Disclaimer: This transcript was auto-generated using AI-powered software. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

To listen to this podcast episode, visit Ep 35: Help! I’m Not That Interesting! with Shawn Van Dyke.

Andrew Peek 00:12

Welcome to Market Proof Marketing, the weekly podcast for the marketing minds at Do You Convert, where we talk about the current state of all things digital and how they impact Home Builders and developers around the globe. We’re not here to sell you, we’re here to help you and try to elevate the conversation. I’m Andrew Peek and with me today we have Becca

Becca Thomas 00:29

Hey, welcome to Episode 35. Recorded live on October 16.

Andrew Peek 00:33

We’re doing the intro without Kevin so this is totally foreign. Now we’re on episode 35. So there’s been 34 before this without Kevin That’s the first time I’ve ever read the intro. I hope I did a good job. So you got your power back. You had some slight impact from Hurricane Michael Yeah, days was it a day or two days I lost power like 330 on Thursday. It was three o’clock I’m not quite sure but leading we got to back on Friday night about 930 not fun time. I’m going with Hurricane Irma last year we were like seven days without power not not bit and they still don’t have power down in Mexico beach in the panhandle whatnot so so my quick little story I am being a remodeling contractor this weekend I believe that yeah sounds fun so it took me like a year and a half to finish the bathroom remodel at our home that we just sold so I don’t know how this happened but I’m going up to North Carolina buddy of mine they just bought a new house up there not new house an existing used home and they have their their powder room which is what the all people in the south called a half bath. The powder room needs to be redone. So it’s an excuse to go up there as well. So I’ll be on this episode of this whole house up that up that way so oh, I don’t know. I’m getting my my boots on and pretending like I know what I’m talking about with with homes. It will be interesting. Awesome. Sure. Yeah, that was fun. Yeah, there’s the time limit of it get it has to be for the most part done this weekend. There’s no next weekend the weekend after that, but we

Becca Thomas 01:58

didn’t finish it in time. My Dad, I’ll be

Andrew Peek 02:01

done. That never happens never happens. So we’ll see no plumbing changes. So it’s just surface stuff though. Alright, let’s jump into the news. And the first one up is Hey, Google, you’re not trying to replace me. Are you? Becca? Did you see the I forgot what it was. It was like about two months ago, Google duplex the AI tool where they did the live demonstration of getting the hair appointment. Yes, I did. That’s super cool. So this is just following up on all these really cool things that are happening with Google. So there’s Google duplex Yeah, well certainly change imagine and with all this ties into the new pixel three coming out, oh, it was like I think it was this week’s this week. I think yesterday before I just got the new iPhone Xs because I had an iPhone seven somehow I was up for an upgrade for a while. So I got that one. And now I’m like, geez, I should have got the pixel because the pixel the rolling out all these cool tools to only the pixel three, duplex and the next one His call screen. So if you get a if you get a call from a number you don’t know, you could tell your Google Pixel three to use call screen. And it’s like a virtual gatekeeper. It’s like Hello, this is I forgot what the intro is. But Hello, this is Bo blah. I’m answering the call on behalf of Andrew, who are you? And why are you calling in? So that would be awesome. Because I am known to not answer the phone if I don’t know that phone number. Sorry, I know. So imagine if you’re an OSC and you’re calling to make an appointment or follow up and you keep getting ditch to the call screen from your prospects. Oh, but it might help with it. Because what happens it answers the phone does the virtual gatekeeping or receptionist whatever you want to call it and then it sends a message to that person while you’re on the phone attempting to contact that person.

Becca Thomas 03:44

Yeah, it doesn’t ask you for like their phone number and wire

Andrew Peek 03:48

or who you are and why you’re calling and why you’re calling. So it’s almost like it’s forcing that voicemail to happen live and set up like hey, this is Andrew with happy acres. I’m here to follow up on the inquiry data that whatever it is obviously not a salesperson and the they’re more likely to see the message or they will see the message versus like, Oh, I have 50 voicemails in my mailbox that I never listened to. So I think this is actually a positive for those who have a legitimate reason to call someone. Yeah, I agree. And it’s like a text message going so it’s I don’t know, it’s even better I think that connection rates will be will be Yeah, will be much better.

Becca Thomas 04:24

I like it because, you know, you’re looking for a house they’re basically gonna want to pick up that phone. You know who it is. And

Andrew Peek 04:31

this next one, have you seen the ads for portal by Facebook or the Facebook portal?

Becca Thomas 04:36

Yes, I have. I think it’s kind of a neat camera only because it stands up definitely.

Andrew Peek 04:41

So this is it’s like the Amazon show. So it’s like a video it’s it’s essentially FaceTime except a standalone device that you and other people can have and you can make video calls. If you’re familiar with the Amazon show. I think it’s kind of clunky looking and old school and not 2018 and the poor. My Facebook looks just Like a tablet, very cool screen creepy but also cool feature it has is if you have it set up it can track you around in a room up to 140 degrees which is almost the entire room so if you can walk with and say in your kitchen back and forth whenever you’re doing your cooking dinner, you can make a phone call and you could still go about your day or whatever you are doing at the time while this is following you around which is cool but it’s also creepy and doesn’t help with Facebook’s reputation this year with all their boys. They’re getting they’re getting beat up by the media like it is not good on Twitter and like wherever it’s been advertised like a lot of negative comments but that did not keep Kevin from already ordering one though. I think I need to get on the list to the screen is huge. Helping mean that’s helpful if you’re cooking and you want to talk to somebody or get my food I’m cooking Isn’t it delicious? I think they had the largest one they have and the price really isn’t that crazy. It’s all pre order pricing. So they are pre sailing without fail. Nice. Yeah. 349 for the biggest one Which call on the portal plus and has a 15 and a half inch screen and it can be portrait or landscape the smaller one is $199 and it is a 10 inch screen. So not much more for the for the big for the big boy so home builder applications, I could definitely see this in models.

Becca Thomas 06:16

Yeah, like for your out of town reload relocation buyers.

Andrew Peek 06:21

Yeah, yeah, that would be awesome, especially with the screen size would be really big and it could track around the room. So if you had this, let’s say someone was Yeah, relocate out of town and you had a person doing a quote, virtual tour with them, they could set it on the kitchen counter and walk around the kitchen and it would automatically track that person in the kitchen so they could show off this feature, this feature this feature, take it to the next room this feature this feature this feature, really let that person get a feel for the room much easier than like trying to go back and forth FaceTime with the rear facing camera, then turn it around like oh, they’re talking to me, I need to look at them turn around to the south facing and back and forth, back and forth, which which can be kind of weird and I’m looking at Sam’s chin while they’re paying time I’m gonna get Yeah, and

Becca Thomas 07:01

then you get dizzy. That’s true. Like, why

Andrew Peek 07:04

is your hand moving? This is This is crazy. Um, and our next one we have is finally Adobe Photoshop is coming to iPads and mobile iOS devices. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. Yay, exactly. I cannot stand like any of the mobile image editing apps or grading apps like Canva. I think there’s like Ober is another one. I don’t

Becca Thomas 07:27

even bother with them. I just take my pictures on my phone, when I get home. It’s already in there because everything is Apple, and I can just open up Photoshop and drop my picture in, do whatever I want to do save it, and then it goes back to my phone and I can send it wherever I want to.

Andrew Peek 07:45

Yes, and I’m sure and so I’ve used like Canva, I think is one of the more popular ones to use, like on mobile that for their problem, like the desktop version of Canva is actually pretty cool. The mobile version of it is not cool. Like you could do things super quick on desktop. You go on mobile But you’re like I want to do a collage. So like like a Facebook ad you know what five pictures and horizontal vertical and maybe like a super wide horizontal one. Yeah desktop really easy to make mobile It is not easy. So I’m a little nervous if they don’t make this as good as Photoshop that you’re used to on desktop, I will have some disappointment but it shouldn’t be but we’ll we’ll kind of find out

Becca Thomas 08:21

early they’ve had six years to make it better. You know what I mean? Like they’ve been planning and trying to do this since 2012. So Adobe usually puts out a pretty good product I’m not worried about it been

Andrew Peek 08:34

a long time coming it’ll be interesting to see if they do use any influencer marketing with this not that we went to that and the builder space but as far as if you think about Instagram, everyone is using an image editing app for the most part that’s that’s popular out there that has a significant amount of followers but getting out board to use the standard as far as professionals using Photoshop. It’d be interesting to see if they see if they do that.

Becca Thomas 08:59

Yeah. I want to see how they do all the shortcuts.

Andrew Peek 09:02

Yes. How do you have? Yeah, cuz I function on the keyboard shortcuts on in Photoshop and memorize them. All of them do not have a cat mobile. We will see.

Becca Thomas 09:11

Maybe I’ll be getting a keyboard for my iPad. Oh

Andrew Peek 09:13

geez. Oh my. And that’s it for this week on a news. Next up with our 360 topic.

Shawn Van Dyke 09:42

Welcome back. We’re here with Shawn Van Dyke to talk about this week’s 360 topic which we are calling help. I’m not interesting. Great job man, guys. Yeah, well, and you’re the right guy to be here to help us work through this. Shawn Van Dyke is a consultant and speaker focused Express on construction businesses only he’s fantastic at what he does. I’ve been creeping on him for the last. We met at PC bc this last year. So yeah, well, time flies and could not be more impressed by how you approach content marketing, both yourself and the topics that you discuss. So thanks so much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me. This is uh, this is great to be here, guys. Thank you. I have to ask first, because the Dick Van Dyke Show is still my all time favorite sitcom. Are you related at all to your band growing up? I used to get that question all the time. And somewhere back, you know, when I was growing up, I thought my dad said that we were like, he was like a cousin to my grandfather or something like that. But then just a few years ago, my dad got on one of those genealogy websites and traced our whole history back. And so you know, I’ve been telling people for years. Yeah, I mean, we’re related back in there somehow. And then he proved that it wasn’t that we weren’t related. So I’ve been lying for for a year, so I feel horrible. So dissapoint No, technically No I’m not. I’m not related. But these days not many people know who Dick Van Dyke is. So that’s true. They would probably I would say, forget genealogy testing. We just need to see how you trip over an ottoman and that will tell me everything I need to know exactly I am. I’ve got a few dance routines worked out with, you know, a chimney sweep. You know if anybody remember the old Mary Poppins stuff, but no relation, no relation? Absolutely. So, again, this week’s 360 topic is just all around the biggest excuse that we hear around content marketing, which is you know, our company homes, communities just aren’t that interesting. And frankly, we don’t believe you. So Sean’s here to help us bust this myth wide open. We think Bryce might be part of it. But we’re going to we’re going to break through them all. But let’s start with focusing on Shawn, your origin story. We use a lot of superhero analogies here. So your quick origin story of how did you come to be a consultant focused on what you do now? Yeah, says superhero story. That’s kind of interesting. Oh, Well, my I started my career, gosh, 20 some years ago, I graduated from University of Tennessee in 1997. So that’s a long time ago, um, but I got a, I got a couple of degrees in engineering in civil and structural engineering. And that’s kind of where my career started out at being an engineer. And then after a few years of doing that, I realized I don’t really know how to build anything. I know how to design some stuff and read plans and, and design a structure, but I don’t really know how to build anything. So I got I got a job in the project management for a large commercial contractor. And that got me out on site. And that’s where I really started to fall in love with the trades in construction, because I saw these guys working, that didn’t have any college experience, didn’t have any formal education, but I had no idea how they did what they did, like I could read a set of plans, but I realized there’s a lot more than just to construction than being able to read a set of plans. It’s being able to coordinate the thing and getting it laid out and then coordinating a team of people to actually build the thing. So I was just fascinated by it do that. But at that time been newly married couple of kids. I have five kids now so congratulations. Yeah, well more congratulation. My wife did all hard work I get to really react to you the same way people react to me when I have four because five to me seems unfathomable. Yeah, it is. It is. I don’t recommend it to anybody out there. Stop it for and that was our plan. Maybe we Yeah, three is good. I have three Yeah, three days. Yeah. Crazy. Yeah, three is good, or is crazy. And at five you start losing friends? Uh huh. Because they say hey, you know, we should have the van dykes over for dinner. Wait a minute, how many out of the park where they can? Yeah, pizza. Like, I don’t think we have enough chairs. Let’s, let’s invite the Smith. You know, they’re gonna start losing friends that at buy. But anyway, so I was a construction manager for a real estate company, a real estate development firm and a couple of kids and on the road three or four days a week and my wife is like, this ain’t gonna work. You You’d have to do something else. And I was like babe, I don’t know how to do anything else. So a little bit of motivation, let’s say from my wife and I started my own real estate development firm infection management firm. So I was working here I’m in Knoxville, Tennessee. So I started developing properties as a construction manager working for other real estate developers here in Knoxville. And then I was approached by my subcon my trim subcontractor. He and I both started our companies at about the same time and he had about eight finished carpenters that were working for him and he approached me and said, Hey, and he’s pretty, pretty big shop. Yeah, it was it was a big shock especially around fear and Knoxville factor. So he said, I don’t think I’m so I’m not I’m not very good at running the business side of it. Do you think it’s silly for me to bring somebody in to run the business? I said, No. People do that all the time are called CFOs or CEOs or CEOs or whatever. And in fact, I told him I didn’t realize he was kind of interviewing me at the time and I said, Yeah, I agree. You suck at running a business. Your your invoices are never accurate. Your your schedules, you’re never on schedule, but when your guys do get there I could leave the job site because their work was so good, I didn’t have to worry about them. And they were always looking out for all of the other little gray areas that I might have missed. So I was there. I was there in total for about four years and, and then had seen what we had done there. And then one day just kind of had an epiphany. And I was always getting questions and people calling me, you know, other contractors and other people in the trades that I knew. And they were asking me business questions. And I realized, for me, it was what I thought was just general knowledge to me, you know, this is this is how you track the numbers. This is your margins, this is what you have charge. This is how you you know, you grow a company, and I said, I don’t think everybody knows this. And so I just had this epiphany and I had her I can’t remember where I heard it, maybe on a podcast, something that what was general knowledge to me was expert knowledge to almost everybody else. So I said, I’m gonna put some information out there. And this is kind of the beginning of my content strategy offer something of extremely high value, give it away for free and then some of those people will take that and they’ll contact you because they’ll want more. Yeah, and by Or they just they like you said before, okay, I believe in that methodology or idea, Shawn, that process that you have, can you just help me do that? Because I yeah, I need help. You know, again, that’s what that’s his work coaches, right? Whether through motivation or correction, when I help you get to where you want to go, that’s, that’s my job. Yeah. And I just found that, that that work, I can walk into a shop or I can walk onto a job site, and I just know, I can see where they’re making money where they’re losing money. It’s all it’s all that I know. And so my business coaching and my strategies are specifically for construction business owners. And so I speak the same language and know how they think and i think that that gives me you know, an advantage. Yeah, sure. And, you know, the difference between what I call you know, big boulders are of opportunity and the small pebbles, it’s like, okay, yeah, there. There’s 25 things we could fix here. But I can tell right away that these two things are gonna have an enormous impact on the business. Let’s get to work on this first, and like you said, that may not seem like a superpower to you, but to them. That’s amazing because they They’ve worked within their own company for 10 years and never saw those those opportunities. Let’s shift over to the marketing end and just talk a little bit first about what are your favorite platforms that you’d like to use to get your content and messages out right now? Yeah, so I’ve built my entire business on on Instagram right now and I’ve started to branch out a little bit as I’ve got more products and started diversify my services but Instagram was really the platform for me again, I go back to because there is there’s this huge community now on Instagram and it was pretty big a couple of years ago. I’m not saying that I had anything to do with that the community was already there. But for me it was very easy to see on Instagram because I could see construction business owners or the owner operator the the Craftsman lead business owner, one that I you know, that scenario just come out of I could see it in their pictures and I could tell that the quality that they were producing was world class but because of the amount of detail that they were spending, or the the amount of detail they were putting into their process. I had an idea like I wonder if there’s been able to sell that and so I it was for me Instagram was very it was very easy to identify my ideal type of client they were interesting I yeah, they were you almost started out there and from a research standpoint not necessarily that’s exactly what I did when I no one knew me and and I didn’t have anything to offer anybody and so what I did when I jumped on Instagram before I started just following a bunch of people wait for them to follow me back and sent me a DM and saying, Hey, you know, like you get you get that all the time on LinkedIn. I don’t know why people in LinkedIn haven’t gotten this but it’s just like, Hey, you want to connect and then here’s my service, bam, let’s schedule a phone call or whatever. The the way that I started it on Instagram is that like I said, offering something my business coach taught me to offer something of extremely high value and give it away for free. So I did some research and I wrote a book called the paperwork punch list. It’s a 20 day 28 day action guide that streamline your production biz, and it just kind of gives you the initial starts of some different systems. That that can I knew that construction business owners were, we’re up against. And so my strategy on Instagram was saying, Hey, I’m doing research for this book. I’ve already I’ve already written the book and had an idea. But before I published it, I wanted to get them real, you know, I wanted to verify it. And so I just reached out to people, and I engaged with them first, and like their stuff in common is more than just a great work. You know, I really, if I saw something that I liked, I could tell the tools, the techniques, the other things they were using, so I just engaged with them. And then eventually I would send them a message and say, Hey, by the way, you kind of know me a little bit. We’ve been engaging in that kind of stuff. I’m doing a research project for this book that I’m gonna be publishing, I’m giving the book away for free. I was wondering, could I get your opinion about the industry, why you do what you do, the biggest struggles that you have, and if those struggles were solved what that would do for your biz? I’d learned very early on that people right out of the gate don’t like to be sold something but they love to talk about themselves. And I don’t mean that in a arrogant way. Yeah. They like to talk about the problems and and the successes that they’ve had. So I do To start with a research survey, and I interviewed hundreds of contractors and I just asked them what what they loved about what they did and what they hated what were their biggest pain points. And that survey gave me two years worth of content. Because all I did was focus on the things that they said were their pain point. And then it really started to take off. And one question that I asked in that survey is at the very innocent, by the way, thanks for sharing all this information with me. Would you like to talk about some free you know, on a free strategy call? Would you like to talk about some of the pain points I might be able to help you out? And that’s where, you know, you just get in and you offer to help people solve their problems. And some of those people will say, at the end of that 45 minutes or an hour, sometimes we’ve been on for two hours, people say, Okay, how does this work? And once someone asked you, when you haven’t really sold them anything, they say, Okay, well, how does, how do your services work? And yeah, the only question is, they can either afford it or they can that was my strategy for Instagram in the beginning was just get the survey information and then put the information out there saying, I think I’ve got some things here that can help you out. Luck or happenstance or just being in the right place at the right time then things like the folks at fine homebuilding reached out to me and they said, Hey, we’d like you to you know, be one of our brand ambassadors Would you like to do that that’s gonna be you know, speaking at some, you know, some public appearances and you’ve definitely put in the grind my friend I mean, yeah everyone always once someone becomes known in our industry they’re always think that came out of nowhere or you know, you hit that one miracle shot you know, that half court shot that and now you’re on the circuit or you’re rarely but there’s always a grind that comes before you reach that level. No doubt. Oh, yeah. There’s a funny story with like, with fine home, but I don’t think I’ve ever been told this publicly before. But when I was putting things out and trying to establish myself, I was reaching out to all sorts of magazines. I was I was going on what I called a blog tour. If anybody had a blog about the construction industry, I was reaching out to them saying, Hey, I can write some some some information for your do some blog posts or whatever. You just get rejected, rejected, rejected, and I was reaching out to trade magazines and that kind of stuff, and I’d reached out to the folks Find homebuilding and talk to an assistant editor there, whatever. And he said, All right, well send me a pitch pitch me on a couple of your article idea. So I sent it to them and they said, yeah, that doesn’t really hit our audience because it was all business. It was all the business side. It was it wasn’t the woodworking, it wasn’t the craftsmanship. It was the business side of it. And they’re like, Man, that doesn’t really fit our audience. I’m like, okay, so you just keep going. And then six months later, they they reached out to me and they said, Hey, by the way, we’d like would you be interested in becoming a brand ambassador? And I was like, Yeah, sure. And I didn’t want to remind them like yeah, you rejected kinda, you know, you were rejected me before, but I thought, Man, this isn’t really the time or whatever. Um, so I said, Yeah, I’d be glad to and they’re like great because we’re announcing you tomorrow with some other guys Brandon bass. We already have the graphics produced so I’m glad that you said yeah, so that kind of you know kick started that so I would say for anybody out there that is in that in that grind man it man when people say no, just that doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. If you if you’re sold out on what you’re doing and you know, you’ve got a message and you can help people out there’s some value there, then the yeses. And even when the yeses come was my point really is it’s still a grind it’s done yeah, it’s not that there is not fun moments right when you get on the stage and you’re actually helping people that’s all fantastic but the travel and the I mean I don’t care how many Instagram influencers want to show pictures of you know, I got first class on Southwest or whatever it’s like nope, that part all sucks. Yeah, you know hanging out in the hallway or in the green room for an hour waiting for your turn to get on stage. That’s you know, all that stuff is still a grind even after you start getting yeses it’s still it’s still work to push out that content. Yeah. And I think you know, part of that grind comes in and I think that that that you experienced this I think you you were after me in the same room right at PCB. Didn’t your Didn’t your slides totally crap out on you? Oh, no, that was that was Mr. Duderstadt. Yeah. Okay, yeah. That’s where the grind comes in. When people say, Oh, man, you’re so good at what you’re doing, like, Oh, you didn’t see my last or you didn’t see. And I was just, I was just in Baltimore at the remodeling show and doing a presentation there and I said, Man, I get fired up. And I get into it. And I launched my clicker across the room, and I don’t know what it did, but it froze up everything and I was just like, Oh, this is the grind. How do we get we got I got a I got a I got 10 more minutes here and I got to finish it without my slides. So sorry. Um, yeah, like you said, even when you get the yeses, it’s just you only can perform and do those things because the yeses are just the icing on the cake. You’re not going to do anything differently. I still get up at 430 Yes, still, you know, doing the research writing copy writing so much content that people will never see because it’s crap but out of that some good ideas come and and by the time you you know, you end up on stage presenting to somebody it’s just because that’s just what you’ve been doing. You know it like you said, it’s just not Hey, will you come and speak Yeah,

Andrew Peek 24:41

I’ll speak this is the first time I’ve ever done it. It’s like no, you’re you know, I’m in my office here in front of the camera practicing stuff looking like a complete moron most days hoping that it gets polished by the time I end up in front of a couple hundred people for sure. Jumping back to Instagram. How often do you post on there and would you have a certain process? I know at least for me, right? blog posts sometimes I’m like, Man, this is taking forever and then I’ll just get in a groove and like well that took like half an hour but the days before that I’m like, man, I just need to knock this thing out and then same for Instagram. Do you find that there’s times where like, I am not feeling it today post anything Oh,

Shawn Van Dyke 25:13

yeah, I I have I have gone back and forth with the whole you know schedule of posting and what I’ve what I’ve found is I have somewhat of a regular posting schedule, meaning that when I write for fine home buildings, typically every two weeks so that gets posted to my Instagram But even as busy as I’ve been with traveling, I’ve still been writing content for fine homebound, I just haven’t been able to produce the content to put it on Instagram. And so but I felt kind of guilty. It’s like, oh, man, I didn’t even do anything this week. And some people are like, Oh, you need to post every you know, stuff every day. And I can understand that if you’re out on the job site, you know, you’ve got some pretty interesting stuff, but most days, I’m just grinding away here in the office. I’m like, I could post a picture of my keyboard. But I don’t I don’t know what is that gonna? Is that gonna help anybody? And so I’ve just figured out that I post when I feel like it’s valuable or in when It’s fun and I haven’t figured out the formula because I’ll post something that was kind of fun and people will react to that and share that and comment on that more than thing I spent hours trying to develop exactly right. Every time you make something that you think is the best piece of content you’ve made recently no one reacts or very, very few people and then you know, you post a picture of yourself picking up milk and bread on the way home from from the airport and everyone comments and reacts and like Yeah. And so I’ve learned that you know, part of its testing and part of it is just you know, is okay, well what’s worked in the past and you know, that’s good, you know, you know, get more stuff of that out there because it seems to be helpful. But the other thing too, you got to remember is like some of this content is kind of old to me. I’ve been working on it for a couple of years, but I got new followers now. They’ve probably never seen it, you know, and so it’s that balance between, you know, the Evergreen stumps, the Evergreen stuff. How often do I repost some of that stuff, but for me something like when I’ve really got an idea of just kind of the craziness that is social media is one morning like I had this really crazy morning routine. I get up early. I take a cold shower. I drink mineral infused water. I do bulletproof coffee. I have a journal. Yeah, all of that because I’m getting old now. And like, you know, when you pull a muscle just getting out of bed, you realize, man, I need to live differently. I got to do something different. So I developed this morning routine, not because I came up with it’s just because I heard a bunch of other really success people doing this stuff. And so it kind of made my own thing. And one morning I just posted it step by step all of these really weird things that I do and didn’t even think about it. And that thing blew up like so many people request I’m like, you understand that I can help you make hundreds of thousands of dollars in your construction business. I really don’t know what mineral infused water does boring, but it makes me feel better. That’s what you want everyone to be about. Everyone wakes up every day or else they die. So it’s completely relatable, right? Everyone has the same routine of sometimes

Andrew Peek 27:52

we all wake up Yeah. How about Instagram stories? fan? Not a fan.

Shawn Van Dyke 27:56

Oh yeah, I love he’s a fan. Oh, I love Yeah, I’m Love Instagram stories. But again, sometimes it’s just like I want to I try not to do the, hey, here’s what I’m having for lunch. And I’m going out to the mailbox. And because my life in general is not all that exciting, but I do feel like it’s important as I say, you don’t want to my my goal is to change the way the world views Great. So I want most of my content be in and around that subject matter. That’s what I want to be known for. That’s what I want to help. But if that’s all I ever do, then people won’t know the why behind. I do that, by the fact that I’ve been I’ve got five kids that plays into my story and why I’m in my office, you know, 12 hours a day and doing the things that I do they need to understand that like, there are five raging human beings right outside my door. And that’s part of who I am. You know, part of my part of my story that I didn’t share before was that my my wife was diagnosed with the disease about 10 years ago, and that really kind of had a profound effect on just how we look at life in general. And that was one of my main motivations for a fork. quitting my job I just walked away from I was the CO CEO of that company. And, and when I started this business, I thought, well, that’s kind of an important part of who I am and why I’m doing this. And I wanted to flate what I called flavor my stories with a little bit of the personal stuff. So people knew that this wasn’t a guy just selling consulting services or online programs or whatever, that I’m just a guy like everybody else that had the crazy idea to start a business trying to provide value. And here’s part of the reason here’s a little window into why I’m doing so if you think I understand, you know, you kind of come across a lot of stuff online and people just possibly selling stuff. I want people to know that if they come across my stuff, and they think that they need to buy services from your thing or, you know, one of my coaching programs that if they dig a little deeper, that there’s just a regular guy that has a ridiculously large family that’s just trying to, you know, trying to make a living for his family. And part of our story, I think is is fairly unique and I hope it inspires other people. And so that’s why I like stories is because it’s so easy to flavor my content with you know, I think The personal side. And that makes it a lot easier because my coaching services are very personal. I spend a lot of personal time with my client. And so it’s just, it’s helpful for them to know that I’m in there. You know, I’m in in there with them, I understand their struggles, and I got a family too. And we’re all just trying to make a living. Yeah, the transparency and approachability is huge. I’m gonna butcher this and i don’t i don’t know where I where I heard it recently again, but it’s great is that you know, the the depth of your relationships is directly proportional to how transparent you are about your flaws. So you can’t have a close connection with your clients or with people who are just out in the crowd unless you’re willing to be vulnerable and not pretend that you’re perfect. And that’s why I kind of one of my regular themes is just to rail against people who just want to talk about you know, it’s another successful morning look at my perfect backyard. And I think it’s just like, nope, man, it’s work. And if you’re scared to show that work is good, which is part of what you’re doing with the trade is, Hey, you know, you can skip college, you can go straight into doing this and yeah, you’re gonna get sawdust on your hands, but you’re gonna To feel good about what you did that day, you’re going to have money in your bank account versus debt, you’re going to have all these other, I just think that transparency and relatability is huge. And I don’t know if if you’re doing this intentionally or not, but I know that but I’ve started using Instagram stories for is a lot of when I don’t want to overwhelm the feed, if it’s not evergreen, or it’s not something truly valuable, then that’s when I’ll throw a story up. Because, you know, people who want to know, if I’m going to go on a trip, and I’m going to I know I’m going to take 1520 images and want to share them, you know, if you don’t want to go look there, it’s not interrupting you. But for those who want to see what’s going on, they can, you know, on their own kind of opt into that higher volume of content. Yeah, I use, I use Instagram stories. As my laboratory, it’s quick, it’s easy. It throws some ideas out and they you know, they really, with the questions and some of the other the other features on Instagram stories that you can do now. So like I posted a question the other day say, hey, let’s talk about your sales process. What questions do you get from clients that you don’t know how to answer and I probably got one of your 30 responses and I just repost those questions with my answers. And that told me that there are people that are still really struggling even though I’ve been talking about and have a program on how you can increase your sales, how to have a process that you can get paid for what I call paid for planning upfront, but there are people who still have these questions. And it was just really, really engaging. So I use my Instagram stories to flavor kind of who I am but also as a as a test lab for subject matters that I want to develop some more Polish or deeper content on and then my feed is kind of a maybe a curation or a cultivation of brento of a lot of those stuff. Yeah. And then every once in a while, it’s just like crap, I haven’t posted anything. I’m gonna take a picture of, you know, this presentation that I’m working on and to make sure that people will remember that, you know, that I’m out here. But the other the other important thing, you know, and this gets into the marketing that I think that a lot of construction business owners are at least are missing it on Instagram is I want to make sure that no matter when you come across my information that there’s always a call to action every now and then I’ll do a post or a feed and there won’t be really any hashtag be a call to action and then That’s a kind of give people a break, you know, but most of the content if you scroll through there down at the bottom it said, Hey, are you interested in more, go to my website, sign up for this program, download my book, I’ve got another book that’s coming out, hopefully Fingers crossed next month. So I’m starting to build some because I want a year from now, when someone comes across some of my, you know, my library of stuff, I want to make sure that they have an option to buy something from me or engage with me or get on my email list. Yeah, that you know, didn’t like what Seth Godin talks about permission marketing, I want people to give me permission if I forget to include that in a post that I posted last year that could be really engaging with people, but they don’t know what to do. You got to tell people what to do. And I think that if more construction business owners included that in their posts, instead of just you know, not that they’re posting just for likes, and everybody has their own reasons being on Instagram, but I think that, that if you you know, put a call to action especially it’s hard with Instagram, you get one right you get one link, you get one link in your bio unless you get 10,000 followers and you can get the swipe up which I’m still pushing for. I’m getting close, but we’ll try to be super close. Yeah. I appreciate that. But so I’ve like I’ve got my my Instagram set up where I’ve got a page on my website and I constantly update page with the most frequent stuff. So when I say click the link in my bio, even if it’s a year old, that’s a great idea, go to that page. And you might have to scroll down a little bit only, but I just thought, Man, that’s my only chance. I’m not going to send them to my homepage. I’m going to send them to the page and I call it Shawn men.com slash now you go to that page and says, These are the projects I’m working on now booked speaking appearance, download my other book, sign up for pre sales, this other thing, here’s the program, here’s my latest article on find homebuilding or whatever. And I’ve found that to be a pretty successful strategy. Now once I get the swipe up. Oh, man, you know, get crazy. Wear that thing out? Yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, let’s shift over to this little segment that I’m calling the excuse that marketers make. And that’s what they all sound like. Let’s just rattle down kind of these excuses that we hear all the time. And I have you know, we have our own answers. I’m sure most of the audience has heard us say before, but I want to hear your take on these things. Well, you know, the first one was, you know, I’m just not that interesting. My home building companies kind of typical. We don’t do anything amazing or unique in our homes or our communities. It’s just it’s another home. And you know, there’s just not that much to talk about, what would you say to those those people? Yeah, and I and I might say that Yeah, maybe you might not be as interesting as you think you are compared to other builders, but I don’t really care about other builders, I killer. I care about customers. And my guess is you are extremely interesting to your customers, because compared to you know, if you’re a if you’re a small remodeling company that maybe does some new homes, and you’re comparing yourself to a big custom home builder that has a lot of money and a big bat to swing on social media. Yeah, you might not look that interesting, but I don’t care. They’re not gonna hire you. The couple that has the kids that are off to college and they’ve been saving for this remodeling project. They’re going to drop $100,000 your little remodeling company has a very personal touch where the owner is going to be on site and maybe on the tools and that’s extremely enticing. Absolutely did that to that client? So when you say yeah, I’m not that interesting you gotta you’re not interesting compared to what my guess is you’re extremely interesting, your ideal clients or your customers and you’ve got to just really instead of focusing on you and you guys get this from your, you know, just being marketing is that don’t focus on yourself, focus on your customer and in Bock less about yourself and the problems that you solve your customers. That’s extremely enticing to them. Yeah, sometimes you just got to get interested yourself too. I mean, a lot of marketers, you know, they say, Well, I wouldn’t necessarily want to buy from my own home building company that I work for, because maybe you are more vanilla, but that you got to force yourself to get interested in the details because those are where you figure out the stories that you can tell like you said, your expertise of narrowing down to who does your Trim Carpentry. I mean, I just had a quick call with with Tim flake who’s the vice president of sales enablement at hearth and home technologies, but all in all he lives and breathes fire. Places that his entire life and we could have talked for probably four hours about how passionate he feels about every piece of how his his company does business and the products they make and why they make them. And so sometimes you just got to force yourself to become interested either in your company or like you said, your customers, and then just piggyback on what they find most interesting and double down on that. Okay, how about this one? the excuse of I’m not a filmmaker, I’m not a professional photographer, or I know the actual skill of creating the content. What would you say to those folks who want to use that as an excuse? I would say that that’s probably an advantage right now. I think that there’s been studies that have been done that shows you know, really highly produced content that just the way that we see so much content, especially in video now that I think there’s been some studies that have shown that if it looks a little less polished, it’s more engaging, and you guys could correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s exactly why you should be because it’s more authentic. You know, the handheld shaky cell phone video is very authentic because people you know, you’ve got one Two seconds, three seconds to engage with somebody and when there’s not some Adobe After Effects, graphics coming across in the first three seconds and all that and it’s just a, you know, a guy or gal walking around the jobsite. People just know, hey, this is real. I’m not being sold something or I’m not this isn’t this isn’t polished. So I don’t think that that’s a valid excuse anymore. I completely agree with you. And we see it even just something as simple as emails responding back to people. You know, it cracks me up when a marketing team has crafted this nurturing email program where it talks in headers and paragraphs for you know, 3000 characters and you look at that and you’re just like that, immediately. I’m going to hit the delete button because I know no human being talks like that. We don’t talk like that. And then when Mike myself or Jen, we craft an email for somebody and it’s three sentences, they’re like, really, that’s it. Well, do you want people to respond back to you and ask you another question or engage with you? Yeah, that three sentences is plenty. That’s all you need. And I think for sure, it translated you know, the only part that and this is again, my marketer biases when it comes to a funnel model then sometimes if you don’t have a skill at all, you may need to find someone who can help you present it in the best possible light. But there’s a difference between the behind the scenes kind of real transparent social media version of that content and the highly produced or professional imagery that you’re going to put on your website to live for all time are in your gallery of featured projects, right? There might be a difference there, but there’s this other thing called YouTube where you can teach yourself all the skills that you feel like you don’t have to I mean, yeah, yeah, absolutely agree. I mean, that’s what the stories are just off the cuff on the fly and all of that, you know, and that’s, you know, Bill making a guest or whatever and telling telling a story but then you go to my that’s to get people to engage and to respond and go deeper and then when you if you go to my website, if you go to some of the things on LinkedIn or whatever, then you’ll see the Polish videos where I’m I’ve been working really hard this year on focusing on becoming a speaker. And so you’ll speak you’ll see a couple of polished professionally produced videos that don’t chase me as a speaker because when you know when when you go through My funnel hey I’m engaging with this guy I think this guy’s a construction industry speaker and somebody that sits on a border or makes the decisions for these things they’re going to engage with me on instagram follow me there go to my website and say okay we think we might want to hire this guy but what does he got? Oh there’s there’s what he’s got you know and so yeah, I think you need both but in general the the excuse that you’re talking about I’m not a filmmaker that’s good right now I think that use that for engagement and then that buys you some time that you probably need some professionally you know, produce stuff but before you even go there like you saying, hey, with YouTube, I have found the key to set yourself apart even before you run out and buy a drone and you know, and all of these other kind of things that everybody has a drone these days I still don’t have a drone I don’t know what that’s okay. I I tell everyone drone videos are like the pumpkin spice latte of video. Yeah, you want just a little bit in the fall but if it was pumpkin spice latte all the time it there’s no value there either. So yeah, that’s right. But you can go up real and this is what I found a really long way with I think I spent 200 maybe 300 bucks on lighting and a microphone. So good audio and well lit and it doesn’t even have to be professionally, I’ve got a couple umbrella lights in here and I make sure that you know, it’s on my face and the background is kind of dark. So I stand out and I’ve got a you know, I’ve got a lapel mic and then another shotgun mic and set it up on my tripod and um, you know, audio and lighting and help when you get in that in that sort of studio type environment. When I say studio, I mean, just my office, for sure. So it doesn’t have to be all that it doesn’t it doesn’t take a lot of time and doesn’t take a lot of money and audio and video go a really long way. How about, sorry, audio and lighting go really long. Definitely. Definitely. And here’s another one. This one’s my favorite as I’m a one person department. So I don’t have time. I think we all time, right. Yeah. I mean, you have time for what you know what you consider to be important. And that’s where I see a lot of construction business owners. They’re spending a lot of time on social media, right? They’re just not they’re just not leveraging all on political posts and other things right. Yeah, yeah, well again, that so here’s the here’s the slide deck. difference. And a lot of I’ve heard a lot of construction business owners say, Oh, I get a ton of work, my social media, my Instagram, my Facebook, whatever. And I’m saying, but how much more could you get if your story was a little bit different. And what I mean by that is a lot of business owner construction business owners will at the end of the project, or maybe even during the project, but they take pictures of the process, which is good, and they take pride, they take pictures of the final project, but let’s say that, you know, you’ve got a kitchen remodel project that you’ve been working on three or four months, and it’s beautiful, and it’s, you know, it’s immaculate, everything’s perfect. And then you go in and take the final picture and what’s missing the client out? Like, you know, the story there is Yeah, we’ve got beautiful work, but so does everybody else. And I think the way that people consume content now they’re just scrolling by that Yep, another pretty kitchen, another nice deck and other but people will stop in their tracks. If you feature your clients the older couple that’s, you know, mid 50s and they’re in the kitchen having a glass of wine and their friends are around it tells a different story like no, hey, this is who our ideal clients are. And my guess is other 55 Old couples with kids out that like to entertain and want to redo their kitchen, they’re gonna stop in their tracks at that picture. Yeah. And your your work becomes the backdrop of the story. But like you talked about before the heroes, the heroes are your client. And so people say I get a ton of work from my social media feed. And I’m like, I think you could get more Oh, yeah, I think you could be more effective. If you if you started teaching between your your clients are telling a little bit different story. Another effective way that I’ve seen a lot of construction owners use social media is, hey, when I hire you to come into my house, or to build a house for me, I want to know who are the people that are going to be in my house. And so I’ve seen some and some of my clients have been doing this because I’ve told them to do this, but start taking pictures of your employee and tell their story. You know, who is James and how long you’ve been working with you and what’s his background? And what does he do on you know, day one, and you guys have probably experienced this to being on social media, you’ll walk into a room and people walk up to you and be like, Hey, Kevin, hey, Andrew, how are you? You’re like, I don’t even know you but they’ve they know you because they followed you and They’ll be like how was your vacation last week and you know, is your is your kids still have the flu or that you know, and that that’s a lot of fun. So the same thing can happen with your, with your clients and introduce your employees and the people are going to be in their lives for three or four months. And day one, they kind of know who they are. So I think that’s another really effective way, you know, to do it. And again, you can do that as a one person, you know, department and anyone that says, Well, I don’t have time. Yes, you do. We all make time for what’s important. We just get trapped doing all of the urgency. And for a new home marketer, they’re working for a builder it’s a great combination of you need an excuse often to get out of the black hole called the office anyway and get out in the field to interact with sales team and struction team and look at you know, how new land projects are progressing. So you need an excuse to get out and then once you’re out you’ve got you know, this amazing device in your pocket that yes, it makes phone calls and contacts but also you know, has a red button on it that you can record stuff in amazing quality whenever you want to two things I want to circle back though, Shawn that you mentioned is you know, the experience in the trust, the instant trust and connection that you can make by talking about the experience end of things on an individual level of the individual team members and the collective and shared experience they have, I think is incredibly huge for home builders to be thinking about. The other is cutting through the clutter of everything on social media. You know, I think there’s there’s two ways to do that either through incredible context, meaning that the content you’re creating speaks directly to this very narrow audience, like you’re describing with the 55 year old couple or drama. And I think that’s the other thing that people in our industry are really scared about is ever admitting that you don’t do perfect work all the time. And I remember a gentleman named john Sherman, who will will have on in a couple weeks came and talked at our summit about one year and really just talked about, you know, if you have a video of any length, you know, longer than 30 seconds, there has to be some conflict in that story or it’s not, it’s never going to be interesting, and it doesn’t mean that oh my gosh, the stairs fell down in the house and we got to rebuild them. It doesn’t have to be you know, NBC primetime television drama of someone’s gonna die or something terrible extremely terrible does happen but there has to be some conflict of how are we going to make that trim come together and look like it matches okay I hadn’t thought about that how do we problem solve it? You know I think do you find that in the trade area that people are really scared to ever put anything other than you know their finished completed work out for everyone to see and is there a benefit in doing that? Do you think? Oh, yes, absolutely. And here’s the thing you were talking about drama did no owner no homeowner or anybody that ever built a house has ever in the history of contracting ever called up a contractor and given them a budget that’s too high, meaning they think that this is going to cost 100 grand guess what it costs 200 grand we think we want to spend $4 million on the house well guess what? What you want is $6 million There’s your drama right there right that that’s never happened meaning people just don’t the average homeowner have no clue just doesn’t know what no clue so so you and that’s what I tell my clients too is don’t wait until the end of the project to market it. Don’t market the finished project market the process as well. So when someone decides to hire you and and they pay you to help them with the pre construction stuff and walk through all the budgeting and planning and they sign an agreement with you just at the preliminary phase, ask them hey, what what is it about this so far that made you trust us and pull out your phone and record them saying that or ask them? Do you can I quote you on that and, and there’s, there’s so much drama in a construction project. Now, every day that you don’t have to manufacture you just record this, you might have to, you know, cultivate it a little bit and edit it a little bit out, but there’s so much that happens. But so many times, even if you do a perfect job, at the end of the project, the homeowner is just sick and tired of having people in their house. So when you wait until the end to give a testimonial they’re gonna say yeah, you guys were great. And we finished on time and on budget, and it looks really awesome. Great. That’s what everybody says. But I even encourage people that say, you know, maybe they realize that they talked with a homeowner and the homeowner doesn’t quite have the budget and the homeowner says and you educate them on what the budget really needs to be. They decide not to hire you because but they appreciate the education that you’ve given them. They just realize they need to go back and revamp and think or even save up or get up, get a testimonial from people that didn’t even hire you that will say, you know what, when we get the budget, we’re going to, we’re going to hire you, we do trust you, and we appreciate the education that you get, because the education part, the very beginning part of the process is what could help establish that trust in the beginning.

Kevin Oakley 48:23

Absolutely. And that’s, you know, we’ve had some builders on our coaching calls really want to talk more about Instagram influencers and who should I reach out to and I always want to push back it’s not that that’s always a hard No, but why aren’t you the influencer to your point it doesn’t have to be just focused on the people are going to buy from you become the influencer around home design and construction and whatever it is, and don’t worry about well, every one of those people are gonna be able to buy from you. So I’m wasting my time. Now you still can influence the marketplace by staying focused on that. Okay, one last excuse that I want to get your opinion on as people who say well, I don’t have hair like Shawn Van Dyke. So I can’t get in front of a camera The only excuse, right?

Shawn Van Dyke 49:03

That is a legitimate excuse. Yeah, for sure.

Kevin Oakley 49:06

Yeah. Do you think you need to be in front of camera one? And two? Do you have to do you have to look like Shawn?

49:15

No, you don’t have to look like Shawn. And it’s funny when I got on Instagram or doing this stuff. That was the big comments about my hair. That’s just one of those things I’d never would have imagined. It’s all very it’s all jealousy shot. Yeah. Oh, I know. I’m, hey, I’m 44 years old, and I still have a head of hair. So I am, you know, back in the day, you know, back in the day when I was in high school, I wish I had known right, because I told those girls in high school. Hey, I understand that you don’t want to go to the prom with me. But when I’m in my mid 40s I’m still gonna have hair and the guy who is the captain of the foot the captain the football team will not so just you know you need to think long and hard about that. But no, yeah, you can. You got to turn the camera around on yourself and and if you’re not comfortable doing we all do multiple takes and all of Everything online is pretty well can be pretty well edited, you know, and I do multiple takes and I’m like, man, I sound like an idiot on that one. And do you know something? You know, so simple find it, you know, trying to get it out. But I think what what matters more is just having your having your vision and talking about your mission and your vision and what you want to accomplish what you hope for your clients, and it doesn’t matter, you know, what you look like or whatever that’s going to come across. And I was thinking about, you know, I was thinking about this when when you said it, too, because I was just traveling in the air, you know, was in airports, and would be a bunch of airports over the next several weeks. And I always like to shoot stories and I can always imagine, like, I look so strange walking through the airport, shooting the story, and I just I can see people looking at me because another just fun thing I like to do. I like to wear my sunglasses and indoors and on airplanes all the time just to watch people’s reactions. Like who does that guy think he is? He’s wearing it

Shawn Van Dyke 50:53

they don’t realize that they don’t know. I can still see perfectly Yeah, I guess but but the thing is, if that’s what people think about like, I look silly doing this and I absolutely do walking through the airport but you got it, you got to imagine yourself through the lens of the camera, like that person is just seeing what you’re showing them. So they don’t see all the other awkwardness that people looking around you. They’re just listening and listening and watching what you what you’re, you know, producing. So I don’t know if that helps. Yeah, people are always gonna stare. If you can just get over that and kind of have fun with it, then, then I think that authenticity comes across, but ultimately, you got to be providing some good information and having fun with it. I certainly don’t it’s not business 100% of the time on Graham stories or whatever. I like to have a little bit of fun with it. But yeah, turn that turn that camera around on yourself and understand like, I think there’s studies that have shown people are more fearful of public speaking than they are. Yes, though. It’s a real thing. It’s a real challenge for a lot of people. That’s what I say if you can’t do that, then show your clients and show your employees or talk about the problem that you saw. And people will engage with that. That’s a that’s a really nice way of saying it, Shawn. We just tell people that if you don’t like the way you look Problem is, that’s the way you look. So get over it. Yeah. I think I think the key with turning the camera on yourself Is it it automatically creates the drama because human beings are what create drama in our lives most of the time, right might be through an experience created by a human being you never even meet. But the drama is from some other human and Mike and I used to joke about this when we first started doing Facebook Live, you know, two, maybe two and a half years ago was pretty sure like 20% of the honest is just tuning in to see if maybe one of us passes out or something breaks, right. It’s kind of that NASCAR effect of any moment. There could be a car wreck. Yeah, I just want to see see what’s going on. Yeah, I hope this guy every now and then, you know, I told him, I told my wife that we should just start a channel instead of just, you know, posting pictures of how awesome Our family is, you know, which is about point 1% of the time is let’s just film all of the fights have to it and that would blow up because it’s really you know, it’s real, but

Kevin Oakley 53:00

So to to wrap up, do you think there are any legitimate excuses to not be creating content on a regular basis?

Shawn Van Dyke 53:08

Yeah, I think that there there are probably some legitimate excuses as it relates to the the work that you’re trying to show. And what I mean by that is sometimes and I’m coming from this just from working in, you know, in, in people’s homes and dealing with, you know, maybe high end clients or whatever, you really need to be careful that not everything is should be consumed publicly. Like if you don’t get permission from your clients to show the inside of their house, then you you if that’s what you if that’s what you do, then you need to not show your processes, but you just don’t get an opportunity to do yeah, guys, and and they’re like, we’re on high street here, leaving this brownstone and it’s at the end of the day, and we’re locking up and we’re gonna be back and I’m like, I know exactly where that building is. I know that it’s full of tools. I know that the walls are opened up and I know exactly how to get in through the construction interest because I walk Dude do it every day. So if I’m if I have no ill intentions, then that’s some content that probably doesn’t need to be out you know be out there. That’s a good thing so i don’t i don’t hear I don’t hear anybody talking about in Blimey, we I’ve had that happen before a company I was working at we posted some pictures and in the background, it showed some artwork and some buying pieces of furniture. And that owner called us up and it was not pretty and we were at fault too, like we didn’t get permission. So in that sense that that would be an excuse of why you need to be careful about what you post. But outside of outside of that, I would say you know, there’s this is where this is how people are buying things. They don’t you know that my kids, they don’t watch TV, they watch YouTube, and and Netflix and all that so so you got to have a presence online. That doesn’t mean you got to be doing stories, you know, 12 hours a day or whatever. But my kids when they buy services from companies, it’s all going to be online so you got to be found and you got to talk to them and and sell them on whatever their problems are that they’re looking to solve. And that’s another thing I teach my clients. It’s like don’t people don’t, they don’t want to, they don’t want to solve their problems, they want to buy their way out. So offer them offer them away to buy their way out of that problem through you. And I think right now, I mean, video is, you guys know, I mean, video is where it’s at. So that’s where everything is, that’s where everything is going to go a website, his website is great, but that’s where I’ve kind of said, I think websites are dead, meaning you need a landing page, you need to collect those email addresses and you need to build that so that you because Instagram is going to change Facebook is going to change. LinkedIn is gonna change and but nobody can take that email list away from it. And so when you’ve got, you’ve built your own platform there, then you can send them to whatever I mean, I don’t know what’s gonna be after YouTube, some Paulo grant channel or something, who knows. But as soon as that new platform comes up, and I’ve got some content there, I want to send an email to everybody on my list and say, Hey, this is where we’re at. This is where you can go engage. Yep. And I think that a lot of contractors in Maybe you and your experience a lot of other business too are missing out on that, that like building your own platform and you know, through an email list and others that’s essential, you have to have something that you own and you control. And the other thing that I think is essential is the same skills that you’re learning from a try to draw people in to become a customer. Those should be actually I’m challenging now the audience of marketers listening is you should be translating those same skills into how you communicate and share information with people who are currently your customers who haven’t closed on their home yet or have closed recently because that’s the other thing that is eating up a lot of time and ultimately hurting a lot of homebuilding brands is a lack of clear communication and updates and and just keeping people in the loop and it’s all the same. It’s the same red button that solves both your new customer problem and your current customer problem if you approach it the right way. Yeah, I’ve always said that if you’ve got problems with your clients, after a project has started, it’s because you skipped something in the sales process, which means if and then if we have a sales process then we are explaining to them how we’re going To accomplish what they’re going to accomplish, meaning Hey, we’re gonna we’re gonna help you to develop budget, you’re going to pay us to do that. And then once we execute the contract, if any changes come up, here’s how we do that. We’re gonna we’re gonna go through all of that before we execute the contract. So Oh, you know, something came up. Well, you already know you’ve already been informed. And and I would, I would produce a piece of content about every step in my process, whether I share that public, right or not, is a decision for the company. But if I sign up, you know, a new a new customer as a home builder and send them an email. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you just need to have an easy five step process on your website of you know, we build your home in five steps, and it’s going to take a piece of cake, right here. That’s right. I’m sorry. You’re right. All right. Hey, Shawn, we are out of time. But thanks so much for joining us. It was it was a pleasure having you with us guys. Thank you and any, anytime we’d love to come back and talk shop, let’s help them out how many? How many more Instagram followers we need to get to the 10,000 I think about about 700 or we can do that. I know But yeah, though Yeah, we’re Oh yeah, we’re at 9278 as of this night,

Kevin Oakley 58:04

okay, everyone go go follow him on Instagram because I’m telling you that his Instagram story content alone should be enough to keep you busy generating new ideas of how you can apply it to your business. Thanks again, Shawn.

Shawn Van Dyke 58:16

Oh man pressures on now and I gotta have good hair days from here on. It’s

Kevin Oakley 58:19

every day. Trust me. Trust me.

Shawn Van Dyke 58:21

It’s every day. That’s right. All right. All right, let’s wrap up this week’s episode with answers to last week’s question of the week, which was how would you describe your new community launches tied into the new presale without fail book and a whopping 60% of those of you who fill out the survey said you wouldn’t define or describe your new Community launches as organized chaos, which at least there’s some organization in the chaos there, I guess is the bright spot. Another 30% of you said if I don’t laugh, I’ll simply cry. And then the final 30% answered, hit or miss completely unpredictable. And that definitely can be a struggle of sometimes committee launches do well, and sometimes they do not do as well. You just have to go back and forth between analyzing Was it the community and the positioning the product of the price? Or was it the fact that we missed something in the process, you do need to check both of those whenever you feel like you’re in that hit or miss situation, zero percent wanted to curse which is nice. And unfortunately, nobody said You know, we’ve got this down. 100% locked and loaded. Alright, that’ll do it this week. Thanks again for joining us. Sorry, it was a little bit of a crazy episode. People come in and go on the full D yc. Family. be back next week. We’ll see you then.

The post Ep 35: Help! I’m Not Interesting! with Shawn Van Dyke [Transcript] appeared first on Online Sales and Marketing for Home Builders - DYC.