Advice For New Contractors - How To Create Unlimited Lead Flow

What's up? Welcome to the channel. My name is Tanner Smith. If you're here, you're probably a new contractor or home service operator that wants to scale and unlock $100,000 months consistently. Today we're gonna be focusing on the advice I would give to somebody starting out that wants to actually unlock $100,000 months, how to change your mindset, and actually the steps and process that it takes to get there. Let's dive right in. So ultimately the biggest piece of advice I can give you and the main takeaway from today is that if you don't have leads, You don't have a business. You're simply still trading your time for money. You have a glorified J-O-B. If you can't spell, that's job. And you're taking on all of the risk for very little upside. So you have to, number one, learn and understand how to generate leads and the entire process of what that looks like. The most successful contractors, the most successful home service operators in your area, are not the people that provide the best quality of service. In fact, you've probably fixed some of the jobs that they've done. It's all about being the best marketed. Now, I can't control how great you are at your job. I hope that you know what you're doing, that you can provide a great quality service. It's going to help you scale and grow and create repeat customers. What I can help you to do today is understand how to become the best marketed contractor or home service operator in your local area. So ultimately, let's just dive right in here. Every single dollar starts with the lead. The dollar that you generate with your business, it comes from a single lead. So step 1 is you generate leads, you then close deals, you get sales, you get cash, and you grow and build your business. It's really not that complicated. If you don't have leads, you don't have sales. A business with no cash isn't a business, it's just a hobby. So let's transform how you're able to go from just being an accidental contractor or stumbling into being a home service business to an actual 7-figure-plus operator. And that's the main mindset shift you have to make if you're just starting out right now. I hear it a lot. The first few months, you might think You're gonna think to yourself, this is easy. I kind of stumbled into this. I've got friends, family members, neighbors. I got people from church calling me. The calendar is filling itself. I'm starting to see dollar signs. Maybe that's what you're going through right now. And if that's the case, amazing. Milk it for all it's worth. And I promise it's going to end. What ends up happening after this first few months is it's gonna suddenly stop. You're gonna tap your organic network and you're gonna think to yourself, where did everybody go? The warm list you have is gonna run out, phone's gonna go quiet, and then you're gonna realize you had no real systems in place to generate people consistently. And And that's where the real operators get started and are able to scale, where people that are just hobbyists will slowly go out of the market. So the rule that I want to implement is for your first 3 years, okay, your free time is marketing time. If you really want to get ahead, you're going to have to be willing to invest. If you have more free time than money, I talk about this a lot on this channel, you have to be willing to do the things that people aren't going to be doing in your area so that you then ultimately can invest into marketing, you can invest into advertising and accelerate and dramatically improve your lead flow. So ultimately, I want you to block about 2 hours a day for prospecting, content, and relationships, and ultimately nurturing those relationships so you can keep the phone ringing even after your organic list runs out. So here's the reality of being new to business, okay? You can get leads in 2 ways. You can either pay for them— that's option A. That's gonna be your own advertising, lead sites, going with lead aggregators like Angie. Maybe you hire an agency. Now, it can work, but it's risky. It takes a ton of cash to do it, and if you don't have the right partner or know what you're doing, you're gonna get burned. That sounds crazy coming from a marketing agency owner, but guess what? Not all agencies are created equal, especially if you don't have an existing way of holding them accountable, a process and system, an expectation of what you're willing to pay for a lead. So if you're just starting out, might not be a good fit for you. The second option is option B. You have to earn them. And this is ultimately going to come down to the relationships, content being seen around town. It's going to cost you time instead of money, but it's going to compound and help you build a brand so that you ultimately can then go pay for them. You can actually scale your advertising like I was saying. Here's your 4 channels to start getting your first leads. Number 1, local networking. Number 2, social media. 3, neighborhood domination. And number 4, website and content. Let's dive right into the first one, local networking. Go out and meet the people who already have your customers. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to go in and figure out how do I go and find these people and generate these leads out of thin air. Okay, you could literally get out and with the right relationships, get in front of more homeowners and more customers than you could ever do on your own. So that's kind of the main thing. Go after interior designers, home inspectors, real estate agents, property managers, other trades. Find a local business chamber or a BNI group potentially. Get in there and build those relationships. I've done a whole other training on 32 different ways you can go and actually find leads and build relationships. Go and check out that training if you're interested. But at a quick glance, local networking is a great way for you to actually get your business going and actually get outside of your organic group. So here's one thing I want you to do. Figure out a simple no-pitch intro And it's a numbers game. So you're going to get rejected. You're going to have a ton of people mark you as spam. You're not going to get in front of everybody or get calls back from everybody. But if you actually find a simple no-pitch intro and you send it every single day via DMs or texting or calling, you're going to build a Rolodex of people that you can have productive conversations with, that you can take them out to lunch, you can get to know them, you can solve their problems and work together. So this is a simple one that I've come up with here. Hi, name. I'm actually Tanner with, you know, Paragon Windows. It's a window replacement company here in Houston, Texas. You know, you are XYZ, an interior designer, or you're a real estate agent. You know, we ultimately do what you do. We help you, you know, generate, you know, more customers. We help your customers actually get into homes faster. We help you sell more homes because of our strategic relationships and how fast we're able to do installs. List out whatever you do specific to the actual person and their needs and their wants and how they can make more money. Seems like we should know each other. Are you open to a quick coffee this week? You open to a quick phone call? You open for me to take you out to lunch? Right? Numbers game. If you send 100 of these, you'll probably get 50 responses. Of the 50 responses, you'll probably be able to book about 10 to 15 lunch appointments. Of those 10 to 15 lunch appointments, you should probably be able to get 1 to 5 that turn into a real relationship. Just right there in 100 messages, you can probably have 10 to, you know, 1 to 5 real relationships that will start sending you leads consistently. One great partner can send you work for years. Completely unrelated industry, right? But at Syndicate Marketing, we have a ton of different referral relationships as well. One of the ones we've built has sent us 200 clients over the last 5 years. That's substantial. That's millions of dollars in revenue for me and my business partner to grow our infrastructure, feed families, hire more qualified talent, reinvest back into our advertising. It's one relationship that has unlocked Tons of doors for us. You could literally find a way to do the same thing with your home service or your, or your construction business. Channel number 2 here, social media. Recognize that you have a movie studio in your pocket. I mean, doesn't cost you anything to whip out your camera, shoot videos, shoot before and afters of your jobs, get video testimonials of your customers and clients that you're working with. A lot of times people are like, well, Tanner, I just feel icky. I feel like I don't want to actually get my, get my phone out. I don't want to shoot a video. I don't like the way I look on camera. Guess what? Nobody does. Nobody likes it. But do you like making money? Because that's one of the biggest barriers to entry right now moving into 2027 is being able to actually leverage and use this tool right here. So one of the big questions we get asked is, Tanner, like, I'm, I'm happy to, to pull my camera out. I just don't know what type of content to shoot. Don't worry, I got you. So here they are. Number 1, job site photos with context. I want you to walk through a job site, show and explain what you're doing, the attention to detail that you and your crews take, and why. Somebody, a homeowner that's looking for that service or has that need or that concern or problem or question, they will see that, that video. We could potentially run it as an ad, and they're gonna be interested in what you're doing. It's naturally gonna create more relevance and trust with, with your customer or with your, with your homeowner. Recognize you don't need this thing to go viral. You don't need tens of thousands of views. You need a handful of very targeted views to a very specific piece of content. Doing it consistently, if somebody finds your social media, starts going through it, they're naturally gonna be that much more emotionally involved and engaged with you and know and feel like you can solve their problem for them. Another thing here, answers to common questions. So go on a list of— go get a piece of paper and write down 100 of the— I call them buyer decision questions or frequently asked questions that you get as you're doing estimates, quotes, and actually fulfilling the service for homeowners of whatever you do. You should be able to list at least 100 of them. Go through and on each and every one of those questions or problems or concerns that they might have, shoot a quick 30 to 45 second video of you Answering that completely, that one question, and then post it. By the way, we can actually run these as ads later on. And people that are on the fence that might have seen your ads, maybe booked an estimate with you, maybe, you know, fell through and you never ended up talking to them or getting an in-home consultation, we can actually run those as ads. So they actually start seeing you again consistently show up on their social media. And ultimately, if they're in the market, who are they more likely to go with, the contractor or the home service operator? that they've seen dozens of videos of that has answered their questions, that has shown their quality of work, or the random guy that they find on Google with no context? It's pretty simple. Next here, shoutouts to your people. Show that you're a real business. Talk about your vendors, talk about your hires, showcase the accolades or achievements or trainings or certifications that they might have. Just showing a little bit of personality as to who you are and what you do is really big. Now this is important though. This is not gonna be your unique selling proposition. So I often hear sometimes, You know, or see ads for a local roofer, hypothetically, that might say, hey, you know, we're, we're family owned and operated for 35 years. Nobody cares. Okay? Nobody cares that you are family owned and operated or that you're employee owned. Okay? That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about giving specific shoutouts to people on your social media. But if you actually go to run an advertisement, you're focusing on solving the specific needs and pains of your ideal clients, the homeowners that you're working with. This is simply just going to be more stuff you can add your social media to give you a little bit more of a well-rounded approach and angle to show how much more personable you might be, personality of your organization. People ultimately like to do business with people they like. And then lastly here, short personal videos. So after completing a job, after you actually, you know, get to give a quote, shooting a quick video, sending it directly to the homeowner, texting it to them goes a long way. It's not just something like that. You know, as an AI automation. There's a lot of automations. We have AI voice agents, for example, that work with a lot of our clients that we've built and installed that help to make sure people don't slip through the cracks. And that's all fine and dandy, but being able to literally just shoot a quick video and just appreciate or thank somebody or give somebody kind of the next steps, it just feels a little bit more personalized. And once again, takes no effort, it's completely free. You have a movie, movie studio right here in your pocket. So third channel here, okay, I call this neighborhood domination. Recognize that every single job that you do is a door to the next 5 jobs, and ultimately they have neighbors. So if this is today's job, you have people surrounding the neighborhood. Depending on the neighborhood, they might be closer in radius, they might be further away, but regardless, this is an opportunity for you to go and talk, introduce yourself to the neighbors. Now, one thing you shouldn't do is just go with a big pitch unless you're really comfortable with what you're doing there, right? Don't go in there and say, hey, what's up? I'm doing John's, you know, backyard, or we're doing John's basement. Uh, you know, I want to talk to you about your basement as well. I mean, that takes, you know, some gumption, and I'm sure it could work. But really, one thing you want to do is just introduce yourself and show that you're professional. And one way that I've seen that work really, really well is just say, hey, what's up? My name is Tanner. I'm with Paragon Windows. I just wanted to let you know we're working on XYZ neighbor's home next door. We're gonna be here for the next couple of hours, next couple days. We're gonna be moving things in, replacing all of their windows. They're gonna get a whole new look to their home. And if our trucks are ever in the way, here's my card. Just call me. I never want to be a nuisance to you. So My guys might, you know, be pulling their trucks over here. We might get in your driveway. Just want to let you know, here's my card. And, you know, just, just, just want to make sure that we're not going to be an inconvenience to you. Okay, that alone gets the card in the door and starts the opportunity for a conversation like, oh well, you know, interesting. I've actually, you know, need a new window in my backyard. Or do you guys also do doors? I was thinking getting a new sliding door. Something of that nature is a great way for you then to just have a natural conversation. It doesn't feel pushy. It doesn't create that sales resistance that a lot of door-to-door guys might get. Now, if you're Dude, I don't care. I'm a door-to-door salesman. Great. Leverage the fact that you're actually in the neighborhood and you're working on, you know, John or the neighbor's home. Go for it. But ultimately, that's a huge, huge thing you can do. Another way you can level up is turn every job site into a billboard. So go and figure out how to be seen. Make it more of like a production when you're in the neighborhood so that everyone who's driving by and the neighbors, once you're actually there knocking, they're seeing the professionalism, they're seeing what you're doing. Couple things you do is a yard sign out front. Get some bandit signs, make a really professional sign saying, hey, Hey, you know, Paragon Windows or whatever your company name is. We're installing, we're doing this, we're working on this company, or working on this homeowner's home. Leave some door hangers on the nearby homes, letting them know what you're up to. And once again, we're happy to move trucks. Sorry, we're gonna be in the way. It's gonna be maybe a little bit loud over the next couple of days. Okay, just a little bit more professional. Big thing here, make sure people have company shirts. Make sure your crew looks good. If it's just like a ragtag team of misfits, right, naturally they're gonna kind of maybe have some resistance to what you're doing, but they show up, they're professional, right? They get some shirts, they have some corporate branded swag. Once again, it just is that extra degree of professionalism that not a lot of other home service operators or contractors are going to do or have. And then another thing here is maybe think about vehicle wraps. I know for my business, my home service business that we, we do, um, we actually get like a big pop-up tent and, you know, we'll actually set it up in the yard and have our branded logos on everything, our yard sign. And then ultimately, we, after every single Every single home that we work with or every job that we install, we put a little yard sign in the home, in the front yard with our logo saying that this is a home and that they actually have a QR code to scan to actually book an appointment with my team again. And legally, contractually, we make them say that they're going to leave that in their yard for 1 year after a job installation. And that has been huge. Gets us a lot more referrals, starts conversations. You know, friends, family members might come over and they're like, hey, what's up with the, you know, yard sign in the front? Like, did you just get new windows? Opens the door to all sorts of opportunities. Another thing thing here, mailers before and after can be some way if you have a little bit more money, with a little bit more money than time, okay, you can actually go in pre-mail a specific neighbor saying, hey, we're starting a project on your street, and then sending mailers after saying, hey, see why your neighbors chose us. This is a little bit more aggressive, but it is something you could do if you want to even level up further. So the 4th channel here, website and content. Ultimately, the goal of a website and your content on the website is to build a salesperson that will work for you 24/7. Your social media is of course a lot like that, right? They're, they're selling, they're pre-selling, Persuading, they're, you know, answering questions with those different buyer decision question videos we just talked about. But your website can be much more aggressive and lead people towards an actual conversation than your social media can be. And what's really funny to me is that when it comes to equipment for your business, like the new truck or trailer, or, you know, the new pressure washer, sprayer, whatever you're doing, I hear it's a tale as old as time, like you'll throw it on the credit card, you'll, you'll throw it on the SBA loan, you know, it's, it's a necessary expense for doing business. But when it relates to a website, what I refer to as your digital real estate, people are often hesitating. I just have never understood that as an agency owner or somebody who actually owns and operates my own businesses. I want my websites to perform, to generate me consistent leads that can be tracked, that can be attributable back to an actual click, that I can see that it actually is generating me revenue. That's something that every business needs. So the key here is that, you know, don't go and just spend a ton of money on a website. Go and actually find the right website that will accomplish the goals that you have and help help sell jobs for you that will consistently generate you revenue in a way that you can track and you can measure. So what that means, what that looks like, is your site needs to speak to your ideal customer. It needs to answer real questions. It needs to have articles, videos, content assets there that will help somebody who's in the process of doing due diligence or looking or researching that you actually are legitimate, that you know what you're doing. And I also need you to add new content every week. So what I mean by that is blog articles, updating your Google Business Profile listing, making sure that you are a living, breathing, evolving thing. Your website's a direct reflection of that. There's a whole training we do on websites, what it looks like, how to set it up inside of my school community. And in fact, we actually do this for you and give you access to all of our website templates that you can actually copy and paste and have it up and running for free if that's what you're looking for. But ultimately, just know that you don't have to spend an arm and a leg on a website that will actually work for you. My team can literally give it to you for free. You can set it up and run it and build it yourself. Not difficult to do. Or if you do want somebody to do it for you, I got— I know a guy. And then one thing here is your site also needs to make it really really easy to call or book an appointment. Sometimes it's multiple clicks, uh, there's a lot of different redirects, your calendar, your booking system isn't easy. So we've added widgets, AI voice agents, calendars. The call to action buttons on the site is really crystal clear of what you're looking to accomplish and what you're looking to do. Going back to it, okay, here's what the 2-hour marketing block looks like now that you know what you can do. I've literally given you a ton of different things, these 4 pillars, if you will, of, of getting leads. Here's how you can fill it and create a daily routine that will actually move the needle for you, help you get to that $100K month. So 30 minutes, spend 30 minutes every day networking, send 3 to 5 intros, follow up with all your referral partners, go and find the businesses and the right relationships and reach out to them. 20 minutes, post, create videos, go and capture content from today's job site, post it with some context, maybe shoot some new videos. Doesn't need to be crazy. Literally pull this dang thing out and shoot some videos. Just get over the embarrassment and the cringe, if you will, of you know, oh my gosh, what am I gonna look like online? This is going to literally put you ahead of everybody else in your area because everybody else feels that same way when it comes to this phone. They are willing to consume, but they're not willing to create. If you become a creator, you can literally leverage it to your advantage. Spend 30 minutes going through the neighborhood of every single job that you're doing for every single person that you're currently working with and just drop off mailers, have conversations, Introduce yourself. Once again, you might want to play around with a specific pitch. You might just want to introduce yourself. But whatever you do, spending 30 minutes in every single neighborhood that you're in is invaluable. Lastly here, 40 minutes. Go and create new content. Go write new articles. I mean, in 40 minutes, you can literally use different AI engines to create 40 to 100 different article blogs. Go and think of different videos, you know, buyer decision question videos. Maybe there's long-form content that you want to do. Whatever it is, focus 40 minutes every single day on creating some piece of content, some new form of content, and then just post that on your, on your 20-minute section block here. It's much better. I've heard of a lot of people, what they'll do is they'll block out certain days, like maybe Monday or Tuesday, all day is dedicated to content. I've tried that personally, and you know what, hasn't worked for me. My advice to you is just to take a little bit of time every single day 40 minutes here and create new content every day. This is gonna make it so it's relevant. It's, you know, you're posting it, you're building momentum in real time, and it's not this overwhelming thing that you're constantly thinking of. Like, oh man, I need to go create in one day like 15, 20, 30 different videos. You can get burned out and it feels like it's this giant mountain to climb. Just start doing 40 minutes a day, post whatever you can do, and just start building momentum from there. Now, putting it all together, this is where the real value and the real sauce comes because if you can do these things organically, just every single day for 2 hours without investing any real money into it. As you're getting momentum and traction, you're actually growing and building your revenue, you can add more channels. So ultimately, this is kind of what the staircase looks like in terms of how to really scale your operation. Stage number 1, spend time. This is $0. All the things that we just talked about here— networking, daily posts, door knocking— literally costs you nothing but maybe 2 hours a day. Once you have momentum and traction, okay, your first profits, get seen clean. Go and buy the yard signs, get the door hangers, get your corporate swag, your shirts, your truck wrapped. It doesn't have to be crazy, but I don't know, $2,000 to $3,000 investing into little things like that can go a long way. Once you're kind of past that, stage 3 is really when you start building the foundation. This is when you're going to build your website, have your 5-star review system in place, your AI chat widget, your voice agent in place that will actually book appointments and jobs for you, have a really great CRM that you can track every single lead that comes through your pipe, have reactivation campaigns, automations, text messages that are going out and getting people back on a calendar that might not have shown up to an appointment. I mean, there's a lot of things that we can do here. There's an entire training on this whole stage, by the way, and it's something that we talk about in our school community if you want to join for free. But this is where that foundational piece really is going to pay off dividends for years to come. And then ultimately, stage 4 here, this is if you're ready to scale. This is where we turn on our growth operating system. This is where you then run Meta ads, Google ads. You build specific creatives just for ads, dedicated landing pages for the specific offers that you're running. You track everything back to revenue and you can measure everything in real time. So once again, this is super effective on stage 4 if you have these other 3 stages first, these pieces in motion. But if you want to just go start running ads immediately without these 3 things first, you're probably going to end up burning through a lot of cash and ultimately calling me and saying, hey, I worked with an agency and, you know, they, they charged me $3,000 a month. I didn't see anything for 6 months. So this doesn't work for my business. Okay, that's not an excuse that's gonna work anymore. You need to take responsibility for your actions, implement these 3 stages first, and then ultimately then turn on the Growth Operating System so you can really have it be as effective as possible. Once again, if you do wanna learn more about what the Growth Operating System looks like, join my school community, and honestly, we can hop on a call and walk through it. So here's what the Growth Operating System actually looks like in real time and why it's so effective at scaling the other 3 stages before it. So what you're gonna do by hand is you're gonna go networking and you're gonna do it With the system that we'll implement, we'll create a review system that will turn every job into proof for you. We'll actually reach out to your customers, find new people, new relationships, run ads to them, build them and get them to book calls with you instead of you trying to knock with them and network with them. It's going to be totally different to what you're accustomed to doing. But if you're good at networking, if you're good at door knocking, actually pitching your service, getting in the door, when people come to you that are warm and already pre-framed and persuaded based on the content, the system that we'll create for you, it's gonna be that much easier to close deals. The challenge that I've seen before is if you are just starting out, you have no clue how to quote a job. You have no clue how to close a job. You have no idea how to actually generate value for a potential referral relationship that will send you leads. Okay, getting them to actually book an appointment with you is just gonna be a waste of money because you won't be able to get it across the finish line. That's one thing to consider when you're just posting daily. You're boosting your videos. That's a great habit to get into, but you're not going to be getting in front of people that are in real time looking most intently hottest traffic for your exact services. We're going to literally build. Specific ad creatives that the algorithm will use. They'll scrape, crawl, and interpret it and put it right in front of the homeowners that have the highest probability of transacting with you. And it'll actually create follow-up landing pages that will book you appointments, get people pre-framed on your calendar, and ultimately we will then follow up with them so they show up to the appointments ready to buy and ultimately ready to transact with you. So this one here, having a website, weekly content, blog articles, updating things on your site, etc., you can do it. But ultimately, if you want my team to do it, we'll create you a whole conversion website for you. We'll build out your CRM, we'll connect your website and your CRM and all of your marketing channels so that you can get accurate reporting in real time of how your website is performing, where every single lead is coming from, what marketing channel is generating the lead, so that we can ultimately then scale and reinvest back into the highest performing channels and turn off the channels that aren't working for you. That's how we optimize and create efficient marketing budgets. And then following up by hand, you're probably going to be sending text messages, keeping people in a Rolodex on your phone, sending personal emails. That's great. You should start there. But if you're ready to actually have a system do it for you, that will follow up with AI chat, book people on your calendars, do database reactivation sequences to get people to rebook on your calendar and ultimately old customers to transact with you again, we can handle that whole system for you. Now, I recognize you might not be there yet, and that's totally fine. But if you are in a position Where this sounds interesting for you, go ahead and join my school community, or in the description below, book an appointment with my team. We're happy to get on a call with you and walk through the system and see if it is a perfect fit. Now, 4 things for you to do this week. Here's some homework, some takeaways. Number 1, list 10 referral partners, send intro to 3 of them. Number 2, create social media videos from, from your recent jobs and post from the job site every day for 7 days. I also want you to go knock 5 doors around your next job. Don't even worry about pitching, just introduce yourself and see what happens from those conversations. I'd be shocked if you at least didn't get one really high-quality conversation that potentially turns into an estimate. And then lastly here, block 2 hours a day on your calendar for just the next week to invest into these different systems to generate more leads. And obviously that can go up. You can maybe do 3 or 4 hours, but don't get carried away. Just create consistency and take action right now. Now, if you made it here to the end of this video, congratulations. I've mentioned in the video about joining our school community. Here's the invite. It's called Scale to 7, and it's all about helping home service business owners build and scale multi-seven-figure business. It's all about helping home service business owners and contractors create and scale to a 7+ figure a year business. What you're going to get in this community is really kind of main 3 main things: our Contractor's Blueprint, everything step-by-step framework for building, scaling, and creating a multi-seven-figure business. You're gonna get trainings like this one, much more in-depth detail, walking you step by step how to implement every single thing in detail. And then last but not least, you're gonna get access to a ton of different business owners just like you that are on the same path, going through the same trenches, overcoming and solving the same problems that you are and getting in a room with a bunch of like-minded people, great things happen. So ultimately, here's the link. It's also in the description below. Go ahead and join us in there completely free. My job is just to help you by actually helping you so that when you are ready to actually scale your business and work with an agency, naturally you're gonna want to work with me and my team. So thanks so much for joining. If you found this training useful, like and subscribe to the channel. I'll see you in the next video.