Navigating Through Uncertainty Ep. 5 with Matt Hullander

This is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast brought to you by G4 Marketing. Interviews with today's top home improvement entrepreneurs about marketing, sales, money, mindset, and lifestyle. Now here's your host, Brian Kaskavalciyan.

Hello and welcome to the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. This is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group. If you're one of our regular listeners, you know, I typically interview home improvement entrepreneurs and ask them about specific strategies they've used to become a wealthy contractor. In fact, we have quite a few killer episodes we've recently recorded with amazing strategies to implement in your business, but I've decided to put those aside right now because of the unique environment we find ourselves in. Instead, what I'll be doing over the next couple of weeks is sharing conversations I'm having with some of these same people to find what they're thinking, feeling, and doing right now. My hope is that by sharing these conversations, you'll hear how others are overcoming some of the challenges you might be facing right now. I also sincerely hope to inspire you and build your confidence. One thing you will notice in all of these conversations is the underlying expectation that what we are experiencing right now is a temporary setback. It will pass, and there will be even greater opportunity on the other side. So enjoy these conversations. We're all in this together.

Stay the course.

Do not give up. Keep moving forward. And always believe in yourself.

All right, everybody. It is Tuesday, March 24th. It's about 3:00 in the afternoon Eastern time. And I'm here with Matt Hollander from Hulko out of Chattanooga, Tennessee. And I recently did a awesome podcast episode with Matt. Um, but we're going to put that aside, um, for the time being, just temporary. And, um, I reached out to Matt because I know he's doing some cool things. He's not taking what's going, going down around us, laying down. And, um, I reached out to him and I said, hey, um, can we do a different kind of conversation, release it right away? and, um, we'll release the other podcast, um, when it's more appropriate in, in a few weeks. So Matt, I, I really appreciate you coming back and, and doing this with us.

Hey, Brian, thanks for having me this afternoon. I hope I can provide something helpful to the listeners.

I'm sure you can. So I'm going to ask you what I'm asking everybody else during these, what I'm calling these, you know, quick conversations is what are you thinking? What are you feeling? And what are you doing?

It changes every hour right now.

I know, really.

You know, we're still fighting. I've mentioned to a few people there's fight or flight, and some people are freezing. So there's 3 options there. We're still choosing to fight. We're being as proactive as we know how to be. We're fortunate. We're in eastern Tennessee, so we work out of Chattanooga and Knoxville markets on up to the Virginia-Kentucky border. We're still able to produce a lot of our jobs. Most of them are exterior. So we're still working. We're taking all the precautions. We're following all the guidelines. Our sales reps that are still presenting in-home are wearing gloves and masks and being safe. But we've started doing a lot of virtual consultations too. So we're gonna continue to fight, and I know it'll get worse before it gets better, but we're hanging in there.

What do you Personally, what are you feeling through this?

It's difficult because you have the safety and health of so many people, and people are dying from this. But at the same time, it's a detriment to our economy, and you look at, you know, what could potentially be 20 or 25% unemployment and what it's doing to small businesses. I do think there's hope here at the end of the tunnel. You know, the president was just on and He wants to get the economy rolling again by Easter. You know, I spoke to Chuck Fleischmann, my congressman, this morning, and if they can hopefully this afternoon get something passed up there, there is a lot of benefit for small businesses and stuff they've even added to the bill since yesterday that'll help companies the size of mine.

So you spoke with your congressman. That's awesome. We should all reach out to our congresspeople and say, hey, you know, we, we need some relief here. We need to, we need to put the country back to work. I was very encouraged by— and this is this press conference, or it wasn't a press conference, it was a town hall that literally happened like an hour and a half ago. And I have kind of been of the mind since this whole thing started that if this thing gets too far into April, I think it does damage that will be very hard for us to repair. What do you think about that?

Yeah, I think we're— every day hurts, but I know it's a crisis we have to get under control, too. So I think if everybody will continue to work together and we can get back to work by— I know there'll still be what he calls the hot pockets, you know, in areas that are worse than others, but for the majority of the country, I think if we can get back to work sooner than later, I think it's going to actually, at least what I'm communicating to my employees, we're going to get stronger through this. So we're going to come out on the other side better than we went into it, despite what happened. We're glass half full.

Tell me more about that. Because I'll tell you one thing that is the underlying theme with all of these conversations that I've been having is exactly that. So can you talk to me a little bit more about about that?

Yeah, I know it's scary for a lot of business owners. I know, I know guys in peer groups I'm in that have had to close. Some of them closed for 2 weeks, some of them laid off 90% of their employees. One guy closed for 2 months and said, we'll open back up in 2 months. I guess I'm taking a different approach, and it's easy to say that when you're still able to operate like we are for the most part. And then you have the cash flow issue. I know There's so many confusing things right now for a small business owner. You have the SBA loan you could apply for, you could try to use your line of credit, you could just get through it, you could lay people off. From what my congressman told me this morning in this new bill, if you have— I don't know if it was the less than 500 or less than 50 employees— and you do not lay your employees off and you make an effort to keep them employed, in this bill it will pay that small business 2.5 times their monthly payroll. So that's a part to stimulate us continuing to work with our employees and not put them on unemployment. But I know for a lot of people it was smart to do that when they had to. I've got one good friend in Illinois that's been shut down. I think the challenge— I'll continue to be optimistic, but the challenge for us right now is receiving product from vendors that are in states that are not able to deliver. We're a Jacuzzi dealer, they're outside Chicago, we can't get product right now. You know, our door company's in Ohio, you know, our window company's in Michigan. So being able to get products to continue to produce hopefully will not shut us down, but we're still being proactive and doing things that we normally would not have done Working from home, calling past customers, doing the virtual consults. I actually got with 2 of our local, our NBC and our ABC managers this morning and negotiated, you know, deals on TV commercials. We're gonna make one 60-second commercial. So it's opportunity, looking for opportunity.

Yeah, let's talk a little bit about, you know, there's a lot of talk about virtual presentations. Yes, we have a dog barking in the back. Everybody excuse the dog, but hey, it's okay. It's, it's, hey, it's the, these are the times that we are in.

No worries.

Talk to us a little bit about the virtual presentations because It's okay, it's all right, don't worry about it, Matt. As an industry, this is something that we have avoided. Like, I mean, this is not something that we wanted to do, and because it's, it's tough. You can't— you— it's hard to sell a $5,000, $8,000, $10,000, $20,000 anything without being face-to-face with, with people and really making a good value presentation, which I know you guys do a killer job of. And that's very difficult to do over the phone. So I know you guys are doing it, I know you're offering it. How's it going?

So far so, so good. Now we're still perfecting our virtual presentation. Our process is, well, we made videos Or we create videos to promote on social, on our website, and push them out to let them know it's available. And then this new 60-second spot we're running on TV, we'll push them to our website where we have a landing page. But they sign up online, and then we go out and take photos of their home. We let them know they don't have to be present. And then we order our report, whether you use HOVER or EagleView or Chameleon or RenoWorks, however you want to do it in your company. We order the report. And then we send them instructions prior to the consultation to let them know how to prepare, or they need to download the Zoom app if they're gonna talk to us on their iPad, for example. And then when we present to them, we— what's difficult right now is taking a sales rep that's used to a 7, 8, 9, 10-step selling process and them now doing it virtually. So You have to keep it simple. It's easy, and I think a lot of companies have made the mistake of having a company story that's too long. It feels good to us to put all our awards and things in there, but it needs to be a little simpler when you're doing it virtual. And you don't have as long to present typically. So we kind of came up along with— we use Engage who helps us with our presentation. They helped us come up with 5 things to build rapport with the homeowner. The first one is keeping it simple. Next is building trust, which we do that in our company story. And make it personal to them and to their house. One of my reps yesterday sold a new front door virtually, and this gentleman's wife was upstairs on Zoom, the husband was downstairs. Our sales rep was at his house, and so we got to go through and help them choose different colors for their door, different hardware, and we made it fun for them too. So that's number 3. Number 4 is to make digital feel real. And I think with the presentation tools we use and just being fortunate to have a great marketing team to build that, that helps. And then 5 is stay top of mind. That's one reason right now during, you know, the next few weeks or at least month, we're gonna try to stay top of mind and come out of it really busy where others that may not be spending the marketing dollars. Now we've cut back a little bit, but we're also looking for better deals right now. And that's what I'm doing with all our local TV spots because a lot of small companies are pulling advertising from them.

Yeah. That's what we're advising everybody. Don't pull your advertising. If you can help it, keep advertising. And 2, stay in front of your customers. That's for our clients here. That's our number 1 job over the next few weeks, is to make sure that they are top of mind, front and center with their, with their clients. So let's go back for a second because we went through— you went through that list real quick. Let's, let's kind of outline real quickly what you are doing for those virtual presentations. So obviously— oh, by the way, can I tell people to go to your website and check out what you're doing there? Do you mind?

Sure. It's—

why don't you give it? Yeah.

Yeah, it's just callhullco.com, and you can watch the videos there. If you find Hullco on Facebook or any other social media outlets, you can watch how we're communicating to the homeowner to drive them to our landing page where they can sign up.

For a virtual, for a virtual consultation. Yeah. I mean, you did that. You did that. You shared that with me quick. I mean, I think you guys had that up and running within a day or two, which I was super impressed with how quickly you had that up. So, OK, so somebody goes to the website, they fill out the virtual consultation form. You go to the house and you take pictures. You take the pictures and you put them into— what are you guys using? You're using HOVER?

Yeah, we order a HOVER report. Now I will say, if you don't have HOVER or if you don't have some of this technology or you're a smaller remodeler or even with our bathroom product, this system, we're trying to perfect it every day, but you can just use FaceTime. You can do something if you don't have all this or if you have— don't have someone to create the content. You know, I had several people reach out to me and wanted to buy the video and I just gave it to them. You know, if they're not in my market, we're happy to help. So being able to create kind of, it shows the homeowner the process. It shows someone out in the yard taking the picture. It shows them what the landing page looks like. It shows them, you know, they'll be doing this consultation from their living room on the couch. So it makes them feel safe too.

Yeah. So, and HOVER, if I'm not mistaken, what HOVER will do is give you the ability to measure. So if you're looking at windows, let's say, you have the ability to measure.

Yes, it can. Well, it'll make a 3D rendering of the home. You take 8 photographs of the house and then it creates the 3D rendering. And there's a measuring tool in there too that'll help you with material lists for production and it depends on what the homeowner's interested in. If it's just a roof, you can order just a roof report from HOVER. If you want roofing, siding, windows, doors, you can get the whole 3D model and there's pricing structure depending on size of house and how many products.

About what does it cost? Just ballpark to get one of these reports.

$40 to $60 for a whole house 3D rendering.

It's not bad.

OK.

So, OK, so you've got that. So then you'll go and you'll create the pricing. You have to use something like— we're using Zoom. So you would go and get a Zoom account. And then to do the virtual presentation, there's this great tool. I really like it a lot too. And that's Engage. And I believe it's engage.io. Is that right?

Yes, that's correct. You know, I just met Engage recently, actually out in San Diego. You were out there for the—

That's where I met them there too. Yeah.

And I was blown away. I talked to, you know, Nikki at New Pro and Reborn and Tundra Land. They were already using Engage and I saw their presentations and I met the folks and we signed up with them right away. The difference— there's several differences, but We just had a company story we'd made in Keynote on our iPad. Engage takes it to the next level. It's more real, it's more interactive. It uses analytics, so a sales manager can know, hey, Gary, my sales rep, had a lead at 10 o'clock, and at 10:07 he showed his company story and he went through the steps. It helps keep them in line with the steps. It keeps, you know, It keeps them from forgetting things, and it's just a better presentation tool.

Yeah, and you sent me— before we got on the call, you'd sent me— and it just looks really nice too. It's got a, it's got a beautiful, really beautiful look to it. So actually, the guys at Engage gave you a special link if people are interested in checking this out. It's engage.io/ Hullco, H-U-L-L-C-O. And I think if you use that link, they'll, they'll do a demo for you and they'll, I think they'll give you a free month also if you sign up with them. I told Matt at the beginning of this that, you know, I don't usually do, you know, affiliate links and stuff like that. But at this time, we need, you know, everybody needs all the help they can get. And so that's good. That I think that's a really powerful tool for those of you that are doing in-home presentations. Okay, so then I think there was one more piece that you were talking about, another piece of technology that you need, or is that— are those the 3 pieces that we need?

If you want to go ahead and close the deal, we use DocuSign, but at some point you got to, you know, have your contract. So, you know, it's confusing now. There's also Leap, there's OneClick Contractor, there's so many different imaging tools. You just have to find what's best for you. But for us, we're using our website landing page for them to register. Then we're ordering the hover report. We tell them we will use their conferencing tool of choice, but we encourage Zoom. If they want to use GoToMeeting or a different one, we can. And sometimes our sales rep is using Zoom and the homeowner is on FaceTime so they can walk over to their bathroom. So it just depends on the situation. And we're trying to make it better every day because it's somewhat new to us. And then DocuSign is what we use to close with. Those are the tools we're using. And I think this is, even after this is over with, it's somewhat the future of remodeling in the way that we present to homeowners. I think it'll take over a section of what we've been doing in the house.

Matt, it'll be interesting to see. We'll see in 60 days or 90 days when we're past all of this whether or not what happens with the whole virtual consultation thing. Cause I don't, the close rates aren't as good. Um, anyway, we'll see. We'll see how that goes. Obviously also you are using, um, financing at this point. You're probably using, are you using pretty aggressive finance offers right now?

Or, or we are, we are, I'm paying a little extra just to be able to promote, don't pay a dime until 2022. So the 60-second spot we're producing now, that's our call to action. You know, people want to hang on to their money now, so we're trying to hit on safety of your home, do the virtual consultation, use a company you can trust, don't pay a dime until 2022. So, you know, there's different financing options out there and a lot of it's the language you use and, you know, saying don't pay until 2022 versus don't pay until next year versus, you know, 18 months. Depends. And actually, I think with that program, we're using 18 months. And by the time we produce the job, it will be 2022 when they pay.

So yeah. Yeah. And those programs are there, they're aggressive. And like Matt said, you're going to pay a little bit more for these programs. But, you know, you got to build the value into the job. You got to get the right price. You got to keep, you know, you got to keep your margin where you need it to be. I think at the end of all of this, we're all going to be better. We're all going to learn a lot. Let me ask you this. You, you, you're, you've always been a very upbeat guy. Every time I've seen you, you always have a smile on your face and you always seem to be like, you know, in a good mood. I'm not around you all the time, so I don't know if that's just when I see you, you're in a good mood, but it seems like you're always an upbeat, positive guy. What are some things that you're doing personally? Kind of like, are you talking to yourself? Are you— how are you, how are you like staying focused on getting through this for the opportunity on the other side? What are some things that you're doing?

I'm talking to a lot of my peers. I'm in a lot of peer groups. We're on the phone encouraging one another. I think that's, you know, it's— I'm at home. I'm actually in my bar right now, so it would be easy to come home and do nothing. But I'm still exercising every day. I do sneak into the office after hours to check on things. I've just always tried to stay positive. You know, worrying's a sin. It does, it does me no good to worry about something. And although it's hard to do that, we all do. I just try to stay upbeat and positive because the alternative of that is negative thoughts and negative feelings. So, you know, whatever you focus on is, in my opinion, what you always get. So why would I focus on the negative? I'm focused on the opportunity. And going back to your previous question about financing, You know, a lot of that cost you would pay extra is money you would have spent on other marketing methods anyway. For example, and I won't use names, we use a couple of them, but for that 18 months, we're paying, I think, 8.5%. And that's what the lead costs me anyway. And I'm doing this virtually and some of it's digital. So I encourage people to spend a tad more and give that homeowner a reason. We all use different call to action, but I would be pretty aggressive with the financing offer.

Yeah. Right now, everybody has to have a finance— if you don't have a finance offer, you're not getting a deal. And it's just not going to happen today. Even people that are averse to those deals, me being one of them, I might look twice at something like that today. You know, right now.

And you can use it to help save jobs too. We've been fortunate. We've had a couple try to cancel after their rescission, and we use that as a tool. And some people are just nervous. We had a homeowner try to cancel the end of last week, and our sales manager said, you know, did you or your husband get laid off? She's like, no, I'm retired and he's a doctor. We're just nervous about spending the money. We're like, well, we'll just, you know, you're past your right of rescission. We don't want to be known for the company that, you know, held everybody's feet to the fire, but It depends on the situation, but that homeowner decided we just wait it out together and then produce their job when they're comfortable.

Yeah, cool. Any parting thoughts to companies that are out there that are— I like what you said at the beginning, and I've been saying that too. It's either— we really only have two options. There are three, but there's really only two. We're, we're going to do whatever it takes to get through this and we're going to be stronger on the other side, or we're going to completely shut down and give in and, and, and, and act as if the world is ending. The third option to me, which isn't a good one, is the in-between. It's flip-flopping between those two every day. And the problem with that is it's not a decision. The other two are actually making a decision. And when you make a decision, you have something to work towards.

Words.

So what was my point in saying that?

Oh, you were asking any parting, any parting words? Yeah.

Oh yeah, any parting words. I'm sorry. Thank you for bringing me back.

I would just change and adapt as quickly as you can to use this time to benefit the company, whether it be now or when you come out of this. You can be doing online training for salespeople. Yeah, I've got, I've got ladies that are working from home right now that I gave a script to that are calling every customer from 2018 and letting them know we have capacity right now, we're the company you can trust, why not take advantage of it, here's our special financing offer. So just don't give up and look for ways. And when you get confused, because trying to figure out, you know, cash flow or the new SBA loan they have or what this bill's gonna have, and there's so many of them out there right now, just try to educate yourself or call other peers and learn all you can. And I think I think a lot of this in the next 2 or 3 days will be a lot more clear once things happen in D.C. Yeah, yeah, it's Tuesday.

I think by the end of the week we'll know. And one of the big things I say to people, and again, maybe this is just for my sanity, but I really do believe it, is we have to have a plan to make it through April. If you can keep the doors open, keep everything running, through April, keep things intact, come May, I think this is gonna be, it's not gonna be completely behind us, but we're gonna be able to really start to zoom forward and hopefully make up for what we've lost. I mean, we've, as a company, we're tied to our clients' success. If our clients aren't doing well, we're not doing well. So we're feeling, you know, we're gonna feel the hit, but I have a feeling that we're gonna more than make up for this temporary, the temporary loss. So, Matt, I guess—

One last thing. For folks out there that have been shut down and all the states are starting to do it, don't take it without really digging in and finding out if you really can't operate or not. I have found with a lot of my peer buddies across the country that essential and non-essential, if you look at the definitions, we're able to still operate in a lot of situations. You may not be able to have your you know, canvassers out or whatnot. But a lot of folks I found thought their business was non-essential when actually they could still be working.

Yeah, yeah, great, great. Well, Matt, you again— well, you guys, not again. I know again because of the interview I did with him before. One of the things about Matt is he's very open, very transparent, and A big believer in sharing. And again, I thank you so much for, for doing this and being encouraging and helping give the listener, hopefully give the listener some hope and some confidence. That's what this is all about. And, and I really appreciate that. To all of you listening, keep looking out for these messages. They're going to, they're going to be coming over the next a few days as I record them. We will be releasing them immediately. Not a lot of editing or anything. We're just gonna send them out, and hopefully we'll get past this sooner rather than later. And I believe that this is gonna end quick. We can't afford otherwise.

And Brian, thanks for doing these. For everybody out there listening, it's a big help to me when I hear the others. And since you're not editing, sorry about the Golden Doodle interruption.

It's okay.

And if I can, if I can help anybody out there listening, I don't have all the answers, but I'm happy to talk through it. I'm matt@callholdco.com.

Appreciate that, Matt. Appreciate that. All right, everybody. Till next time.

Thank you for listening to this special edition of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. I hope it gave you the confidence to know that there are other successful contractors out there just like you who are not letting circumstances get in the way of providing excellent service to their customers, serving their communities, and achieving their goals. This will pass, and your attitude and the messages you take in right now will determine your mindset and where you end up. I'd encourage you to listen to the other podcasts in this series that we're releasing regularly, as well as going back to prior episodes of The Wealthy Contractor Podcast to hear from like-minded contractors in the industry so you can pick up on strategies, tactics, and tools that will help you overcome the circumstances around you. We'll be back to regularly scheduled podcasts soon. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan with G4 Marketing Group and The Wealthy Contractor.