0001: The Fastest Way to Double Your Profits in 90 Days with Contractor Marketing Expert & #1 Best Selling Author Tony Bernard

I am excited to be here with you tonight. I have a great guest and you're going to learn so much from him. Tony Bernard. He is a contractor, marketing expert, Amazon number one international bestseller certified power marketing consultant. He's going to come up right after the break. Let's say thanks to our sponsor, Charity.

Music has been providing musical instruments and music education to at risk and disadvantaged youth wishing to explore their hidden musical talents. To learn more information go to charitymusic.org Once again, that's charitymusic.org well, everybody here.

Is the man, the myth, the legend, Tony Bernard.

How are you doing today, Mario? Great to be here. Fantastic day today and I want to give you and your clients prospects value today. Help them in whatever business they may be in. This stuff is universal. Great to be here.

Well, I'm excited to have you, Tony. Like I was saying when, you know, we met a couple years ago and you were launching your book and telling me all the stuff you did and the people you were helping like you had on the video and I appreciate the shout out. I, ever since day one, sincerely always knew that you were great with business and you had a heart for giving but you had a fa you know, you had a great family and great family values. Because one of my core values is surrounding myself with like minded people. And of course you want to be around business movers and shakers, all the cool people and all of that, but some of them, it's like they're really great in business but they're kind of greedy and they're kind of prickish and that's not the case with you. So I'm excited to have you on the show and let's just jump into it.

All right, thank you.

So I, one of my favorite questions I ask people is why, what is the inspiration behind Tony Bernard? What made you go, you know what, I want to do my own thing. What made you want to start your company?

So back in, I've always been in construction. I started in 1980 and you know, it's a great rewarding industry and it's got, it's cyclical, you know, goes up and down with the economy and such. And in 1991 I got laid off. So that was a little blow. You know, you're an up and coming star and to get be laid off. So I had some skills and it was in the construction industry. So I ended up becoming self employed about that at that time I said I'm living, just go for it. And I got a couple good consulting gigs right off and that that's what started it all off, being self employed and I've been pretty much self employed ever since. Been very rewarding and you've got to.

Help a lot of people. I was watching your video and looks like you worked with some pretty big companies and over 18 billion in projects. What's it like working on something like that?

I've been very fortunate. I don't, you know, try to, I don't try to say it to be braggadocious but you know, I've just been fortunate from many different aspects to be able to work on such large, some large projects and actually some smaller projects. And the beauty of that is you get to see the different size of companies and how different companies operate and that's just been all a plus for me. I use it as an asset. Some people will say, well if you know you need to be doing things the same way all the time, no, no, that's not the right way. Right. You're doing the same thing every day in and day out. It's going to get you the same results. And I've adopted that model actually on my, on one of my business cards.

So that's the definition of insanity if I'm not mistaken, isn't it?

Correct. Yeah. Doing the same thing day in and day out and expecting different results, that's insanity. Yes. Thank you.

So you've worked with all the companies and you are one of the most humble people I know. There's even if you were brag and do that, there's no way that it would even come off that way because you know that it's not not about you, it's about the people you can help and the results you can get them. So if you could for a brief moment speak to that, who do you help and how do you do it in a way that no one else does.

So you know, there's actually personally I like to work with open minded, action taking people but how do I help people? There's a lot of great consultants out there in any industry. You've got some great ones and you got some not as great one. I'll just put it that way. Okay. And you need to figure out who you, who you would work with best when you want to hire someone. And that's a. Actually I'm going to kind of segue into different way of this saying this is you need. I look at it as you need to reframe some questions that we have in our mind. But so I help open my, come back to this. I can help open Minded people who want to take action. That's who I'm looking for. Because if they know it all and they want to tell me how to help them then then they're not the right fit and that's okay. They'll do their thing and I don't really want to work with them because they know it and that's great. But they didn't, you know, they contacted me for a reason. So I just want open minded people and we can get them some tremendous results. That's all. That's what I'm looking for.

Bottom line with the results you are getting them. What is something that someone can expect to. If they reach out to you and they go I'm a contractor, I need help with marketing my contractor business. What type of results should they.

Well, as you know, everybody's different. You know, you can have, you and I can listen, go listen to the same information and come back with a couple different interpretations of it. So you gotta, we gotta be careful about that. But when you use something that's kind of got a proven track record and let me, let me get into a couple specific examples here. I got a company like one company A and I won't even pick the industry.

I utilize a thing called strategic messaging formula and what that does is it grades and can give you the likelihood success of a particular marketing piece or ad. Now most marketing pieces actually get a 2 out of 10 or 20. Now that's not good.

That's like my grades in high school.

Great, great point. If you, your child came home or grandchild came home and they had a 20 on a report card, what would you do?

I personally invited my friend over and ate an apple. I had an 18% but most people would probably be pretty upset, right?

So you'd want to get them some help, you know, your child or grandchild. Yet most businesses accept a 20 but it's because they don't realize that it's that bad. They're just going with the newspaper salesperson or the website design person and just going with it. And that's a whole other thing. But let's continue on this here. As far as I have this strategic messaging formula and you grade your ads or marketing pieces and when these people, when we revise the ads and I'm going to look at the specifics here, a two went to an 8.8 from a two. So that's like four times as better. Okay, now what does that really mean though? We can grade this thing until the cows come home. But what that really meant Was the person was getting 39 calls a month from the ad. It went to 108 once this was used. Exactly, exactly. And the profits increased about 277%. 277%. That's tremendous. But that always. I shouldn't say the word but. And that was because they increased the conversion ratio. They decreased the time to get the clients on board, and they were able to increase their price because of the demand for their services. So that's a win, win, win scenario.

Let me give you absolutely a win, win, win.

One other example, if I may. Quickly here. Another ad for a different company scored again a 2 out of 10 or 20. The ad was rewritten using the strategic messaging formula, and it went from Their ad went from 70 calls a month to 955 calls a month. Is that it? Yeah, that's it. So that's only a 1,364% increase in call volume per month. So obviously that did a tremendous amount for that single business. And this proven formula is unbelievable, actually. And that's only one of the chapters in my book that we'll talk about later, perhaps.

Wow, that's phenomenal. So that's really great. So you have your program, you have your training, and you follow those steps with your clients. That's fantastic. So who is your favorite, the best success? I mean, I don't know who these people are, and I know for privacy, you probably can't say these were specific results you got for two people. But who's your best success story? Is it one of these two you kind of alluded to, or is there maybe a third that you go, you know what? The strategic marketing formula is just part of it. Here's what happened when we did the whole shebang.

These are case studies that I use to show the power of marketing, because marketing is your greatest leverage tool. Where else can you get 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200, or even 1000% increase? And oftentimes it's just with some minor tweaking of things. Now we're in the same mindset all the time, and we're in our grind and we're doing things. That's why it's oftentimes good to hire somebody outside with a different mindset to just kind of make a couple adjustments and bamboo. It happens. So as far as the specifics, I really can't get into that right now. But I use these case studies, and then in my book, I've got a couple things in there to help people because again, it's. It's not, we don't need to do life changing events. It's. I have another thing that I call the slight edge theory or not slight edge theory, slight edge marketing, slight edge concept. And just, I'll just touch on that for a minute. The difference between first place and second place in golf, tennis, horse racing is just minor minute, little bit percentage wise. It's oftentimes less than 1% but yet the reward is 2, 4, 10 times as much. That's what this the same thing with marketing, just a slight edge advantage. And that's what people like you and I can bring to the table.

Yeah, I've told my clients that and especially, you know, when the Olympics are going on, they're like, well how much of a difference does the website make or the LinkedIn or the Facebook or this that. The other thing, you know, I promote using live video and I go, it could be the difference between bronze, silver or gold, 1/10 or 1/100th of a percent.

Great point. Great analog. Yes.

So you know, like we're doing live right now and it's awesome and you know, nothing.

It'S so smooth and seamless.

But there's people that don't use video and I question myself because I've been seeing people putting polls out there and everyone I saw that put a poll, it said what would you rather have long form text or video? And it was a resounding 71 to 72% preferred video versus reading a whole lot. Now that's not to say it doesn't have its place because you know, if you do a long. I love doing long posts on LinkedIn because people will read them, but you can also put video in them. How are you using video with your clients and your contractors to maximize their profits?

And that's a great point. Now video, but you can do a slide presentation, PowerPoint presentation and just read it. Okay. Because a lot of people obviously being on camera, people can get nervous and stuff and it, and it can be nerve wracking, but that's that that comes over time and you just slowly get into it. But doing a PowerPoint presentation, it can help set you apart from the next person, whether it be whatever type of business you're in, it doesn't have. We're talking more about contractors here, but these principles that we're talking about today are pretty much universal. So the video can be better utilized for, you know, your clients, contractors, any type of brick and mortar business, local business, you know, just being seen on in life. You know, you don't have to be an actor and glamorous, just everyday stuff. Show them how to do something. A quick video on how to do something is a great opportunity to show yourself. And it gets you. When you, when you're in that position, it helps you to get out of the mindset, well, I got to speak perfectly and all this. What it does is it just, you're in your element, you're doing what you do and you're showing somebody how to do something that can be great. The video is like you said, like 71, 72%. That or higher. That's that much of a demand.

I remember when I did my first book on video marketing years ago, I had some stats coming up, you know, in this year, you know, the stats.

Are going to be higher.

And it was two, three years down the road and we're past that now. But I mean, if you, here's what I tell people when they go, well, which one's better? This or that? What's your power medium? Like you're saying, I love the tip you just shared, you know, because people go, I don't want to be on video. I don't want to be on video. But like you said, you can just do a slide presentation. And you, because it's nothing more than technically a moving picture, it doesn't mean it has to be you. It doesn't mean, mean it has to be a Hollywood film. Whatever you're most comfortable, you know, just pick up the phone and hey, I'm over here. I'm on a construction site. I'm on the job site. And you know, here's something we ran into, you should consider before doing your next job.

Exactly.

So that's great. Thanks for sharing that.

So, Tony, let's get into some of the content from your book. Why don't you take it away with your profit pillars.

Profit pillar number one in my book is marketing mindset. And I got a couple different points that I talk about here. But what I want to talk about is the use of platitudes. You know, people use platitudes and I need to define that for you.

Words are phrases that are devoid of any real meaning. A statement that expresses an idea that's not new. So when you look at yellow page ads or Google Ads, display type ads, typically you'll see like gets the, in construction industry, you'll see, gets the job done right the first time. 20 years of service, largest selection, highest quality, best price, number one, state of the art, honest. And then this one here, that I, that is a showstopper is lowest price. Don't ever go with that, that you're cutting your profits. That's the least one you ever want a monkey with. And I alluded to this one earlier. Fragmented by marketing. That's another thing.

I'm presuming that these people are well intentioned. The newspaper salesperson, the website salesperson, the SEO salesperson, the yellow page salesperson, they're all coming in and trying to get your get, get you to buy their services. But are they working on your behalf for your best interest? No. And they got their own idea about marketing. You should have a core message that you want them to disseminate and that's where hiring someone can come in so that the same clear message is being brought to all these same people across all these different media types. So it's very important to have.

Non fragmented marketing, concise marketing.

You know, you've had, you said you started in, not started in 91, but that's when you started your company. You were in the industry before, correct?

Yes.

So you had all these years of knowledge and expertise before you published a book. What made you want to publish the book and what has it done for you since you have published it?

I've read a bunch of marketing books. I was a student of Anthony Robbins and still am. He turned me on to jay Abraham Back mid-80s, late-80s. And I've done a lot of his programs and studying. And then of course there's a bunch of others, more current people, Frank Kern and stuff like that. Jimmy Harding's a great guy.

And there's a bunch of others as well. And.

The thing about marketing is it's such a leverage tool that you can use by investing so much a relatively small amount of money in marketing, getting these huge returns that I spoke of just a little bit ago, it's just massive. So.

I thought about doing a book and a lot of people think about doing a book, right? But just sit down and bang out a book. It's, that's, it's mind blowing. It's, it's overwhelming. Right? So there are people like yourself that can help people with that. And I decided that I needed to write a book. And the reason why is because all things equal and anybody in this that is watching this, think about this. You have your product or service that you provide. If you give someone the product or service in a proposal format or you advertising, you're saying, hey look, here's my product or service and here's the price. But then this other, well, let me reverse this. That's what your competitor does. Now you come along and you give them the same basic product or service, but you give them a book with it. Okay. Versus just a business card. Who's. Who do you think they're gonna buy from? Who's in a better position? So what it does is it makes you stand out light years or way so much different than anybody else in your business, industry or industry. So by just having a book, you can do that. And it's not as difficult as you would imagine when you talk to someone like Mario that can help you do a book.

Love the knowledge you're sharing. I'll take a second and touch on what you were saying. When I did my first one, video marketing for business owners, I was not. Remember when we were talking about the 20% and all that. I wasn't joking about that. I had literally had an 18% in school. I failed English seven times. So what? The idea of writing books and everything, it wasn't really the top of mind. I actually, in one of my classes, we were supposed to do an English paper. I didn't do anything the entire semester. And I was like, how can I still get credit? I convinced the teacher. Well, I asked and persuaded. You can't convince anyone of anything. I go, you know, it's been a busy semester, you know, that's why the paper's not done. How would you like if I gave a presentation to the class on the subject matter in place of the paper? And he was throwing.

Thrilled, actually.

He put me in touch to rewrite our chapter in the book. The class was on web design and I knew my strength was presentation, so I totally didn't have to write the paper. He gave me a double A plus. I passed the class and I didn't spend nine. Nine weeks or 12 or whatever that I don't even know is rarely there. But the point is, what is your power medium? And even if you aren't good at writing, if you have a level of expertise, there's. There's things you can do to get it out there. So I like what you're suggesting with the frequently asked questions, and that is a good segue. We're gonna go to the sponsor and then when we come back, we're gonna go and touch on your frequently asked questions because I know you have them ready and people ask you the same ones, just like any business. Thank you for touching on that. So stay tuned and we're gonna go to charity music.

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Guess who's back.

All right, it's us.

You ready to rock and roll it for the second half, Tony?

Sure. All right, so this is a slide that shows the information about follow up. And I work hard to help my clients understand things that are difficult, so I make things easy for them. 48% of the time, there's zero follow up by either the salesperson or the company. Okay, well, that's fine information. And then it goes to 25%. There's one follow up, and then it's 10. 12% is two follow ups. 10% of the time is three follow ups. And then only 5% of the time is there five or more follow ups. Okay, well, that's. That's information, obviously. It declines about 50% each time. Zero follow up is 48% of the time, yet that's when 2% of the sales happen.

2% of sales happen. 48% of the time. There's no follow up. Let's take it to the other end of the spectrum, and what that's saying is 48% of the time, there's 2% of the sales, zero follow up. All the way to the other end of the spectrum on the far right. If you follow up four more times, yet that's only when 5% of people do it. That's when 80% of the sales happen. Think about that. 80%. So if you're in, whatever type of business you're in, Brick and Mortar a contractor or whatever you may be. If you have zero follow up, look at the money you're leaving on the table by not following up. That's what this says and it really tells the story. I love doing graphs on data, things like this. Clients really love it too. So bottom line, and I like to use the extremes to show things right. 0% of the time, excuse me, 48% of the time, there's zero follow up. That's when 2% of sales happen. You go to the other end of the spectrum, four or more follow ups, that's when 80% of sales happen. Is that a no brainer, folks? Start following up now. What is follow up? It can be as easy as just calling up the people that you've given some information to and asking them if they have any questions. Don't call them up and keep hounding them about buying and all this. Just call up. Do you have any questions? We'd love to help you out. Love to help you make a decision. Love to educate you. Do you have any questions about this aspect or that aspect? It's about continuing to educate them. That's the raw and easy way of doing it. If you get more sophisticated, you can have automated follow up systems. So that's not dependent upon your salesperson or your office person calling. It just happens automatically. And there's all kinds of systems for that when you get to that level. But first just start picking up the phone and calling. That's your greatest leverage tool. Starting tomorrow morning too, as a matter of fact, or today, depending on when you listen to this.

Wow, Tony, that is some great information and I appreciate you for sharing that with the audience. It reminds me of when I was starting off and trying to get my first couple of clients and I was like, I really, really want to help them, but I don't want to be a pest. And I think that's everyone's reservation. But the fact of the matter is if you can really truly help them, it's unethical not to help them and push through. And I'll tell you that majority of the time I was like, they're not going to get anything that they're not calling it and you just think nothing's going to happen. It took one phone call, one email, one. Just reaching out, whatever, maybe stopping by, whatever the case was. And it was like, oh my gosh, I am so glad you emailed, called, stop by, whatever. I was just thinking about you. Let's go talk some more or you know, let's go finish that deal. Or, you know, let's sit down. It was never a hard sell. It was just people are busy and they absolutely need be doing that follow up. So follow up is important. You know, you gotta follow through. You gotta follow up and you will close the sale. But let me ask you, Tony, what's the number one way contractors could maximize their customer lifetime value?

In my industry, in the construction or contracting industry, you want to build something that's going to last. So we don't really have a good life cycle thing of. It's not a consumable item where you, you know, you're going to come back and buy more of it later on and such. But a good example of.

Lifetime value is in my industry, who would be the next person that would logically be involved? Now, say a roofer, you could have a gutter contractor. If you don't include gutters with your roofing, you can refer them to a gutter contractor. Gutter to drain, get the range, the drainage off the roof. A carpet installer. Okay. Well, in a few years, you're perhaps going to want to have those carpets clean to make them look better much longer. So the initial contractor that did the installation of the carpet could refer a carpet cleaning company. So that's an example of getting more lifetime value out of a customer. Because as a referral, you may get a little percentage of the sale or something. I've got a way that a contractor can actually get paid to provide the estimate. Now, of course you're going to offer free estimates, and you give that and you provide that. Okay. I'm not saying don't do that. But in providing them more value, you can actually get paid for your estimate. And I'm not going to give that secret away. That's kind of one of the bonus program, bonus items that I provide in the program. Easy way that you can actually be paid to provide an estimate. And it really helps the client. Okay. That's the key. They're gonna actually want to buy it from you. It's not a profit center. It's just something to help pay for the gas. And again, it's about helping them.

So, Tony, tell me about your book. What's one strategy you'd recommend for anyone considering business? Book publishing?

My book. Yeah. Thank you, Mario. You actually, you gave me a nice testimonial for my book, and I appreciate that. That's something that you want to, you know when. If you do a book. We spoke about that earlier, but get some testimonials and put it in the front of it. Right. Why not? You should actually have them for your proposals and stuff and your work and on your website. It's a good place to display them. Not even actually on another tab. You can have them on another tab all in of themselves however, but you'd want to put a little short quote every so often on your page. So that's a key testimonials.

All right, Tony, shortest path to the cash. What's one thing contractors could and should do to increase their profits the fastest?

Okay, so shortest path to cash. Again I'm going to suggest that it's follow up and why? Because you, you in my industry. Anyways, you've probably got some bids out there and you've got some stuff that you put out there. Follow up with people. Okay, Just call them up and hey, do you got any questions? Is there anything I can help you with? Clarify something for you that is quickest. Hello, Quickest path to cash. I want to provide them with a couple bonuses. I'm going to give you a copy of my book, a PDF copy and actually a flip copy. It's like a book. I've got two versions of it, a PDF and a book copy. Love to share with you there. Yeah, there you go. Excellent, Mario. Thank you. Tony at Marketing Blueprint for contractors with an s dot com. You email me there and you've got to say please PDF copy. Mario. I want to give Mario the credit here, so to speak. A great guy and I enjoy doing this with him and I want to give him the credit he's due for that. Promoting this as well. I want to give you another bonus here if you qualify, that is. I just, I just love helping people. Would you rather do business with company A, B or C? A has one star, one review. Company B has three stars, two reviews. Or would you rather do business with company c who has 241 reviews, a star rating of 4.8. Google loves reviews and consumers do as well. 97% of consumers look for online reviews. 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Can you believe that? 85% of consumers. And then the bottom one, 68% of consumers left a review when asked have a review tool that will help you get four and five star reviews. And I want to give it to you for free for 30 days, free trial if you qualify. Now I can't give it to everybody. I've only got a certain amount every month that I give out. But when you request the book, I put that text information and put it in this graphical information so Bottom line, I want to help you get good Google reviews and I got a service that does it. I'll give it to you for free if you qualify. I've only got a certain amount each month and I've actually given some away to the Chamber of Commerce for this month. I might be able, I can squeeze in a few more. Tony Bernard Marketing Blueprint for Contractors the subject must be please PDF copy. Mario, that's kind of a weird way of writing it, but in the body of it. Please put apply for Google review tool and then we're going to talk and see if I can provide it to you for free. I most likely will be able to, but I need to make sure that you qualify. And again, I've got a certainly certain amount I do each month for free and this will help you get Google reviews. Who doesn't want Google reviews? You need a consistent steady flow of four and five stars. One for Google Juice to help you with searches and two to help you possibly get in the three pack if you aren't already there. That will work in your favor. Plus consumers want to see current reviews, not year or two old reviews because that doesn't. That makes it look like you're not, you're not still on the top of your game. You need to be on the top of your game both for Google and consumers.

Tony, I want to say thank you for coming on the show. It's been great to have you here. Love the information you shared and for anyone that wants it, you know they can get it and you provided it. Thank you so much for coming on.

Awesome job. Yes, thank you sir. You did a great job and thank you.

Looking forward to talking with you again. Thanks again. And we're gonna go to the sponsor.

Awesome job. Yes, thank you sir. You did a great job at. Thank you.

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