florida Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering – Dean’s Advisory Board, on the Board of Governors of the Alan B Levan NSU Broward Center of Innovation, and on the Board of the Sheriff’s Foundation of Broward County.

Connect with Ron on LinkedIn.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] You’re listening to Innovation Radio, where we interview entrepreneurs focused on innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. Innovation radio is brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs the Levein’s Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founders journey from Birth of an Idea through successful exit or global expansion. Now here’s your host, Lee Kantor.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:28] Lee Kantor here another episode of Innovation Radio and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, the Levein Center of Innovation. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on the Innovation radio, we have Ron A.V with E Builder. Welcome, Ron.

Ron Antevy: [00:00:48] Thank you. Thanks, Lee. It’s good to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] Well, I’m so excited to be talking to you. You used to be with the builder. I don’t know if you’re still affiliated with them in any manner, but we’re here to talk about primarily your journey from entrepreneur and building builder to your exit. Can you talk about a little bit about what you’re up to today and then we’ll get into it? Builder.

Ron Antevy: [00:01:10] Sure, sure. So yeah, I’m no longer with the builder. I recently retired and I know we’ll talk about the journey, but about five years ago I sold E Builder to a public company called Trimble, and I spent the last five years at Trimble in various roles running the business, continuing to grow it. And then I was more on the investment side and running a corporate venture capital arm for Trimble. And now I’m off kind of doing the same thing mostly for myself. I’m out investing in technology companies, early stage type companies and mid stage growth businesses in tech.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:49] So let’s get back to the now. Let’s start at the beginning. Now, in college, were you always had dreams of being an entrepreneur and then, you know, venture capitalists and all the stuff that you’re doing now, was that something that you were aiming at or was that just something that happened, you know, through the natural evolution of a career?

Ron Antevy: [00:02:08] Yeah, I never thought about the venture capital side of things and never thought I’d be doing that. But as a kid growing up, my parents are immigrated here from another country. They were entrepreneurs. I they sort of instilled in myself and my brothers that, you know, kind of if you want to get ahead, the way to do it is to have a business and to be an entrepreneur. So I always had that sort of desire to be an entrepreneur. I studied civil engineering in college and my brother studied architecture in college. One of my I have three brothers, but one of them studied architecture. And he and I thought that we’d get into construction. And that was our family’s, our family was in the construction industry. And once we when he graduated and I graduated, I went I went to work for a big company for a few years. He got a master’s degree in construction management and wrote his master’s thesis about what at the time was the still very nascent Internet just starting. And his master’s thesis became the business plan for E Builder. We then built together over about 25 years.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:15] Now, when he had that, I guess conceptually there was a business there. When did you take the leap into the world of E E Builder and say, okay, this is something now that we’re going to put all the chips on the table and go boldly forward with?

Ron Antevy: [00:03:32] Yeah, So it’s interesting because so John John started the business in 1995 and then I was kind of advising him in the background. I had a really good corporate job. I was, as you know, a rising star in a business and a leadership role, making good money and so on. And but about three years in 1998, one thing led to another. I had been talking with John and I said, you know what? I’m going to I’m going to take a chance. And I took the big leap of faith. I quit my job. And I actually drove up to Gainesville, Florida, because the business was based in Gainesville, where both of us went to school and got an apartment. And I said, we’re going to figure out how to make this work. Didn’t have a salary for a year before I had any kind of salary there. And John actually made it four years without a salary before we started drawing a paycheck. So now and that was in 98. So 98.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:33] When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. When you have something now you have something to lose. What was kind of the was that a hard decision to make? You know, here you are. There was a path for you in this corporate setting to leave, that there was, I’m sure, some pros and cons. There had to be a sheet of paper with pros and cons on it somewhere. Yeah, trade offs, you know.

Ron Antevy: [00:04:57] Yeah, well, you know, I didn’t have much to lose. I mean, it’s I didn’t have a family. I was single I think when I think now having the family and kids in school and all the the responsibilities and commitments that you have make it tougher to take the leap. But at the time it still was a leap because I had a great job and I had a career and so on. But when John started to, he actually called me and said, Do you? Think I should do this. He had an offer right out of school, and we went through a little exercise, and I told him exactly what you just said, which is he really had nothing to lose because he had had no money, he had no family. He it’s like worst case, it doesn’t work out. He can always go get a job. So it was easier for him in some respects to do it, even though it takes a lot of guts to do this. And it was a little bit harder for me. But and I think if I would have waited a few years, five years, had a family kind of thing, I probably never would have even taken the leap. It starts to become really difficult to make, to take the chance.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:06] And that’s a good lesson for the young people. Listening right now is just that. Right When you have less responsibility, this risk isn’t a big risk. It’s a small risk relative to the other risk you’re going to be taking later in your life.

Ron Antevy: [00:06:20] That’s right. Yeah. And I think some people for for the folks that are thinking about this, you know, if you’re if you’re young, if you’re right out of school, you might say to yourself, well, I don’t have the experience that I need or let me go out and work for a while. I actually think you figure that stuff out. You do figure it out. It’s more about being able to take the risk and the the sooner the better in some respects, because it’s a much it’s a much simpler thing to recover from if you try it when you’re in your early twenties versus when you’re in your forties or something. And that’s not to say you can’t do it. And there are many success stories of that as well, but it’s just a much higher hurdle of risk that you’re taking on.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:03] So what was it like? You moved to Gainesville and now you’re looking at your brother and you’re like, okay, now what? Like, did you have an action plan? Did you know how, you know, those first days were going to go, or were you now just looking at a blank sheet of paper and saying, okay, this is what have we got to do now?

Ron Antevy: [00:07:20] Well, when I when I first joined and John said to me, I have this great product and I have this great market and it’s this amazing business now with the Internet, and it was a collaborative tool that can be used over over the Internet for construction. And all we need is a sort of a go to market plan. We just need to scale things up. We need to operationalize things. And we have tons of businesses. We’re talking to lots of people, tons of leads. So I sort of was led to believe that there’s a great business here. We just need to operationalize a few things. After digging in and arriving and spending a little bit of time, I realized, you know, John wasn’t doing this for any reason. I mean, this was his belief, obviously. But I dug in. I realized the business model really was not a good business model, and it needed to be changed. There was a lack of focus. We were trying to do too much. There were some that we had to do a little bit of work we had to do with the product, so there was a lot that we had to do.

Ron Antevy: [00:08:22] I took a step back. We shed some things that were not a core focus that we where we wanted to be as a business. And that’s another important lesson. I think. I see small companies try to take on too many things. They’re afraid of missing out an opportunity, so they want to do everything. And the reality is you see huge companies that only do two or three things, but they do them very well. And so we did that. We focused we changed the business model completely. We change who we targeted. We changed how we price the product. And then we started to figure out also how to sell. That took a little bit of time. And then and then finally, what I did, we knew that we needed to raise some money. We were bootstrapped. That’s why none of us took salaries and we said we have to go out and raise some money. So I also did that. So that was kind of the the game plan for maybe the first year, year and a half that I was focused on.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:23] Now when at the time this is kind of early Internet, right?

Ron Antevy: [00:09:29] That’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:29] Construction companies aren’t typically early adopters of new technology like this. Was that part of the challenge is getting them to even, you know, take the leap into the Internet and to, you know, get away from paper and pencil and onto a keyboard?

Ron Antevy: [00:09:46] Yeah, that was the biggest challenge, actually. We were. So, you know, John likes to say we were we were way too far ahead of our time. We would go to a very, very large and reputable construction company. So multi hundreds of millions of dollars, billion dollar businesses. And we sit down and we talk to them that we have this Internet based software today. People talk about things like software as a service and things being in the cloud and all these terms that are very common in technology. Back then, none of this, none of this existed. So we would explain what we’re doing and the prospect these. Senior executives at construction companies would back all the way up. They didn’t even want to talk about or software. They were trying to wrap their head around the Internet and they’d say, What do you mean, this cloud? What do you mean? We put stuff? Who controls the Internet? Who’s paying for information to go back and forth from all these different people? So we would find ourselves, instead of being in sales mode, we would be in education mode. And. And that was happening early on. And that was actually another challenge that we had to overcome. Because you don’t you can’t have a business. You don’t make money by educating people unless you’re in an education business. So we had to figure out how to sell versus and how to get people to buy what we were selling versus just educate them about the Internet and the technology that was coming on board.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:16] So. So when you realize that, how did that change your marketing? Like is that this is a totally different tactic now that you have to deploy in order to get people to understand what it is your services.

Ron Antevy: [00:11:30] Yeah. So, so this was like a big turning point for the business and it probably happened it was in the early 2000. So it’s probably, you know, more than 20 years ago. But what we did is we, we, we had some customers and people that were using our product and we went out and interviewed those customers and spent time with. I did a lot of these interviews myself. We really tried to understand why did people use what we had, why did they pay us money? Really, It was almost like a very innocent question. We would ask people, Why are you paying to use what we’ve created? And from that we distilled the real major benefits of our product and which market segments were benefiting from our product. So we discovered that facility owners we were. So our software helps people build buildings and infrastructure and that kind of a thing. And there are a lot of people in the construction industry. There are architects and engineers and contractors and so on, but we discovered that it was the facility owner. So if you think of a hospital, it would be memorial health care system in Broward County, Florida. They have multiple campuses. They build. They spend hundreds of millions every year on construction. We discovered that it was that segment that benefited the most from our product. And then we figured out how to quantify the benefit. And once we did that, we embarked on a very targeted marketing plan.

Ron Antevy: [00:13:00] Instead of just going out and trying to get leads and doing trade shows and doing a lot of what common you would think of common marketing, we pinpointed we got very, very focused. We said, you know, there’s a certain there’s a certain kind of hospital. And we started with hospitals specifically, but we said in the United States there are 600 hospital systems and those hospital systems have more than one campus, and they spend a certain amount of money on construction every year. And those are the ideal client for us, and we can really save them tons of money. We figured out that we could save them anywhere from 2 to 4% of the amount of money they spend every year on construction. So you’re talking about millions of dollars saved. And we then put put various marketing tactics in place to get in front of those 600 targets and explain to them what we were doing in the hopes that just a few of them would agree to take a look at what we were doing. And then, of course, a few of them would would buy our product and our service. And that’s that’s kind of that started a journey for us. We eventually expanded from hospitals and health care to higher education and from there to government and from there to commercial real estate.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:20] Now, I don’t want to give short shrift to the beginning of this. You went The customer discovery point of any business is critical.

Ron Antevy: [00:14:32] Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:33] How going to your customer to ask them why they bought the thing you sold them requires a level of humility and vulnerability that not every executive or leader has. Can you talk about those initial conversations? Because you’re you’re basically asking your customer why you bought the thing you sold them.

Ron Antevy: [00:14:56] That’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:57] And you have to do that. And it’s you’re trying to get a nuanced answer and not. What do you mean you sold it to me? Because a lot of times people buy things because how they imagine it would be not from what it actually does.

Ron Antevy: [00:15:12] So. That’s right. No, you’re right. And not only that, but a lot of times when you are a customer and a vendor comes to you for any reason, you also have preconceived notions of why they’re there. When when a vendor shows up, you think, well, they’re trying to sell me something more, or they’re they’re there for a reason. What’s the real reason? So it actually is there’s an art form to it. Like I said, I did it myself. This was in the in the early 2000s. We went through a period of there was the dotcom boom and then the dotcom bust where Internet companies were frowned upon. And so we were struggling candidly, we we weren’t growing. We thankfully we had a business. Many of our peers in the industry were going out of business. Many Internet companies that were very well funded were were going bankrupt. So it was a time it was easy to be humble. I’ll put it to you that way. But but even so, I think you’re you’re spot on. I mean, it’s it’s an art. It took time to figure out how to do it. And one of the things that we learned, I would I would ask I would have to ask the same question. It’s like being a great interviewer or a great journalist or it’s like when you watch 60 Minutes and you see the folks that ask the kinds of questions that get people to really open up.

Ron Antevy: [00:16:36] It was that kind of work, and I would have my list of questions and I would start with softballs and build the relationship and build some rapport with the customer. And I’d eventually go deeper. And some customers were more willing to share information, and others were even after I told them 20 times that I’m not there to sell anything and I’m really there just to learn and to make our product better for them and to help benefit them. Still, some customers would keep it close to the vest and not want to open up completely, and that was okay, you know, but you do enough of these and what you start to tease out different trends. I start to hear the same information and I developed a rule of thumb for myself. I said, if I hear the same thing four or five times, for me it’s fact. At that point I would write it down and say, you know, this is this is a fact. And so I just did a bunch of those interviews and they did get easier over time. And the other interesting benefit of doing that, that it is, by the way, very critical. And I and I think a lot of entrepreneurs missed the mark on this. They’re excited to do some of the other stuff and get out there and try to sell or whatever they want to do.

Ron Antevy: [00:17:53] But this is this is the key to everything in terms of your success is really figuring this out. And so so I did it. I did it for a long time. And what I found is the people that even I also, by the way, I did it with prospects, which is even harder to talk to prospects about it because they really wondering what it is you’re doing there. I did it with folks that that didn’t choose us, that bought our competitor product. But but one of the benefits I was going to tell you that we got out of this process is people if you think about how many companies actually do this, how many companies get a call from the CEO that says, tell me why you bought from us and tell me what we could do better and tell me what you like and what you don’t like and so on. And it spreads so much goodwill amongst our customer base and our prospects. People would say, boy, these these folks really care. They’re trying to do the right thing. They’re trying to build a great product and a great company simply because we were doing these interviews and selfishly, we were doing them to gain more information. So it’s a great I can’t say enough about it. I’m passionate about it.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:06] Now. Before you decided to do that, was it a hard decision to make to actually do that kind of work? Because it takes a lot of time and then I could see some people rationalizing. Like, Why do I have to do this? I already know what my product does or service does.

Ron Antevy: [00:19:24] Yeah, it was it was tough to convince and it really in early, early on it was my brother and I that did it. Like I said, this isn’t a kind of a task that you can, especially as a startup. Obviously, when we towards the end of our journey, we had several hundred employees and it’s a different situation. But early on it’s the kind of thing that you have to you can’t delegate. You need somebody senior who can ask the right questions, who can who can take the conversation wherever it goes, wherever the prospect or customer takes it. So so it was hard to convince John and it was me and John and a couple of other people that did it. I would say, though, that the the hardest conversation and the hardest decision to make was actually something else, and that was the focus conversation. So when we were selling to a lot of different, we had contractor clients, owner clients, architects, engineers, subcontractors. We had different markets that we played in, different geographies that we were involved in. And we we made this decision that we’re going to completely narrow the focus to these 600 hospitals. When when we made that decision, that was a lot of debate before we we agreed to do that because it’s very counterintuitive. And my brother in particular, but others in the company were like, we’re going to we’re going to go out of business. What do you mean we’re not going to sell all these other leads that come in. We’re only going to sell these 600 companies. I mean, that’s crazy. And so that was the toughest decision that we made. And in hindsight, it was it was a turning point. It was pivotal for the business.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:11] Right. And and that’s the thing when it comes to narrowing focus and pruning, you’re not saying you’re never going to sell to these other people. It’s just not today. You know, you’re going to focus today on these 600 and let’s really let’s own this market and be the go to resource for these folks. And then let’s down the road, we get to all those people, but just not today.

Ron Antevy: [00:21:36] That’s exactly right. And that’s how that’s how we would that that’s exactly the conversation that we would have internally for the folks that were just die hard. You know, how could we be turning away from this business? And we’d say, look, it’s just for for now, it’s not forever, right?

Lee Kantor: [00:21:53] So now as you kind of you penetrate the one market, you expand to the other markets. Now you’re getting traction, you know, probably more than you could have imagined when you first started, Right. All your dreams are coming true.

Ron Antevy: [00:22:06] Yep.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:07] How did you know it was time now to exit?

Ron Antevy: [00:22:11] Well, you know, we had we had a really great run and the company grew once we nailed down, when we got the focus and we got kind of the whole business, the go to market figured out and the sales process figured out. We had a period that I would say longer than a decade where we are average annual growth was in excess of 30% was between 30 and 50%. And so the company started to really, really took off. And and then fast, fast forward all the way into 20 2015, 2016, 2017, the company is doing north of $50 Million. At this point, they’re over 250 employees. And we were thinking, you know, and I’m thinking to myself, we really weren’t thinking about exiting actually, but I was thinking to myself, Boy, I’ve never done this before, which I had thought, you know, for for the 20 years along the way. I thought that, too. But at this point, I started thinking, you know, I’ve never done this before. We’ve had so much success. We’re getting into the quote unquote big leagues. I’d really love to have a partner with experience to help me get to the next level, to get to 100 million or 200 million, and maybe I can de-risk my own personal situation and take some chips off the table, so to speak. So I thought to myself, you know, John and I will sell part of the company and continue to grow the business. I was very bullish. I thought there was lots of opportunity ahead. I just thought it’d be great to have somebody else sitting at the board table with me and not just going it alone.

Ron Antevy: [00:23:57] So that’s really what started the process. And and then what happened is we went through the process and we were a highly sought after asset. So because we were a bootstrap business, we had these great growth metrics. We were a leader in our space. Many of the financial buyers that are out there, the the. Private equity investors, they were just all of them were lining up to want to do something with us. And then we had a couple of strategic what people call the strategic buyers. So companies like Trimble that came along and said, We really like what you’re doing, but we aren’t really into buying a piece of the company and being a partner with you, we’d need to buy the entire company. And so we we you know, one thing led to another. We didn’t really plan for it to happen that way. And then when we sat down with them, we really liked what what they had to say. And we like the opportunity to continue to run the business and continue to grow the business. And I thought that I would get with Trimble in particular, the ability to have that partner. I’d have somebody to help me go to the next level. And that’s really how it turned out. I mean, we ended up growing the business significantly more once we were purchased and I had the support of a big company to do it. And at the same time I had the autonomy to keep doing things like running the business the way I did when I when I owned it.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:24] And that’s another great lesson for entrepreneurs when it comes time to exit, to know ahead of time who the players are and who would be the good partners that might become the good exit partner.

Ron Antevy: [00:25:37] Yeah, that’s it. Just to highlight that, I’d say you really have to think about it before the day comes. And, and, and I was having conversations with the private equity folks for a number of years before I actually decided I was going to take an investment. And then I also knew and I had had conversations with most of the strategic buyers that are out there. So if you as an entrepreneur, if you take on an investment. And of course, now I’m on the other side of that and I see how how it looks from an investor’s perspective. But that’s really a marriage. And the the amount of money you get is really the least important. And that may not seem obvious when you’re a fledgling entrepreneur and the getting money is so important for you to continue to grow your business. But it’s really who you who you marry up with because you’re going to be dealing with them. It’s a true partnership and picking the wrong partner will will ruin the business regardless of how much money they give you or the valuation and so on. So that’s an important lesson. And then if you go in and sell the business and exit completely, that’s also very important because it’s true what they say. You put 20, 25, 30 years. We put a lot of time into this business. Some people don’t do don’t, don’t go that far, but it’s still your baby and you still care about the customers and you still care about the employees and you care about the vision and the further the future direction of the business. So it’s important that you pick that right partner. And you can’t just do that in a in a process where you have one or two meetings and you make a decision, you know, you need to be doing that early and thinking about it ahead of time. Good point.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:24] Now, changing gears a little bit here, talk a little bit about the Levant Center innovation. How do does how do they kind of help the ecosystem and why are they so important to an entrepreneurial ecosystem?

Ron Antevy: [00:27:41] Sure. So I’m a volunteer at the Levine Center and I’m very passionate about what’s happening there. What the Levin Center does is provide resources for an entrepreneur, especially early in that process. Now, the Levant Center helps throughout the process from the idea stage into creating a business to the acceleration and even the post accelerator stage. But they’re providing a wide variety of resources, people that you meet lawyers, accountants, marketing people, other entrepreneurs with experience. So a ton of different experiences that if you’re an entrepreneur just starting out, you’re trying to figure out, what do I do first? How do I what do I do next? As I said, I for me, for 20, 20 some odd years, every day was a new day. I was figuring every time I thought I figured something out, the game changed. The company got bigger. The I had new challenges to deal with. So how do you figure all that stuff out? I mean, you can try to learn it all the hard way and and you eventually can do that. Or you have folks around you that can help you and mentor you and advise you. And that’s really what the Levant Center does. It provides that whole ecosystem of people and mentors to help answer questions and help you with problems that you may have along your journey.

Lee Kantor: [00:29:11] And now that E Builder is kind of in the rearview mirror, what are you up to now? How can we help you?

Ron Antevy: [00:29:20] Well, these days I’m looking for opportunities where I can be an investor. So I’m thankfully, I’m in a position where I don’t need to be an operator of a business anymore. And and after a number of years and as the business grew, it’s more and more pressure. And when we are part of a public company, it’s even more pressure to hit numbers and do all of those things. So I’m happy to step away from that now. And I’m really looking and I’ve been working with a few companies where I’m an investor and then typically an advisor or on the board where companies that are technology companies, typically it’s enterprise software. And I’m I’m usually looking for companies that are past the initial idea stage and pass product market fit. So they have a few million dollars in revenue already. They have some customers and they’re trying to go from that level of say, two or $3 Million in revenue to 20 or 30 or $50 Million in revenue. So that kind of scale up phase is it requires a whole different set of skills and it’s a it’s an area that’s super fun for me in an area that I have helped other companies grow at. So that’s what I’m looking for these days. And it’s fun. It’s fun to see other entrepreneurs that have built something and to see them take it further than they ever thought they could do, just just like I did.

Lee Kantor: [00:30:54] And so these are SAS technology companies, or are they in construction or it doesn’t matter what industry.

Ron Antevy: [00:31:02] Doesn’t matter what industry, but it’s SAS tech companies and it’s B2B. So and enterprise type stuff. If the if the market that the company is selling to is a is a big complex market like construction, like utilities, energy, that kind of thing, it’s even better. But yeah, it doesn’t need to be construction. So concepts are many of the go to market concepts when you’re selling a business application software to a large enterprise are really the same regardless. So that’s the idea.

Lee Kantor: [00:31:38] So if somebody wants to connect with you or somebody on your team, what’s the best way to do that? Is it through LinkedIn or do you have a website for your firm?

Ron Antevy: [00:31:46] So so they can connect with me through LinkedIn or I can give you my email and they’re happy for someone to email me directly at Ron at A.V. Capital dot com. So my last name, Capital Dotcom.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:03] Well, Ron, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Ron Antevy: [00:32:09] Oh, thanks so much for having me, Lee. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:32:11] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Innovation Radio.

Intro: [00:32:18] This episode of Innovation Radio was brought to you by the world’s first theme park for entrepreneurs, the Levein’s Center of Innovation, the only innovation center in the nation to support the founder’s journey from Birth of an Idea through successful exit or global expansion. If you are ready to launch or scale your business, please check out the Levant Center of Innovation by visiting Nova Dot edu. Forward slash Innovation.

Ali Schwanke with Simple Strat

by

Simple-Strat-logo
St. Louis Business Radio
Ali Schwanke with Simple Strat
Loading
/

Ali-Schwanke-Simple-StratAli Schwanke is founder, CEO and Marketing Strategist of Simple Strat. With a fierce strategy mind, she helps clients approach marketing from a business perspective.

As an entrepreneur, Ali has a proven track record of marketing success and coming up with innovative ideas and campaigns that drive demand.

Connect with Ali on LinkedIn and follow Simple Strat on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

About Your Host

Phillip-HearnDr. Phillip Hearn Ed.D. is a results-driven entrepreneur, Senior Executive, Consultant, and Board Member with more than 20 years of success in business acquisition and real estate. His expertise in leveraging extensive experience with expansion, and financing, makes Phillip a valuable asset for companies, particularly in real estate, seeking guidance on growth opportunities and process improvement.

Phillip is the founder of Mid American Capital Holdings, LLC, an acquisition focused company. Current subsidiaries include Phillip Speaks, specializing in coaching, advising and public speaking engagements; Financial Center, consulting business owners on methods to implement business trade lines and credit to grow their operations, and other subsidiaries which continues to expand. Phillip also gives back via his non for profit Center for Communities and Economic Development.

Phillip has obtained an Ed.D. from Capella University and holds an Executive Masters in Health Administration (EMHA) from Saint Louis University; an MA in Marketing and a BA in Media Communication, both from Webster University, and Lean Six Sigma (Black Belt) from Villanova University. He has served as a Board Member for the National Sales Network St. Louis Chapter and Ready Readers, for which he has also served as the Governance Department Chair and President of the Board.

Phillip is a coach, advisor, key note speaker and podcast host on Business RadioX. Audiences benefit professionally and personally through his teachings of leveraging and application. His new book “Life Mottos for Success” exemplifies how positive words and thoughts can transform your life!

Connect with Phillip on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:05] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Saint Louis, Missouri. It’s time for Saint Louis Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Phillip Hearn: [00:00:17] Hello, everybody, and welcome to Docs discussions. My name is Dr. Phillip Hearn, and I am so excited for my guests today. Usually, I get to talk to very smart people in general, hopefully smarter than myself. But this definitely is without exception. And I’ve been looking forward to this meeting here for the last few weeks myself. This is an interview with Ali Schwanke from Simple Strat. Ali, how are you today?

Ali Schwanke: [00:00:46] I’m doing great. Excited to be here.

Phillip Hearn: [00:00:48] Good. Good. Well, we’re happy to have you. I got a chance to dig more into your information, so I’m extremely excited for the opportunity to talk to you and kind of pick your brain before we get into what simple shred does everything that you have going? Because it seems like a ton from what I’ve been able to research. Give the viewers and the listeners a bit more about your background. Tell us a little bit more about Ali.

Ali Schwanke: [00:01:12] Sure. Well, I’m the oldest of four, which tells you a lot about the type a type of person that I think I am. And my whole life has been spent solving problems. And I think that marketing that’s what I do in my my day job is marketing. But really it’s it’s helping people solve problems. So I went to college thinking I was going to be working in medicine and really just kind of fell out of love with the idea of school. And little did I know that being a marketer means you’re in school every single freaking day for the rest of your life because everything changes about every 5 minutes. But yeah, I own a company now and kind of work my way up from an employee to eventually then obviously owning my own firm. And now we help people with growing their business through marketing, helping individual people become more thought leadership driven and create a presence online and use that to drive leads. And then ultimately, I love to have fun with video and audio like this. So I experiment with my own YouTube channel. We’ve got a channel where we teach people HubSpot, and then I’ve got, you know, Tik Tok and LinkedIn and all sorts of fun stuff where I could just create content and kind of see how people engage.

Phillip Hearn: [00:02:16] So you cover the full marketing spectrum basically from what this sounds like. So this is awesome. Yeah. So with simple Stretch, how long has it been around? Share a little bit about your mission, your vision, and your purpose of what you and your team do.

Ali Schwanke: [00:02:31] Yeah, simple. Start with started in 2016, I would say officially. And prior to that I was doing a little bit more of like CMO consulting. So going into businesses, helping them figure out their strategy, help them determine resources, you know, how are we going to execute, what’s the system, who are the people, what are the roles, what’s the tactics, and then ultimately helping to hand that off to them and move on. And in doing that, I discovered that sometimes actually a lot of times doing the execution is the hardest part. And it gets hard because the shiny kind of, Wow, this is new wears off, and then you’re in the throes of it just like you are in the middle of a marathon or the middle of a house building. There’s that kind of just dip where the the results aren’t there yet and you just have to keep pushing. So we launched our I guess I launched a company in 2016 to somewhat help the clients that were needing that execution and was hoping that I remember actually writing the name Simple straight down and writing what I would call the manifesto that was on my kitchen table, and I just kind of brain dumped all my thoughts into a piece of paper and it was Marketing is changing marketing. Isn’t this push sort of relationship? It is a it’s conversation. It’s a give and take. And helping is the new selling. And that really was the presence for us. Launching this company brought in a minority business partner about a year into it. And ever since then our philosophy has been selling is really just helping people identify their problems correctly, leading into the solutions that, you know, makes it easy for them to make a decision and then have a good experience and make sure they get that problem solved. And that’s really what we do every day.

Phillip Hearn: [00:04:06] I love it. I love it. I like something that you mentioned and I want to make sure I’m saying the phrase correctly. Would you say helping not selling? Is that was that the kind of part of the manifesto, if I heard that right?

Ali Schwanke: [00:04:18] Yeah. I mean, the way that I tell it to to clients now is helping is the new selling. Like people just do not want to be sold to. Everybody is allergic to ads online. Don’t show me ads, whatever. But somehow we’re still getting ads shown to us. They just don’t look like ads anymore. Because again, we we know when we’re being sold to. And so we want to be helped. We want to be entertained. We want to be educated. That’s really where we’re at today.

Phillip Hearn: [00:04:41] Absolutely. Absolutely. Now, I love that philosophy. And kind of digging into what you talked about within your site and everything else, That’s part of the reason I was so excited about the interview, because it’s just a fresher way of thinking about marketing. So let me ask this. People hear the word marketing. And truthfully, if you’re. Business owner that, let’s say, doesn’t focus on marketing. That sounds like an overwhelming word or concept. So how do you and your team approach it to with all the ever changing landscape that takes place, how do you and your team help to almost smooth that process out?

Ali Schwanke: [00:05:19] Yeah, it’s I like to think about things logically. And so marketing to me has never been about finding the best idea to pitch and get overwhelming amounts of insight because really it comes down to what problem are you solving, Who are you solving it for? Where do those people go to look for solutions for that problem? And then what is that journey to conversion look like? So let me give you an example. When people are coming up with a concept for, let’s say, a startup or a technology, they often interview a lot of people about how they’re currently solving that problem. And they run into a couple of challenges, like people don’t even know they have this problem. It’s kind of like yesterday, my son and I watched The Little Mermaid for the first time, like it’s my favorite childhood movie, and he’d never seen it because he’s little. But, you know, she if you’ve seen the movie, she picks up a fork in the bottom of the sea. And she is told by the seagull that it’s a hairbrush. And so she believes that she has a hairbrush because she has a dingle hopper, which is a fork.

Ali Schwanke: [00:06:15] Little does she know that the fork is being used to eat. Humans use a fork at the table, and a lot of people are solving their problems in ways that make sense to them, which would never, ever make them go look for your product, look for your solution, whatever. So understanding the journey that someone goes through psychologically to solve their problems is actually the bigger piece of marketing that a lot of people are missing. They think I have solution. I put it in front of customer and I barrage them with messages till they get it in their head that we should help them. And that’s an archaic way of thinking about it. So when it comes to how we walk people through that, logically it’s again, what are you, what are you solving? How do the customers that you’re trying to reach talk about it. Let’s find the places that they have those conversations online and let’s be part of that community so that we can eventually invite them into quote unquote, our funnel or through a conversion opportunity and then nurture them toward a conversation.

Phillip Hearn: [00:07:08] I love it. I love it. I’m not going to lie. I think this is the first time that anybody’s ever hit me with Little Mermaid. Follow the example on how to do good business. So that’s the first. I mean, I’m in though, and it makes complete sense to so. Here’s a little bit of almost a piggyback to that previous question that I asked. What’s the most rewarding aspect of what you do on a day to day basis? Because again, it sounds like you and your team are doing a lot for clients, but what’s the most rewarding aspect of all of that?

Ali Schwanke: [00:07:38] Yeah, really clarity. I mean, I think I find so much joy when the the vague kind of, let’s call it like I’m going to trick you veil gets gets pulled out because too many times and anybody that works in marketing and sales, we are all going up against the previous baggage that someone has had with that particular word or concept. So if you hired somebody and you hired them to do marketing for you, let’s say, and it never produced a result for you, you have this baggage that thinks marketing doesn’t work or all marketers are cheaters or whatever. And so I’m up against that and you might be up against that if someone had a poor deal and they think that all people like you are terrible too. But I think clarity on you are really connecting people with solutions to their problems like that is what you do. And if you can look at marketing in that way, we can start to be logical and creative together as opposed to just trying to be this adversarial relationship, hoping to eventually see a dollar dollar come to the bottom line.

Phillip Hearn: [00:08:43] I love it. I love it. So adding to that particular piece of it, what is the process look like with your ideal clients or sets of clients? So I know the end result can be different, right? So of course you can run a marketing campaign, you can help them with YouTube. It sounds like. It sounds like you can help them at their end product with a lot of different functions. But tell me a little bit about how that process, how that relationship starts on your end, because again, it seems like you have a clear, logical concept of, Hey, to get to where you want to go, we need to do these, let’s say 3 to 5 steps. So take us take our listeners through what that looks like.

Ali Schwanke: [00:09:22] Sure. So I’ll give you the the process you’d go through regardless of whether you work with us or another agency, because I think that you’re going to find that there are two types of people in the world. One of them is they have an educated awareness about what they need to do. Now, when I say educated awareness, I mean you’ve been in the space, you understand marketing, you understand what I’m talking about from like I could use all the marketing buzzwords and you and I are on the same page. And that is, that’s not as common as people would like to think it is. And then the other side of that is they don’t know what they don’t know. They read one post once upon a time and they’re somewhat like the people that go to the doctor that read, Oh my God, I have cancer. I read it on WebMD. And the guy is like, No, you’re just dehydrated. So, you know, the the self diagnosis and everyone, quote unquote, is an expert these days. That’s really tough because you have to be willing to admit that you don’t know what you don’t know. So back to how we help people. There’s kind of two ways that they that you come into a conversation when you’re looking for results from marketing. One is, again, you know exactly what you need to do. So let’s say that you have had some success going to trade shows and converting people from those events. Now you know that you need to double your exposure at events like that. You can’t do it internally. You need a team to help you. Great. We know exactly that. You need to create a better digital strategy and enhance the overall number of events that you do a year.

Ali Schwanke: [00:10:43] Perfect. Okay, we can do that. The other one is we don’t really know what to do. And if you don’t come in admitting that you don’t really know, then you might end up hiring someone to do, let’s say, a YouTube campaign for you. And then at the end of the day, there’s no leads from it because you hired the YouTube campaign thinking, I’m going to get leads. And what they did was they got you awareness and awareness is not the same thing as cash in the bank, which is fine. They all fit together. But if you happen to not know what you need to do and you don’t have a written down strategy, we help you create that. So that is that is our job is helping you nail down what channels to be on, why you should be on them. What is your conversion mechanism? How does a person who’s cold and that means they’ve never talked to you? I’ll say people will say we have lots of leads in our database. And I’m like, No, you don’t. You have names on. You have names in a record. That’s all you have. So in that case, if you just have cold leads, what’s it going to take for them to move from? I have no idea who the heck you are to. Yes, stranger, I would love to give you my money. That’s a big journey and there are lots of touchpoints along the way. So we design that journey with you and then ultimately how that’s going to transact and move them into your funnel.

Phillip Hearn: [00:11:55] Awesome. And I love the WebMD analogy, right? Because somebody happened to read something one time and they go there hiring you with all of a sudden they become the subject matter expert. Not quite. We love we love the enthusiasm, but not quite so. And I think that’s important, too, that you talk about. If you just have a record in your CRM system that is completely different than a lead, Right. And I think that’s a key component to that. I love that you and your team focus on of going. If we’re talking about a record, we’ve got to do some work to get it to a lead, right? If it’s a lead now, you’re talking about actual conversion opportunities and going from there. I think that is that’s powerful because again, I think it starts to break down some of those those pieces about marketing that folks think they understand. But just that little bit of change and thought is extremely huge.

Ali Schwanke: [00:12:46] Yeah, there’s ADD one quick thing there. So one of the things that seems I talk a lot about the unsexy parts of marketing and one of the unsexy parts that is absolutely necessary and you don’t realize it until you realize the life on the other side is we have to have shared understanding of what each contact, let’s say, milestone in their buying journey is. When I say lead, if I go into any company, their definition of what a lead is is going to be different. And then when I talk about people who registered for a webinar, are those sales qualified leads or those marketing qualified leads? What’s happening with them? All of that’s different to an organization. And if you have not standardized that and everybody can repeat that on the spot as to what it means, there’s some clarity issues there, and your marketing certainly could be more effective if you knew exactly what it meant to be each place on the journey.

Phillip Hearn: [00:13:35] Awesome. Yeah. So, so basically what you’re saying is internal processes and internal milestones are going to be key for you and your team to come in and be as productive as someone would want you and your team to be. Am I hearing that right?

Ali Schwanke: [00:13:51] Yeah. Well, we’ll often help people set those things because again, back to the you don’t know what you don’t know. It often doesn’t come up until we start saying, Hey, we’re going to do a webinar campaign. And they say, Great, and we’re going to call everybody after the webinar. And we say, Is that is that the best is that the best way to follow up with those folks? Well, I don’t know. What do you think? And that’s what we start talking about intent signals and buying signals, because just because I happen to I’m going to use an example of, let’s say, dating websites. Just because I looked at someone’s profile doesn’t mean that I’m ready to go on a date with them. So we if we look at relationship building, which is what sales is, is that person ready to have a sales conversation if they haven’t raised their hand yet? Probably not. So if you follow up, you might want to be saying, Hey, thank you for joining the webinar. I just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Ali. If you have any questions, I’m here, but we’d love to see you on the next webinar. That’s far different than trying to get them into a sales conversation, if you see what I mean.

Phillip Hearn: [00:14:45] Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if they’re not ready, they’re not ready, right? So you’re not going to force them into something that they’re not prepared for and really are not looking for in that particular case. I love that analogy. That makes complete sense. So here’s something that I know. It’s come across your desk. So there’s the rise in all the AI apps and the tools and different marketplaces. So how is this affected your business? How is this possibly even enhance your business? And how does this help you work with your clients? With all there is? That’s I again, I feel like a couple of people have read some articles about AI and now they know everything, right. So and it’s going to be difficult for us to know everything because I feel like it’s just now getting to that critical getting to those critical mass points. So how does this affect your business? What are you seeing with everything that’s going on in the AI apps in the marketplace?

Ali Schwanke: [00:15:36] Yeah, there’s a lot of really wonderful and exciting things that are happening and we are benefiting them from them as content creators. For instance, I’m now a chat GPT subscriber. Like if you haven’t, they have a wait list you can join in. They’re releasing it slowly, but I’m using this AI to help springboard some of the initial ideas that come into a blog post. But I think the for those that are on the outside saying great, I now can have I write my blog post, I don’t need to have an agency anymore. Why don’t you guys focus on something more effective? And with that thinking, it’s it’s basically what it’s going to what it’s going to do. And what we’re seeing already is we’re seeing the rise of just because you can doesn’t mean you should. So they’ve got double the blog posts. Well, to be honest, it reads like a robot wrote it because a robot wrote it. And so there’s still the need for editing and there’s still the need for context. And quite frankly, what it’s doing is it’s increasing the importance of what you and I are doing right now, and that is bringing the human expertise in a way that you can’t use A.I. over top of it. So you’re seeing more people doing things with video. They’re recording their podcasts so we can see their faces because we know when their faces are there, we can trust them explicitly when their voices are there. We know we can trust them explicitly. So we’re seeing the rise of what we call thought leadership content. And that’s you can’t talk about marketing like I am if you haven’t worked in it. So there’s no way to refute that. I know what I’m talking about and you’re going to see a lot more of that in the very mediums that we’re using right now.

Phillip Hearn: [00:17:11] Yeah, and I think that’s the thought leadership content piece I think is huge and. From what you’re talking about, even with all the growth and additions into the marketplace when it comes to AI, that human expertise doesn’t get lost. Right? Right. So have you started to see clients come to you and go, Well, I’ve already got I can do the blog post. I don’t need you or your clients still looking to you and your team to go, Look, I understand we can maybe help with some of the brainstorming, but we still need Allie and her team’s expertise to come in and do what they do. Well, what are you seeing within your customers and your clients and even prospects of how they’re looking at your agency versus the AI game?

Ali Schwanke: [00:17:58] Yeah, we’re seeing it the same way we saw when people and now like we help people with HubSpot. So if they come in and they’ve heard about HubSpot but they don’t really know what to do, I compare it to, to go into the Home Depot and you’ve got a lot of tools you could buy and you just end up being loaded up with tools and for a hot minute you think you’ve got things like, Great, I’ve got all these tools. You still don’t really know what to do with the tools or how to use them together. And so the need and the things that we see people is it’s not about the tools. It’s about knowing exactly what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and whether or not it’s worth your time. And that’s difficult to understand when you don’t work in the industry. Every day there’s there’s a company that releases changes to social that come out every day, and they have a laundry list of changes that just happen on platforms on social every day. So if you’re going to expect to keep up with all of the things that you need to know to be an effective marketer and a financial person and a business like whatever. Good luck. Good luck with that. So with with AI, it tends to be this. If they bring blogs to us and say, Hey, we already have a bunch of blogs written, the challenge is a lot of these companies that are doing that don’t really even know what effective content looks like. And that’s a challenge because effective content looks like really helpful, insightful, different point of view driven information. And it’s not a five tips to get more out of LinkedIn. I mean, like we’ve read those articles, those are terrible ones to read that nobody like if you’re, you know, have a profile picture, well, duh, have a profile picture. Like if that’s the type of information you’re putting out, you’re not really helping anybody.

Phillip Hearn: [00:19:39] Right? Right. So bringing a higher level of content is going to be important, even though great, like a robot can write this. But that human touch element, bringing that to a higher level is going to be extremely important from what you’re saying.

Ali Schwanke: [00:19:55] Yeah. And we don’t even know yet of the implications of this coming forward when we don’t know what Google is going to be doing with content that you might be able to be flag that that’s only AI generated. We see students that are writing papers using Chat GPT and now there’s people that are developing apps that are helping flag whether or not that’s actually original content. So in the same way that we have plagiarism in issues from copying and pasting from other websites, we’re going to have issues in this area. I think the bigger question tends to be tools aside, what unique value do you bring to the marketplace? What do people look to you about what content topics and really start there first before you say these are a lot of cool tools, where do I put them into my process?

Phillip Hearn: [00:20:40] Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. Don’t don’t pick up a hammer when you need a pair of pliers. Right. The Home Depot reference. So making sure that you’ve got the right tool for the right time. I love it. So let’s ask a forward look from you. So you’re are marketing subject matter expert. What do you think? Marketing. For not only your organization, but just in general in the marketplace. It’s going to look like in the next year, three years, five years, because there’s so much going on. And I feel like there’s almost a groundswell of everybody’s now focused on marketing. I know that sounds kind of maybe goofy, but I feel like it’s a different conversation than it even was five or ten years ago for the masses, right? There’s of course been the marketing agencies, etc. But where do you think that the industry is going to go marketing wise? And how can your contacts and clients go with you into whatever that change may look like?

Ali Schwanke: [00:21:37] Yeah, there’s a couple of things that we’re seeing and depending on the industry excuse me, these look a little bit different, but one is the importance of human connections, driving a lot of community type of marketing. And what that looks like is there are, you know, I belong to seven different communities for revenue or they call it rev ops would be the name in terms of like sales and marketing alignment together, people that work in those industries and want to share best practices and just feel like they’re in alignment with one another. So there’s there’s those communities. There’s definitely a rise in the amount of content that’s being created, period. So just like this podcast seems like everybody in my network starting a podcast, why are you different? Who is it for? Can you be specific? So even though I’d say ten years ago, I would still say this then is you can’t be all things to all people, even more so today. If you pick a vertical in a niche, that’s the person who sees that content can say yes. So let’s say, for example, we help folks with HubSpot.

Ali Schwanke: [00:22:42] And if I said this whole campaign is how professional service companies use HubSpot, I’m a professional service firm. Great. I know you’re going to be talking to me, so I should pay attention. So that relevancy and context I think is going to be important to your marketing, which is tough because I’ve met a few executives and sales people that are like, Oh, when I say no to this market, I’m letting go of opportunities. But when you tighten your focus, the ability to execute and clarify that, that definitely leads to faster, faster lead generation, then it’s like the opposite effect happens. So we’ll see a lot about a lot of that. And then I think we’ll see, just like you’re doing here, is we’re going to see a lot more individual voices come out of the the, I guess, realms of companies because we’re just becoming like disillusioned with brands and we want to identify with other humans. So I think we’re going to see a lot more of that here in the next couple of years.

Phillip Hearn: [00:23:37] Well, yeah, it’s funny, as you say, as we’re sitting here doing a podcast, right? But those podcasts that are going to stand out even are going to be the ones that are almost more thoughtful in nature as opposed to just like you said, backed by this massive corporate brand, just to make a bunch of noise. So it’s interesting. It’s definitely interesting. So let me ask this. What would an ideal client look like for you and your team? Right. So you talked about being able to drill down in your focus and and lock into those clients or that audience that is of benefit to what you’re trying to accomplish at the end. At the end of the day, who’s an ideal or what types of industry verticals? Who are your ideal clients that you’d want to talk to?

Ali Schwanke: [00:24:24] Sure. Before we get to verticals, I usually discuss three core problems that we solve. Okay, great. One of one of those core problems is, you know, you need to scale your business through technology in a sales and marketing capacity, but I have no idea what that looks like. So you’re doing things by hand. You’ve got a sales team in the field who’s not maybe operating off of the same source of data, whatever that is. We we definitely solve that problem. The second one is you happen to need to increase your awareness in the marketplace. You’re an unknown name, unknown brand unknown person, and you need to be in those. Call them warm conversations before they’re ready for a sales call. That is certainly a problem that we help with. And then the last one is there’s some sort of a thought leadership opportunity in your market, and you can solve that with content, whether that’s a video series, a podcast series, blog series, LinkedIn, whatever, that that medium looks like. We do all sorts of mediums depending on your industry. And if that’s you need, you need to be able to execute faster and need a partner that can consistently do that for you. That is a problem we solve. So where that boils down to is we do operate solely on the HubSpot platform when it comes to technology. If you’re not a HubSpot customer yet and you’re thinking about it like people, HubSpot got a very aggressive sales team.

Ali Schwanke: [00:25:37] So if you’re being called by HubSpot and you’re like, I’m not sure we’ve got free calls where people can just like ask us a bunch of questions. We have a YouTube channel with 80 plus videos about it. You can go just soak up a wealth of knowledge from us there and then we’ve got consulting on that side, what that looks like from company size all over the place, all over the board, but primarily most of them are driven by having somewhat of a. Presence in sales, whether that’s the founder or a sales team. And then either you have an internal marketing person or someone who’s maybe part time that needs some extra support. So that’s that’s one side. The other side is larger B2B brands that have, let’s say, sales teams that are doing a lot of really good things in the marketplace. We see this in software, we see this in professional services, we see this in health care. They’re doing their work, but there’s a long sales cycle and they really need to stay in front of those people during that sales cycle. That’s a good, really good fit for us because we can help them align their content and their delivery of those awareness pieces during that journey to then again see in front of them and ultimately close sales faster.

Phillip Hearn: [00:26:45] I love it. And I love that the three core problems that you solve, right? Because again, as we talked about earlier, the idea of marketing for a lot of business owners, no matter how big or small, it almost becomes analysis paralysis, right? Correct. There’s so much information. There’s so much going on. So to have someone who is a subject matter expert and their team that walks someone through from start to finish, I think is potentially invaluable for most companies. So I love what you solve and how you get to it. So here’s a little something that might be off of the beaten path. So you have so much going on. It sounds like you and your team are doing such great work. What do you personally do to recharge and stay sharp? You’ve got a ton going on. How do you do it? I mean, are you reading or are you working? Not like what? What are those things that allow Ali to say, This is my chance to recharge so I can go be great for the clients that I’m working with?

Ali Schwanke: [00:27:40] Yeah, there’s a couple of things that I believe, and I have believed them for a long time, and that is one you have to be where people are having conversations about innovative things and ideas and that I mentioned. One is a slot community. So I do participate in a lot of online discussions and places where I can even just observe conversations that are happening. I don’t have to be in them, but I can. When you’re in a slot community, for example, you can just go and read the dialog happening in a specific channel about a certain topic, and it’s like eavesdropping on conversations in the industry, which is super helpful. Secondly, I go to events. I make it a point. Yes, you can do everything virtually now, but I’m going to tell you what you cannot replace the amazing insights and relationship. I’ll say it currency that you get by being in person at an event. And you and I are definitely like, I think we all align on that because we spend a lot of time traveling. But those people that are willing to do that, those things escalate faster than they ever have. And I’m seeing that as a result in my life. And then two other things. One is I definitely stay active. I’m I run and my running is kind of my meditation because I just kind of let my brain go and I have all sorts of ideas that come from that. And then thirdly, it’s definitely making time to put together a, let’s say, a list of experiments. So if I’m not testing something and experimenting with something, I’m not sharpening my own skills and sharing that with clients. So even today, like on LinkedIn, I released a video that I put on Tik Tok. It was talking about a specific kind of marketing principle, and my test is will I get more TikTok followers by simply posting this on LinkedIn? We’ll see. But I can now talk about that and talk about that strategy because I’m also testing it.

Phillip Hearn: [00:29:23] I love it. Yeah, and that’s the fun part, right? It kind of puts us back into what was that middle school where we have all those science experiments, right? Yeah. What they don’t tell you is, hey, you’re actually you don’t have to be a scientist to do science experiments or experiments in general, so that that’s a lot of fun. I love it. So last question for you. What is the best way for our listeners, if they’re interested, if they think you can help you and your team can help solve the core issues that you mentioned, how do they connect with you? How do they stay in touch? Give us all your your good stuff.

Ali Schwanke: [00:29:55] Absolutely. Well, if you Google Ali Schwanke, there isn’t another one of me that I know of yet, so you’ll be able to find me. I have a website, Ali Salon.com, where I’ve got an email list and some resources there. If you go to YouTube and search for HubSpot hacks or even if you just search for YouTube and see the kind of first female face with like light brown, blondish hair, that’s probably me because we have a YouTube channel there. But if you search HubSpot hacks, you will find us over on YouTube. And then Simple STRATCOM is the website of the company that we operate and we’ve got a variety of free resources on that website. And then there is a new podcast and channel coming out called Marketing Deconstructed. I’ve got a newsletter over on LinkedIn. You can join now and when that goes live, you’ll you’ll know about that as well.

Phillip Hearn: [00:30:38] Awesome. I’m so excited. I’m glad we got a chance to get together. Like I said, I’ve been looking forward to this for the last couple of weeks because I’ve been reading up on your stuff, taking a look at the videos. I mean, you, you and your team provides such amazing content to kind of break down some of those myths and the mystique of marketing, right? We hear so much about marketing, especially today. And you guys make it a simpler process, which is impressive and and not an easy to think thing to do. So thank you so much for all that you and your team are doing, and I’m really glad you got a chance to come hang out with us today.

Ali Schwanke: [00:31:14] Yeah, thanks for giving me the opportunity to share. And likewise, I’ve enjoyed learning more about what you’re doing and can’t wait to see where it takes you.

Phillip Hearn: [00:31:20] Absolutely. Thank you so much. So that is the end of our show today. We want to give a special thanks to our great guest, Allie Schwanke. So much good stuff about marketing and all the industry trends, where we are and where we’re going. But that’s been it for DOCS discussions. I’m Dr. Philip Hern and we thank you so much for listening. Take care.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Hell Yes or No Corollary

by

BRXmic99
BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Hell Yes or No Corollary
Loading
/

BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: Hell Yes or No Corollary

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, we’ve talked before about this idea – it’s either a hell yes or a no. But you’ve got a corollary to this.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:14] Yeah, this is from one of my favorite writers, Derek Sivers, and he was the one who coined the hell yeah or no way to make a decision. But I think that a corollary to that is if you already have decided about something, and you’ve been doing it for a while, and then now you’re deciding, “Should I stay the course or should I change?” So, to me, if you’re debating staying the course or changing, you’re pretty close to changing because, especially, if you are having this conversation with yourself multiple times, if there’s multiple times, you’re like, “Should I stay the course or make a change?” and you know, a week later, you’re like, “Should I stay the course or make a change?” it’s probably time to make a change because something, obviously, is causing you to rethink this decision.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:06] So, I’m a big believer in hell yeah or no when it comes to making that initial decision. But I’m also a fan of, “Should I stay the course or change?” If you’re asking yourself that, it is probably time to make a change.

BRX Pro Tip: 3 Ways to Beat Procrastination

by

BRXmic99
BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: 3 Ways to Beat Procrastination
Loading
/

BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: 3 Ways to Beat Procrastination

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, I’ve been meaning to do something about procrastination, but I just can’t seem to get to it.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:11] Yeah, join the club. Procrastination, everybody kind of deals with this. It’s really difficult. There are so many things that interest us and distract us. It’s hard to stay focused for one thing for one time. I mean, even how we do these tips every day, you know, we don’t do them every day because if we did, we wouldn’t be doing it every day. We do them in chunks of ten few times a month in order to release them every day.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:36] So, one of the easiest ways to beat procrastination is to time block in your calendar and to put the time in and say, just like we do that, you know, Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon, we get together to talk and do things like this. So, when you time block something, it gets done because people break promises to themselves every day. You’re not reliable in this manner, but people tend to keep appointments. So, when the appointment is there for you to do something, you tend to show up and do that thing, and especially if another person’s relying on you. So, if you can get a partner in this, it will be even that much more effective. So, use your calendar to your advantage and book time in there for yourself to get more stuff done.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:21] Another thing that helps with procrastination is to take a task and break it down into the smallest possible tasks and add those tasks right into your calendar. So, again, you have a task, “I want to write a book,” if you put in your calendar, “Write a book,” it’s never going to get done. So, if you spend some time and go, “Okay, I’m going to outline the book,” that’s one task. And then, you go, “I’m going to outline chapter one,” that’s another task. Then, you go,” I’m going to outline the four parts of chapter one,” those are four more tasks. If you do that, and then put each one of those many tasks into your calendar, it’s more likely it’ll get done. And eventually, the big task will get done. So, break big goals into smaller parts, and you’ll find you’ll be more effective in getting them done.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:07] And the last thing is you’ve got to eliminate distractions. Getting anything done is difficult when people are chirping at you, and you’re dealing with other things like social media, or phone, or email or whatever it is. Those things are distraction. It takes a lot of time to kind of reboot yourself and get focused again. So, don’t kind of get into those time sucks of social media or just other types of distractions that are keeping you from your goal. So, you got to kind of turn off your devices and focus. You need ways that are going to protect you from yourself, so you can get more things done.

Ayo McKerson with Always Reliable Junk Removal and Brandon Weems with WEEMSCO

by

Cherokee Business Radio
Cherokee Business Radio
Ayo McKerson with Always Reliable Junk Removal and Brandon Weems with WEEMSCO
Loading
/

Sponsored by Business RadioX ® Main Street Warriors

Main-Street-Warriors-Banner

Ayo-McKerson-Always-Reliable-Junk-Removal-Brandon-Weems-WEEMSCO-banner

Always-Reliable-Junk-Removal-logo

Ayo-McKerson-bwAyo Mckerson, owner of Always Reliable Junk Removal, is an Atlanta native that grew up in Decatur. GA. He attended Albany State University, receiving a Bachelors Degree in Business Marketing.

Ayo spent 15 years in the management field from retail management to healthcare management before starting Always Reliable Junk during the height of COVID in 2020 due to being laid off.

Follow Always Reliable Jumk Removal on Facebook.

Brandon-Weems-bwBrandon Weems is the owner of WEEMSCO.

Connect with Brandon on Facebook and follow WEEMSCO on Instagram.

 

 

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:07] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Woodstock, Georgia. It’s time for Cherokee Business Radio. Now here’s your host.

Stone Payton: [00:00:24] Welcome to another exciting and informative edition of Cherokee Business Radio. Stone Payton here with you this morning. And today’s episode is brought to you in part by our local small business initiative. The Business Radio X Main Street Warriors Program, Defending Capitalism, Promoting Small Business and Supporting our Local community. For more information, go to Main Street Warriors dot org and a special note of thanks to our title sponsor for the Cherokee chapter of Main Street Warriors Diesel David Inc. Please go check them out at diesel. David dot com. All right, we’re ready. Now, please join us in welcoming to the broadcast with Always Reliable Junk Removal, Ayo McKerson. How are you, buddy?

Ayo McKerson: [00:01:10] I’m doing well. Doing well. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.

Stone Payton: [00:01:14] Well, we’re delighted to have you in the studio. And you brought somebody with you as well. Brandon Weems with Weemsco Logistics. Good morning to you, sir.

Brandon Weems: [00:01:21] Good morning. Good morning. Great to be here as well. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Stone Payton: [00:01:25] Yeah, it is my pleasure. All right. I know I got 1000 questions and I’m going to have plenty of Brandon as well, but I’m thinking a good place to start would be mission purpose. What are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Ayo McKerson: [00:01:41] Well, honestly, the mission that I have envisioned for Always Reliable Junk Removal is to be right now the number one junk removal provider in the Atlanta area. And the reason that I feel that we can do that is there are so many different corporate level junk removal providers. I think that we can provide a service that is costly and that is friendly and that’s reliable to our customers out here because right now, if you think about it, if they go to our competitors, they’re spending costs that a lot of people just don’t have and they don’t know how to get rid of junk. So I’m just here to kind of bridge that gap and just offer a friendly face while we remove their junk. So I think that we will be able to be the number one junk removal provider very soon.

Stone Payton: [00:02:31] Well, I got to tell you, the conversation, the relationship is so timely. Just last evening we were talking a little bit about this off air, but Holly and I are looking around the house and we got company coming in this weekend. My wife’s in a play and they’re all going to come watch her. And we just have stuff that’s sitting around that we don’t want there. Right. But we don’t it doesn’t really lend itself to, you know, just taking it out to the trash. It’s too big for that. Right. And even though I have a truck, I mean, me trying to figure out how to get all that going and get to the right dump site and all that jazz and but I told her last night, so I got a guy. And don’t you just love being the guy that knows the guy?

Ayo McKerson: [00:03:09] Absolutely. Absolutely. It happens all the time.

Stone Payton: [00:03:12] So I to get a chance to talk to him. But it’s I would think that that there’s plenty of business out there, plenty of opportunity out there. People need this service.

Ayo McKerson: [00:03:23] Absolutely. People definitely need this service, especially when COVID came. What we found is a lot of the counties no longer offer the service where you can just put a couch on the curb and you can just come and get it. So now a lot of people, if you ride through some communities, you see they have furniture out there and it’s there for two or three weeks, if not months, and it’s an eyesore to the community. So now we’re able to they’re able to just give us a call. Googlers find us and we come out there and we remove it. We make it quick and fast. So it’s definitely needed in the community and I’m just glad to be of service.

Stone Payton: [00:03:58] So what’s the backstory, man? How in the world did you find yourself in this line of work?

Ayo McKerson: [00:04:04] Absolutely. It’s kind of funny because I really feel like I stumbled upon it because I used to be a manager for a lot of gastro, and when COVID came about, I was furloughed.

Stone Payton: [00:04:17] So there’s that like fired. It’s essentially it’s a nice it’s a real nice. Okay, you are making a coin anymore.

Ayo McKerson: [00:04:26] I was COVID fired. I it.

Stone Payton: [00:04:28] So.

Ayo McKerson: [00:04:29] So what I did was during the time I was just trying to figure out, okay, you know, I had a family defeat, what am I going to do? And I had a box truck and that’s kind of where Williams CO came in because I had been talking to him like, Hey, I want to get into the trucking industry because right now I don’t have any income coming in. He was already in the trucking industry, so he gave me a lot of knowledge of what to do and things like that. So I bought a box truck and when I bought it now mind you, this was in January, COVID hit big around February, March. So I bought it and I was getting all my stuff together and like the routes and stuff just plummeted for box trucks. So for tractor trailers, you can get a pretty good load because they were trying to get water and things around. But for box trucks, they didn’t have that use for it. So I went to Ashley Furniture. The pay there wasn’t that great because of course you had to have your truck and all your expenses. So I went home one day and I just remember the conversation that I had with my college roommate when I went to Albany State and he was telling me his brother owned a mess hall here in Atlanta and it was a junk removal provider. And I’m like, I wonder if I can do that as well. So I took this big old 26 foot box truck and I came up with the logo and slapped that logo on there. And I’ve been going ever since. When I actually was called back to work, I was going to go back and then I sat there and I talked to my wife about it and I said, I said, love, I don’t think I want to go back to work. I think I can make. This work. And she said, Well, you think you can keep up with all the bills? I said, I’m willing to try. And we’ve been running ever since. We are two and a half years, almost three years strong. So.

Stone Payton: [00:06:13] Oh, yeah, you’re over the hump, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:06:15] I’m over the hump. I think COVID was actually a blessing in disguise for for me and the company, and we’re just excited to continue to grow.

Stone Payton: [00:06:23] Well, shout out to your wife, too, because don’t you find this to Brandon? I mean, it’s important to have a support system because without that man, because I mean, look, you run into stuff, you get you find challenges, you know, everything doesn’t go right every day. And not to have that support system.

Ayo McKerson: [00:06:41] Absolutely. In the junk removal business, there are so many unknowns and things that I didn’t know where. I felt like I’ve wasted so much time and so much money.

Stone Payton: [00:06:49] Right.

Ayo McKerson: [00:06:50] But it’s a learning lesson. And, you know, I tried to mentor other people who are coming in and junk removal business that I like meet on landfills or if people inbox me and say, Well, how did you do this? I kind of try to offer that mentorship because, I mean, if I can save them some money and help them grow, why not? I feel like it’s enough in Atlanta. It’s enough work out here in the Atlanta environment for everybody.

Stone Payton: [00:07:13] So at this point, a couple plus years in, what are what are you finding the most rewarding? What do you like most about the work? The business?

Ayo McKerson: [00:07:22] Honestly, it’s working with different people. The reason I say different people, you find a lot of young people who just don’t know things. It’s like you’re kind of a mentor while you’re in that truck because you’re riding three or 4 hours going to different spots. So you have a lot of conversations with people. And just the conversations where I might say, Hey, you know, if you can’t get a you can get a 401 K or try to how to tell them how to invest their money or just save their money, a lot of them just don’t know the different things that they can do as a young as a youngster to elevate their self in the future to where when you become 30 and 40, you’re already ahead of the game. So just kind of talking to them and I feel like being a mentor is really cool to me.

Stone Payton: [00:08:08] Wouldn’t it be great if you could go back to to 20 year old I o and say, look, just suck a little money away, do this or don’t do this? Or Oh.

Ayo McKerson: [00:08:17] I tell my wife and I say, If I could have done that, I would have I would have owned the junk removal where by now it’s cool. It’s all a lesson learned. I think everything that I have and the way the business is going, every job that I work has been able to put me in a position to where I know how to do different things. Like I used to be a manager for Kroger, so this helps me, you know, manage people. When I was a manager for.

Stone Payton: [00:08:47] You’re busy Guy, somebody wants you want you to come and get a load, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:08:51] Right. So, so every, every, every job that I have has prepared me for this big task I have in front of me now. So I’m definitely I’m just excited.

Stone Payton: [00:09:01] Well, it’s an important point, and it’s another one that we should share with our with our younger friends. I mean, even when you get out there and you miss all three and you and you strike out, you still learn something.

Ayo McKerson: [00:09:12] Absolutely. Absolutely. I take everything that every loss has been, not a loss, but it’s been a lesson. So I take it with stride and we continue to keep going.

Stone Payton: [00:09:20] Yeah. All right, Brandon, talk a little bit about Weemsco. Were you already in business when you hooked up with this guy? What were you doing?

Brandon Weems: [00:09:26] Yes. Wow. Who took me back when he started.

Stone Payton: [00:09:30] Bringing that up?

Brandon Weems: [00:09:31] So I started out with a well, I started out in the film union and I worked on a couple of movies and I ended up having a daughter. And at the time, you know, you know, you’re working for the film union, you’re waking up at 4 a.m., you’re trying to get to the site, and once you’re off the site, 6 p.m., seven kids asleep at eight. My kid didn’t know who I was, so I told my wife, You know what? I think I want to try something different. I ended up purchasing a a cargo van and once I purchased that cargo van, I just started Weemsco from there and just wanted to do something simple with the name Weemsco Just kind of it’s my last name, Weems and I just saw Costco and I think.Costco is just like a big company. So I was just.

Brandon Weems: [00:10:15] Like, Hey, man, you know, people remember Weemsco like Costco. So I wanted to do that and I really did it to be around my family more to try to give my family a financial freedom that the rest of my family haven’t really seen before. So and it’s working. My wife’s a stay at home mom. She’s able to raise both of our kids and teach them they’re doing excellent in school. You know, my son’s too, but he’s learning words and he’s learning some of everything, like, you know, way ahead of kids his age.

Stone Payton: [00:10:46] Oh, man.

Brandon Weems: [00:10:46] And that’s because, you know, we’re afforded the opportunity to give that to our spouses and our kids and give them a different way of living. I think that’s really the gist behind Williams call and what I wanted to do, if any, in my. Family members, nieces and nephews come out of college. I don’t want them going to college with their aspirations to work for Coca Cola when they get out. I want them to go on to college with aspirations to work for Weemsco.

Stone Payton: [00:11:10] When they get out. Amen. So what was I got to know, man? What was that conversation like when you’re sitting down with her and say, you know, I think I want to go out and do my own thing, I’m going to buy this truck.

Brandon Weems: [00:11:20] And so, you know, you and I said it earlier, right? Having that backbone when you are the backbone is so very important. And that’s what my wife is to me. So she was the person when nobody else was believing she believed. Right. And that’s what it takes for us to, quote unquote, jump off the porch. Right. So that’s that’s that’s the thing that kind of pushed me. And and I also got a credit another dear friend of mine, his name is Samuel Flowers, and he has a company itself called called I’m sorry, Quality Septic. So and I used to work for Sam in between film sets. So when one movie would shut down, you know, I go pump septic and dig up trenches and everything with Sam, Right? So he comes to me one day and he says, Hey, man, this is the last time you can work for me.

Stone Payton: [00:12:10] Hmm.

Brandon Weems: [00:12:12] And, you know, I took it. A certain type of way.

Stone Payton: [00:12:16] Yeah. I was like.

Brandon Weems: [00:12:17] You know, What do you mean? Like, this is I got to do this to. But as I was saying, the mentorship that he was giving his young guys, Sam is my age and he was giving it to me as I rode with him every day. So he would tell me, Hey, I would see how he would handle a plethora of business on the phone with several different people. At one time, I would see how he would handle customers, and I would also tell him my aspirations for starting my business. And he told me one day, You can’t work for me anymore. Not after this. Hmm. If you, you know, you can do whatever you got to do, but you got to start your business. You said that’s what you want to do. Go do it. If not, you can’t come back and work for me. Lo and behold, a week later, I got a call about a van. Got the van started the business and it’s been going since then. And we kind of merge from logistics because we had some trucks go down at a critical time and it was weird. And I had a friend from the film industry, like you said, this is this whole thing is about networking and people that you know, Right. And you’re only rich with your resources, right? Because a lot of people think it’s just about finances, but it’s really resources. But. So Iowa is one of my main resources because when things kind of die down in the trucking, like I said, he found the other way, right? So when he found that other way, he came and told me immediately, Hey, listen, Brandon, I got another way. And I’m like.

Stone Payton: [00:13:41] Oh, wow.

Brandon Weems: [00:13:43] Look at this other way. I don’t have to try and book these loads and try to get out of town away from my family. I can actually pick up junk here, remove that stuff, get it, go on and do my thing. So that helped, right? Because I started doing that. So now I started building up those customers, but then those customers started taking me to a different level of work and I got into general contracting. But when I kept those customers, I started shooting those customers towards always reliable every time, always reliable every time. Hey, you need junk removal. Go to always reliable. So he would say, Hey, do you need general contracting work? You need some painting, you need some flooring, you need some stuff like that. Come on over to Williams. Go. Right. And like I said, a friend of mine called me one day when things were like super slow for Weemsco, and he said, Hey man, do you do epoxy floors? I said, Yeah, I do epoxy floors. He said, Hey, come bid on this Netflix contract.

Stone Payton: [00:14:40] Right. Oh, my. Right. So I’ve heard of them. Right. Right. We have.

Brandon Weems: [00:14:46] You know, I get on the elevator, man, with like 15 of these suit guys, and they’re all suited up with their with their hard hats, and they got their little vest on. And we go up to the 11th floor of this brand new construction building down on William Street and 14th downtown.

Stone Payton: [00:15:02] Mm hmm.

Brandon Weems: [00:15:03] And, you know, they’re listening to me and they’re looking at me like, who is this guy? You know, Where did he come from? Who? And once they started hearing the numbers and they started hearing the jargon that they were familiar with.

Brandon Weems: [00:15:14] Then they understood, okay, this guy knows what he’s talking about. Let’s give him my opportunity. So once Netflix did that, yes, I put that in my portfolio and I kind of took off. Now I’m working with Atlas, I’m doing for Asheville Apartments, renewing the entire Forest Ville Apartments and across the entire exterior, entire interior, Wynnewood Apartments in Lithonia, entire interior, entire exterior. We’re doing 1280 West Peachtree, all of their residential hallways and floors, entire 30 levels, all the 30 level residential hallways and floors. We did Atlantic Station residential lofts down there. We did all of their residential floors, took them from the carpets to we took the cement floor, stripped those down, took it back to a shine. We took it back to a nice painting, the hallways. It’s beautiful now. So I’ve gotten into that level of work. And of course, every time I get junk removals, that’s who I’m calling, right? When I when I get ready to do a building I got a demo with, that’s who I’m calling. So like I said, you’re only rich with your resources. And all of my friends are the ones who put me in the position. So that and like you were asking him yesterday, earlier, what’s the end goal? Right. And it’s to the end goal, a small business, right, is to employ more people to create a larger business. Right.

Brandon Weems: [00:16:37] So if small business moves America. Then you’ve got to respect Georgia. You got to respect what we did during COVID, Right. Because we kept we were one of the states who kept America moving. We didn’t shut down. So. I got to thank our governor in that situation because he didn’t close my business right. He didn’t close Ohio’s business. He didn’t close the plethora of my friends businesses. And that allowed us to flourish. And what did that do for Atlanta? It brought a lot of people here. A lot of people moved here during that time because they say, hey, Atlanta’s open, right? I can go to work. I can do what I need to do. I got to get here to Atlanta. Right. And that brought more business to us, more moves, more junk removals, more people needing to know where to go, what to do. More people needing jobs. Now, I have about 15 employees. I am pretty sure you got at least ten now. Right. Right. And we’re from Decatur. The place that they say it can’t be done. But, you know, you look around and you see these guys doing it. And now, like you said, that’s a mentor situation. When guys see us doing this instead of the rapping or they see us doing this instead of, you know. The other things that we could be doing.

Ayo McKerson: [00:17:47] Right.

Brandon Weems: [00:17:47] Now, they know that it’s another way. So programs like you are going to help shows like you’re going to help, too.

Stone Payton: [00:17:53] Well, I sure hope so. And I do want to ask about sales and marketing, although Ayo’s phones ringing off the hook. So he doesn’t need any help in sales. Marketing. I got mine. All right. That’s what I should have done. No, Ayo’s just showing off like, yeah, I’m good. I got this. But don’t talk a little bit about sales and marketing. Everything from if and how you try to differentiate. And this is for both of you, but I’ll start with you if and how you try to differentiate yourself from other people in the arena. Two strategies for getting the word out and building those relationships, because I suspect that the removal there is a lot of opportunity out there, but it’s probably kind of a competitive arena, isn’t it?

Ayo McKerson: [00:18:32] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And I didn’t that was one thing that I kind of faulted myself on when I jumped into junk removal. I thought, you know, it was only a couple of the big companies. But as I went to like the landfills and saw, there are a lot of small businesses that are junk removal. But I think the difference between me and them is I and I’ve told people this, I said they treat their junk removal business as a hustle and I treat mine as a business, as a career that I want to keep growing. One of the first things that I did that I know that I knew if I wanted to be taken seriously is I said, Well, let’s get a logo. You can’t say you’re a company. You don’t have that logo that can attach to the brand. And my wife actually helped me out with the name because we were sitting there. We were like, What can we call ourselves? And we came up with so many different names. And she said, You know what? Everybody looks for somebody that’s reliable. And I said, okay, always reliable junk removal, so let’s do it that way. But some of the biggest things that I do when I look at far as marketing Google and Google is the backbone, I think of my industry because what do people do when they look for something? They go straight to Google and they Google it.

Stone Payton: [00:19:51] Yeah.

Ayo McKerson: [00:19:52] So right now in the Stone Mountain area, I’m number one as far as junk remover. If you Google me, you’ll you’ll, I’ll pop up first. So I do a lot of Google my business. I run Google ads, I do Facebook and Instagram social media. That platform is huge for us because everybody is on their phones, whether it’s checking their email or checking Facebook, Instagram, they’re always on their phone. So I try to stay in people’s mind that way. I started doing email blast just so people can like once they once they book with me, because now they can book online, it captures all that different information from them.

Stone Payton: [00:20:34] Was that a game changer for you being able to book online?

Ayo McKerson: [00:20:36] Absolutely, because a lot of times a lot of people what they do is they’ll come to your website, but if they’re not able to book online, a lot of them, I don’t know if they don’t like the call, they’ll kind of just go to the next person. But now on my website, you can actually book you see the prices beforehand, so you kind of know what you’re getting yourself into instead of having to call and say, Do I want to use this guy? So booking online has been a major change for me and it’s a great platform and I’m just excited for it. But yeah, I think Google has been my number one way of just marketing to everybody and just sometimes you have to do that old fashioned marketing because when it’s the cold months it slows down for us. So what I did is I got door hangers made and I just walk around neighborhoods and I put on my door hanger and sometimes you can be walking. You know, some people, they’re going to open up their door because they’re wondering, why is this guy.

Stone Payton: [00:21:29] Walking up to my door.

Ayo McKerson: [00:21:30] Putting the door hanger? And that just opens it up. So for conversation and I’ve gotten a lot of jobs in that way. So, yeah, you just got to be creative. Think outside the box and if you’re going to bring yourself, make sure you bring yourself strong. I just got my logo and name trademarked, so I’m happy about that. So now that it’s trademarked, I want to start trying to do like billboards and things like that just so people can know that we are here and we are around and we’re ready to give all those big competitors a run for their money.

Stone Payton: [00:22:00] Yeah, and for whatever it’s worth, I do think always Reliable was a was a stroke of genius because for me when when I want services, you know, a big thing to me is if you’re going to come on, if you say you’re going to come on Tuesday, come on Tuesday or even I mean I don’t expect you to be there at 130. But if you’re going to get there Tuesday afternoon, because I got a life to organize and I mean, we work from home a lot and it’s not as big a deal, but that services are notorious for not being on time or and I’m sure there’s other ways that they’re not reliable. That’s huge. And Google, you’re absolutely right. If you and I had not connected, you know, we got a chance to talk on the phone a few weeks back. Right. But if you and I had not connected, that’s exactly what we’d have done. You know, I would have gone straight to Google and look for something.

Ayo McKerson: [00:22:48] Absolutely.

Stone Payton: [00:22:48] And then it’s a pig in a poke. As my wife would say. You don’t know what you write. You don’t know the person, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:22:53] Absolutely. You just hoping that you get somebody that’s good. And that’s one thing that I and it’s like I say, everything’s been a learning lesson to me. So when I first started the junk removal, I would tell somebody, Yeah, I can be there at 1:00 or Yeah, I can be there at 3:00. And I quickly learn with.

Stone Payton: [00:23:09] That’s got to be hard to navigate when you’re picking up people’s junk. You got to run to the dump.

Ayo McKerson: [00:23:13] Absolutely. So now I was like, I got to figure this out so now I can be there between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.. Get in there. Yeah, give my cell.

Stone Payton: [00:23:20] But you’re going to be there or you’re going to or you’re or your person is going to call and say, Hey, Stone or you know, I’m not going to be there. But it’s like right to me, that is fine with me if you call. And then I’d say, Hey, Hall, I’m going to run to the grocery store. They’re not going to get here until probably a little after three, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:23:36] It’s all about respecting everybody’s time.

Stone Payton: [00:23:38] Yes. Respect.

Ayo McKerson: [00:23:39] Yeah, respecting everybody’s time. And a lot of people, that’s what they don’t have. They just feel like, oh, I’ll get there when I get there. You can’t do that in business. You have to respect each other like you want somebody to respect your time, just respect your customers time as well.

Stone Payton: [00:23:52] And I’ll tell you, like in my little neighborhood, we’ve got a bunch of old people, you know, and we all we all get together and chat and talk and we have a cocktail on on the TANTAROS front porch. But we’re kind of a tight knit group, so we’ll ask people questions. You know, hey, I got to get rid of some stuff. Who do you know, who who’s doing it for you? And so just do it. Like doing business with me might lead to four or five other ones at some point, Right. Right there in that one little neighborhood.

Ayo McKerson: [00:24:17] Absolutely. And that’s that’s big about when you say branding. So branding, I put my you know, you put your your name and your logo on your truck and everything, because if you’re just riding around the truck, people are going to be like, okay, who is this? When I’m at the stop light and people can take a picture of this truck and it has always reliable on it. Every time I have people call me and say, Hey, man, you just pass me on the freeway. So people are seeing the brand. They know who the brand is. And, you know, like I said, we’re two and a half, three years strong now. So people are going to know, hey, whoever these guys are, they’re here to stay. Let’s give them a shot. Let’s go in and let them remove this junk because I don’t want to deal with it.

Stone Payton: [00:24:55] Yeah.

Ayo McKerson: [00:24:55] So absolutely, we do the job that other folks don’t want to do.

Stone Payton: [00:24:59] You know? I like that. And then you’re out on on the social media platform so people can follow that. I mean, you even you write a blog, you’ve got some blog content about different things, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:25:10] Absolutely. Yes. Any way that I feel that we can connect with people. So in my blogs, what we focus on is trying to that people think outside the box on what to do with furniture or what to do with clutter. Spring cleaning is coming up.

Stone Payton: [00:25:26] It’s time. Is that a big time of year? Absolutely, yeah.

Ayo McKerson: [00:25:28] So that blog is kind of linked to them so they can think, okay, spring cleaning is coming up. Always reliable. They wrote a blog on it. Let’s let’s let them come out and clean out their garage or clean out that estate that their loved one left them. So just writing those blogs and that’s where it’s key. The blogs actually help because when people Google stuff like that, I can stay clean out, my blog will pop up. Wow.

Stone Payton: [00:25:56] So they’re ready money, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:25:58] Yeah. So they’re reading this and they’re like, hmm, Well, they already told me about it. Let’s go ahead and give them a call. So just having different types of media out there, it’s just great.

Stone Payton: [00:26:08] I’ll bet. How about you, Brandon? Are you out there shaking the trees or is it just mostly referral business from one commercial?

Brandon Weems: [00:26:15] I’m shaking the trees, but I did my thing a little bit different because when I started a little bit before I oh, I was on a bunch of platforms like Tackle at the time and TaskRabbit and stuff like that. So what would happen is when I would go visit my customers from these platforms, I would keep their information. They would like my work so they would keep my information. These customers started spreading me to their friends. Their friends started spreading me to their friends. If you look at my customer base now, it’s over 835 customers and that’s just formed by Weems CO alone. So what I did was when things slowed down for me again, went to my wife, My wife said, Are you crazy? You got over 800 customers in your phone. Let’s just send them all a blast.

Stone Payton: [00:26:56] Ah.

Brandon Weems: [00:26:57] So and I take this from Whole Foods. I used to. I used to be a butcher at Whole Foods. And Whole Foods at the time had no commercials, no social media, no anything. But they were the most expensive grocery store. Right. But they had the quality. So that’s what people returned for the quality. And so when you offer quality, it doesn’t really matter what else you’re seeking. People are going to seek quality every time. So when they call me, they already know my prices from a referral. They already know my work from the referral and they already know how exceptional things are going to be once I get there and do the service for them. So that was one thing that just pushed me overboard to where I used to tell I even though in the slow times and COVID, I don’t know, customers would just pop up out of. Will work. I mean, they would just call me, just I call him and say, Yeah, man, it’s Sunday. I haven’t got one person on the schedule for next week. Maybe later on after the football game that night, it’s like it’s packed. It’s packed, man. I got to pack because I got a slam schedule for the whole week moving into the next week. Right. And, you know, I did my thing a little different, like I say. And now sometimes I go on to my social media and I show the work that we’re actually doing. So we’re seeing progress. So the works in progress and that leads to larger contracts for me a lot of times. So one of my contracts and it actually ended up getting me a contract with FedEx down by the airport to redo some stuff in their warehouse, some warehouses for should take down by the airport as well. We want to do some renewals. They help. And with my projects being larger than they used to be now. I’m starting to branch out to larger entities, larger corporations, and my name is being passed around that way.

Stone Payton: [00:28:47] Yeah.

Brandon Weems: [00:28:48] It used to be a more residential thing and now it’s a lot more commercial.

Stone Payton: [00:28:52] I thought I’d pick that up from the, you know, some of the things that you that you talked about. Do you still have a residential division or do you still do much residential or are you pretty much moving away from that over time?

Brandon Weems: [00:29:02] All of my customers that were my customers to start and that carry me through the times where I had no one, I still take care of them.

Stone Payton: [00:29:09] Yeah.

Brandon Weems: [00:29:09] You can’t change. You can’t change, right? Williams Co is the entity that I want everybody to remember, whether I did a move for you, remove some junk for you, came in and refurbish your home for you. If I put my plumbers over there, my electricians over there for you. If my gardeners came to see you, if my tree guys came to remove some trees for you.

Stone Payton: [00:29:29] Talk about the guy that knows the guy mean he’s your one Stop shopping.

Ayo McKerson: [00:29:33] He knows everybody.

Stone Payton: [00:29:35] That’s what we do.

Brandon Weems: [00:29:36] And I mean, as a general contractor, you kind of have to. That’s something that I’ve been blessed with. Like I said, you’re rich with who you know, right? You’re rich with your resources. So my resources are making me rich. So and that’s the thing that’s going to and again, the people that work for you make you rich, right? Because they’re your resources as well, because they’re going to tell other good people. The Hey, come to work when you got opportunities, right? Right. Hey, I’m a good worker. I know a good person. And that’s how you get your people, right? That’s how you get your good people. And then once you got that going on, now you have those larger entities. Like I said, when they see you, they’re. Hey, this guy was exceptional, His prices were great and his team came in. They were efficient, Right? That’s what they want to know. That’s what they want to go by.

Stone Payton: [00:30:22] So stay with that a moment, because for me, it’s one thing to have IO come out because I’ve gotten to know him and I mean, I just have ultimate trust in him. I mean, you’re definitely not picking up the phone to call you, right? Even if I’m not the right piece of business, you’ll say, well, you ought to talk to blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. But talk, talk about recruiting, developing, retaining good people because they got to you got to get this done with and through those folks. Right.

Brandon Weems: [00:30:51] You got to remember and and I’ll let you speak on it as well. You got to go through the bad stuff to get to.

Stone Payton: [00:30:59] The good stuff, right? Absolutely.

Brandon Weems: [00:31:01] And once you see that this is the type of guy don’t need to have now, you know what attributes to look for in the other people. And then, you know, what are the red flags to right as you go along. So you know, and we would trade people often. Absolutely. We have some other business partners that we trade people back and forth, good workers.

Stone Payton: [00:31:19] So you’re looking for specific traits, attributes, because you can probably train some stuff, but some stuff you need born in them or you need them to have.

Brandon Weems: [00:31:27] For me, it’s a lot easier being a general contractor. I was in the film union and I was on the construction side, so I built the sets. I wasn’t acting or doing anything production wise. We built the sets. So I know carpenters. I know everybody who does all the specific cuts. I know electrical guys, I know plumbing guys, I know everybody from the sets. And when they don’t have anything going on, they call me up, Hey, can I get some work, man?

Stone Payton: [00:31:53] I’m like, Hey, can you know they do good work?

Brandon Weems: [00:31:56] I know exactly what they do.

Stone Payton: [00:31:57] Yeah. And they’re going to be reliable, Right? Right.

Ayo McKerson: [00:32:00] That’s a pretty reliable.

Brandon Weems: [00:32:02] So yeah. And that’s and, you know, as long as you keep those type of people around, then they’re going to refer you to other people who are good when they’re gone. Right. And then, you know, you know, you know, the time span for those people and how they work. And so I got my guys four floors. I got my guys for paint, I got my guys for roofing, I got my guys for plumbing, electrical, you know, prepping and all that good stuff. I got my guys for everything. And when you got a guy for, like I said, for everything, you start getting another guy. And so now you got two guys for everything. So once you get motion moving over here and you got a job over here and you got those guys over there, but then you can set it up, right? That’s the logistics of it to where my painters aren’t on top of my floor guys and my floor guys on top of my roof guys. And so that way I can run all my projects with my same guys, but just have men at different times.

Stone Payton: [00:32:48] Yeah, I would starve to death in this business. I would never be able to plan out the logistics. I’d have them tripping over each other. But no, that’s an important aspect of your business, right? Is planning all that out right?

Brandon Weems: [00:32:58] Right, right. You got to have a little logistics. I mean, for you guys, same thing.

Stone Payton: [00:33:01] I mean.

Brandon Weems: [00:33:02] I don’t think people really understand how important logistics are and almost any situation that you’re dealing with. It’s not just transportation, you know.

Stone Payton: [00:33:09] So have you cracked the code on having good people to hire?

Ayo McKerson: [00:33:12] To be honest with you, I’m still trying to crack the code. The hardest thing I think about this business is finding reliable people. And the reason I say that is our business is not hard because everything that we’re taking out these most people don’t want anymore. So you don’t have to be careful in trying to make sure you don’t break something.

Stone Payton: [00:33:32] Right.

Ayo McKerson: [00:33:33] But my first year, year and a half, it was hard to find the reliable person that wanted to work, especially during COVID, because so much money was being given to everybody and nobody wanted to work. So that made my time harder. Luckily for me, when I didn’t have people that wanted to work, I have sons.

Stone Payton: [00:33:55] And.

Ayo McKerson: [00:33:55] You know.

Stone Payton: [00:33:55] Hey, there’s a pro tip, get you some kids, get.

Ayo McKerson: [00:33:58] You some kids, you know, and but yeah, so I’ve been able to find a couple of guys that I’ve been able to rely on, definitely looking for more reliable people. So as we expand and grow, I can put them, train them and then put them together in teams and just kind of let them go out there. I definitely want to right now, I think I’m at the point where I want to focus on building the brand instead of being out there in the truck. So much. So I’m looking for those reliable people that I know I can trust with going to people’s home, being respectful, doing, doing the right thing. Because a lot of times when you’re out of sight, out of mind, a lot of people tend to kind of venture off and do their own thing. But when you’re in my presence, even when you’re not in my presence, my expectations for me as well as the company is always to be responsible, respectful, make sure you know, I mean, it’s the small things. Watch your language, make sure your pants are pulled up, things like that, even though we’re a junk removal company. We need to handle ourself in a professional manner.

Brandon Weems: [00:35:02] Don’t want to look like junk.

Stone Payton: [00:35:03] Right. There you go.

Ayo McKerson: [00:35:06] Don’t want to look like junk, So. Absolutely. So we’re still trying to create the recipe for that. When it comes to hiring, though, I definitely like my wife involvement because she’s that manager that. Oh, she’s going to let you have it.

Stone Payton: [00:35:22] You know.

Ayo McKerson: [00:35:23] She’s going to she’ll see you home type things. So definitely love her input in that because she’s going to tell me, hey, I know this person is not going to work for our brand.

Brandon Weems: [00:35:34] But you know what I got to say to man, when you do find that right person.

Ayo McKerson: [00:35:37] You got to keep.

Brandon Weems: [00:35:38] Them. You got to hold on to them.

Stone Payton: [00:35:40] And and it’s not all just about the money, right? There’s a lot more to it than just compensating them properly.

Ayo McKerson: [00:35:45] Yeah, absolutely. They want to feel respected, right? They want to feel like they can trust you and they can rely on you.

Brandon Weems: [00:35:52] They want to feel a part of something, too, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:35:54] Absolutely. Appreciation is key.

Brandon Weems: [00:35:56] Yeah. It’s almost how, you know, Green Bay allows the fans to be a part of the team, the ownership. The team is right. You know, you can’t get a game to Green Bay, right?

Stone Payton: [00:36:05] You can’t get a game, right?

Brandon Weems: [00:36:06] You got a you got to pay one of them for a seat. Well, it’s the same thing that you want to do with your workers If you put them into your company and make them a part of what your vision is, then it’s no way that they don’t want to foresee it through with you. Right. And if you if you’re doing the right things and if you’re treating those people right, then they’re definitely going to help you see your vision all the way through and it’s going to make a better situation for them and a better situation for you and your family. All right. So when you could do that and this is what this would be the prime example of what small business is supposed to be in America. And that’s the reason why we have it. And that’s the reason why it’s supposed to thrive, right? We don’t kill.

Stone Payton: [00:36:41] It. Yeah.

Brandon Weems: [00:36:42] Then America would continue to be the power and force that we are. But if you pay attention to what’s happening right now, too much funds are falling back into the larger conglomerates. And if that money is more so spilling back into these guys who create jobs out here. Seriously. All right. Not just take away you know, we’ve been the guys who’ve been creating jobs. I don’t care whether it’s 5 to 10 or 15 positions. Right. You know, I’m not laying off 3000 people. Right? You know, not I’m not coming in one day and just saying, hey, you got to go. Here’s a severance package for 5000 bucks. You know, Now these people might take that and say whatever, but at the same time, they still don’t know where to go. You know, they don’t know where to go. So you got to try to keep that consistency for your company. I think that’s my ultimate goal. Keep keep a consistent flow of work here so my guys can always have work and that code will forever stay a name.

Ayo McKerson: [00:37:36] And I think one of my goals is to also some of the younger people that I influence is to have them build up the courage to where they can open up their own business. If it’s not a junk removal business, I don’t care what it is, but open up your own. Like I have one gentleman who came and talked to me about junk removal. He was going to buy a box truck and I said, You know what, let’s start off small. You’re new to the business. I know I started off with a box truck, but I kind of ventured into that. I told him, I said, let’s get a pickup truck and let’s get you a trailer. And he’s cleared out junk removal. But now he’s over a year strong and he’s looking to buy another trailer and things like that. So my thing is, I don’t want you to come into I don’t want you to come into it and say, well, I’m going to always work for you, because if you have an entrepreneur by your side, they’re going with their main their their thought structure. They’re going to try to help you build and continue to build. And now you’ve helped me build. Now what? What are your goals? What do you want to do? Right. Okay, let’s focus on that. Who knows? I might be an investor.

Stone Payton: [00:38:42] That’s right. So I think that’s great.

Ayo McKerson: [00:38:44] So, yeah, that’s my always my ultimate goal. Let’s let’s build some more entrepreneurs in the world. That’s what we really need.

Stone Payton: [00:38:51] So I have a question of both of you, but I’ll start with you. I you and I can’t take credit for this question, but I’ve enjoyed asking it ever since they asked it at the Young professionals of Woodstock.

Ayo McKerson: [00:39:02] Okay.

Stone Payton: [00:39:02] And my version of this is is outside the scope of your work, your business. What do you have a tendency to to nerd out about Like and we learn so much about you. It’s like somebody who runs a mechanic shop and they just love playing video games late at night. Or like me, my listeners know I love to hunt and fish. That’s if I’m not doing this, I’m hunting or fishing. Right? So outside the scope of work, what is something you have a tendency to to kind of dive into?

Ayo McKerson: [00:39:29] Honestly, I’ve gotten into different types of whiskey, so I like to just try different brands of whiskey and all the different flavors are dope for me. So I want to go to in Tennessee, Uncle Nurse, they have a distillery. You know, that’s one of the goals is to kind of get out there, taste some whiskey and stuff. But I also like a good steak. I’m a sucker for steak, so.

Stone Payton: [00:39:55] Well, in those two, those two always pair, don’t they? Brand Right.

Ayo McKerson: [00:39:59] So I like to go to the different restaurants and just try try out the good steak. Right now, the best one, I think in Atlanta is going to be ocean air shout out to them.

Stone Payton: [00:40:09] What is.

Ayo McKerson: [00:40:09] It? Ocean near.

Stone Payton: [00:40:10] Ocean.

Ayo McKerson: [00:40:11] Air. They’re more so branded to seafood, but their steak is phenomenal.

Stone Payton: [00:40:14] Is that right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:40:15] It is. You have to try it.

Stone Payton: [00:40:16] Well, thank you for that. I’ll send them an invoice, you know, for the plug, right?

Ayo McKerson: [00:40:21] Absolutely. Please send them one. And I need a free state.

Stone Payton: [00:40:23] Well, I knew you and I were simpatico. I, too, enjoy whiskey. In fact, just was it last weekend? Weekend before last was the bourbon gala, a fundraiser for enduring hearts and bourbon tasting. And they raise a ton of money for a great cause. Right. But, boy, you know, and they’re not stingy with the bourbon at all. And you could just taste all these different kinds. And both of my son in law was really but one in particular is like a bourbon aficionado. And so when he comes to town, he’ll buy all the, you know, the fancy stuff. So I to. Right. I enjoy my whiskey. And we’re going to the we were just looking at YouTubes about it two years in 24, my brother and his wife and me and my wife, we’re all going to the Isle of Elah in Scotland and we’re going to taste all that. Scott So, yeah, you and I, we got to we got to stay connected. Please.

Ayo McKerson: [00:41:14] I want to go. Sue.

Stone Payton: [00:41:15] That is fantastic. How about you, Brandon? What do you have a tendency to nerd out about, man, I.

Brandon Weems: [00:41:20] Like a little macallan myself, man.

Stone Payton: [00:41:22] Okay. Got a whiskey group here?

Brandon Weems: [00:41:24] Yeah, but now I’m a poker guy, so.

Stone Payton: [00:41:27] Ah, yeah, yeah.

Brandon Weems: [00:41:28] When I’m. When I’m not spending time with my kids or doing whatever, I’m playing poker. I love to play poker. I actually want to develop a app myself, a poker app myself. So that’s my whole reason for starting the logistics company so I could do something that’s going to be consistent with money so I could do my other things with my play money.

Stone Payton: [00:41:46] Oh, fun.

Brandon Weems: [00:41:47] I love poker, man, and that’s my thing. So I like various ways to play. I’m always meet up with my guys playing on poker nights.

Stone Payton: [00:41:54] Yeah.

Brandon Weems: [00:41:55] And I do a thing.

Stone Payton: [00:41:56] So, yeah, all these things play so well together, though. Whiskey, right? Steak, poker, throwing a cigar and, I mean, you got the whole. You got the trifecta, right? It’s like, Oh, that’s funny. So what’s next for you guys, Brandon You know, for world domination or. George domination or. Oh.

Brandon Weems: [00:42:16] I’ve been seeing that the thing. I’ve been refurbishing a bunch of apartment complexes lately. And I think the next step for Williams Co is to actually step into ownership of a complex. So that’s going to be the next step here By the end of the year, I hope to have two complexes under my belt. I love it. Maybe nothing super large, but at least two eight unit complexes that I can have myself and maybe have my wife manage. Right. And, you know, I got all my guys to do everything I need to do around to do the upkeep and do the resurrection of the property. So that’s what I foresee Williams Co doing in this next year to come.

Stone Payton: [00:42:55] I’m so glad I asked. I think that’s fascinating. That is terrific. And of course, seven of those units will be available for rent and then one will be the poker room. Right? Right. The top floor. Right.

Brandon Weems: [00:43:05] Don’t tell the FHA.

Stone Payton: [00:43:10] That is great. How about you, man? What’s on the horizon for you?

Ayo McKerson: [00:43:14] I you a couple of different things. So since we’ve been trademark, now I want to I’m thinking about venture into where I will offer offer for people to come in and what’s the.

Stone Payton: [00:43:26] Word franchise.

Ayo McKerson: [00:43:27] Okay yeah definitely thinking about franchising out and and allowing people to come along and build a brand with me. In addition, I’ve been looking for Rohloff dump trucks. So now I want to get into the business of providing drop off dumpsters for that. Makes sense. So dumb containers. Yeah. So definitely this year I definitely want to purchase a couple of containers and some trucks and then we’re going to because I think they go hand in hand with the junk removal so that that will be another division into the always reliable brand. So I’m excited and we’re going to we’re just going to take over Georgia first thing. We’ll go to the rest of the states.

Stone Payton: [00:44:10] No, I think both of those are fantastic. We’ve had some success and we’ve enjoyed. I shared with you guys before we came on air. My day job is to find entrepreneurs around the country to run these hyper local business radio studios. Right? We chose not to formally franchise. We have a little bit of a different kind of membership type of structure, but it’s but still, we have these people all over the country running business radio studios, and it’s there’s so many stories to gather, right? We’re not going to get to them all. And it’s a lucrative business for them, which is fun, right? Right. Absolutely. And so, boy, I really encourage it. And then like on this roll off idea, like if Holly and I had more stuff, we’re going to have you come come out and get some stuff. But if we had more, much more, you know, maybe a small roll off would be nice parking back there for a couple of days or whatever the deal is. Put the stuff in there. I think that’s a fabulous idea.

Ayo McKerson: [00:45:02] And we pull up and take it off so you won’t even have to worry about anything. So yeah, that definitely is going to be in our future. Been looking for some. And right now with inflation, the prices are a little crazy, but they’re starting to tinkle down. But yeah, it was crazy. Trucks doubled like 60,000 roll off truck. Now it was about 120. They’re going down to about 110 to 100000.

Stone Payton: [00:45:25] Ouch. I had no idea that.

Ayo McKerson: [00:45:26] They.

Brandon Weems: [00:45:27] Got crazy. I mean, that’s why, like he was saying at the time with box trucks, it just got out.

Stone Payton: [00:45:32] Right. Right.

Brandon Weems: [00:45:33] But then you know what? Georgia and South Carolina has the highest insurance rates. So, you know, that was the thing that killed us if you’re a small business, because that’s almost like a conglomerate with the insurance. All right. I’ll tell you what, when it comes to politics, the next president that’s ready if they want to do some insurance reform, because, I mean, if you if you really look at it. Right. What do we as Americans spend most money on? Insurance, home insurance, Car insurance.

Stone Payton: [00:46:00] It is.

Brandon Weems: [00:46:01] Insurance.

Stone Payton: [00:46:01] Yeah. You got.

Ayo McKerson: [00:46:03] Life insurance.

Brandon Weems: [00:46:03] You got life insurance. You got medical insurance, right? You got dental insurance. You got vision, vision and visual insurance. You have so much insurance that you have to pay for. That’s just a just in case clause. Right? Right. And we get none of that back. And if you look at what those insurance companies spend out every year, they don’t really pay a third of that out. So, I mean, if we can get somebody to do some reform on that, they got my vote.

Stone Payton: [00:46:26] We should have like the. And political show. Right, right, right. Get a party.

Ayo McKerson: [00:46:30] I’m starting to think I’m like, man, I’m telling you.

Stone Payton: [00:46:32] Right. Insurance. It’s crazy. You’re bringing all the candidates in here. We’ll grill them. And you know, you know, as long as we can get them aligned with our causes, right, we’ll promote the heck out of those episodes. The other ones we won’t even publish. I like it. That’s funny. Yeah. Before we wrap, I want to make sure that our listeners know how to connect with you. Tap into your work, have a conversation with you or somebody on your team. But before we go there, I like to hear a little bit about what you guys read or study. I often ask, you know, what’s on your nightstand? So many entrepreneurs and business leaders. I find our life learners and they may or may not have actual books on their nightstand. Me I have stuff on a Kindle and we have the Daddy Daughter book Club, me and Kelly, because we’re because we’re both in the business arena and we’re always recommending books to to each other. In fact, one of them that I’m about halfway through now is what is it costing you not to listen? And I’m getting so much out of that one. And then another one she recommended is everything is figure out a bill. And I just love the tone of that. And so whether it’s blogs or newspapers or periodicals or books, I’ll start with you, Brandon. What are you reading, studying, trying to learn more about these days?

Brandon Weems: [00:47:45] All right. So on the Daily, I’m doing Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I have a crypto meeting almost every day. My boys, we do a over the phone meeting and we talk about everything that’s been discussed with crypto. So that’s something that we read into any blogs that deal with cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, any new currencies? Etherium Anything on the on the metaverse and all that good stuff. We’re on it. And for my personal reading, I’ve been reading the book now for about almost two years. I’m at like chapter 5000. It’s like it’s called The Amazing Charlie Wade. So just to put that out there. But yeah, that’s so it’s hard for me to get into anything else.

Stone Payton: [00:48:23] They just.

Brandon Weems: [00:48:23] Cap.

Stone Payton: [00:48:24] It. Yeah. Amazing.

Brandon Weems: [00:48:25] Charlie Wade. But Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the daily read and we’re like I said, we’re always into crypto and Bitcoin blogs and that’s what we do on a regular basis.

Stone Payton: [00:48:33] Oh, fun. How about you?

Ayo McKerson: [00:48:35] I am. So right now what I’m doing is more. So I will say the blogs and I’m I’m having to YouTube because my thing is, if you don’t know how to do and do something, you can youtube it.

Stone Payton: [00:48:46] Yeah.

Ayo McKerson: [00:48:48] And YouTube has been major to me. When it comes to junk removal, there’s a lot of different companies that have taught what they’re teaching you, how they started up. Of course, you don’t have to take everything that they’ve done because some of them probably could be scams. But what I do is I kind of take that knowledge from each and every one of them, and I’m learning how can I tell it that to my company and my business and grow. So every day, if it’s not a junk removal blog, it’s a roll off blog. So I’m just learning more and more about the business. And honestly, sometimes I even go to my competitors blogs and read their blogs.

Stone Payton: [00:49:23] Now see, there’s a pro tip. I like that idea.

Ayo McKerson: [00:49:26] You know, And that’s one thing that I had to learn, is figure out what your competitors are doing and try to figure it out better and see what their costs are. Because a lot of the times when I first started with my 26 foot box truck.

Stone Payton: [00:49:39] So now Brandon showing off all the calls he’s getting, it’s not a competition.

Ayo McKerson: [00:49:45] But when I first started off with my 26 foot box truck, based on how big the truck is, I probably should have charged about, I would say, to fill that big old truck up. I probably should have. Asked about, I would say about 2000. Allo, but I wasn’t because I didn’t know the numbers. I didn’t know the numbers and I didn’t know how to effectively run it so somebody could come. I’m actually done. Truck removals filled up the entire truck when I first started in charge, somebody five $600. So I cost myself a lot of money, but I, I didn’t know and there was nobody there to tell me.

Stone Payton: [00:50:21] Right.

Ayo McKerson: [00:50:22] Right. And then when I say, you know what? I’m not doing this right, Let me call up my competitors in, I will say, how much does it cost to fill up your truck if I need you to come out and they say, oh, any more from 1500 to 2000, I was.

Stone Payton: [00:50:34] Like, Wow.

Ayo McKerson: [00:50:35] I said, Oh, I’ve cost myself a lot of money. And now that I know, and that’s another reason I switched to box dump trucks. So I have the same type of trucks as one 800 junk now, because now it’s easier for me to say, Well, this is how much we charge and this is our going rate. And it’s kind of hard to do that with a box truck because it’s so huge. So now that I know that going right or whatever, and I’ve done my research, so my biggest advice I would give anybody is basically do your research before you go into the business, because if you don’t, then you can find yourself in some financial Well, I’m not going to say financial trouble. You’re just going to be giving away. Yeah, you’re going to be giving away your service because you didn’t do the first step and just doing some research and saying, okay, well, this is how much it costs. This is what my price is going to be.

Stone Payton: [00:51:24] No, that’s great, Counsel. All right, Brandon, what’s the best way for our listeners to connect with you? They’d like to reach out and chat with you or somebody on the team and look into.

Brandon Weems: [00:51:32] Some of this this way as Williams. Co You can reach out to WMC. Oh, you got us on Instagram, you got us on Facebook. We’re coming with the website soon here for you. We’ll have all of our pictures, photos, all of our projects, everything that we’ve done, everything and every way that you can get in touch and contact with us and reach us and actually get us to do some work for you. So, yeah, and I know what you got there, man.

Ayo McKerson: [00:51:57] So there are so many different ways you can contact us. Of course you can contact us by phone. 4705882782. You can contact us online at we always reliable junk removal dot com. You can chat with us there as well You can send us an email at info at always reliable junk removal dot com. Check us out on Facebook and Instagram. It’s at always reliable junk removal so there’s different ways you can contact us. We would love to hear from you guys. And like I said, we do the jobs that nobody else wants to do. So give us a call. We’ll take care of you.

Stone Payton: [00:52:31] Well, it has been a real pleasure, gentlemen, having you both here in the studio. Don’t be a stranger. Come back sometime. It might be fun to come back with a delighted client and talk about the work and. Absolutely. And you guys are doing such important work, and you’re a real inspiration. I really appreciate you taking the time to invest the energy and share your insight and perspective with us today.

Ayo McKerson: [00:52:51] We thank you for having us. Absolutely. We appreciate the opportunity.

Stone Payton: [00:52:55] My pleasure. All right. Until next time, this is Stone Payton for our guest today and everyone here at the business Radio X family saying we’ll see you again on Cherokee Business Radio.

 

BRX Pro Tip: Ideal Client Purchase History

by

BRXmic99
BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Ideal Client Purchase History
Loading
/

BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: Ideal Client Purchase History

Stone Payton: [00:00:01] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Lee, what are your thoughts, do you think it’s important to find out what a prospect’s previous purchase pattern is like if they’ve bought things, services, products like yours before? Is that important knowledge to have?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:22] I think it is. I think that if given the choice between having somebody who has never purchased anything like your service versus somebody who’s purchased something like your service in the past, it’s better to have them have some history with whatever it is the service you’re providing is. You don’t have as much time and energy spent on educating somebody on the value of what it is you’re delivering.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:53] Once they already believe that that service can solve their problem, now, it’s a matter of choosing which is the right fit for them. And now, you can spend more time on understanding what they liked and didn’t like from the previous supplier and how you’re different from previous suppliers. You don’t have to educate them or persuade them that your methodology or the thing you’re doing isn’t worth doing. They’ve already believed that because they’ve already invested time and resources in that. Now, it’s just differentiating yourself from the other person that they were doing work with.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] So, that, to me, is a lot easier to sell rather than going from square one where you’ve got to educate them on, “Oh yeah, our thing works,” and you’ve got to explain why it works and all that stuff rather than just saying, “You’ve already bought this once. Here’s how we’re different. Here’s how we really use this platform and this to leverage your strengths and to help you get the outcome you desire.” So, I think that it just saves some time, it save some energy, and you have a semi-educated prospect who, now, is just kind of choosing service providers that are the best fit. And then, you can really, now, hone in on seeing if you are the best fit.

BRX Pro Tip: Promodoro for Productivity

by

BRXmic99
BRX Pro Tips
BRX Pro Tip: Promodoro for Productivity
Loading
/

BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: Promodoro for Productivity

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, you’ve learned a little something about this thing called Pomodoro. Tell us more.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:10] Yeah, this is something that my kid actually told me about because he was using it when he was studying for tests in class, and I think it transfers to business very well. The Pomodoro technique is one in which you block 30 minutes of time to do work. And then, during that time, you spend 25 minutes – set a timer, an actual timer, for 25 minutes, and then work nonstop for the 25 minutes. The timer goes off. Now, for 5 minutes, do whatever you want. You know, take a walk, go get a drink, do whatever, but don’t do work for that 5 minutes, and then do another, and then see if you can stack a couple of Pomodoros in a row, and you’ll be surprised on how much work you’re going to get.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] This kind of distraction-free, focused time on these type of work activities really can make a big difference in your work because most people, during the day, if they think, “Okay, I’m going to do work,” and then, oh, somebody emails them, or somebody calls them, or somebody texts them, all of a sudden, you’re distracted. It takes you a long time to get back on track again because you lost your flow, you lost your frame of reference. Now, you got to restart it, you got to get remotivated. This way, if you kind of block out time for work in this focused, distraction-free manner, you’ll find you will get more done, it’ll be more productive, and you’ll get more productivity in less time.

Our Mission

We help local business leaders get the word out about the important work they’re doing to serve their market, their community, and their profession.

We support and celebrate business by sharing positive business stories that traditional media ignores. Some media leans left. Some media leans right. We lean business.

Sponsor a Show

Build Relationships and Grow Your Business. Click here for more details.

Partner With Us

Discover More Here

Terms and Conditions
Privacy Policy

Connect with us

Want to keep up with the latest in pro-business news across the network? Follow us on social media for the latest stories!

Business RadioX® Headquarters
1000 Abernathy Rd. NE
Building 400, Suite L-10
Sandy Springs, GA 30328