Hooked on Hype, Generative Search and AI -Tim Brown

Hey, everybody, it is your host here with Contractor Radio, Jim Johnson, the head coach at Contractor Coach Pro, where we help contractors get control of their business by becoming better leaders so that those businesses can grow and expand and offer opportunity and achieve what we think most of you are after, which is the freedom to do what you want to do with, who you want to do it with, when you want to do it. That's what our goal is here at Contractor Coach Pro. We've helped hundreds of contractors do that and going to we're. And we can help you do the same thing by growing that business in a way that helps you achieve your dreams. I'm pretty excited about today's guest. The reason for that is I genuinely just like the guy. Like, he's a cool guy, but he's also really good at what he does. He's a meme master. He is top three of all the ones in our industry. And he is a guy that is passionate about what he does. And he's a marketer, which most of those guys don't like. Just to be honest. I don't like most of them. They're all out there. I get 30 leads in 30 days. Crap. Ignore that stuff and listen to a pro. We have today, the rock star himself, Mr. Tim Brown. Hey, Tim. What's going on, man? Good to have you.

Yeah, thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about this in particular today.

Yeah, it's going to be good. We kind of talked a little bit about like, because, oh, marketing is marketing. Right. Like, I get leads and are they good or bad? And salespeople all say they're bad and marketers say they're all good. Right. That's the way it works.

Yeah.

So before we get started for the listeners and you're, you're one of, I think three now, three second time guests. Oh, it's pretty rare for me to put somebody on a second time. And the only reason I do is if they bring high quality conversation content for our listening audience. And you're one of those people. So tell everybody who you are, who you're with. And kind of a little bit of the story about Hook Agency.

Sure. Yeah. Hook Agency is my company. We're in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It's 28 people as of today. We just got our 28th person. And we are a company that does SEO, Google Ads and website design. We do custom work. A lot of these companies copy and paste. And then for SEO, you get set it and forget it. And we are different than both of those things. We're relentless and we do custom work that's built to fit people like a glove. I've been doing this for 10 years now. I was in school 10 years ago, built a little bit of a business in school, went worked for somebody else after school, then went out on my own. And one of the things that allowed me to go out on my own is I learned how to create leads. The Internet. And I was having lead people coming talk to me. Even Mall of America was a client. And I brought that client. I got a lead on my website, but I brought it to my employer. At that time, I kind of realized I was able to design, develop and do all this stuff and I'm able to create leads. I kind of felt like it was time to go out on my own. And companies were. I started in design, but people wanted me to, to help them make more leads happen. And so I got the opportunity to do that for people. And even though they knew I was kind of new at it, this is. We were talking seven years ago, they let me do it, which is really cool of them, and I helped them do it and they trusted that I was going to be vigorous about it when I went out on my own two or three years ago. So I actually went on my own six plus years ago. But two or three years ago now we had a lot of. We started to get some roofing clients and home. Roofing and home services. We had a good concentration there and we had like somebody, Dmitry Lipinski, who started to promote him, promote us on his YouTube channel. And then we had just more people that in the roofing industry that started to say really nice things about us. So we just started to get more and more clients. Now we have like 57 roofing companies and a good chunk of other home services. So that. And a year ago I started to make memes. So that's part of the story too because that's helped get us a little bit more traction and visibility and through that and through all these things because I study algorithms, Google's algorithm, but for promoting my own business, social algorithms. You know, we learned a lot about, you know, because of memes and because of short form video, we learned a lot and we're learning a lot all the time about what works on these algorithms. And I set out to go viral at the beginning of this year, which is. It's so dumb. It's such a dumb.

I remember that actually on my list of questions to ask you, how did the go viral thing go?

So I went viral. So I just hit 10 million views on Astute. The worst meme I've ever created in my life about it was, like, making fun of millennials and Gen Z and, like, because so many people hated it. They hated it so bad. They hated it into, like, virality. And I say that because we're talking about a little bit about the responsibility of, like, unfortunately, the algorithm loves negative stuff. The algorithm loves negative stuff. So this was kind of a negative meme. And now I feel dumb for it going viral, but nonetheless, I wanted to go viral. So check. It's just checked off.

You got it. But it wasn't what you thought it was.

Yeah, I thought, well, who knows, you know, it's just so funny. It's like every morning I wake up, this is such a bad, like, priming thing, you know, you're not supposed to look at your phone for a little while when you wake up. I look at my phone, I look at the recent comments on this meme, and I just, like, read, like, 10 hate comments every morning. Like, get myself into a good mood.

You know, a good mindset. Right.

This is like calling me a boomer and all these things, and they're just like, it's so negative and it was accidental, but whatever, we're. We're past it.

That's. That's fantastic. Actually cracks me up quite a bit.

Yeah.

Because I was wondering how that went.

Yeah, it happened, but I don't know if it was exactly what I thought it was going to be.

Yeah. So let's talk about that first. We got some other things to talk about, but let's talk about that, because I was talking with another individual. I won't name names, but it was. There was some frustration, almost like jealousy maybe might be the core word of that. Like, you see others putting stuff out that is either like, no value to it, it's repeated from somebody else type of thing, or it's silly, or it's not what you would call intelligent and valuable and practical. It's just. It is the stupid stuff. Right?

Yeah.

And you see, actually, I'll tell you what it was. We got called out for you and Patrick Carr. You and Patrick Carr.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because we're. You guys are coming to our event. Top Rep. Anybody that hasn't been to Top Rep needs to be there. If you're a salesperson, you want to increase your closing percentages and all that good stuff. Ad ran. There you go. Go to toprep training.com. yeah, you guys are coming to the event and you're going to compete against each other. And we put out a picture about, you know, you two battling each other. Right. A little bit of UFC look to it. Not really with this, like, you're going to fight thing. You're going to compete against each other to see who finishes with the higher score. During our dog fights that we have, where people compete to see who can perform the presentation, what we teach the best.

I've been running the flashcards, by the way, and I'm really excited about it. These flashcards are really cool. What is that deck called? It's like.

It's called pivot points. It's where a. It's where a sale pivots, and it's going to be good or bad.

I'm really enjoying it, and I'm really enjoying studying. I'm also one of your guys's students, Dylan Herman.

Yeah.

Coming down next Monday to train me. So I am like, it's my rock montage, you know, I'm getting ready. Yeah. But somebody posted about that, was kind of, like, annoyed with all the fights in the industry or whatever.

Yeah. You got lumped in with Dimitri and. And Lee Hay, and, like, that's like, they're actually going.

Right.

You know us well enough to know that that's not really our jam. Right.

Yeah.

But the reason he made the post is because he knew it would provoke conversation, because he's made millions of other posts that were a lot of intelligent, high value, great content stuff that didn't get a lot of engagement. I make a lot of those posts. I make a lot of posts. I'm like, this is the most brilliant thing that anybody has ever put on Facebook. And, like, how in the world could somebody respond to that, even with, like, good questions and all the other stuff that they tell you to do to get interaction. Right.

And then sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I think you have to have a balance of those two. You have to have kind of provocative in your face stuff that's challenging. And this is me just, like, amorally kind of talking about this. Like, I'm not. I'm not making a value judgment here. I'm literally just saying, like, if for the algorithm's sake, we need a balance of, like, provocative content that asks, like, kind of intense questions or. Or even says something is bad, because that's what his post was. It was kind of saying it's bad. And he wasn't like, we won't go into that, because I. I got my feelings hurt a little bit on that post.

I did, too. I was like, hey, Wait a minute now.

Yeah.

We're not fighting each other, so relax.

But then for the most part, you don't want your content to be totally that, because if you do that all the time, people will start to see you. It's like a boy who cried wolf type thing. It's like, I always am inflaming people, so then I. You know what I mean? Like, that's not necessarily the brand that you want. You don't want your brand to be inflaming constantly. So, like, I look at as like 10%. You want 10% spicy. You know what I mean?

Like, I'm like, well, who do you want your client to be? Do you want your client to be that person that gets inflamed by every negative thing that you can possibly say out there? Then you should put that stuff out there, and you're gonna get a lot of those people.

Exactly. We say we want calm, not agitated clients. And I do think when you promote that way, you're more likely to get agitated, inflamed, and other. And you know what? We're. He called us out a little bit, so this is a little bit of a call out. Well, we're talking about it, right? But. But that's what. That's what people want. They want you to talk about their thing. And I think that, like, noting, because I took a walk with my wife that evening in our beautiful area in Minnesota, and my wife was a little annoyed by it, to be honest with you. She was a little annoyed because it didn't seem like, honestly up to the level of whatever that she expects from that person. And I mean, this is me too.

I literally called him. Like, we had a phone call. We talked. We talked on the phone for an hour about this.

And.

And he was. He was honest with what it was. It was. There was some jealousy there going, hey, this, you know, provoking and. And hype type stuff is what's getting all the attention. So maybe I should do some of it.

Yeah. And.

But it wasn't his. It wasn't on brand. It was off brand.

You're right. And I do stuff that's not on brand sometimes because. Oh, excuse me, burped.

This causes me heartburn too. Yeah.

Not on brand, because I get a little thirsty sometimes. I get thirsty for likes. And getting thirsty for likes is. Is fine as long as you don't do something stupid. Stupid. We're all fine after that post. Like, we're gonna be fine. And I knew what it was like, and I kind of just explained to My wife, she's a little frustrated, but I'm like, you know what, at least we're in the mix. I mean, I don't know, I want to be.

Well, they say no, no press is about.

No press is bad press. Now I don't agree with that one. I think there's certainly things that your char can then get shown and that's. It can be very bad. But yeah, I think ultimately you want to keep the ratio pretty low on super spicy content. I think it's not the best. And even if it is, like, let's say you get 70 likes 70, man. 70 is like, whoa. In niche world, like for roofing company, maybe you could go more than that. You do something human interest, you just show pet you have a deal, you do a giveaway. You do all these little roof on a veteran's house.

Like any of those kind of community service type stuff was going to get a lot of play.

But for our niche player like us, as we're serving roofing companies and home service businesses, we're not going to get 70 on average. It's a little lower. So like getting. That feels good. But is it? You know, I, I heard someone say if, you know they're promoting their thing, but it was like, if you know that the amount of impressions doesn't equal the amount of people that were impressed.

Ah, I like that.

I like that too because it's just like, no offense, but people like stuff just it doesn't necessarily mean that they said, I think this person is a better service provider. So I'm gonna like this. Sometimes they like it just to say that's not me. And I'm acknowledging that's not me. Oh, thank God I'm not the one under the, under the heat lamps today. Right. Like, I just like, I comment on stuff sometimes just say, this isn't about me. You know, just so you know, I'm.

Very, I'm very much like, we're aware of this now because I, I'll be honest, there was some jealousy of my own over the years with like, God, man, this guy's like all over the place and he's getting all these interaction stuff. But when I really thought about it is because it was very provoking, pretty negative. That kind of stuff is what seems to get the most attention. And pretty simple, right? Like there wasn't a lot of value to it or depth to it. And so we talked about it here and we're like, that's not us. Let's not be something we're not. And so by sharing the things we share that we. We know they're not going to get a lot of likes. They're not going to get a lot of that kind of stuff necessarily. Although our podcast has gone through the roof for some reason or another. It's called you guys. It's not us, you guys. Like, hey, that's why we're watching the podcast. But what it does speak to is the type of clients we want. It attracts them specifically. It sticks out to them because they hear what it is that they're searching for. And so we don't need a lot of clients. We just really need a few. So keep sharing our message the way we share it. We'll have a little fun here and there. I mean, this whole thing with you and Patrick Carter, that is a little bit of fun.

Just a touch of spice. It's a touch of spice. And it was.

We knew where we put it.

Sorry.

We weren't being provocative in any way.

Tell me to do the one to do it with Patrick's giant arm. Kind of us with our. You didn't tell me to make fists. You know, I chose to do that because I like a little extra spice. I'm authentically a touch more spicy. I had somebody, but that's who you are.

That is your voice. That is your. It's what attracts people to you. They're going to be a little spicy, too, which is cool. You're going to like them. They're going to have a good fit. Right? I really hate interrupting these videos, but I've got some important information for you. If you haven't tried out Atlas shingles, you should, because they put you first as a contractor. They want to give you a competitive advantage out in the field so that you can win more sales and be more profitable. Check out Atlas in your local area, find your local rep, get hooked up with them today, and start making more money tomorrow.

Yeah, I think ultimately what we're getting at, too, on this particular podcast is we have a responsibility to somewhat authentically represent what we actually want out in the world. We have some responsibility to not do spicy and provocative things just to get clout on the Internet that will then negatively affect people's lives, because there are things that you can do. Like, there's. There's a. My buddy was telling me there's these fractal tables, and it's not even negative. So I just want to use, like, kind of like a basic example. But there's these. They. They take bolts or something, and they put it on either side of a table and then they electrocute the table. And it does like a fractal design. And it was all over.

Yeah.

But a ton of people have died trying to make those fractal tables. Apparently.

That seems bad.

So there's a danger, like, right. This is a very interesting. It's good content and they went very viral. Right. But, like, there's a danger, too, to people that aren't fully trained or understand what they're looking at in that particular situation that will hurt themselves.

Yeah. Grab both those things at the same time, you're in trouble.

Yeah, exactly. I don't know what these people are doing, but I'm just saying there's people. There's a good chunk apparently, of people that have died doing this. And it's just like kind of noting that there's a little bit of a danger to all of our, you know, when we get too spicy or negative online because we're kind of creating some. You, you can. If you did. If you. If that's not 10% and now 50% of your content is now negative or whatever. And I'm saying 10 because that's what I'm comfortable with. If 50% of your content is negative, even if the person deserves it, because, no offense, a lot of people deserve it. Right. Like, we could go after. Yeah, like, but that's kind of. It kind of gets us stuck in that spot where one, you, you attract maybe some. Like, if you're. If you're a home service contractor and you're going after the. The bad. The people that do the bad installs, you do that occasionally, maybe just to show what a good install looks like. But then if you're doing it 50% of the time, one, you're going to attract weird clients. And two, you're going to. You're going to essentially create this negative vibe around contractors. You're going to. You're basically putting it out in the world. And it's very strong. Like, that idea is very strong. So that is.

They already think something terrible.

But it's a little bit because of ourselves sometimes because we're promoting that idea of the negative contractor, the scammy contractor. Roofers talk about scammy contract scammy roofers a lot. And it kind of gets stuck and it's a very strong idea. So even though it's only 50% of the time, it starts to become the identity of the industry. And that's where we kind of like, I think we lose control of the narrative. It's no longer like us versus Them it's just homeowners versus roofers or homeowners versus home service contract.

And the words you use and the approach you take whenever like, yeah, people make bad installs. It is just what it is. And to go out there and video that and notice it and then give some instruction on how it could have been done properly with this intent to not only serve the homeowner, but other contractors, I think would come off a lot better. I think there wouldn't be that negativity to it. And I think the thing that we're really honing in on here is if you're going to go out there and put your voice out there, realize that people are listening. It may be a few, it may be many, but neither, neither of that really matters. You have a responsibility to those who are listening. I hate this term influencer. I just, whatever reason, it just gives me a heebie jeebies.

I like.

Not a big fan of. I'm not wired that way. I'm not looking for anybody to go ho. Jim Johnson's amazing. But it has been a bit assigned to me because we do have like thousands of people that follow what we do and what we share and that kind of thing. And it's constantly on my mind that I have this responsibility to those that I'm about. It actually locks me up sometimes. Like it locks me up from creating content because I'm like, I really want to talk about this thing but I want to get it right before I go and put it out there.

Sure.

And I think so many of us struggle with that. It kind of holds us back sometimes. And it's okay to make a mistake here and there. But.

Yeah. And that's, that's something that you are.

Is important.

Yeah. And I would say contractors are it. We get stuck. It's. It's tough. There's this balance of like we want you to post on the Internet.

Right.

Like, don't let this stop you. Do it poorly if you need to first because it's so good for your business. We just want you to do it. I mean it's not the main thing obviously. Like the, your core values and what's you're trying to do different in your culture is going to come out in your marketing. Like that's the most important stuff.

Yeah.

How you treat customers, how you get referrals and five star reviews, that's the most important stuff. But then the social stuff, I want you to post. So I don't want people to get totally locked up.

People really want to hear A story. Now you have a choice of that story being negative or positive. And with the way of the world today, it seems like negative attracts more attention.

Yeah.

But I tell you, there's a lot of people like me out there. I haven't watched the news in 13 years. It doesn't come on in my house. It's negative. If you're negative on my Facebook stuff, you're gone. I don't even warn you. I just like unfriend. I don't need that in my life. I think there's a lot of people out there like that. Maybe that is who your measure is. Right. Like, that's who is listening to you.

Yeah. And I. I think that one thing to note too, is negative negativity is always going to be more. It grabs attention because that's what we're talking about, Right.

It's human behavior.

Because I do think it goes back before the Internet. It goes back before terrible news and in the newspaper. I think it goes. I think it goes way back.

Oh, I think it's hardwired for it.

Yeah. Because. Because the whole fight or flight thing, like, you. You're looking for snakes in the dark.

Because, well, there's this idea of I'm better than you. I. I see what you did there, and I'm better than that. Yeah.

Yeah. Status. And we. We're always trying to. We're always trying to one up each other for status, and we're also always trying to look for danger. So for some reason it works, right. If you put the big red spinning lights on top of something, it will. Like, it's gonna. Because it's danger.

I wish I knew why it was, but it's. And I think it's just nature, like that fight or flight thing. I don't know. But it seems like it's a lot easier to jump on the bandwagon of pushing people down than it is to jump on the bandwagon to lift others up. And I think that's why we're attracted to that stuff.

It goes. Yeah, it goes into, like, the. The primordial part of our brains, which is tough because we want to use. Like. I'm a marketer, man.

I want to. Yeah. You know what to use.

I want to use the stuff that works. And that's. Right. I don't want to, like, come. I don't. Personally, I can't say I don't want to. I want to use it. I want to use it in such a way that's accurate. You know what I mean? Like, and let's just say Jim's not agreeing with what Tim's saying. He's. We're going to, we're going to listen fully before Jim doesn't have to nod on this. I'm just saying what I think, which is that I want as many eyeballs on what I have to offer as possible. And you might too, as a home service contractor, I want as many eyeballs right as I possibly can get. And because I believe I'm the best at what I do. And I think you might believe that as well. And if there is some way to incorporate a dash of fear, a dash of us versus them and a dash of danger because you, you and I have both seen people go with the wrong contractor and get burned severely by having to redo their roof in two years or you know, there's a.

Fly.

By night roofing company that leaves town and doesn't honor their warranties or whatever it happens to be. So there's an element of we want to put a dash. This is my. This is mean. Maybe not Jim, but I want to put a dash of that into the top of my marketing. Like I want it to catch people's attention so that we can sell them something that's better than what our competitor has. And so that's where I do think. I do utilize this principle and I don't fully judge it. And that's probably because I'm a touch just like I'm just pragmatic and I hate.

Personally I don't think there's anything wrong with it and I think there's some difference too that needs to be like honed in on. If I want to sell thousands of something, I'm probably going to need a hype man. Somebody that's the hype guy. He just gets the attention and draws a bunch of attention and all that other stuff. And I want to sell a whole bunch of whatever it is the people that come to mind for me, like Grant Cardone to the world. Right. Super hybe. Gary. Gary V is another one. Like super hype on stuff all the time. They say provocative as well as valuable stuff. Like I don't want to discount that there's not value in what either one of those guys do.

But they're known for hype.

Yeah, but they're trying to sell thousands of something where if I don't have to sell thousands but I have to concentrate on quality versus quantity. Your message can be different. Yeah, I'm not saying one is right or wrong. I'm just saying they can be different.

Yeah. And I do think, like, to distinguish one more way is, like, some people make that their whole thing. What I'm asking you to do is learn a dash of it.

Like, Donald Miller, like, seasoning, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not like, that's the whole dish. Because if that's the whole dish, you will overpower the dish, and all people will get is heat. You know, we've all had that meal where it's like, there's no other flavors, there's no garlic, there's no salt. That's just heat. And you're just like, this is not good.

I, I, maybe it's like green beans. Like, if you eat green beans, just green beans, that's pretty boring, Right? Add a little salt and pepper there. A little better. Put a little bacon in it, man. Now we're rocking some butter, but I still want to taste the green beans.

Yeah. Let's just keep talking about food. Like, what else do we got? Like, I'm just getting hungry here.

Yeah, no, we do, we do some of that stuff where we will challenge some of the status quo, but we do it in a way that brings into our world, to bring the positive back out. And we know our voice. I think that's really a part of it, too, is, do you know your voice and who you are? Like, Tim, you're okay with it. My voice is this. And we're good with you being that way. I want to be really clear about that.

Yeah. Yeah. But I just didn't want to make it seem like you were signing off on what I was saying, because sometimes we can just, like, have. Have.

Yeah, we. Well, you have a different business than I have. You have different needs than I have. You have different beliefs than I have, and that's okay. That's not. One is better than the other. They're just different. And I think we need to have more conversation around that. Like, it's okay to be different. I mean, Dimitri is probably the most provocative person out there that's, like, on people all the time. And I have a lot of respect for him.

Yeah. And it's weird because I learned from him a little bit. You know what I mean? Like, he. And it always scared the crap out of me.

It's a podcast. You can say whatever you want. You're good.

Yeah, it scared me because I, I, you know, my wife was like, I don't know about this guy. You know what I mean? Like, and we ended up working together, and, and we've talked about that together, that story and all that But I learned from him, man. Like, it's hard. It's hard when you're a small business, and it's hard to get attention, and there are cheat codes for getting attention. And so it's hard to not, once you see some of them, to not be like, oh, let me just press those cheat code buttons again, a little bit of negativity here. And boom, boom, boom. And then we got a text.

People are watching.

How can we wield that, like, in the right direction? But, like, yeah, so it's hard. It's hard to be a small business and need attention. And most roofing contractors and home services, they need. They need a good amount of attention. They need to sell a thousand of something this year. Right. It's. It's hard.

Very well could now. Yeah. Yes. They could be selling a thousand or they could be selling 50. Very high end. Really nice, you know, slate roofs and stuff like that. It seems to me that message is maybe a little bit different too.

Ah, yeah.

Okay. So. So we get to point. We got responsibility. Our voice is the voice we should stick with. With authenticity. Like, I think it's very authentic for you, Tim, to add some spice into what you do.

Yeah.

I think most people go, it's not like, if I started doing a little bit of that, everybody go, what happened to Jim?

Oh, one quick caveat is you have to be ready for haters. If you're going to get that extra attention, you're going to have people that are negative. Like, I. I'm not surprised that we had somebody a little bit weird and mad about us in a post last week. I just, I'm also used to it right now. Like I said, I wake up every morning and prime my mind with 10 negative comments. Like, I just. But I. But I remember. So I'm just saying, like, if you go this route, if you go that route where you add spice, just don't be surprised. There will be. There will be more negativity that comes your way. Because if you put negative out, it comes back. So don't be surprised by it. And then not always negative, but spice, if you put spice out, some negativity comes back. And then Dimitri taught me this, which I'm not telling you. This is a good lesson. I'm just saying, like, this.

He was fair. It's good.

Like, you have to. You have to make fun of yourself when somebody's negative. Like, because I was on his podcast and there's a bunch of negativity, and I just. He's like, you make. You make Fun of yourself more than they made fun of you in a way. Like you just have to take yourself less seriously if you do all this. So that's just my last caveat is yet like make fun of yourself in addition to them making fun of you. Otherwise it gets in your head too much and they win. So anyways, last thing.

No, that was good. That was really. Yeah. So. So we got this ability to get eyes on us and we can do that in a variety of different ways with video. Short form video. You might actually mention some short form video. Why? Why is that becomes so popular.

Yeah, I think it really comes down to how are we using social media when we pop on, you know, and the more particular platform is pushing something like TikTok came out is all short form video. Then Instagram and Facebook both added YouTube shorts. So it all kind of came in very quickly because they realized that if people get kind of in this hole will say that they're gonna get stuck a little easier because short form video is so kind of like involving. And it kind of like there's funny, there's emotional.

Just interesting enough. I should look at the next one.

Yeah. And it's just like. And we've noticed bringing our average from like one minute because we were using the whole minute because YouTube shorts is one minute. So we put it out on all the platforms and you should too. Don't just put it out on TikTok or Facebook. Put it out on all the platforms every single time. You should do that. But we would do it for one minute. And what we've kind of realized is the shorter ones do really, really well. Maybe it's not as informational, but maybe it's a little bit more entertaining. So what we've been trying to do is go a little bit towards the entertaining and mix in the informational occasionally and then we try to bring it down. So if the thought gets said in 20 seconds, let's leave it 20 seconds. Let's not add the context for the minute. And it's okay that people disagree with you. And I realize that that's a little bit like, you know, I'm actually good with that. Yeah, it's okay like as long as it was authentic what you said and you really believe it and you believe it's accurate, then it's okay if people disagree with you.

Well, I. When it first was out and really for quite some time, like it's been around now for what, a couple years, this short form thing.

Maybe longer, a year or two where it's been like it's been two years ago. It was like, whoa, it's kind of coming in. And then one year goes like, everyone is doing this, right?

And it was very disappointing to me at first. Like, I, you know, I think about things maybe way too much, but I'm like, kind of. Is that really all people have time for a few seconds of listening to somebody talk and they're on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And it was like an indictment on us as human beings. What have we become, Right? Like this is just instant gratification. Give me this thing now and if it's longer than a minute, I can't take you. Right? Like, that was a bit of my thought process. But I sat there, here recently and thought about this. I went, wait a minute, that's all the time I have to create the content too. Sometimes, like creating a 20 minute, 30 minute YouTube or that type of thing, man, that's a lot of effort. And we've kind of short circuited sometimes by creating that 20 or 30 minute piece of like this, you and I today we're creating a, you know, 45 minute thing. Maybe an hour, depends when it's done. We're going to pull those good, really strong nuggets, the ones that we think, hey, people want to hear and pay attention to, and we'll split them up, put them on shorts and Instagram and Facebook and YouTube and all the other stuff, Right. With the hopes that they come back for the real meat. Right? Like come back for the. The thing. Yeah, but sometimes all I have is 30 seconds or a minute and that's Costco samples, man. What's that?

It's like Costco samples. You go in, they give you the little like, hey, you might want, you know, this bagel. And you're like, maybe that is you.

You just told everybody you're from Minnesota.

Yeah, bagel.

You called it a bagel.

Bagel.

It's a bagel. What's wrong with you people?

You're giving out these Costco samples and then you're saying, hey, maybe you want those bagels.

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Yeah, I think. I think that there's a lot of places where you could waste your effort today. Like, I. I think that there's certainly. You don't chase purely after likes, but if. If I post something and it's getting two or three likes or something, I am kind of concerned that I might be wasting my time creating that content, which is. It's true. We have to, like, we're having. We need attention. You know what I mean? For small businesses, growing businesses, we need attention. And I kind of have to watch, like, spending too much of my time. Like, I've been doing a lot of lives and I've been doing on my personal channel, and it was working last year and now it's not working. I'm just gonna stop doing them.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna sit there and constantly hammer something that's not working. So short form is where people's attention is. And Gary Vee, you mentioned Gary Vee, he said, like. And he's. He's like, I sometimes watch young people on their phones when I'm in an airplane. It's, like, kind of creepy, but it. I kind of get what he's saying. Like, they're on Snapchat. I'm gonna like, where. What are we doing on marketing on Snapchat? They're on TikTok now. What am I doing on TikTok now? Like, if. If that's your audience.

Yeah. What's everybody doing? And who actually. What is your audience doing?

Yeah, exactly.

I don't think my audience is a bunch of teenagers. Right.

We're not those people that are on. Sorry. I was thinking TikTok, they're maybe not as heavy there, but like, you know, time passes. Right. So it's kind of preparing ourselves and then short form on Facebook, because I. I know that short form video, it's. They have the reels. Right. That people in Gen X and even older, I think that there. There is people spending time on video on Facebook.

So I have to guard myself pretty hard. This is one of those things, like, I got to be very aware of it.

I don't spend a lot of time consuming. I think that that's. Anyone that's creating all this needs to kind of note that there's a major danger here, which is, are you spending an hour? I guess I do kind of. Like, I do spend, like, maybe A half an hour every day, kind of consuming a little bit of content.

Here's the question. What are you doing it for? Are you doing it to learn from other people, or are you doing it to just be mindlessly entertained?

This is such a good question, because this, the answer to this question, if I answer honestly, should inform all of your content creation. Because I am a homeowner and I am like, you know, I'm on the, you know, my age group is on the come up as far as home buyers and people making big home improvement decisions. And I'm going there to be entertained. I'm going there to laugh for a couple minutes at lunch. I'm going there to see something that I can talk to my friend about at work. I'm going there to distract myself, and I'm not going there to learn. And I know that this, like, it informs it. Like, it kind of hurts. It kind of hurts because it's like, no, I want you to learn from my content, and I want it to be nutritional, but if it's all green beans and no bacon, then no one's coming back to your stuff.

Now I'm starving. I'm actually doing the whole intermittent fasting thing right now. I don't eat for another 45 minutes.

No wonder we're talking about food.

Yeah, I started it. It's my fault.

Yeah.

All right, so short form, important think. I think the thing that you just called out there, like, if you listen to the whole podcast at this point, that was maybe the most important thing. What are you really going there for? Ask yourself that. Ask what your ideal client is going there for and get an honest answer. Because if they're going there to be entertained, you should maybe be entertaining, right?

Yeah, exactly.

In my particular circumstance, I get that. And I know that I want the few that are there to be educated, the ones that are learning, because think of what it is. We have, knowledge that we're sharing. We're different from you. You have this service that you provide that gets them more leads.

Yeah, there's an information product and information and consult.

Yeah, it's just we.

I mean, we put out a lot of informational content, too. I do think that, on average, I actually believe that to try to create entertaining content, it's actually harder in a lot of ways. I'm just throwing that out there, like, and I think you will find that as a home service contractor, if you believe that your people want to be entertained too, it sometimes takes a little bit more effort to try to be.

Naturally predicated towards It. Which I have been called out by my team a little bit. They're like, hey, dude, you're actually pretty funny. You should maybe share a little bit more of that stuff out there instead of always just with your education.

Right? Exactly. And then, like, from this podcast, if somebody's clipping it up, there's times where we were kind of joking back and forth. And since my video guys right here, I'll just say those are great things to clip. Right? Like, that's. That's what you do is just, like, note that you're. We're telling jokes amongst this thing. It doesn't always have to be, like, punchy, like, this is the best information in the world. Just cut a few times where we laugh, too. You know what I mean? That one liner in the podcast, if you think it stands alone, so. Or in the short form in the bagel samples.

And that applies to contractors, too. The very exact same thing. Hey, you're out there recording all the content. Record the part where your ladder fell down. Or record the part where something silly happened.

Right.

Like you dropped your. Or the worst. I. I would take an old iPad and do this. Yeah, I know it's maybe not authentic, but I would do this. I would, like, go up on a roof, drop my iPad. It was on video. It's like, slides down the roof, hits the gutter, flips over the top, and hits the concrete. It's an old one. It's not a working one. It's. It's just was sitting around the house. I think people would watch that.

Yeah.

And it's just mindless. It doesn't provide any value other than maybe I should do something else to, like, have it lanyarded to myself or something. But it seems like that's what people want to see is the entertaining stuff. Sometimes even the okay, other people are just as dumb as me stuff. Yeah, that. That works pretty well.

And I go, you know, I go out to roofing companies and kind of shadow them sometimes. And, like, I always am surprised by how much funny stuff is happening behind the scenes.

I didn't get that.

We think we're supposed to be corporate and buttoned up, because I think small businesses, we have a little bit of a complex. We're like, we're trying to compete with the big guys, and so we need to look clean. Clean cut all the time. It's like, you guys are hilarious. Like, new boot goofing in the back, and this guy's got his lunch from three months ago that's, like, still in the fridge. And there's like, there's people just giving each other, like, a hard time, but they're having a good time. Like, that is all content. There's. I. I saw, like, I was at a roofing company, and there, like, they had a picture of, like, him with a raccoon, you know, like, and like a baby raccoon. It was adorable. It was funny. And I'm like, just tell people to name the raccoon. And so they put that out and got hundreds of comments or whatever. And, like, you're seeing all this stuff and just let a little bit more of it through. Like, let the authentically let more of it through, because I think we're stopping some of it. We're not. We're not letting it onto our social because it doesn't feel professional. What I'm asking you to do is, like, people are just doing, like, people do business, humans, you know, like, and that's. That's why we let more of it on.

I think people want to interact with other human beings, not other businesses, and.