EP107: Double Your Business Without Paying For Leads by Steve Burnett
Introduction:
Join Steve Burnett as he presents at the Blast Off Event and learn how to Double Your Business Without PAYING for LEADS.
Steve has said it before, “Paying for leads is a racket,” and he can tell you why. But you need leads, so what do you do? Listen to this podcast to find out!
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TRANSCRIPTION:
Blast Off Event – Steve’s Presentation – How to Double Your Business Without Paying for Leads
[00:00:00] Welcome to the DYB podcast, where each week we share strategies and stories to inspire you to double your business so that you can have financial freedom, time for your family and make an impact in your community. And now this week’s episode.
And we’re going to talk about a topic that I’m passionate about, not just in building businesses, but how to do it without paying for leads.
You’ll see. A little bit later here, why I’m passionate about that a little bit, uh, about me, we had built a company earning over 300, 000 in personal income. And I say personal because sales are for show. Profit is for dough only working 30 hours a week. Now this was during the great recession in cases from years, you know, 2008 to 14, 15.
And I have a picture here of me in our pool with my son Samuel, because I was. Able to be home with them in the afternoons and teach them how to swim. And that’s important for anybody we’re ever working with or anybody building a business. You don’t want to sacrifice the time with your family just to build a successful [00:01:00] business.
And do I believe in whole life success, including health and exercise. Diet and marriage and relationship too.
So you want to build a company, use a lot of this tech to automate all your business and get down to that 30 hour work week. So that’s really important. Once we got it rolling, I wrote and published a book because a lot of people started asking, how did you do this?
I wanted to get the framework out of my head. So we wrote and published a book. And then the phone really started ringing. We help us to coach, to consult wasn’t my plan, but I just said, yes, I’d love to help. And so we went ahead and sold our business. We had an exit, uh, December it was 9th of 2014. So about 2015, we went full time, started traveling all over the country, giving presentations and seminars.
And here we are with my buddy, Josh Abramson. I think this was 2014 given the keynote or at the time was PDCA at the PCA expo. There, and I believe it was Reno. Then, we put it all together in a framework called the DUIB system. Okay, and here’s, we have it all laid out. These are posters [00:02:00] and, and, uh, PDFs. In fact, the PDFs are free.
You can download it if you search DYB System online. It should be easy to find, and you can download it and have a copy for yourself. Once we put this, uh, framework together, we built our courses. And we built them out in a website. I call it the UIB cafe because I think everybody should drink coffee in there.
It has everything you need to build a million dollar plus business profitably and get your time back. It’s only 49 a month. I’ll show you a link later on, but after we put all those courses together, we’ve got all these Members, in fact, we’ve helped over 1, 530 businesses, and that was the count, I don’t know, a few months ago, so it’s, you know, a little bit more than that now to get their freedom back.
Here’s one with Bill Carlson. He said he saved 4, 000 a month. I stopped and he stopped paying for leads in October, so 4, 000 a month and leads have not dropped off. Plus, we have more than doubled our sales this February over last, and we have many of those. One was, uh, Stephen last week said he’s [00:03:00] saving 10, 000 a month now from paid leads.
Okay, and I’m gonna show you how you can too here. Now, I’ve done a lot of things right, however, I’ve done a lot of things wrong. I discovered these the hard way. Now, the hard way is working for GCs. The good news is, I’m not seeing or hearing a lot of that anymore, but back in, you know, when I got started, um, in 96, to get going, you worked for GCs.
But now it’s, it’s more so door to door or paying for leads, which I hate. If you gotta go door to door, okay. All right. That’s, that’s, that’s an honest way. It’s hard, but paying for leads is a really bad way. And here’s the reason why they attract unreasonable people, unreasonable people, and they keep you running all over town going after these leads for these unreasonable people.
Cause if you don’t show up for these unreasonable people, they’re going to yell, yelp, yelp. You know, I mean, who would name something called yelp, right? They’re going to complain. And, uh, give you poor reviews. And so you have to show up, you have to pretty much do everything they want. So they don’t leave a nasty review.
Moreover, I [00:04:00] sincerely believe, and I’ve gone on record saying this, I’ve published videos and I’ve written articles saying that I believe that paid lead sources are a racket, just like how the mob is a racket.
And so you kind of pay for their protection when you pay for leads. What you’re doing is funding their SEO, effectively pushing your URL down the SERPs, and that’s really bad.
And you don’t want to do that, but you need leads. So what do you do? Well, I assume you want the creative way that made us and many other successful. So I’m going to share as many of the creative and fun things that we’ve done and as many stories as I can in the limited amount of time we have. So first I came across this quote, I was sitting at my desk.
We were doing okay, but it wasn’t exciting. And this is Seth Godin. He said, if the marketplace isn’t talking about you, there’s a reason. The reason is you’re boring. And you’re boarding on purpose because it’s safe. I felt like a punch to the gut. I was like, Oh, because I was doing everything safe. I was [00:05:00] professional.
Um, I never, I never pushed any limits. Okay. I did everything the way you’re supposed to do and nothing more. That was it safe until this quote caught me at the right time. And then the gloves were off. Okay. I also come across this. I think it was Michael Hyatt that had posted it. You know, and I’ve saved this.
It’s the backdrop on my phone and on my computer, and it’s in my favorites, and I’ve shared it many, many times. You know, here’s your comfort zone, but here’s where the magic happens. All right, so let’s lean into it and of these stories in the system, I’m going to go through the ABAs. Now, ABAs are ads that look like anything but advertising, right?
Because Jeff Gittemer said it best, he said, We hate to be sold, but we love to buy. And so what we do is we present ourselves in a fashion that helps us to stay top of mind in an entertaining way that helps others to want to buy and refer. First up, Remarkable Presentations.
This was the first. Thing I did after I read that quote from Seth Godin.
Now, if you know me, I’m [00:06:00] generally a shy, reserved person. I would rather research and read all day than to have to stand up and present. So this was not easy for me to do. In fact, I had talked myself out of it. And here I am at the, uh, chamber meeting down in Venice, Florida. And I think it had been my third meeting.
There was a room at a country club with about 90 people there. They started passing the microphone around. If you’ve ever been to a networking meeting, you know, it’s. Finally, everybody stands up and they give their want, want, want, want, want. That’s my Charlie Brown teacher impression. And that’s, that’s all we knew what to do at the time.
And so everybody’s going around and giving their, you know, 30, 60 second presentation. And I talked myself out of it. Well, fortunately, one of my competitors was there that day. And when my competitor stood up and gave their 30, 60 second presentation. I thought, well, now I’ve got to do it. So I had a little flip cam at the time and I threw it over to a guy I knew.
And I said, Hey, record this just in case it works. And so, uh, he did fortunately. And I stood up and I said, uh, I [00:07:00] said, have you been following the latest swimsuit trends? I said, Benjamin Moore has just come out with her latest swimsuit body paint, and I know what you’re thinking. Does swimsuit body paint and house painting have in common?
I’m glad you asked. Whether you’re all about sporting that bone, and I held up a artist brush there, or, and I grabbed the biggest, blown out, nappiest, 18 inch roller frame I could, and I said, or, if you’re wide bodied, right, and I looked back at the crowd, I said, call 1 800 PAINTING, because we’ve got your back.
Not knowing how they were going to respond, they actually, they all went nuts. Uh, so that encouraged me to keep going, and so I did. Uh, the next one, I sang, uh, Sinatra, and I think it was, uh, Flying to network at noon instead of flying to the moon, uh, pick a shade of blue. And again, they loved it. That encouraged me to do it again.
Uh, did a, uh, Sir Mix a lot rap, but I think it was, uh, I like referrals and I cannot lie. Okay. These are all on YouTube. You [00:08:00] can, you can check them out. And then I did Hulk Hogan and that’s the one that kind of really tipped and got the attention of many others. In fact, uh, it’s when PDCA reached out and said, Hey, where are you coming?
And speak and share in all these wild things that you’re doing. Cause again, guys, please remember this was during the great recession when many good businesses were going under, but we just kept scaling up. Okay. So this is certainly going to help you if we are coming into another correction. Now others are doing these as well.
So here’s a Craig Armstrong crushing it. Uh, Mark Lane, there’s Mark Polos, Mark Polos again with the, uh, uh, Mr. T, right? And then here’s Steve and I’m in California. In fact, he did so well that he also won business of the year. Next are young entrepreneur scholarships. And what we did with my local mastermind group at the time was the Monday 20.
We put out nominations into the community, and we got the community to share these for young entrepreneurs to submit their business or business idea, and then We would pick a [00:09:00] winner and then award them anywhere between 250 and a thousand dollars, depending on what their business was and what they needed.
Here’s Zach. He needed a lawnmower. His dad wouldn’t let him use his profits to buy a new one. And so we went ahead and awarded him. Sure enough, you know, we got a bunch of press for that. A lot of these I’m going to show you, we got press for. In fact, we were in the paper on average five times a year.
That’s not that hard to get in there, especially if you write the little story and take a picture and send it in. If you do a little work for them. You’ve got a good chance of getting done there, especially if you’re doing good in the community. Next are community spotlights. These are kind of like podcasts, but with your community and much smaller and much easier.
Okay. So here I am with Mark Smith. He’s a CPA. You just sit there and I threw a phone on a tripod and I just asked him a few questions. They’re about five to 10 minutes long. Very simple, a fun question at the end. And then what you do is you send that to your customer list. You say, Hey, I just interviewed Mark Smith CPA.
I [00:10:00] don’t know if you’re in the market for a CPA, but you can check it out here if you want. So now you’re giving the customer’s value. You also stay on top of mind. And then you give Mark the video. He sends it to his network and he’s introducing his network to you. Obviously he posted on social and YouTube and it gets all that engagement as well.
I interviewed everybody. I interviewed my favorite coffee shop here. There’s a Luigi and a bug guy and there’s Jane, you know, a realtor. Uh, these were, uh, this is Karen. They were my all state agents. Awesome people. There’s somebody Dallas with his, uh, Amco. So give me your mechanic. Here’s H and H signs.
They did vehicle wraps and all of our signs and such. And I mentioned Mark Smith in the beginning, he went ahead and put his on his website. I grant I know the site’s a little dated, but he put that video on his website and he says he gets a new client every month. So if you think about this, those clients are also introduced to me and my brand, but who became his favorite painting company, just from taking a five, 10 minute community spotlight video [00:11:00] for it.
All right. So next we have the, uh, paintball charity championship and boy Dallas and I were talking and said, Hey, we love doing these things with our, with our employees, with our teams. Why don’t we Do something together. And so we came up with the CNB charity paintball championship. And what we did was we each put in 250 and whichever team won, they got to choose which local charity, all that money went to, we had a lot of fun the first year.
And so then we started inviting other companies to join us and we kept doing this every year. And sure enough, we landed in the paper and get a bunch of free press again. Also, it’s great for culture. The teams love it. Ben Campbell just posted a great video up in Campbell painting up in Alaska, had his team out doing the paintball charity championship and they loved it.
It was a blast. Couldn’t wait to do it again and it’s not that expensive. Okay. Video testimonials. These are so, so important. I know Google reviews are important. Those are great for getting those cold leads online. Video testimonials just help you to [00:12:00] close so many high value leads on the spot. All right, now Jeffrey Gettemer said, if you say it, it’s bragging, if others say it, it’s proof.
And when you’re at that sales call, they say, well, if I could prove to you that our team provides the best experience, would you be interested? They always say yes and say, well, given the experience that our team provides, right? So now we’re giving them all the credit we’ve earned these, all these testimonials, video testimonials, please take a look at them.
You very well see somebody, you know, and you just start scrolling and hand it to them. And scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll. And you have blown their mind that you guys provide the best experience. And really it’s your job to prove that you provide the best experience. I feel like. We have a moral obligation because we know that there are people in this industry who they’re not honest, just to be frank, and they’re not good guys.
And they’re not guys that I’d want in my home, you know, around my wife, if I wasn’t there. So I felt like I had a moral obligation to convince them that we. We’re the best option for them that we provided the best experience and nothing [00:13:00] closes like Rose video testimonials HHRs meet my buddy Charlie, we were actually at a chamber function, and I was asking around I say hey guys what’s a unique vehicle that we could line the cruise up with that would stand out, and my buddy Charlie was an HHR and he says, all right, he’s from Boston.
All right, so there’s the accent. So we did. We went and bought one and then we bought a few more. We went ahead and made yard signs out of them just to go ahead and brand these because they’re very unique, you know, at the time. Now they don’t make them anymore, but Oh, and we also won the, uh, PCA or PDCA at the time, a vehicle of the year.
I forget what the award was called and again, got in the paper. They don’t make them anymore, but what I want to encourage you to do is to think of what’s a unique vehicle that you can just have a fleet of that pops or stands out. Right.
And then also, if you notice something about the branding, don’t wrap them with a bunch of whiz bang.
It’s just distracting. You have half a second to make an impression, [00:14:00] right? Think of the Coca Cola trucks that go down. They don’t have this. 50 million colors all over them and confusing something or others, right? Just keep it clean. Keep it simple. Keep it clean, but pick a unique vehicle that pops. Paint it forward 2.0.
Josh Abramson was the first to start paint it forwards and he shared that process with me years back. I really liked it, but I tweaked it. Some to include the team and so that we could do more of them rather than just one a year. So we rolled it out. It was a hit. It was so much of a hit that we couldn’t wait to do it again.
In fact, what I loved about it the most rather than all the press we got from it was what it did for our team. We can go paintballing. We can go bowling. We can have cookouts. But to watch them serve the community in a painted forward and afterwards, it changes them and it takes your culture to the next level.
And as It never failed. The new guys on the team, they would always come up to say, wow, this is amazing. We’ve never done anything like this with another company [00:15:00] before. When are we doing the next one? And then here’s some flyers of others, you know, doing these painted forward 2. 0s as well. In fact, I had a client, uh, he’s a mechanic.
Uh, he also did the same thing and sure enough, you know, he landed in the paper. The new owners of Burnett painting, they continue to do the painted forwards. And then check this out. Here’s Genesis up in New York says, uh, just got the newspaper, the article’s full page, completely free. Talk about ABA, right?
ABA’s ads that look like anything but advertising. Got a full page. That was awesome. Now, one time we made the front page top of the fold. That was when we did that near Christmas. So you can kind of time it right again to help you get into newspapers. Okay, get free press, write the story, take the picture, do the work form and send it in.
It’ll greatly increase your chances of… Getting published. We’ll continue with the rest of this week’s show in just a moment, but first, we want to take a moment to thank you for making us the most rated podcast dedicated specifically to painting contractors. Do you feel like you’re just [00:16:00] missing one piece to the success puzzle?
Are you so close to breaking through that you can feel it? Book a free strategy call with Steve now to help you finally break through. Just click the link below in the show notes that says free strategy call. There are only a couple of openings on his calendar each week. So get your free call with Steve now.
And then Matt Jensen, his caught so much press that they mentioned it on the news multiple times, I believe worried about it just really took off. Here’s a really fun one. Gore made cookies. What you do is you get a case of paint cans from your local vendor and get some custom labels made, put them on yourself, and then go around to the local bakeries and get some pricing and let them know what you intend to do.
Now, the hard part is you have to sample, right, all those cookies. And so go around a few bakeries, get some pricing, sample some of the cookies. The key here, please hear this. The key here is they have to be delicious. Okay. If they’re just some Keebler Elf stuff off the [00:17:00] shelf, then it’s a gimmick. That’s the difference between being remarkable and being a gimmick.
They have to be delicious. Take them and make contest out of them, right? So we would say, Hey, if you see one of our HHRs out on the road and you post on Facebook and tag us. We’ll give you some cookies and then they would do that all around town. And then when they kind of pick up the cookies, we go ahead and take a picture of them as well with their cookies, just to show, Hey, we do put it forward.
You know, we do pay out. Right. But if you do this, here’s one thing you want to do is make sure you let them know you had, they have until Friday to come pick the cookies up, or it’s safe to assume that they will have been consumed, right? We don’t want a bunch of people showing up three months later asking for their cookies, so we can keep turning them over and keeping them fresh cookies were so awesome.
In fact, that we had rolled out our own coffee at one point, I called it nine hour buzz because I’m playing off of our nine year warranty and our buzz. And I would have people message me say, Hey, Steve, thank you so much. I’m glad I wanted the coffee and could I have cookies instead? So, so we pulled the coffee and just kept running with cookies because they were so popular.
Also, cookies help to tee you [00:18:00] up for that video testimonial to help to sweeten the ask, if you will, when you show up your video testimonial and you’ll see in many of our video testimonials, they’re holding on to a can of these delicious gourmet cookies again, run contest with these. There’s Matt crushing it again with a contest.
And if you look at this, you have 20 shares, right? And a can of cookies costs a unit cost is about 20. Here are others with their cookies. Here’s an awesome post that Jeff Summers got, he says, best painters ever after pictures coming soon, but first this final walk around yesterday with Jeff Summers, not only was he in town making sure everything was perfect on the exterior and the paint stage job, he also gave me a card with all the paint colors and a gratitude paint can filled with cookies from Blue Moon Bakery.
Seriously, you’re not impressed, right? It’s just these little things that help make you remarkable. Okay, set a record. I was in Starbucks one day, like I try to be every day. And the manager, Mary, said, Hey, Steve, our Pike place is on sale for 30% off. Really? She goes, yeah. So I got to thinking real quick. I said, Mary, has anybody ever bought 50 pounds at one time?
[00:19:00]
And she says, no. I said, would that be a record for this store? She goes, absolutely. I called April. So I have an idea. I’d like to set a record here and buy 50 pounds of coffee. It’s 30% off. Now my. Awesome way. Does not like to spend money. So I have to justify it financially for and sometimes she might not see the vision that I have for the branding aspects that might be there for us.
I said, listen, where else can we get 30% on our money right now? And again, remember, this is the Great Recession, right? And she said, okay. And then I called a contact at the newspaper. I said, listen, if I had a story, if there was a story about setting a record for the most coffee bought with local Starbucks, would you be interested?
And he says, well, uh, will you be given any away to charity? I said, absolutely. He says, possibly write it up, send it in. So I did. We had Mary take a picture of April and I there with 50 pounds of coffee. And three weeks later, we were in the paper again, front page, easy to do, and a lot of fun. Club 50. Yeah.
Meet my friend Doug Parsons. We met on a [00:20:00] project and exchanging cards and he sent me a referral. Fortunately, I closed it and I sent him a handwritten note card and I said, Hey, Doug, thank you very much for referring me to Mrs. Smith and welcome to Club 50. And for each additional job you send me, I’m going to send you a crispy 50 bill just like this one.
Well, that year I closed over 70, 000 in business just from Doug and it costs me nine fifties or 450 because he just, he loved the idea of scoring 50 bucks and it has to be a crispy 50. Don’t send two twenties in a wrinkled tan. Don’t send a gift card, right? A crispy 50 is the lowest hanging fruit and it’s emotional and it’s fun.
And he’s just one example of many others who loved club 50. It was just an easy, easy avenue to generate top of mind referrals. With your network and there’s Jeff sent out that crispy 50 and it looks, you know, something like this. Thank you for referring. Thank you for the referral and welcome to club 50 for every referral.
We’re close. We close. I’m going to send you a crispy 50 like this [00:21:00] one. Warm regards, April tip, make sure you kind of tape or put a sticker on that a 50 on a note card. I watched somebody pull up a note card once and the 50 stayed in there and she read the note card and she’s like, well, that’s interesting.
She goes, what’s club 50 and trash can was right there. So if I wasn’t there, I probably would have just dropped it in the trash can. I said, hold on, I looked in the envelope, and then she pulled out the Krispy 50. She goes, oh, okay, wow. You know, so that’s when I learned to stick that 50 right to the number card.
Okay, iClass. I had approached our library, and I offered to give Uh, free class on how to use iPhones and iPads because a lot of our clients were retired or elderly. That was our target market. That’s who we’d like to work for, right? And do I even call them our three piece? They said, Steve, you wouldn’t believe how many people come in with them still in the box, asking us to show them how to use them.
And she says, we don’t really know. And I said, okay, great. I said, we don’t happy to do this. And I think we started with a couple of test classes and, and, uh, [00:22:00] sure enough, you know, got in the paper again. And then the class started filling up, and when I say filling up, well, many times we had standing room only, so they would put a max of 80 chairs in there, and then sometimes there’d be a row of people standing in the background, and then you’d have to shut the doors and say, sorry, no more.
So we’re giving these free eye classes. You can’t really advertise the collaborative because it goes against, you know, some of their policies, but what can you do, right? There’s a spirit of how can we. So I created an app called iClass Videos. What I let them know is that the, uh, there’s videos in the app where they can watch these on their own time at home.
And another question they always had is, when is the next iClass? So I said the second tab is going to have a calendar on it. And then I went ahead and included our story. This is a story of how April and I met and how we started the business and where we are today. And when you share your story, get personal because people want to connect with people on a personal level.
And the, and the more you share, the greater connection you build. So then after our [00:23:00] story, I went ahead and shared a link to all of our video testimonials, right? They could scroll and scroll and scroll. Then after that, there was the contact. Sure enough, generated, you know, a ton of leads through this way, and the library was so grateful they awarded me a certificate and an honorary iPad for dummies book at the library.
Oh, my name in there. Okay. So again, you execute these ABAs and you will crush it in your market and they will feature you in the newspaper, write up the story, take a picture, send it on in, and then before you know it, you’ll be awarded, you know, business of the month, top 40 business featured in local magazines.
National magazines and you too could be the first painting contractor to win business of the year. All right. So that is how to double your business without paying for leads. This is one section of the DYB system there. It’s a step five in the system of nine.
And I hope that those inspired you guys to [00:24:00] take action, to be unique, to step out because remember what Seth said, if the marketplace isn’t talking about you, there’s a reason. The reason is you’re boring and you’re boring on purpose because it’s safe. Don’t be mad at me, Seth said it, right? But it changed my life, and I’m grateful for it, and I can change yours too. If you’re interested in the programs and what we have, those courses I showed you, it’s 49 a month. You can go to JOINDYB.com.
Check out the chat here, see if there are any questions. Dude, super freaking awesome. This is awesome. Yeah, if you guys got any questions, Drop them in there. We have, you guys got any questions? Drop them in there. Um, yeah, it’s funny, Steve. Like, I think a lot of people would see me as the marketer and think I’d be against some of this stuff, but this is so freaking awesome.
It’s super creative. Um, just finding those like out of the box ideas. Like I love everything you were, you were preaching here. This is awesome stuff. Thank you. Appreciate that. Thanks guys for the comments in there. Paul, uh, Jose. Candelario, appreciate you guys. Cool. That’s it. I know we were running behind schedule.
Uh, if there’s some [00:25:00] questions, I’ll answer them. If not, um, I’ll go ahead and cut a little early here to help you guys get back on schedule. You’re good. You’re good. Yeah. If nobody has any questions, we’ll go around and wrap up here. If you got anything, go ahead and drop it in there. If not, you don’t want to ask you to do drop an emoji.
Drop an emoji and show, show Steve some love because it’s freaking awesome. Here’s also the reality too. I think, and see, I don’t know, actually, here’s, here’s actually a question I have for you, um, because I would look at some of this, some of this stuff is super creative. Um, and I know if like, if I, if it was me coaching on this, I’m like, man, I would tell the stuff, but some of it’s hard.
You got to get uncomfortable. You got to get in a costume. You got to go, go make connections with bakeries. Most people actually probably aren’t going to take the time to do that. They aren’t going to take action on it. Is that something you ran into a lot and how, what are, what are, what’s that? Thing we can give people to get them to take that action on the kind of uncomfortable thing.
Yeah. Let’s go back to one of my favorite [00:26:00] images here. It’s a great question. A couple of things too. There’s something I’m sure you’re familiar with. It’s called the social proximity effect. It says that your habits and your behaviors will adapt to those you associate with the most. That’s why it’s so important to get into a peer group.
We call them mastermind groups. When you’re around these. peers who are doing these things, it inspires you to take action. And then also, you know, there’s accountability to make sure you get after too. So you can throw your hat over the wall. It’s the same from a story from JFK, Kennedy, to commit to doing it.
And then you don’t want to disappoint your peer group or mastermind group. And so it helps you to take action as well. Also, when you see The results from your peers, from them doing this and how much fun they’re having doing this and the response that they get from their community and their market and how they’re just getting, you know, all of these no comp leads, you know, these referrals that show up, they didn’t call anybody else.
You show up, you connect with them, you establish a report, present your proposal, and basically collect a deposit and schedule it on the spot for the majority of them. [00:27:00] And so when you see others doing that, then it encourages you to go ahead and take action. I love it. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, and definitely just have to get outside your comfort zone.
This is freaking awesome. Doug said in here, Chris, where would you get the custom paint buckets or labels like that? Good question. So we had a printer in California. Unfortunately, he just retired. And so we are currently on the look out now what some are doing is going to a local printer. I use Venice print about Venice, Florida.
Some of them might not be able to print the full width. And so my encouragement is do the best you can with what you have. If you can get somebody to make like a three quarter label, that’s still going to make a great impression. It’s tough to find the full width labels, but check with your local printer, see if they can or see if they can get close enough.
And then we just use like double sided tape to put them on. And then again, the best part is, you know, going around all the bakeries and testing the [00:28:00] cookies, you know, and put it in. And again, the unit price is about 20. It was usually 18 to fill a can, about 1. 50 for a can. That depends on your relationship with your vendor and you know how much product you’re moving, you might get a better deal.
Some pay 2. And then the labels worked out to about 1 a label, 1. 50 I think. So it came to about 20, 21 a unit. But also think about it this way and, and Steve, I’m not sure you think about it this way, but like when you combine that with then going to socials and running the contest, and that example you share where like 20 people shared it, for you, whatever it costs you to fill that, the amount of impressions you probably got from all the people sharing that in the newspaper, if you looked at it from an impression standpoint as far as then spending that money on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google, like there’s probably some of the cheapest impressions you’re going to get.
Indeed. Yeah, no doubt.
And again, remember like we exploded during the great recession and this stuff is, it’s easy to do. It takes a little bit of courage, you know, it’s easy and it’s fun to do. Yeah. And the word amount you get, it’s just, [00:29:00] it’s remarkable. And everybody knows they love you because you entertain them, you know, like gladiator.
Are you not entertained? And so you entertain them and end up making a lot of money. Works really, really well. Yeah. Um, Doug said, was this presentation recorded and would it be available to watch later? So Doug, it is being recorded. I believe Tanner’s plan is to, it’ll take some time for all to render and chop it up.
But I think each session is going to be a podcast episode on Tanner’s podcast in, in, in a couple of weeks. Um, once it’s all rendered and everything. Tim, what’s your advice on getting your contacts with the local media sources for the free PR? Yeah, great question that. So for me, I was able to make that connection through Rotary and step five and the UIB system is ABCs of sales always be connecting.
And so we highly encourage networking BNI chamber Rotary, but in Rotary. You will make the highest value contacts and friendships and you’ll be connected to who’s who thanks to Rotary. We make connections to the newspaper. So I had a direct line thanks to the relationships and involvement in [00:30:00] Rotary, but again, it was my responsibility to write up a story in the picture.
Now, if you’re not in Rotary, if you don’t have a direct contact, then, you know, ask around ask. You know, ask your network, ask, email your clients, email your customer list, say hey, you know anybody who works for XYZ paper and find a referral so you don’t have to cold call them or you know, because they get, you know, they get spammed in their inbox just like we do.
But try to network your way to getting a contact to get an introduction or referral to them. Start with your customer list, start on social. Say, hey, who knows somebody or, you know, pull up your magazine, your newspaper to go to the business section and find out who’s in charge of the business section.
And then you can ask specifically, hey, who knows John Smith, who writes the for the business section and the, you know, and the XYZ paper. And just to clarify, Rotary BNI, what’s the difference between this? BNI is a group that meets weekly with the direct purpose of exchanging referrals. Meet for about an hour and a half and have [00:31:00] breakfast every week for exchanging referrals.
There’s accountability to share testimonials and referrals. So that’s the fastest way to generate referrals. And the first thing anybody should do if they’re trying to break into a market. Rotary is a service club. Rotary is where people get together to serve the community. However, the cool thing about this is that it attracts the most successful people in your community and many times retired, they were all or all are very successful.
And so that is one of the best places to network because you go to a place to where not only are they the most successful there, but. They’re good people. They’re some of the best people in your community as well. I love that. Absolutely love that. Um, also just, I don’t know, I think one other thing that’s just valuable to point out, and then we’ll wrap up and go over to Brad.
If you guys noticed too, you know, some of those answers to like, hey, where do we get some of these paint can labels? And Hey, how do we find some of these, um, connections? Um, like there’s some tactics in there, but a lot of it is just like going and starting, [00:32:00] you know, like, Hey, just go reach out to some of the print people.
Right. Reach out and see that go, go reach out to some of the bakeries, go look in the magazine and find the contact and just start.
Reach out a lot of it’s just, just start, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That’s it. And so, yeah, a couple of things. So like I have all the step by steps, how to do everything in the system, you know, in the cafe for 49 a month.
But to your point, Eric, my encouragement is like, this wasn’t available for me. I just like tried stuff. I just threw stuff at the wall. I just asked one of my favorite quotes is from the movie facing the giants, the soccer kid and the Dan just moved to town and to Texas while in Texas, soccer is not. Very popular.
It’s all about football. And so the soccer, you know, the young man’s kind of bummed. He’s like, man, he says they don’t have a soccer team here. He says, why don’t you try out for the kicker? And he says, well, I’m, I’m afraid they won’t, uh, they won’t accept me. He says, son, you’re already not on the team. You can’t get any more, not on the team than what you are already.
Now, okay, the principal is, you’re already at, no, [00:33:00] you can’t get any more no. Than what you are right now. So go ask. Cindy says, how can you find a rotary? Uh, just Google it. Just Google rotary. Google BNI. And then get involved in your chamber too. A lot of networking opportunities there. Buy Bob Berg’s book and read the first seven chapters.
You’re welcome to get a copy of my book. I’ll give it to you for free. Just shoot me a message or email me. Just cover the shipping. I go all about how to network properly how to flip it around so it’s not aggravating it can be aggravating when you go in there and everybody’s just all about me, but there’s there’s a special way to go about it we don’t have time to unpack that here but grab Bob Burke’s book endless referrals read the first seven chapters, and then, you know, get a free copy of my book too.
But remember everybody in Rotary are volunteers. So if you reach out to them, they may not respond to you right away. Cause they’re busy trying to take care of their business and their clients and all their emails, just find out where they meet and just go. And if you need to say, Steve Burnett said I should go.
And they’ll, they’ll be, you know, not that they’ll know me, but at least it’s a referral from a Rotarian, right. And they’ll be glad to have you and introduce you around. [00:34:00] I hope you enjoyed this episode. If this was helpful, please share it with a friend to help inspire them to double their business. Again, this is April Burnett.
Steve and I are the founders of Burnett Painting and DYB Coach. We want to take a moment and thank you for making us the most rated podcast dedicated specifically to painting contractors. To celebrate, we want to help you break through to higher success. So, Steve is now giving away free strategy calls.
Just click the link below in the show notes that says free strategy call. There are only a couple of openings on his calendar each week, so get your free call with Steve now. Thank you so much for listening and remember, to dream big, hustle smarter, you’ve got this.