Dylan McCabe 0:00
roofing CEO Show Episode Number 31 Welcome to the roofing CEO show My name is Dylan McCabe. And in every episode we give you a seat at the table as we talk with owners and CEOs of roofing companies and industry experts so that you can get the insights you need to remove the limits on your business and take it to the next level. Now in this episode, I’m going to be talking with Tracy Bookman. He’s actually the owner of homestead roofing in Colorado. He’s also a member of one of our roofing CEO groups, and he’s going to unpack how he gets a steady flow of leads without paying for ads. By using YouTube videos. He’s self creates YouTube videos just holding his phone up with his camera on and doing educational videos. And guess what, when people in his local market do a search in Google with roofing questions, Google pulls up his videos because Google loves to answer someone’s query online with a video. So we’re going to talk about how he does that what his method is, how he comes up with topics and how he has used that to increase sales. Now before we get into that, I got to give a shout out to our corporate sponsor Dalian black. They are very effective attorneys in the arena of construction and restoration. And if you are in a situation where the insurance company is underpaying delaying or denying, you need a 600 pound gorilla to bring to the fight with you and Dalian black is that partner, they fight to win, and they’ve got the record to back it up. In fact, they’ve never lost a case. They’ve even helped draft the Texas insurance code. And they take things to litigation more than any of their competitors. And when other law firms want to speak to specialists they call Daly and black. This is no joke. In fact, one in crowds, one of their key attorneys led the panel at the wind wind storm conference for the attorney attorney panel there. So they are a serious player in this space, and we recommend them and no one else. If you want to learn more, you can listen to the podcast we did with London crowds on our podcast and you can go to their website at daily black.com. Alright guys, let’s jump into this interview and discussion with Tracy Bookman about how to leverage YouTube videos.

All right, as I stated, I have special guests on the show today, Tracy Bookman from homestead roofing Tracy, thanks for joining the show.

Tracy Bookman 2:44
Thanks very much for having me on.

Dylan McCabe 2:47
Yeah, I’m looking forward to this because not only are you a member in our roofing CEO group, but you also have really a unique way of branding yourself and setting yourself apart with video content, we’re going to kind of get into that. And just some of the kinds of things you do differently. But before we get into all that, I’d like to kind of give you a chance to just share who you are, what your background and how you got into roofing.

Tracy Bookman 3:12
Yeah, probably real similar to a lot of guys, right? I actually owned a business in different industry. And when I was part of a bi group, business networking group, and there was a roofer in there. And kind of that was really the first contact I’d had with anybody in a roofing company. Other than the fact that when I had my roof down, and that wasn’t a very pleasant experience. But so anyway, so my whole industry back in 2008 2009 2010 really collapse. You’re in the Colorado Springs area. And guys that were in my industry, were dropping like flies. And so we started talking to the guy that works for a roofing company. And, you know, they said, Well, what come talk to us when talk to them?

Unknown Speaker 4:08
And

Tracy Bookman 4:09
they said, Okay, yeah, you can start. So, right. I’m not an employee, just a subcontractor. They say, just go knock doors, like, well, what am I supposed to say? Just ask me if you get on the roof and inspect the roof. I’m like, okay, so I went out and did that. And I don’t know, I think I saw like 11 or 12 deals just within the first couple of weeks. Because I just picked an area that had been completely overlooked. It was because I live way out in the country. And so I picked this area that was kind of out my way. And it was full of T lock rooms at the time. This was back in 2011. And nobody been door knocking out there. So it was like virgin ground, you know? So, but it took me about three weeks working for that guy to realize how How slimy he was and you know, kind of how wrong the in the roofing industry can be, you know. So then I spent the next two years trying to figure out how to get away from that company and started a couple other businesses. And so I was working two or three jobs all at the same time. Finally, I just kind of had it with working for that guy and decided I was just going to quit site. I interviewed with the owner of a different roofing company. He said, Well, tell me what it is you do for the company you work for. And I just went through the whole list. He said, Well, you might as well start your own because you’re doing everything that an owner would do anyway. Okay, so we did that started in 2013. And haven’t looked back since and been pretty. It’s been pretty fun ride. So Colorado Springs a good place to be. I mean, my family’s been here since 1880. So we can position ourselves, you know, homestead roofing, right, we can position ourselves as you know, we’re not strong chasers, we’re not traveling all over the country, we didn’t come here from somewhere else and leave when the storm seasons done. We’re here we’ve raised our family here, we, you know, do business with other local businesses. We go to church here, etc, etc. Man,

Dylan McCabe 6:18
that’s cool. So why the name homestead? Is that is that because of the family history there,

Tracy Bookman 6:23
it fit. Right. But no, the real reason is because, you know, I told you I live out in the country. Well, there’s a county park out there for him 50 acre county park called homestead ranch Regional Park. So it was like, okay, that works. And then it was after we decided on the name of like, Oh, yeah, we’ve been here since 1880. That kind of fits. Let’s go with that.

Dylan McCabe 6:43
Oh, that’s cool. And so your company you’re in, you’re near Colorado Springs kind of tell us about the, the size and scope of your company. And what your focus is, yeah, we

Tracy Bookman 6:54
are very small fish in a big big pond. You know, there’s, it’s not like Dallas, where you’ve got probably 1000s of roofers there. But in the height of the season, you know, there might be three to 500 roofers, here. You know, and they come from all over the place, we get a lot of guys from Denver. But you know, if we get a storm here, before Denver does, those guys will come down here. And then when a storm gets there, they all go back up there. Because exactly pays a lot more in Denver than it does here. So that’s kind of a challenge in our market, is that, you know, trying to deal with exact mate, which we don’t play the exact making at all. You know, the prices here are really low. And the margins are really low if you’re working with exactly, but, you know, on average, we’re going to get a pretty major hailstorm.

You know, probably once every two or three years. It’s it’s been now three years since we had our last real major one. We do. Yeah,

Dylan McCabe 8:01
right. Same thing.

Tracy Bookman 8:03
on anybody. I actually, I’m one of the rarities, right that, you know, I don’t really want to hailstorm. Let’s try to build our business so that it’s sustainable. And we don’t have to depend on all these storms every year.

Dylan McCabe 8:14
Yeah, right. Yeah, I can I can tell you in Dallas. It’s I’m I’m the only one of all of my friends that when it hails, I’m all excited. You know, and the guys like we have a small group at our church and the guys and the girls split up and we meet with the guys and we had hail a couple of weeks ago. And one of the guys said, I think it’s hailing in my house. And I texted back hail Yeah, right away, and all the other guys were laughing because I said, I’m sorry, but your damage is my bread and

Tracy Bookman 8:39
butter. Remember, a few years ago, we had a massive storm. And we had a church meeting that night. And the pastor said, so what’s got done for you lately? My wife said a massive hailstorm today. That’s pretty good.

Dylan McCabe 8:57
That’s so funny. I can’t I can’t ever get over that. Well, so So let’s talk about so your company. Obviously you’re you’re a very proactive leader, you do some unique things, with educating homeowners with teaching comment. You also decided to get involved in a roofing CEO group and implement EOS in your company. So I look at somebody like you and I and I think you know, it’s really wide open for where you could take your company, for the kind of lifestyle you could create for yourself, the legacy you can leave behind the way you could provide for employees. The impact you can make on local homeowners and I just know that you’re you’re a very high value guy, you’re driven by really high ideals and values. So where where are you looking to take your company over the next three to five years? What would you kind of like to see happen?

Tracy Bookman 9:47
Yeah, I’ve been I how would I put it I guess I’m on this. I’m on this fence. You know, because if you listen to A lot of the so called gurus out there, you know, their big focus is getting bigger.

Unknown Speaker 10:07
And

Tracy Bookman 10:09
I’ve really, always resisted that idea of getting bigger. But there’s always that tension, right? There’s always that push, where you think, Oh, yeah, you know, everybody else, that’s what they’re doing. Maybe I should be thinking about doing that. But now our goal is, we really want to focus on the client experience. And anything that we do in our business as far as growth as far as revenue, as far as profit, has to be there to support that, that one mission, that, you know, I mean, you can see on the side behind me, you know, that was awesome. That’s, that’s our goal. That’s what we’re shooting for, for a homeowner to think and feel when the process is all done through the process, before the process begins, and all that so. So we’re kind of intentionally trying to focus more on margins, both gross margin and net margin, rather than on total revenue. That’s, that’s kind of where we’re wanting to take it because we want to we want the client to have an experience. Well, kind of like what I say is I want I want our clients to have an experience with us, unlike any that they’ve ever had with any other company, not just another Roofer, but any other company. And that’s, that’s kind of what we’re shooting for.

Dylan McCabe 11:30
That’s huge. Yeah. Dave Sullivan. I’ve mentioned this before on this podcast, but Dave Sullivan, host of the roofer show, he calls it the the two week test? Yeah. And he says, basically, are your processes set up in your company? And do you have the right profit margins in place so that you can go on vacation for two weeks and everything keeps running smoothly. And if you don’t, your that your either your processes are too cumbersome or detached? Or your margins are too slim, because it’s like he says the same thing? Who cares what your top line revenue is? What’s your profit margin, your gross profit, your net profit at the end of the day? And so that’s, that’s huge. So. So tell us about, tell us about how you’re getting there? How are you differentiating yourself in the marketplace, to bring about that great customer experience? And then we’ll get into how you’re doing it through branding with videos on YouTube?

Tracy Bookman 12:20
Yeah, so it all starts, before anybody even picks up the phone. I swear, it has to start for us. I don’t want to wait until you know, they made that call, and my office manager into the phone. My goal is that they’re ready to buy when they dial that phone number. So to get there,

I’ve got to number one, I got to get to where they relate to me.

Right? Because, you know, everybody knows the tired old cliche people buy from people they that they know, like and trust. Well, I agree with that. Right? You can’t really disagree with that. So that’s, that’s where I’m trying to position myself is when they pick up the phone. They’ve already had some sort of contact with me, that establishes a rapport. I mean, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve taken different sales training, I’ve listened to different sales trainers. And that’s one of the things that they always keyed in on is when you show up at the door, the first thing you got to do is, you know, look around trying to figure out how you can build rapport with this with that person.

Dylan McCabe 13:39
Yeah, right. Hey, you like golf, don’t you? I see a picture. You play a golf. I like golf, too.

Tracy Bookman 13:46
I heard one guy say something that I thought was really funny if you’ll give me just a minute here. But he said, Okay, so you’re trying to build rapport, you walk into a guy’s office, and he’s got a deer head mount on the wall. So you try to pick up this conversation about Oh, you hunt? Oh, yeah, I have to and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He’s like, No, I don’t hunt better if I’m an animal lover. This, this deer right here ran out in front of the car. And I hit him and killed him. And I just felt so bad that I wanted to remind myself to drive slower, right? So it’s like, gosh, you tie all these stupid things to build rapport and like, whatever. So I wanted to be myself. Put these videos out there, put put blog articles out there. So that way as people are investigating this whole process, if they come across my stuff, when they call, they’re like, yeah, I feel like I know you. I trust you. And let’s go ahead and get this done. That’s kind of where I’m sorry, that was a kind of a long answer to your question.

Dylan McCabe 14:45
Yeah, but it’s so it’s so true building rapport. I mean, people do business with people they know like and trust, and they can’t know you. If you’re not putting any content out there. That’s how they get to know you. They can’t like you until they Spend time engaging the content watching it, whatever it might be. And then they trust you when, when what you’re talking about shows that you know what you’re talking about. But I mean, let’s, let’s deal with I think the biggest challenge that a lot of guys might think about this right now is number one, I don’t have time to make YouTube videos. And I don’t even know what I would put in a video. I mean, that’s it. Where do you begin as some people with writing, like, I’ve taken multiple writing classes. The best writing class I took at the Masters level when I was getting getting my graduate degree is they call it the rewrite method. And their their thing was just write, don’t even try to engage in should I write this or not just take a topic and write write everything you want to write, then go back after you’re totally done and rewrite and edit, but totally remove the thought of editing. Right, wrong black and white critical thinking from your brain. Just create first. And I think people even though that’s different than video, I think people would do the same challenge. So before we before we answered that, how many videos do you have on YouTube right now?

Tracy Bookman 16:05
I’m out, I think I think we’re right around 105 110. Okay. Yeah.

Dylan McCabe 16:12
So we’re not talking about 10 or 15 videos. So you’ve clearly developed some method with this. And it’s proven. I mean, it’s it’s absolutely proven that when you create the content, you’re branding, and you’re you’re building a house of content, instead of just renting content through online marketing and stuff. As soon as you stop paying for those ads, your content is completely vanished from the internet. So you’re building a brand. So What tips do you have for the guys that are thinking? I don’t have time for that. And I don’t even know where I would start. Where do we start?

Tracy Bookman 16:41
Yeah. All right. So let’s let’s deal with I don’t have time first. That’s a pretty Sorry, excuse, right? That’s an excuse that really is saying something else. I don’t have time, of course, you have time you’re a business owner, you have to have time to develop your business one way or another? Doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter how you’re going to do it. Maybe it’s you spend an hour and a half of the DNI meeting every week. And then, you know, two more hours during the week doing one on one meetings with people in that DNI group. Okay, there’s four hours in a week right there. Maybe it’s you’re knocking on doors for insurance agents, or realtors. That takes time, right? All that stuff takes time. Now, you might go and knock on insurance agents stores. And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing to do. Alright, that’s one of the ways that I got started. But what what kind of what’s the return on that? Maybe you maybe you talk to 50 agents this week? How long did it take you to go talk to 50 agents this week? And what are you going to say to them? Right, I talked to insurance agents, because I’m always asking people. Okay, give me your impressions of roofers. Right. And they’re like, yeah, we had five people come to the office today, and what do they want? They just want us to send them business. So it’s all me focus from the roofer standpoint. I think they’re walking into an insurance company, or an insurance agents office, they’re like, Hey, give us give us referrals. None of it is, you know, how can we help you in your business? So if I’m going to go to an insurance, I’m getting sidetracked here, let’s get back to your sorry, I can sidetrack really easy. So anyway, what was I, what I was saying was, you’re going to, you’re going to spend time somewhere. So when you say, Well, I don’t have time to make video, what you’re really saying is, I’m uncomfortable making video. I don’t like myself on camera. I don’t know what kind of ideas I would come up with. I don’t know how to do it. You know, that’s really what people are saying. I think that’s my opinion, is you’ve got to develop your business one way or another, and video right now. The statistics all prove video is the way to go. It beats everything anymore. So we drive everything to video. Okay, Did that answer question number one?

Dylan McCabe 19:13
No, that’s really good. And I think I think that the deal is is like you said, you’re you’re saying yes to some things and notice some things on a weekly basis. And you need to say yes to spending time creating your brand with video. And for guys that think well, I can’t, you know, do that. One of the channels I like to watch on YouTube is a guy that does nothing but review heavy duty trucks and travel trailers. It’s all he does. And every single almost every single one of his videos is him driving in his truck. And he’s not even on camera. It’s literally just the highway rolling by it. He’ll talk about some new you know, Ford F 350 truck or dodge and he compares the models and it’ll show the image on the video while he’s talking because he went back and put that in there. But This guy has got a massive following. And some of his videos have almost a million views. And he’s gotten sponsors, because the bigger companies see that he’s getting tons of traffic. So now he’s getting free trucks. He’s getting all these, you know, tricked out bumpers, and it’s just crazy. So anyway, if he can do that driving on the highway, and he doesn’t have a good voice, he’s not he’s not skilled in how to craft an argument. He’s just talking about what he likes and the differences between travel trailers. So for those of you listening to this, if you think you don’t have time, if you are in the on the road for at least 10 or 15 minutes on the way home, you can do this or on the way to the office or on the way to a job. If you are writing in your car, you can simply just attach your phone to a mount there and record the video and it’s good enough.

Tracy Bookman 20:51
Yeah. Oh, yeah, it definitely is. You know, and the other thing about I don’t have time, it doesn’t have to all be you, right? I mean, if you’re, if you’ve got a bunch of super happy customers, talk to them. And, you know, people hate to be on camera, right? So don’t make it a kind of a mug shot kind of thing, or here, just stand here and tell us what you think about homestead roofing. It’s, hey, I’m going to sit down with you. And we’re going to we’re going to have a conversation. And one thing that I learned a long time ago is that the most successful movies or videos or books, they tell a story. So let’s talk about my customers journey. So, Mr. Customer, you know, explain to us where you were at the beginning of this process? Well, no, I had this this problem. And I’ve worked with some other roofers and they did the job completely wrong and, and then everything kind of fell apart. And then I found the homestead roofing and you guys save the day and let them tell that story. Right. And like you say, All it takes is, you know, to stand there and hold it. Tell Tell me your story. Tell me what happened in problem with questions.

Dylan McCabe 22:01
That’s good. Okay, so let’s say you’ve got somebody says, okay, Tracy, I’m gonna, I’m gonna take you up on this challenge. I’m going to make time for this. I’m going to hold my phone or I’m going to mount it to my you know, the mount in my my windshield, and my car. Dini, do you use anything else? Like any kind of lapel mic? Or what do you use to shoot the video?

Tracy Bookman 22:20
Yeah, that’s actually an excellent question, I was actually going to have it here on my desk. So I could show you that you can buy you can buy a microphone, a wireless microphone, well, it’s kind of a wireless, you know, it’s a radio transmitter microphone. And it’s made by azden, eight, ZD n. And you know, I bought one that will fit on my DSLR camera. But it also comes with a mounting bracket for the phone. So you can put it like that mount the microphone receiver here and plug it in your jack, and you wear a lapel mic. So it transmits wirelessly, you don’t have to be tied to it. And that that’s I’m glad you brought that up. Because that’s probably the most important piece of equipment that you could have Besides this, right, you vote everybody’s got one of these. So invest 100 bucks to buy one of those microphones because if you’re outside and it’s windy, you’re going to your voice is going to disappear. And the only thing people are going to hear is that from the wind, you put one of those microphones on with that little wind sock on it, and it cuts all that out and makes it way more professional. And then people can actually hear you.

Dylan McCabe 23:31
Yeah, and the thing is, is when it comes to, you know what we call production quality, if it’s just you holding your phone, and you don’t add any weird effects or any kind of really top notch, you know, editing, it’s fine, that people are either expecting to see raw, authentic video like that, or something that’s very, very professional. It’s when you land somewhere in the middle that people started saying, Oh, this looks kind of crummy. But if it’s just you on camera, people will be fine with that but like you just point out they will never forgive bad sound. Yeah, and we use that exact mic that you were talking about. The one I have is it’s we use the azden mic ours is the pro the Pro X d i use I use it to do a lot of videos. Before we rebranded to limitless I used to do a lot of videos teaching the whole EOS program. But I asked the guy when I was at the store How well does this work? You know, I don’t know the difference between one mic and another and they range they can get up to 1000s of dollars. He said well I was in the jungles of I don’t know it’s like on some crazy trip for National Geographic and in the jungles with some obscure tribe and he was like it works great for me. I was like sold. Okay, I’ll

Tracy Bookman 24:48
take it. I just bought mine off of b&h photo. And yeah, it was 100 bucks or whatever. Well well worth it. And the nice thing about it, it doesn’t have batteries, right so it charges Going into a USB port, you can charge anywhere.

Dylan McCabe 25:03
Oh, that’s great. Yeah. So for those of you listening to this, there’s, there’s some great options out there for lapel mics. Just go to your local camera shop or whatever, they have some that can just clip right to your lapel that without connecting to your phone, they have some that they have all different setups, but it’s not as hard as you think. And if you’re not in a noisy place, you can just use your phone. I mean, if you have a relatively recent iPhone anyway, I can’t speak for Android, but the mic and the cameras are amazing. So So let’s say somebody is going to try it. Where do they begin? How do you come up? You’ve got over 100 videos out there. How do you come up with ideas for content? All right. So that

Tracy Bookman 25:39
that’s, that’s the probably the million dollar question right there. What do I do? What am I going to talk about? If you’ve been in business for any length of time, six months, even, you’re going to see a pattern of things that are that people are going to be asking you about? How much does How much does a roof cost? Right? That’s a question that it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, you’re going to get that question. If you sell cars. So how much does a car cost? How much does the roof cost? I’m still going to discuss how this is cool, cos that’s what people want to know. Well, there’s video, there’s video idea number one, and the blog article number one. Let me let me throw in something, any video that you make. You’ve got content for a blog article. Any blog article you write, you have content for a video, right? And there’s no reason there’s no reason to double dip, but try to come up with twice as many ideas, make a video, then write a blog about it, and then embed your video into the blog article. Okay, so you’re going to see a pattern of questions that that your customers are going to ask you start making a list of those. That’s how you start sit down and write a list of the the generalized questions that your customers are asking you, not the specific questions. I mean, you can you can write down specific questions to for a specific question might be customers are asking you Well, are you licensed in in this county? Or well? Okay, yeah, that’s a question you may get over and over and over again. But what does that that’s a 32nd. long video, right? There’s not much to that I’m talking about stuff that actually is going to educate your prospective customers. Using information and questions that you’ve gotten from your existing customers, your existing customers are going to tell you what your prospective customers want to know. So one of the most popular videos that we have is five ways your insurance company avoids paying for your reroute claim. That’s actually one of the most popular ones we’ve got out there. Another one that’s real popular is how much does the new roof cost?

Unknown Speaker 28:02
And,

Tracy Bookman 28:04
you know, that’s trending up right now, as far as views. And I’m going to now I’m going to redo that one for 2021 because the costs are going crazy right now. Other other ideas are, you know, God on YouTube, find some of the other more popular roofing channels, meaning popular that they’ve got a lot of subscribers and look and see what content they’re putting out what questions are they answering, and then and then you make that more specific for your for your market. You know, like Dimitri, right, with roofing insights, go out there and watch the videos that he’s putting out because he puts it out videos once or twice a week. So he’s got a lot of content out there that you can piggyback off of, for your specific market. There’s a software program called h refs, a h r Fs, you can use that to research keywords, and hrs will tell you what keywords people are searching for. There’s a bunch of video ideas for you right there. Another one is called Cora Q. You are Oh, I just got a ping from Chora a couple days ago that people are out there looking for Should I tip my roofer? Bingo, there’s a video right there a video and a blog article because I know people are searching for that. So now, I’ll make a video and a blog article about that. Let’s see other ideas for content ideas, you know, just go with go with what people want to know. And don’t be afraid of dealing with like touchy subjects. So we’ve got two negative reviews out there on Google and one negative review on Yelp. Okay, why? Maybe if I’m looking for a roofer and I see Oh, this guy’s got negative reviews. I want to know why. So I did a video why all the negative reviews On homestead roofing, Well, it turns out kind of the two on Google one was fake.

Unknown Speaker 30:05
And

Tracy Bookman 30:06
the one on Yelp was fake. So as they tell people, well, these are fake videos, one person lives in California, one person lives in Arizona, these aren’t our customers. And so why are we

Dylan McCabe 30:16
spending the time to do that?

Tracy Bookman 30:19
I know it’s creepy. But then so we got the one valid negative review. So I was able to address that. I was like, Yeah, I blew it. We were in a really busy season, this was a small repair, I let the ball drop. Right. And so it gave me the opportunity to tell people, yeah, I blew it. This is why,

Dylan McCabe 30:41
you know, that’s, that’s interesting, because we, you know, early on, when we first launched limitless as roofing mastery, we thought one of the biggest services we were going to offer to owners or roofing companies, it was a review management system, just because I have a background in online marketing. And, you know, that’s really the best thing that you could get from somebody is is a positive review. So we we found out that people will forgive a negative review, what they won’t forgive is no response to a negative review. But if somebody gives a negative review, and then you respond and say, Hey, we’re sorry, you’re right, we dropped the ball. This is some things happen internally, but that doesn’t matter. You know, what matters? Is you getting excellent customer service, will you please give it give us a chance to do whatever. And then you can shift it. And even in gathering feedback before you ask for that review. If they rate it low, and you call them and say, Hey, what happened? I saw you gave us a three out of a 10. What can we do to make this right? Sometimes you can turn that negative review into a positive? Yeah, you used it as a chance to just say, Hey, we operate with integrity, here’s what happened. And you you flipped it and turn it into a video. So I think that’s, that’s, that’s a remarkable way to deal with that.

Tracy Bookman 31:57
I also use it as a chance to call the guy on yell out, right? It’s like, Look, I know this is fake, because his reviews that that he wait, he called somebody up for inspection. And you waited and nobody showed up, he waited for six hours. It’s like, what same person isn’t going to call after the first 15 or 30 minutes and say, Hey, where’s your guy, right? So and plus the fact that he was from Arizona, and plus the fact that he doesn’t show up in our CRM anywhere. So I used

Dylan McCabe 32:29
some people have way too much time on their hands to do nothing with. And another thing for those of you that think, you know, I want to do this, yes, I’d like to tell a story on the video or highlight a story of a homeowner or whatever. But it just seems complicated. There’s a really cool thing you can look into called story brand by Donald Miller. And you can actually get a free. It’s a free software that shows you step by step, it’s like seven points to just tell a story. And if you want, you can use those seven points to guide every video you make. And I’m looking at right now, you know, while you were telling the story, if you saw me look away, it’s because I was typing in my story brand deal. But the whole story brand framework assumes that people don’t really care what you have to say until you highlight one of the major things that our brain is looking for. And their brain is looking for a story that identifies a problem that solves that problem with a plan and explains that the stakes, the stakes are high, here’s what can happen. If you don’t do anything, here’s what can happen if you do something. And so anyway, if you story brand, and you go to my story, brand calm, they’re not affiliate of ours or anything, I just think it’s an amazing tool, you can see how they do that. And then you can pay for it if you want to, you know, get more into but you can even have a basic framework there. And Donald Miller’s thing is like, you don’t have to use every part of that. But you need to know that this person is on a journey. Yeah, you need to identify what their big problem is, what their pain point is. And you need to guide them you are the guide, you need to guide them to success in the end, and let them know what the stakes are in their decision making. And and we try to do that as well. When we’re talking to people about joining a roofing CEO group. Who are you? What’s your what’s your journey? What’s your idea of success? Where do you want to take your company in the next three to five years? How are you going to get there on your own, here’s what we think we can offer in a small community. And here’s the stakes, you can either join a group and get surrounded by kind of a band of brothers a team of honors and all this stuff, or you can keep going in at your own and deal with those limits. And, and that’s it. It’s It’s It’s, it’s it’s a very powerful thing and whether people buy from us are not or buy from you or not. At least you know you’re communicating what they want to hear. And it’s statistically proven, that if you don’t land on the problem The fact that you can be a guide, you have a plan, you’re calling him to action and relating to them to success, these major things, it’s statistically proven that they go, they go totally distracted on you. Yeah, people are we are trained to just completely start daydreaming if somebody doesn’t immediately meet those needs.

Tracy Bookman 35:21
Yeah. Yeah. So another book that’s really good is called, they ask you answer by Marcus Sheridan, you get an audio book, so you can listen to it while you’re driving around, which is kind of difficult, because you’re gonna want to write down ideas. But that’s, you know, I mean, that whole concept of basically just educating your customers. Now, I saw a TED talk years and years ago, by a guy who started a software company called 37 signals. Now it’s called Basecamp. But that’s what he talked about it just, they started their software company, the software engineering company, just by by putting out information to educate their prospective consumers about that industry. And their company blew up, you know, it turned into like, whatever, a nine figure company. And I was like, that’s easy. I can do that. Right. So back in 2013, right after we got started. I got a call to go look at a T lock shingle roof. I asked the lady I said, Can I make a video while I’m up here? I’m brand new, right? And so I made a video, there’s my T launch Shingle Roof really need to be replaced? Because every roofer under the sun is going to tell you Oh, yeah, you got it, you got to replace it. And the conclusion in the video was a roof was in perfect condition. So I was like, No, you don’t have to. Sometimes you mean, sometimes you don’t? Well, just within a few months of posting that video, I got a job from somebody found that they did a search for keylock shingles. They found that video, they called me up, they’re pre sold, like, Okay, let’s go. So there’s a whole reroof multiple layers of singles with a read deck on it. So it’s a good job to get, you know.

Dylan McCabe 37:04
That’s awesome. Yeah. And for those of you listening, I mean, obviously, when you operate with integrity like that, and people see, wow, this guy is just trying to close me. He’s just trying to close a deal. He’s trying to build a long term relationship with me, he values me he wants he sees my needs. Those are his focus. I mean, that that’s, that is the most powerful sales pitch. Yes. It’s not a pitch, you’re just coming in to say, I’m here to help. I’m going to tell you exactly what I think whether it benefits my bank account or not. That is the ultimate sales pitch.

Tracy Bookman 37:37
Yeah, yeah. And in fact, that’s one of the things are you asked that question about? Can I do this? You know, earlier, that was kind of one of the basic questions that you started off with. And my my thought about that is, okay, so somebody says, Well, I’m not a writer, or, you know, I don’t like my personality, on video, I’m not good with that. That kind of thing. If you can sell a roof, you can do a video. Because if you can sell a roof, that means you’re answering questions that people have just put that in a different format. Right? And exactly like you said, said, Don’t none of our videos or sales pitches, none of them. We got 100 plus videos out there and not one of them. basically says, you know, homestead roofing is going to be able to solve all your problems call homestead roofing, oh, by the way, you should ask for Tracy, here’s our phone number. Here’s, you know, none of them are like that. It’s all here’s an issue. Here’s what you do about it. Or here’s a question. Here’s the answer. 100% of them are like that. And that we’ve been told, over and over and over by people when they when we finally got to the to the house. Like I watched so many of your videos, and you just came across so credible and so trustworthy. And I felt like I already knew you. That’s what you want. Because then the job is done. The sales job is done. Right? You don’t have to worry about knowing the assumption close and the puppy dog clothes or any of that stuff.

Dylan McCabe 39:01
Yeah, you know, it’s it’s so true. We in that’s a way that you can do that as the business owner with video. Because we live in a day and age where people research everything because an ocean of information is right there at their keyboard. And Google as far as Google works Google wants to get all Google wants to do people are confused about how Google works. All Google is is the librarian of the internet. Somebody types in a question, Google wants to give them the best answer possible. Google has a lot of criteria, how it distills all the information available to decide what the best answer is. To put it in simple terms, if somebody types in Best Rock Climbing book for Colorado, well, Google has literally 1000s of pages and websites it could pull from to give them the answer to that question the best rock climbing area in Colorado. But if Google only had three options, let’s say Google had three options. Google has a website with two pages on it, a website with 30 pages on it and a website with 300 pages on it. Which one do you think is going to point them to the one with 300? Google wants to give somebody the best answer possible, because Google wants to remain as the hub for all of their searches. Yeah. So. So the deal with that is, is that Google also wants to pull up video content, more than anything else, because like you said, it’s statistically, video is engaged more than any other form of content, it’s engaged more, it’s shared more, it’s clicked more. It’s also watched more Google, Google records, the time how much time you spend on each web page. Well, if it’s a five minute video, usually that’s a lot longer than anybody spends on a blog post. Unless it’s a really well written blog post that includes graphics and videos and all kinds of stuff. So So for those of you listening to this, this is an easy way for you to get your company out there and for you to educate people, because education really is the new selling, people want to be educated, they want to know they’re working with an expert. So you could just I mean, you can jot a list down of all the things about roofing, how does ventilation work? What does a new roof, what should it cost, how to know you’re working with a good company, I love the one you did on basically educating people saying that whoever you talk to is trained to get you to sign a contract. They’re not necessarily trained to educate you. They’re trained to close a deal. And, man, we’ve taken a lot of deals here at rain tight in Dallas, we’ve taken a lot of deals that where other guys bid on it, but they didn’t educate all they did was sell. Yeah. All right, we got we had one where the whole sales pitch was about how they’re going to get checks. And the checks belong to us, not to you. I mean, it’s just crazy. And so we spent, we spent time educating the homeowner. And I, we we really get a lot into the insurance process to without trying to, you know, deal with up issues or any of that. But we do try to educate the homeowner that, hey, this is an insurance restoration claim here in Dallas. Here’s what that process may look like. And a lot of homeowners just don’t have a clue even in Dallas have no clue what to think about all that?

Tracy Bookman 42:11
Well see, that’s where you can you can use your existing video content to educate a homeowner before you go to the sales meeting. I’ll give you a good example. So when somebody calls our office, and my office manager sets them up in our CRM as a new lead, they automatically get sent an email that basically just says, Okay, here’s, here’s the way it’s going to work. So and so it’s going to show up on such a date such a call you before it gets there. Oh, and by the way, here’s three videos that you need to watch before he gets there. One of them is should I get three roofing estimates, right? Because if it’s an insurance claim, we all know the price is the same. It doesn’t matter what the roofer is, right, the price is the same to the hallmarks deductible. Well, we get if we’re in the midst of a massive hail storm season. We don’t write estimates, I’m sorry. And so we want people to know that if you call us to come out, we’re happy to come out and look at your roof and everything. But we’re not going to write an estimate for you. We want you to interview three different roofers, find out who you’re most comfortable with. And if it’s us, let us know, then we’ll start the whole process. But we want people to know that right after the call, we don’t want. We don’t want to tell them on the back end, when we arrive at the house. So everything out by an eagle view and then they say yeah, just give me an estimate. Now, yeah,

Dylan McCabe 43:42
I had a guy asked me for an estimate today. And I said, oh, we’re not ready for that yet. Do you need to file a claim and get a check? And then let me know if you want an estimate. And by the way, your price is the same no matter who you work with?

Tracy Bookman 43:54
It’s good way to do it. I like that, you know, we’re not ready for that yet. Kind of like,

Dylan McCabe 43:57
we’re getting away from the car ahead of the horse. Yeah. So I really like to do another podcast with you about about how you guys do your sales process your estimates, your you know, your system, because it is unique. And there’s a lot of guys out there that that I think are just doing it the wrong way. And I think you guys are doing it the right way. And so we’ll have to get into that another time. But let, let me ask you this. What What do you see as I mean, if you were to if you could have 60 seconds with somebody, and you were you were to say, Listen, you got to do this. This has been very effective for us to build, report educate homeowners and stuff like this. And they say, well, we’re just using a digital marketing company. If you had if he had 60 to 90 seconds to respond to that. What would you want to say?

Tracy Bookman 44:46
Well, they have to know your industry. And they have to understand your personality. Because whatever communications are, are going out either on your website on your blog. or on your YouTube channel. Any of those communications have to be in your voice. And what I mean by that is it, it doesn’t have to be written by you, or it doesn’t have to be you in the video. But it’s got to represent your personality. So we were using an agency for about seven or eight months. And it worked, it did a really good job of getting us from showing up nowhere on Google, to now we show up like three or four on the first page. And so what they were doing is they were taking my video content, and they were writing blogs to go with that was hidden $4,000 a month to do that, right. So at the, when we got close to the end of last year, I was like, that’s way too much money to pay somebody to write one blog article a week, from content that I created, right? So I took that back. So an agency, a marketing agency can be really good for you. But it’s, in my opinion, it’s a short term solution, it’s the kick in the pants, right? It’s the, it’s the throwing fuel under the fire to just get things going. And then just take it back, right and save that money, because $4,000 a month, it’s just way too much

for that, you know, kind of in the small picture in the big picture,

it’s really not because, you know, now our, our our Google results have gone up. But the other thing is, I don’t know how much of that is due to the fact that our YouTube results now are also going up. I mean, I was looking at that before this interview. And so I know all of our YouTube numbers, I know all of our Google Analytics numbers and all that. And so in about in October of last year, so we were kind of flatline, really, really minor on YouTube. You know, like three views a day. And then October of last year, it jumped up to about 250 views a day? No, sorry, April of last year, it started kind of started creeping up like this. And then in October went like that. So our Google Analytics numbers follow the same pattern. So was it a result of what the agency did? Or was it a result of what YouTube is, is doing? Probably a combination of both. So that’s why it’s really important to know your numbers and to track all of that information, so you can see what’s happening.

Dylan McCabe 47:33
Yeah, that’s good stuff. Yeah, when you spend the time, I mean, it’s just, it’s just been proven over and over again, if you spend the time making good educational video content that people can get value from and share with their friends. It’s golden. And you don’t need to pay an agency to do that. You can hold the phone, record yourself, do a little to three points of education, address a pain point, give a call to action, if you want and help people to see how they can get what they need to get get what they want to get out of life by working with you. You’ll be so glad you did you know, Joe, I did an interview with Joe Hughes from contractor dynamic. And he called it owning house versus renting a house. Yeah, I heard that. Yeah. And he compared it to, you know, when you create all these videos and stuff, you’re building your own house. But if you pay somebody else all the time, you’re renting it. And obviously with SEO, if they’re doing blog posts, they’re not going to take the post back. But if you’re paying for Google ads, as soon as you stop renting that branding, it’s gone. And so I just love that. Well, we could keep talking about this. And I really want to have you back on to talk about how you do your estimates, and how you do the insurance, you know, deal with the insurance process? Because I think the way you do it is really, really interesting and the right way. So but before we do that, is there any last parting piece of advice that guys have listened to this mean? We’ve been talking for about 45 minutes here. So what’s a parting piece of advice to just sum it all up? What would you What would you encourage others to do?

Tracy Bookman 49:02
Well, when you’re making the videos, don’t worry about trying to make it like somebody else. You got to have your own personality in it. You know, Dimitri, probably a lot of your viewers are familiar with Dimitri. With roofing insights, he’s got a really good personality for what he does. If I lived in his area, I probably hire him to do my roof. Right. Randy brothers up in Denver. You know, he’s got the roofing Academy. He does his podcast great personality, I’d hire him to do my roof right? Well, no, I wouldn’t because I live in his market so I haven’t but you know, just you got to let your own personality come out of it. And not try to be somebody else. I you know, Josh Biggs with BDR. Like if you want to do your best damn roofer videos like better prepared to have your your series you know, it’s like, but he’s He’s operating in a different market. He’s being his own person and people like what he does. That’s great. You know, so don’t worry about all the vanity numbers, don’t worry about how many subscribers you have, how many views you have, how many clicks you’re getting, none of those vanity numbers mean anything. The thing that means something is, how much is your phone ringing? And how much are you making off of those efforts at the bottom line, and the only way that you’re going to actually see a return on that is when you stop trying to sell, and you and you let your personality come through.

Unknown Speaker 50:37
So good,

Dylan McCabe 50:38
and it’s free. Yeah, nothing to lose, the only thing you have to lose is the cost of not doing this, you’re gonna, if you don’t do this, it’s guaranteed you will get zero results. If you do create some videos, you may get some extra phone calls. So what have you got to lose?

Tracy Bookman 50:54
while you do if there is one other challenge, though, is, right, everybody’s got the tool to do it. But not everybody has the tool on the back end to do the editing. So they would that would be one challenge, right? And you got to have some sort of editing software to be able to take out all of the noise and all the slips and the ties that you dropped your phone and you got to be able to compress that and make it watchable. You know, but then the other thing along with that is everybody says, Well, you got to have short videos, that can’t be more than three minutes. That’s baloney. I mean, I’ve got a video out there on explaining to homeowners how to get comparable roofing estimates. So basically teaching them how to do a request for request request for proposal. It’s 30 minutes long. I’m not going to worry about that. I’m going to give people the information, not worry about trying to keep it in there three minutes, if they want to watch it great. If they don’t, that’s fine. I can look at my YouTube analytics and see how much of the video people are watching. And then I can

Dylan McCabe 51:54
change if necessary. Yep, know for sure. I mean, it’s is the content engaging or not. And if you’re meeting, if you’re addressing a problem, or a major pain point, it’s going to be engaging for whoever typed into Google and your video came up. So I think it’s great advice and really appreciate you taking the time to to share with other owners and listeners what you guys are doing because it’s helping you to show up in Google, which means more calls to your business, which means more revenue, which ensures you’re you are sustaining the growth and the success you get so Tracy Bookman at homestead roofing, thanks for joining the show.

Tracy Bookman 52:30
Thanks so much for having me.

Dylan McCabe 52:32
All right, great show with Tracy. Man. I love what he said about just driving everything to video because statistically it is the most effective method for communicating your message in building rapport. I just want to challenge everybody out there, just try it. Just try it. Try doing a facebook live feed, giving some points and trial uploading those videos. And hey, if this podcast has been helpful to you, if you’ve given any gotten any insight that’s helped you in your business, please take 60 seconds and rate and review on iTunes. Just go to rate this podcast comm slash limitless. That’s rate this podcast.com slash limitless or just pull it up in the podcast app you’re watching right now and leave a review. If it’s Apple podcasts and other it really helps us get the word out. And if you haven’t done so already, check out our limitless Facebook group, you’re going to get some collaboration with other owners and we don’t allow any spam, spam or advertising at all. Alright guys, thanks a lot for joining our show. This is Dylan McCabe and I will catch you in the next episode.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai