The Secrets to Marketing in the Trades w/ Crystal Williams | Podcast Ep. 48 | Toolbox for the Trades

Crystal Williams, welcome to the toolbox for the trades.

Hey. I'm so excited. I can't believe I'm actually getting to do this. I feel honored.

Oh, well, thank you so much. I so appreciate it. You are the owner and creative director of Lemon Seed Marketing. And before that you were the head of marketing at McWilliams and Sun Heating and AC&AR Services. I heard all about you from service titan colleagues, service titan customer friend of the podcast, Angie Snow. She spoke so, so, so highly of you and about all the cool things that you can do. So I'm just so thrilled to have you on today and just chit chat a bit about marketing.

Oh, first of all, I am so lucky to know so many amazing women. Shout out. But so many away amazing women in the H VAC plumbing service industry. It has really been a turning point for me making contacts with contacts with so many man powerful, powerful women. They don't realize their power a lot of times, but that are running successful businesses and coaching businesses and things like that. So I mean, I'm honored that Angie mentioned my name. She and I have a great working relationship and I really enjoy working with the whole team there at Western.

That's so awesome. Yeah, no, Angie is a badass in the women in the trade space, as I believe are you. We've chatted before. I kind of know your background. Uh, but the folks listening right now don't know you at all. So let's start from the beginning. How did you get into the trades?

Oh, yes, absolutely. So I'm little East Texas town here, if you couldn't tell by my accent. But basically I grew up in this business in a sense of my grandfather opened the business in 1974 when he retired from the Navy. Came in and opened a basically a refrigeration and appliance repair in our little bitty sleepy town, I call it. But it's got more passion than people realize. But town of about at that time, about 3,000 people and just started kicking it off and through like great customer service. And I joke all the time. I called him papa, but his name was Mac, you know, which that comes important here in a minute. But Mac was my grandpa and you know, he was known for sitting down after the service call and having a piece of pie or coffee or whatever the homeowner offered him and just, you know, people would call and ask for him. And so he really built up this solid sense of family environment and trust and you know, Amanda's good of his word style style of thing. And then My dad came right along when he was 18, worked there through high school, took the company over, and then my brother came along, worked all through, you know, junior high in the summers, you know, same little holding the flashlight, little story there, but. And being a helper. And then all the way up until a couple of years ago, my brother bought the company from my dad and really started kind of changing our trajectory. And so I worked, you know, a lot of. A lot of contractors that I talked to are family businesses. And so, you know, the daughters come to work before answered the phone during the summer. And so I lived that life. Right. I mean, back in the day when we had to radio technicians. So you would say, like, base to unit 101. Right. That was my grandfather's number. Base to unit three. And you would call out over the radio. So before cell phones, which makes me sound super old, I feel like. But I'm only 39. But sometimes I'm like, golly, people now, they don't even understand, like, life before texting. Yeah. Like, your technicians would have to, like, radio in. So I know people are listening to this podcast that feel that struggle. So when I was in high school, we had to learn radio traffic. And so I just really, you know, worked so much during the summer. And then basically I got my degree in marketing and went to work for a local Coca Cola bottling company here in Texas. It's one of the only independent bottlers of Coca Cola left in the country. So I went to work for them. They were amazing people. Amazing company. Lufkin. Coca Cola really enjoyed it. But in 2014, Trey calls me and he says, trey is my brother. And he says, hey, I'm about to acquire a new company, and I want to start pumping up our community engagement. My employees, I need. I need some help with retention. And he said, you know, me and dad. Dad and I have been aggressively buying marketing at about 12%, and now we feel like we need somebody to come in and, like, really run this show on that side. Don't get it twisted now. Trey still runs the show. You know, I have to still let. Even though he's my little brother, I still have to. You know, he still runs the show, but he needed. He just needed help. He needed somebody that. Their daily focus was on their marketing, their employee engagement, retention, and consistency among them, and then just creating this community presence, because, again, we're a rural area. And so just. It's kind of one of those who, you know, style things, especially on the commercial side of our business. And so it took A little bit, you know, because I needed to convince myself that, okay, I'm going to go. I'm going to leave this job, that I'm safe, and I really enjoy working for Coca Cola and Dr. Pepper and Big Red. And I'm going to now shift over to back to the world of my high school days of heating and air conditioning. And so I just decided, you know what? This is really what I want to do. I'm super passionate about marketing and branding, really reiterating the brand presence in the market. And. And just. So I went for it in 2014. And so we were sitting at about $3 million in 2014. And again, our whole entire market, we have about 60 miles of what I call windshield time. Some people are fortunate to go seven miles from their office. You know, I've talked to. I have contractors that I work with, and they're like, we service a radius of five miles. I'm like, ma', am, I. I could throw a rock five miles and hit three people, right? So our. Our little service area, little service area is about 60, 60 miles windshield time. And it's actually grown. We're actually getting ready for our fourth location in the near future. So, you know, it's just kind of. Kind of escalated to that. But, you know, this year we're on trend. I think our goal that I saw that Trey released the other day was 14 million. This year, we're H vac only. And I say only meaning we wish we could add plumbing. We hope that's coming soon, but right now, Texas has some different roles on plumbing. And so we're doing the best we can with what we got. And, you know, it's been a blessing. It's been interesting. I came in and jumped in with both feet, and our turnover rate has drastically decreased. Our community involvement has drastically increased. As far as just awareness in our community, like, if you were to walk around here and say, oh, McWilliams and son, that's who I work for, people are going to say, oh, my gosh, they do so much, you know, so that. That was a goal for us. And so that. That's basically how I jumped in. How I really got versed in the industry, if you will, was Service Roundtable, Service Nation alliance. And I just kind of dove in. So I was participating in the AB calls. I was watching the forums, participated in their trainings that they would put on, loved going to their conferences and shows, and I really just started making meeting people. Now. I know this is going to shock people based off how much I'VE already talked in this podcast, but I have zero problems talking. And so it was really easy for me to meet people, fantastic people like Angie through those relationships. And I think that really launched McWilliams and Son forward was joining that. And then of course, back in about 2011, Irvin, my dad, when he owned the company, he had started really investing in the marketing. And I have so much to say about that. But when I say he invested, I mean he, he partnered with an agency and they gave recommendations and they gave budget spends and he went with it and he trusted the professionals. And I want to like, I stand back and be like, you know, look at me now kind of stuff in a sense of what a little faith and a little trust can do for you in, in marketing. And marketing is a game, right? I, I say this all the time. Marketing is a game that a lot of people don't like to play. You know, nobody wants to pull up a seat when people are playing the marketing game. I mean, you know, my family's a game family, so we're, we love to play dominoes and cards and stuff like that. And I'm all about a puzzle and a challenge. And so that's why marketing speaks to me. But, you know, marketing, and I think I shared this with you. You know, right now people will get on the, on the forums and on the groups and they'll post all these things that are working for them. And the first thing I want to comment almost every time is this is so specific to these specific markets, to the size of your company, to what area of the United States that you're in to what, you know, what? Oh, it can just go on and on. So while there's so many great ideas out there, not all of them are meant for you.

Yes.

Right. Not all of them are designed for your company. And so my dad told me when I first started it because I would say, gosh, you know, I just want to make the phone ring more. And he's crystal, if marketing is a game and if we had it all figured out, then everybody would be doing it right? So I started looking at, is it more of a challenge and a game instead of, instead of a daunting task that sucks money out of my business, you know, because that's what I think. A lot of contractors, by the time they get to Lemon Seed and talking to me, they're like, I hate marketing. Crystal. Save me, save me.

I absolutely love that I already have half a page of notes from that wonderful answer you gave. And I love that you ended there with the marketing mindset because I think that's such an important thing. A lot of owners that I speak to talk about how marketing is just one of the other things they have to learn in addition to how to run a business, how to make it successful, how to get everyone on the same page. And I feel like, especially in, you know, the million dollar mark. So like say the 3 million, the 8 million, even the 15 million, marketing just kind of is like, I know we have to do it, but like no one's really owning it. So I love that you frame it as, instead of looking at it as a problem to be solved, let's look of it as more of a game and more of a. Well, actually no, more of as a puzzle to solve instead of this like, like just all encompassing headache of a task.

Yes. And you know, like I have this little saying, so I was a softball girl. I umpire softball. I know, I love baseball and softball. And so I say this all the time, not every, just because you're the best shortstop on the team doesn't mean you need to be the coach. And so a lot of times you may be a fantastic finance guy or technician, installer, community guy, but not everybody, and especially not every business owner is going to be savvy in the techniques and the caveats that lie within marketing. Strategy implementation may be their strong point, but creativity may not. And so that's why I say like when people try to lump, quote unquote marketing, I feel like that's like it's starting to become a cuss word to me because it has so many different meanings to what that means. Because people will say, oh, you have a marketing agency. And I'm like, yes. But I always have to put the little caveat in there of most of the time I have to say more than digital. Because when people say, oh, that's my marketing, my marketing, they're really talking about their PPC or their website or Google local services or whatever little caveat they're doing. But when I talk marketing, I'm talking about your holistic approach to branding and brand awareness, frequency and consistency and just a holistic approach. And so I just don't want people to be scared. Scared of marketing. Like you said, it's not something to be feared, it's something to be conquered. Like, we're gonna conquer it. Like we're gonna run this show, we're gonna grow our business and we're gonna figure it out like fighting tooth and nail through the finish line of hitting those goals. And Exceeding them, you know, that's how I feel.

I, I love that. I absolutely love that. And you actually, in the time that you joined your brother Trey at McWilliams, you. You grew them from 3 million to 9 million. And I believe you said that they were kind of coasting at 3 million for years and years and they just couldn't break that barrier, right?

Yes. So literally, my Irvin, he'll tell this story like he woke up. Literally, he was like, you know, I woke up one day, I was like. I call them the speed bumps of growth. So again, we see a lot of businesses that open up that skyrocket to like $20 million. Okay, great. Think that's fantastic. Some people are just super driven like that. But for the majority of contractors that I visit with their, Their growth is a little slower. It's a little bit more methodical, in a sense. And so I feel like there's a mill. It takes a lot to get to a million. It takes a lot to get to three, takes a lot to get to five, and then it takes a lot to get to 10. I feel like those are just speed bumps in marketing. Right. Because guess what happens now? Now you got to work a little harder. And most of the time working a little harder is a combination of processes. New hires, somebody, you know, somebody new on your team, and marketing spend. A lot of times it requires them to add more dollars to their marketing spend. Because if you're, if you're doing it right in the first place, you're maximizing every marketing dollar that you're doing. Right. So by the time you get ready to grow, you've got to then figure out like, okay, I'm going to add these dollars, but I'm already. I know, because I'm maximizing these, that now I'm going to move to this layer of my cake. Right. That, and then a lot of times, in my opinion, there's going to be some internal changes that have to happen. So one of the first thing I ask people when they call me for a consultation is I'll say, okay, so you want to grow by 50%. Tell me how you're going to tell me about capacity. Tell me how you're preparing internally to market this. Because it's going to work. We're going to, we're going to find a secret sauce in here that works for you and your company and your area of the country. But tell me what you are doing on the internal side. Yeah, if you're. Yeah. I mean, if you're telling me that you're going to grow by 50% then. So you're already have a plan for new technicians and new vans and new uniforms and all of those things. Right. And most of the time they don't. A lot of times they're. They're so stuck in growth mode.

I want to interrupt you there. It's really the chicken and the egg problem, right? What do I get? What do I do first? Do I do marketing first and scramble to do the internal stuff later or do I get the internal stuff sorted out and then do the marketing? It sounds like you're in the camp of make sure that while you are ramping up your marketing, you are also ramping up your internal processes to accommodate for higher demand.

Yeah. Because let me tell you what marketing will do for you. Marketing will complicate an already problematic internal process.

Yes.

So if you are already at where you are can't control, like my CSRs are exhausted or my technicians are exhausted or my sales guy can't get enough, okay. All of those things are going to be like lit on fire when you start marketing. Right? So. And marketing is a marathon strategy. Like my clients right now, they joke with me like how many times a day do you tell me something's a marathon strategy? All the time, friend, all the time. But so let me, let me back up to McWilliams and son and what, what Trey has done.

Yes.

So we knew how we were going to hit 2021's goal, right? But we didn't want to carry in a bunch of labor in Texas in January and February. Now we did have the great snowpocalypse or snow vid, where in East Texas we have legit snow, okay? That like y' all have a quarter inch of snow going to shut down Texas, okay? If y' all don't know that. But we weren't ready, okay? In the words of Kevin Hart, we were not ready. So what McWilliams and son done, normally, January and February are our months of we just try to hang on. We are doing lots of outbounding and lots of dredging up internal clients and creating our demand. Right. Because weather ain't bringing it to us this year. We got lucky and got blessed with a snow with temperatures in single digits that we hardly ever see. I think the last time they said that happened was like in the 70s or 80s. So. So a long time ago that we, we actually had that. So we got lucky this year that, that was really, that was really built up. But we hired 13 new technique. Well, 13 new team members between our call center, our dispatchers and our technicians. And so people are, I know right now people are like, how did you find technicians? Well, our biggest form of new hire acquisition is internal leads. So. And I'm going to get on my soapbox. You said I can stand on a soapbox for just a minute. I want to get on one soapbox. Okay. Most of the time. Most of the time. What I realized is when you create a work environment that is healthy, that is positive, and that the expectation and account, expectations and accountability are there and they are adhered to by your leadership. And I say all of that because all of those pieces make up a very important puzzle. Your leadership is leading by example. People are positive and your employees enjoy coming to work. Okay. And they feel supported. Right? When that is the situation, you automatically. We have clients that call us right now. Clients, employees. And I don't even like using the word employee because it's very much a team effort. But. And that sounds very like, oh, you know, peace, love and hope. But they're a team member, right? So, but, but those employees, what they do is they start wanting those things for their cousin, their brother, their best friend, their, their wife's husband, their wives friend's husband. I mean we get, we opened it up and we, we said that we were hiring for office team and technicians. We had like 125 applicants.

Holy cow.

And the reason, and the reason is almost every single one of them were referred to us by somebody that we know. And I think what's happened is when I came on in 2014, we were struggling with the people on the team that were just negative Nellies, just didn't want to work, didn't, you know, we're milking the clock. Everybody was hourly and it was just slow. And you know, Irvin, my daddy was doing everything he could, but it really took us bringing on a team to get in there. We like infiltrate, infiltrate into those departments and people started eventually that, that ship turned all the way around and now negativity sticks out like a sore thumb here. And like, we identify it and we fix it because it is, it is detrimental to the success and the retention of employees. And so, but back to what I was saying, we joined, we. We hired these new people for our team and we spent. They spent three weeks in training. And one of those times we sent them all to a school all at one time. We literally rented out the school. It was like, hey, here's eight different, 10 different technicians. Make them good and send them back to us ready to run maintenance calls. Right? And then our other team members set in sales training internally. And we also added girls to our call center, our team members to our call center. And it just took us being prepared. Now, right now, do I need all of those people in February? 100%, I do not. Okay. We're finding the work because my call center has call goals that they have to hit every day. But for the most part, we're on the struggle bus when it comes to we're over capacity right now. But guess what's going to happen in the summer. Okay, the summer hits Texas, right? And we are the only show in town with capacity. So we are. We. And I say, you know, we are. Every time a client calls their competitor or our competitor or their. Their go to guy and he says, oh, it's going to be three days before I can get there, you know, or they've got an answering machine answering the call, guess what happens. We're swooping in and we're coming in and they're saying, well, I've heard about y', all, but I just thought y' all were expensive. Well, then I know if I can just get my technician to the door, he's going to win them over. If I can get my call center to answer the call, they're going to win them over. If I can get them on our membership plan, we're going to win them over because we're going to exceed their expectations. That's what we work towards every single day, our marketing. We try to teach people we're going to exceed their expectations. We never. We're not fighting people to be the low man on totem pole. We. We are the most expensive in the market, but we've become a lot more competitive now because of some vendor choices. But right now we are, you know, we are ready. So if you can't take your clients, guess who can. So during the great snowpocalypse, we were getting calls and people would say, I. I normally use so and so. But I saw you guys were out. I saw Yalls Facebook video where y' all were working. I just wanted to call y' all because I figured y' all could get here sooner. Well, we're going out there and signing them up on memberships. We're going out there and selling them on. Oh, my gosh. I got a text message that's told me who this was. And we were able to show all their discounts and everything in it. We just were. We are working from iPads and our technicians look clean and our Vans are clean and we are winning this race. Maybe not as fast as some other people like to win it, but we're winning the race. And so that's why we are ramping up right now. So if you wait to ramp up, those of you, especially in the south, until April and May, that that new employee is not going to help you. I mean, he going to be overwhelmed and not helping you. So, you know, just we try to set our team up for success. And so, you know, being prepared for the what you need to be for capacity is very important, which leads to knowing your numbers.

I'm not sure if the listener can take that can I can figure this out, but it sounds like you're really passionate about the work that you do.

Yes. Oh my gosh, I'll sound like a.

Raging crazy person, but no, that is passion, my dear. And not many people have it. So kudos to you. I also just want to date this episode real quick because you mentioned snow vid and the snowpocalypse, both hilarious. We are recording this episode the first week of March in 2021. And just last week, Texas was delivered a once in a lifetime storm. I'm sure you all saw it on the news.

Gut punch.

But I really want to talk about this one theme that's come up in your answers, which is creating the marketing that's going to appeal to your community. And you've already told me that. Lufkin, that's the name of the town, right?

That's our main town. Yes, that's our central location.

That's your central location. So you've got four locations, right? Or open?

We have three currently and we're getting ready to open that fourth one.

Got it. 60 miles of windshield time you've got. You are covering a lot, a lot of ground. Talk to me about as you were working with Trey to grow from 3 to 9 million and now you know we have the goal of 14 million for 2021. How you identified what your community, your rural community wanted and how you gave it to them and how that was that informed your marketing. Because I think when we talked about this last, you know, not all marketing works for every service company. It's going to be different where you are. So I would love if you could really talk about how you use your knowledge of the community to really inform the marketing choices you made.

Absolutely. So one of the first things that we did was identify a unique selling position. So what is our USP? What is our unique factor about McWilliams and son? That's going to make us stand out, right? So down here, down here in old Texas, guess what we have, right? My buddy, my buddy does AC work, my buddy this, my buddy that. So we really had to overcome the fact that there's a lot of mechanically inclined people that can do a lot of their own work. And like many of you, lots of Chuck in a Truck style businesses. And so Trey and I literally sat down with a whiteboard and went to town just like, what can we do? So we, at the time, a lot of contractors were Moving to these 8:00am to 8:00pm, 8 to 8, same great rate. So we were like, you know what the biggest time that we gain the most customers on the weekends when we do call, you know, when our technicians are being on call. So it's a pain point internally, right? It's a pain point to have technicians be on call because it's a struggle of how to schedule and retain employees like that. But we also knew that that's where the greatest need was. And so we, we launched our campaign 7am to 7pm, seven days a week, no overtime charges. And so we launched 777. And so in all of my branding, I started listing 7am, 7pm, seven days a week, no overtime charges. And then I launched a radio campaign around no matter if it's 3 o' clock on a Tuesday or 3 o' clock on a Saturday, give us a call saying great rate. Now. Like it's kind of funny, you know, you have these neighborhood like social media groups and people will say, hey, it's, you know, it's Saturday afternoon and I have a family event tonight. Who can I call that's not going to charge me an arm and a leg. And like people will comment on there. McWilliams and Son is 777, no overtime charges. McWilliams and Son. McWilliams and Son. So even though I'm the most expensive person, I've conditioned our community to know that they can call us anytime 7am to 7pm, seven days a week for no overtime charges. And then it allowed us to decrease the amount of time that the expectations for the client were that my guy was going to drive 60 miles because remember when we go on call, we really run skeleton crew. So he may be driving all over landing country. So then we were able to implement that we only run call till 9pm and we removed 24 hour service because we realized that the majority of the time that we were running between 6 and 9 as far as late times. And so we just kind of Alleviated that. But we launched that campaign because we knew that people could not get in contact with someone on the weekends. And, you know, I don't know about you guys, but I'm home. I mean, I'm at work, you know, nine, ten hours a day, right. So I get home in the afternoon, and I may not realize that I'm having a problem for several days, especially in this type of weather. So, you know, we started realizing when are people really realizing that their systems aren't functioning all the way now systems broke fine, but when are they really realizing, like, it's not really getting cool enough or hot enough, it's nights and it's weekends. So we launched that and that was huge for us here because like I said, it really served two purposes. It allowed us to really streamline some internal processes with our team, and the expectations were there. And then it also allowed us to really have this niche, like, here's who we are, 7am, 7pm, seven days a week. And so that was great. But we also, like, we were through service titan, we were actually able to use tracking numbers. And we all. We had been using tracking numbers for years, but now with the accessibility that you have in service, putting those tracking numbers on things we were really able to identify, like phone books perform so well for us. And I think it's because so many contractors have gotten out of phone books. Now I have clients on the lemon seat side that don't even have phone books. Sure, okay. But my, but my Target market is 55 and older, so guess what? They still use a phone book. I mean, I ran data for February this morning with the McWilliams and Son team, and one of our phone books that we spend $3,500 on for the year generated almost $45,000 last month in February.

Cow.

But we've. But we're an older market, right? We're an older market. We're not really near Metro. So I'm two hours north of Houston, two hours, I guess west of Tyler, and three hours from Dallas. And so we're like slap dab in the middle of nothing. You got to drive a couple of hours to get to like, big city, big, you know, so. But I think that when we just kind of paid attention to what was missing from our market, we. We were able to kind of knock it out. Now I can get on my soapbox too, Jackie, about branding. Well, that everybody wants to do. Call to action.

That was my next. My next kind of question was to talk about branding because, I mean, 777. That's a phenomenal branding thing. And I will actually let you know that I'm, I'm sure you did not know this, but in the 90s there was a car service in New York City, call 7. And it was 777777. And that is a commercial that ran in the 90s. Crystal. I was a child watching this. Never had a need for a car service. But when you said it, I was like, oh, yep, card car service in New York City. You need to get to LaGuardia or JFK. There you go. So I mean, 777 for you guys, that is branding. So talk to me about your mindset with branding. Not mindset, but your strategy around branding.

Sure. So a lot of times when clients, by the time they're reaching me at Lemon Seed, they're like, I should make the phone ring, Crystal. I just need to make the phone ring. And so they want something that's very immediate. And so, you know, I'm like, well, let's, let's take a look at what you've got digitally and things like that. But the biggest thing I want to encourage contractors about is marketing. Is such a long term strategy, a marathon strategy, because, yes, now there's the power of search in a Google bar or a Bing bar or yacht, whatever you're using. But you know, there's power in search and there's power in direct mail pieces and there's power in Facebook and automation and, um, never leave, you know, schedule scheduling softwares and things like that. But let me tell you, to me, the real power is when you become a household name first or at least consistently. And so that's not as fun to spend money on because you look up and you're like, here, I just bought X amount of dollars in this Wonderful Pandora Radio, iHeartRadio, Spotify, or for people like me, traditional broadcast radio. And I just don't feel like anything's happening. Well, that's because you are literally infiltrating, and I've used that word a lot today. But you are, you are, you are blanketing people with who you are, brand recognition and brand awareness to who you are and what you stand for and how you do it. And it's just so important that your brand reflect who you are. Because what happens to people is what are the odds that my direct mail is going to hit a home that is exactly ready for it? Well, that's why the return on investment is 2 to 3% for direct mail. Right. So that's why it's A lower expectation. But marketing and branding. Branding, I should say, is such a smooth way to just constantly be known by everybody. And when I say everybody, I'm speaking to your target market. So that's another little box I can get on. But I'm talking to, I want to talk to Lufkin, Linda and Nacogdoches, Nancy and Livingston Lucy. Like, I know who those people are. I know who I am talking to. And I don't try to talk to the 20 year old. I don't, I don't try to talk to the, the person. Like right now I'm working on some Instagram strategies only because now my market is dominating Facebook. So I'm just trying to be ready when my mom, who's in that target market, starts realizing she needs to be on Instagram, right? So I don't have to necessarily be an influencer because they ain't jumping on there at the beginning right there. It's a slow transition from my target mark over to, over to these different platforms. And so I just really want to let people understand, like, find something that you can anchor to. Okay, about your company. Is it a mascot? Is it a name? Is it a history statement? Is it a service that you provide? Is it your colors? What is it? And then by God, own it. Own that to where you now have. You are setting aside money towards branding your company. So again, I see it every time. People will say, what do y' all think about my rap in these Facebook groups? And half the people don't comment to save from hurting feelings. The other half is making recommendations of who they need to go see because evidently it's not very good, Right? And so, you know, I just get to where I want to coach people to understand, like, you're so many of people are putting the cart before the horse with these branding, with these calls to action. And call to action only works when people trust you and know who you are. Like, if I give you a coupon to Sandy's Tacos, right? And I say like, hey, girl, it's, it's. I mean, here's a hundred dollars off your next catering for your office at Sandy's Tacos, you're like, so I have no idea who you are. I don't even know what kind of tacos. Yeah, it's great that you gave me a coupon offer, but I have zero. You have built zero authority with me to go, I'm going to choose Sandy's Tacos because they're awesome. That you have no authority. And so that's what contractors try to do. They want to be out there. Like, I got free diagnostic when they people make a repair. That's great. Zero people know the name of your company, nor do they have any relationship built with it. So then they're mad that this piece of direct mail didn't work. And I want to be like, ma', am, nobody knew who you were. So it wasn't a direct mail tactic. It was that nobody knows who you are. And so a lot of times I feel like we rush to call to action because we can see the immediacy on that marketing dashboard. Like, we feel good because we're like, Okay, I spent $15,000 this month on marketing. And I look on here and I can see where I spent X. They call and spent X. I did X. They called and did X. And that's great and that's wonderful and we can get there. But what really makes those calls to action, you really want to kick start them. Brand your company first and never take your foot off the gas. Whether it's radio campaigns or it's TV commercials or it's OTT or CTV or billboards, whatever it is that works for your market, that just gets your name out there, like, what are you doing on social media right now? Like, nobody wants to be sold to on social media, right? So you might can sell to me if every other thing on social media is kind of fun and engaging. And then you toss in there like, hey, don't forget we're running free furnace right now. Right? That's cool. But people don't want to be sold to all the time. And so your organic social media has to reflect who you are as a company. That is another powerful recruitment tool. So for McWilliams and son, right now, we just had daddy daughter dinner.

Oh, I love that.

And oh, my gosh, it is my absolute favorite. Tell me about the campaign.

I love that.

So daddy daughter dinner was an internal campaign that we ran with our employees. And so what we did is. And again, this is. Guys, this is intentionality, okay? Because let me tell you, most men right now just rolled their eyes on the top of their head. Whether they're running on a treadmill or sitting in their office. They literally were like, oh, my gosh. But all I do is, is. And the team of marketers that McWilliamson has, we have three marketers. I can talk about that later too. But we start off by telling the guys, hey, this is the day we're going to do daddy daughter dinner. You're going to Go home from work and we're going to let you off. You're going to go home, you're going to take a shower, you're going to put on a shirt that has a collar, and we are going to provide roses or corsage. You can choose which one you want. And you're going to tell your daughter that you're taking her to dinner, just you and her. And you're going to show up and McWilliams and son, we're going to buy the flowers and we're about all the food and we're going to rent the location. You and your daughter just come and have a good time. So this was our fourth year to do it. The first year we had about 80% participation. This year, I think I counted. So we have 75 employees, which like 68 of them actually have a daughter or a granddaughter, somebody they could bring. And we were like at 99% participation. And then guess what happens? Yes, the magic happens. From I was there and when I videoed, it's on our Facebook page. You can go watch this old daddy daughter video. But what happens is I'm watching men that didn't really know how to. How to even facilitate this kind of relationship with their daughters. Men are coming in with car seats. They don't know how to get their kid out of the car seat. And they're coming in with their grown daughters, daughters that are in their 30s and 40s. And our technique, I mean, it's wonderful. And they start building and then they start realizing, like watching the smiles on these kids faces, they walk in like they're like they're at a prom. I mean, some of them are dressed all the way up. I mean, it is precious. It's so sweet. And it cost us like $3,500. Okay. But at the end of the day, then guess what happens. All of a sudden our post of that daddy daughter dinner is being shared like wildfire in our market. And people are saying, it's such a great idea to do this for your team. Oh, I love to look for this every year. So now I've created these raving fans of McWilliams and son that may not have ever used our services, but they just like what we stand for, what we do. And our employees are sharing the videos. Their spouses are sharing the videos, the spout. My employees, mothers are sharing. My son got to take his daughter. I love McWilliams and son. I'm like, ma', am, you've never had our service. But they just like what we stand for. And so that. But that's a part of building your brand on social media. You know, like, who are you as a company? People care about those things right now. That's why you have hashtag cancel culture, right? Because you start looking up and you're like, I don't like what these people stand for. And so all it takes is one person saying it. And here comes here, here comes everybody out of the woodwork. Right? But it also works in the positive way. It also works in a way of people getting addicted to what you're doing, and they want to be a part of it. People want to be a part of things that are successful. And I go with that. Same thing about service Titan. You know why people are willing to take the battle, take the bite and invest in something like service Titan? Because, by God, you're missing out fomo. You're not. What am I? I'm missing something. I'm going to do it because look at all these raving fans. And it's the same thing for your business. And we can create that. Any contractor can create that. It just takes patience, it takes diligence, and it takes, you know, being not afraid to put forth what you need to do.

Oh, I absolutely love the daddy doll. I can't wait to share this with my social media manager. After this call, I'm going to tell her, like, you won't believe what Mick Williams is doing. And also, as an FYI to any service titan customers who are listening, if you are ever running a very adorable, not well, that's adorable, but a very effective branding campaign, you want some service titan love behind it, you just let me know. And that goes to you too, Crystal. We love sharecasing.

Yes. I have some clients that are doing some really cute stuff, too.

We love showcasing our customers who do that kind of stuff. So. All right. Me and Crystal's business dealings aside, I mean, you are just a wealth of information, my dear. You have ideas on ideas on ideas. You've mentioned a bit about employee engagement. You skated over it a bit with how one, I think you said 125 applications were. Most of them were referrals because you've provided a culture where your team's like, I'm so happy at McWilliams. I want to provide this for my team. And then you also mentioned how by doing stuff like the Daddy Daughter dinner, it just boosts that organicness. It just the more you involve your team into your marketing, the more organic traffic and boosting it will get. So I Would just love to hear more about how you've really galvanized your employees to be active in marketing and whether that's them consciously doing it or subconsciously doing it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Oh, for sure, for sure. Well, so here's the thing, you know, and I talk about this, this, this goes for any business, not just service industry, but when you create something for people to be proud of. Right. So right now, you know, and I can get a touch religious on this. I won't necessarily, but I just feel like right now people need positivity and people need acceptance as far as like making feeling like they're a part of a family and a team. So what happens is when you start showing people that your offers are legitimate. So for instance, when I coach on the new program. So we're, right now, we're running Free Furnace. Now people right now are shaking their head like, free Furnace, that's not new. You're right, it's certainly not new. But it works well in my market. Okay, so Free Furnace. But I coach our team, our leaders about how so that our team doesn't feel like it's a, it's a scam, right. Or it's, it's shady dealings. It's, it's 100%. The cost of the furnace equipment is deducted from the invoice. And basically. Right. And so we coach on that. So then when they see Free Furnace on social media or they hear it on the radio or somebody comments about it, they jump right in. Oh yeah, it's Free Furnace. Like call me. Let me show you how you can like do it before summer. Like they promote for me with these things. And again I go back to social media. So when we're running some social media pieces, I'm like talking about our maintenance program or talking about a tune up season and things like that. We get so many shares from our flipping team that it just, it just, it vomits, if you will, all over our market. Like it just flows everywhere because our team is behind it. But guys, right now I talk to a lot of contractors that their team is so disengaged with what is happening. And that is an internal process problem. And you know, we've all heard it, right? All of us especially those are in best practice groups. We've all heard, oh, you got to have a morning huddle, you got to have a 10 minute huddle and all that. Well, what you really have to have is be intentional about educating your team and making them feel like they are a part of what they're doing. And they are. I mean, I say sometimes to contractors, why would you not tell your CSR about this coupon that you're running? I mean, are you afraid she's going to actually use it and promote it? Like, what are we afraid of? Right? And most of the time, you know what it is? It's, it's lack of being intentional. And I'm going to use the term laziness. And when I say laziness, it just falls so low down on your priority list. And when it comes to marketing, until you're able to get a marketing person for yourself or for your company that helps you relay that information, you have to be like a walking billboard yourself. Like, hey, guys, in April, my team knows what my, especially my sales team, my comfort advisors, they know what we're running in April. They at least have, they have a general idea that we're going to be running rebates and you know, whatever it's going to be, payments as low as offer or whatever we're going to be running. But I've already started coaching on that last week because, hey, in March we're going to finish that free furnace. We're going to continue to run that and we're going to do everything we can. And then here's what we're moving to in Q3, right? So there's no surprises. They don't wake up one day and go, oh my God, we're giving away a grill with a new system. When did that happen? Right? Or I will lose all control. If I'm listening through service Titan and I hear a CSR go, oh, I don't know. I don't really know what that piece of mail is about, y'. All. It makes me feel like I just threw a bunch of money out the window. And so it hurts my feelings, as I say. And so, I mean, we have implemented as many processes as we can for our team. But you know, just making them feel aware of those things makes them empowered. It empowers your team member to feel confident. And a lot of times I feel like, you know, leadership. Another problem that I have is I will talk to contractors and they'll say, well, my team's just not motivated. But then the next time I look up, they aren't motivated. The contractor is not motivated. They're so focused on, what do you, how do you say, like the, the day to day operations that it is consuming them and they have forgotten how to check on their team and just be positive influences on their team. They're just Pounding out orders, orders, orders, and do this and don't do that. And you know that they forget sometimes to be like, can I buy you lunch? You know, and listen, it ain't your grandma's, it ain't your grandpa's heating air conditioning business anymore, right? No longer do people really work over and above for you without seeing some benefit for themselves. Used to when I grew up, I never remember my, either one of my grandfathers or my dad ever missing work. My family, you didn't call in. Now I'm down here from the, from the, the lumber industry, right? So lots of meals. And I can remember my grandpa, he would be not feeling good and be at work. And nowadays that's just not where we are, right? So we can be mad about it and we can shout at millennials and Gen Z and all. We can be mad about it or we can figure out how we're going to embrace the culture to coach how to be better. And so when I say embracing it, like, no, my dad could really care less that Friday is employee appreciation day and we're giving out all these cool, like, yeti style water bottles. My brother and my dad could care less about getting that water bottle, right? And as a matter of fact, they're gonna look at it and be like, well, Crystal could have saved her $15 buying this for me and put that, and put that directly to the bottom line, right? But it's our other employees that we're gonna say, you guys have gone above and beyond through Covid and through our snowpocalypse and through all this craziness. And the least we can do is this. We're doing breakfast for them and our company meeting and we're giving them these water bottles and they're engraved with our logo on it. And I promise you, they will be super thankful for those things. But a lot of times as contractors, you sit back and you're like, I'm not spending any more dollars on my team. They don't, they won't like that stuff. That's, that's not my, that's not my team. They don't really like that. You know, they'd rather just have the money on their paycheck, okay? It's not always about the actual dollar spent, as it is about thinking past your nose on something that might make them feel appreciated. And listen, employees are crazy. I mean, they're problematic, right? They're full of problems. They don't work, they're late, they messed up, they don't know how to close out tickets they get on there, and they mess up service time. They run over their iPad. They lose their cell phones, they lose drill. We all know that. We all know this, right? But at the end of the day, if you want to build retention and you want to build engagement, you start acknowledging who they are as people. And you know what else we do. And it drives my brother crazy, but he does it. If we know that one of our employees. Wife is having a baby. Right? Spouse is having a baby. Or they're adopting or they're fostering, for that matter. We do a $50 gift card and a box of diapers and a McWilliams & Son baby onesie or T shirt for the kid, for every single one of them. And then I make sure that Trey acknowledges them. Hey, don't forget, her mom is having another. His third baby, and it's a boy. So he has two girls, and now he's having a boy. And my brother will call her mom. I'm so excited for you. Okay? That's what my job is. Because now her mom's not just another employee lined up making the boss a bunch of money, because that's how they feel right now. I'm hoping I have all these contractors driving and shaking their heads. They feel like you make all the money. Right? Millions of dollars y' all owners make. Right? And at the end of the day, they. It's. It's not hard. It's just. You have to be intentional, Jackie. And you have to be ready to. Ready to invest in your team and more than just shove them in a training. It's. It's showing up when someone passes away. It's showing up when someone's going through a hard time. When we had an employee that his house flooded, and guess who the first two people were? Trey. And our office and our sales manager. First two people there helping him work through things. And so, you know, you have to be more than a boss. And so once we figured that out, we've started really creating a culture here that is. Trey says all the time, I just want to create better dads, better husbands, better wives, better, better partners, better. You know, all these better. Just better people in general where they feel better about themselves. And, you know, we want to have the baseball coaches and the girl Scout leaders and the members of their church and the deacons and the community leaders. We want those people with employees. And so. But you got to do what it takes to keep them and get them.

Yeah. I mean, it's. It's not so much building a culture. It's almost building. Building a community, which is really what I felt while you were talking there. We've been chatting for a little over 50 minutes, Crystal, and you have just given. Like, I can't even. I have. I could take. I could ask you a question that goes in a million directions right now. We covered social media, we covered community engagement, we covered employee engagement. But is there anything that we should have talked about in this interview that we haven't yet?

You know, again, I just go back to encouraging people. You know, a lot of times, Jackie, I'll have people reach out to me. You know, now that I started Lemon Seed. And in all fairness, Trey is who started Lemon Seed for me. Really? He came to me. Yes, yes. I'll never forget. And Angie might remember this, but I was standing outside of. We were waiting on a class to start, and Angie, she and I were just talking, and she said, crystal, you. You should do this for other people. And I was like, oh, girl. You know. You know how you're like. You know, because I love to give advice, and I say friends and family talk free and everybody, my friend. But I love to conceptualize and strategize with people. But. So Trey came to me and he was like, hey, let's do this. Let's. Let's start something, because there's such a need. And so Lemon Seed was born because I have been the daughter of a business owner that's trying to just run a business. He's trying to provide a solid work environment for 30 employees. Heck, 10 employees at a time, 12. And then you're at 20, and then you're at 30. And it's so hard to grow and. And manage the business and manage the employees and the marketing. And so I just found a place where I can just slide right in there for these contractors and be there. Be their liaison between themselves and these client and their vendor partners. And so basically, that's what I do. You know, I have. I have a little consultation that I go through because I want to get to know your business because it's really hard for me to do the organic marketing for you and things like that. We don't even know who you are, and I want to understand who your team is. And so I just started, like, taking people on. I was actually called Apex Marketing for a while, and then I brought on a different partner. I have a friend of mine that is a wonderful designer, and she is going to be the next big thing in the HC industry. Just give her. Give me some time, because we've already Done a couple of rebrands, and she is awesome and she is cool. And so I was like, hey, let's do this together. Her husband owned a business, and she was like, I really want to do my own thing. I want to support him, but I want to do something that I can own. And so she's a portion owner and then trainer, and we just slide right in there for contractors so that they can focus on running the business. But it's a partnership where basically I am their marketing department. And so I push them. They probably. I probably get on their nerves because I will push them and say, hey, Friday is employee appreciation day. What did you do for them? What are you doing for your team? And men don't like to think about. Especially men don't like to think about it as much, a lot of them. And so I have to kind of push back a little bit, like, hey, get your head out of your truck for a minute, and let's talk about how you can order some ihop for your team Friday. You know, but, you know, lemon seeds job is to be the creative force, is to be the organizer. And, you know, I've had to learn and adapt my business to help contractors, you know, better, easier, and better. And I've had some wonderful clients that have really given me grace as I've kind of built this custom, custom agency for contractors.

Right now.

I have heating and air conditioning. I have plumbers, and I have some electricians and. Or a combination thereof, you know, And I sit in the middle for them, and they'll tell me, like, their biggest fears of marketing is. I hate most of them will say nobody likes their digital company, or they're absolutely 100% in love with their digital company. Right. So a lot of it's digital. Like somebody to help them on digital and understand it. And so I try to develop relationships with each of the vendor partners. So if you come to me and you're on a Rhino website, fantastic. I'll start working with Rhino for you. I love that team you're with. Online access. Fantastic. I'll start working with online access. So my team comes in and just kind of does the tedious things. But I also come up with one of my really good friends, Julie Orzikowski. She has a company. She and her husband have a company in Georgia. And we came up with Bailey's Cash for Clunkers. That's not new. Cash for Clunkers is not a necessarily new to the market. I actually had other clients running that same promotion, but it just clicked for them Some. So we've been really, like working on that and coming up with the creativity. Julie and Ray will do anything I come up with, and they'll come up with their own content. And it is a fantastic partnership. And so I just keep their branding consistent. I'm on the back end doing radio scripts and all those good things. And so my biggest encouragement to contractors right now is get a coach that can guide you on marketing until you're ready to get somebody like Lemon Seed that can basically stand in the gap for you and do what you need to get done. But don't be afraid, especially of digital marketing. There are some fantastic digital marketing companies in our industry. And don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid to mess up. It's all trial and error. But also you've got to let loose of some of those marketing dollars. The biggest question I get all the time is, Christian, how much money should I spend on marketing? All the time. And it really just depends, you know, on your market. But for the most part, I tell people, to maintain what you did last year, you need to be spending 5%. So when clients come to me and they're like, I'm going to spend 5%, a lot of times I'm like, oh, that's a gut punch. Because we're going to do everything we can to maintain what you have. But if you're coming to me and you're like, I want to grow by 50%, I'm gonna be like, okay, let's talk about your budget. Because we need to pump up our game, right? We need to pump it up. So again, my job is to just be there for these contractors. Like, I wanted to be there for Trey and take that off of his plate and just start thinking like a. Thinking like a consumer, less like a business owner to see, like, what are these apply to me? That's why earlier I mentioned like Mac, I was gonna bring that back. We. We created a mascot. We went Goodman and we private labeled. We were a carrier FAD dealer for 45 years. And like two years ago, we went with Goodman and we private label a Goodman. And our private label is called Armada, which is a fleet of warships. And so our private label is called the Armada label. And our mascot is Sailor Mac. And he is a full, I'm talking full big mascot Sailor Mac. So we just ended Sunday, Sailor Mac system giveaway, where we had over 650 entries to our contest to see who's going to win a complete new system compliments of Sailor Mac and the McWilliams & Son team. And one of the requirements to enter is your system had to be 10 years or older. That was it. You had to own your home. Your system had to be over 10 years. So now I have a list of 600 people across all markets that are like, hey, my system's old and in dire need of repair. And so now, yeah, super. And we now we went all hands on deck. I mean, we did the press release, the newspaper, the radio. I think we probably spent about $2,800 promoting the event or promoting the contest. But a little secret. If you're already doing branding and you're already working with these vendors, guess what? They want to be a part of something cool and fun. So I just called the radio station, was like, hey, can you put me on air two or three times between now and the end of the month so we can just talk about Sailor Max system giveaway? And they're like, oh, yeah, when do you want in the newspaper that I advertise in two or three times a year. I was like, hey, do y' all think y' all could run a story on this? They're like, yeah, when do you want it? And so you really get to work those relationships. But, you know, it is what it is with marketing. You can't get frustrated. You just have to go at it like it's a game and you're going to win.

I love that, Crystal. I mean, mic drop everywhere. I love this interview. And if you guys loved it as much as I did, know that Crystal is going to be speaking for Service Titan's growth series, where we're going to be talking about how you can leverage marketing to grow your business. And the link for that will be following the end of this interview. It'll also be in the show notes. But, Krystal, I have. You've been so generous with your time already. I have a couple follow like rapid fire questions I'd love to shoot at you if you have a moment, but before we.

I will have rapid answers this time, I promise.

Honestly, I don't know if you've ever heard this, but an interviewer's best friend is someone who doesn't give rapid answers. So you made my job very easy for the last hour and I thank you for that. But before we even go to this, this probably won't be rapid, but I'd love to ask, what are your favorite go to books and podcasts.

Okay, I'm so weird with this. So I have two kiddos that are 11 and 14. Two boys. And so I'm forever at a practice or waiting on to get out of church or something. But so one of my favorite podcasts that I love to listen to is Jasmine Star. That's her name. She was a photographer and now she's social media. But the reason that I like listening to her is that she speaks on straight up marketing techniques, right? So so many times I hear people say, well, that didn't work for me, that didn't work for me. I'm not going to do that, or people aren't going to do that here. Well, she talks about you manipulating the marketing tactics, social media mainly, but manipulating that tactic to work for you. So it isn't that social media doesn't work for you. You're just not doing the right things on social media to make it work for you. So I love Jasmine Star, just like I said, because of, you know, what she brings to the table. As far as that, I really like, of course, the service style ones like H Vac Masters of the Hustle. I like that one. I like the Profiles and Prosperity by Service Nation. But another one that I really like is he comes on once I'm looking for the name of it. Entree Leadership is also a good one. But he comes on and he owns a, he uses, he owns a marketing company in Today. It's called Today in Digital Marketing with Todd Maffin. Today in Digital Marketing. And the reason that I like him is it's like six minutes and he just goes over like all these changes in digital marketing. So like Google's getting ready to drop an algorithm. So let me, let me tell you something here. I'm not a digital strategist, right? Like, I'm not in competition with these website companies, right? But it does me good to keep my finger on the pulse of the digital industry.

I totally understand that. And I'm actually going to steal that recommendation for you because I'm the same way. And an eight minute podcast, six minute podcast. I can just tell me like what I need to know about Facebook ads. I, I will take that. So that's a great, great yes.

And he doesn't, yeah, he doesn't skip a beat. He's like, hey, here they are. And then at the end, so he'll talk about like the most popular ones. But then at the end he's like bomb, bang, bang, bang, bang. He like rapid fires them off. And like I said, my job as a liaison for you is to stay abreast of new cool things and weed through, if you will, the, the flashy people that are all in the groups and all like, oh, yeah, call me and I sent you a dm and I'll all these new things. Because as contractors, we cannot be distracted by the shiniest fishing hook that flies by our face. Right, sure. We need to back it up, you know, back it up a little bit, and let's really pay attention to what we're doing now. People don't even maximize what they're doing now before they're adding layering on these tactics. And so that's why I like to keep my finger on the pulse of the digital industry. And so to the point, um, all of those are fantastic to listen to just because, again, they keep you aware of what's happening and they are comers and movers and shakers and, you know, just get in there, get in there. You don't have to like, everybody just get in there and listen to what people are saying. So my books, right now, I'm reading the one minute manager. Oh, but one. Yes. So Dave Rothacker, you know, king of books, he made some suggestions to me, and then I saw where Lady Titan started their service, their book club, club kind of thing. And so I've committed to reading. I just do better with podcasting because I'm kind of add, but I like. I like to sit down with a tangible book. I know, I know I'm crazy, but that. But one of my favorite books that I first read when I got into marketing was called the Raving Fan or Raving Fans. And that book really resonated with me when it comes to customer retention and exceeding their expectations, paying attention to the little details in people's lives. And that's how you really make a. Really make a splash, you know, like, if I find out that one of my employees lost a pet, I'm gonna send a card. I'm gonna send a little something, you know, and it's just acknowledgement. So Raving Fans is one of my favorite books too.

I love that. Great, great, great recommendations. Also appreciate the many podcast recommendations. I didn't realize the profiles and prosperity was thing. I'm check that out. All right. Ready for some rest?

I think. David Hammer from Service Nation.

No, Nice. I will definitely check that out. All right, ready? How do you take your coffee?

As sweet as I can.

If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be?

My grandmother.

What's the number one thing you're trying to learn more about right now?

Social media.

If money weren't an object. Got it. If money weren't an object. So you had unlimited resources. What's the first thing you would do?

I really want to build a homeless shelter in my area.

I love that. What's the number one thing? Every contract. No, no, no, no. That's lovely. What's the number one thing every contractor must do to run a successful business?

Trust the professionals. Dig it.

Crystal Williams, thank you so much for being on Toolbox for the Trades.