May 11, 2025 • 37 mins
Tyler Dunigan shares how he built a platform of brands providing turnover services to the largest property managers in the US, growing from painting to flooring, bathtub refinishing, and patented products.
• Understanding your target audience is critical – Tyler discovered property managers were his key clients, not property owners
• Data-driven marketing decisions are more effective than relying on assumptions
• Analyzing client budgets revealed opportunities for additional services within the same customer base
• The "Edge Strategy" concept helps identify adjacent business opportunities within arm's reach
• Looking at the market size and potential before developing products helps validate business ideas
• Testing different marketing messages and website versions shows what resonates with different customer segments
• Personal branding is becoming increasingly important as "social capital."
• Only 4-5% of LinkedIn users post weekly, creating an opportunity for those who consistently share content
• Network effects within your own business ecosystem can drive exponential growth
• Baby boomer businesses changing hands create massive opportunities in traditional industries
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing,
your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential, let's get
started.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Howdy.
Welcome back to anotherfun-filled episode of the
Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
I am changing a lot aboutwhat's going on, as you know.
I've been talking about thepodcast name's going to be
changing.
We're doing additional branding, we're doing the mastermind
group.
We've been growing as a companyand we've been exploring new
(00:42):
avenues and hopefully you'lllike the new format.
As we've expanded out.
We're going to build these intoplaylists.
So, if you have a particularinterest, a lot of people ask
well, hey, where do I getstarted with this, where do I
get started with that?
And you know this podcast isgoing to fall into the like
entrepreneurial category forpeople that want to make some
(01:04):
money.
I think a lot of people want tomake a lot of money and they
think the internet can do it,and they're absolutely right.
And so I wanted to bring on aguest that has done that same
thing multiple times.
He's on the Inc 5000 list, he'sgrown and scaled multiple
(01:24):
companies.
He's actually in a niche spacethat I recently heard about that
I do believe is booming, and heagreed to come on.
So, tyler, great to have you on, buddy.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Matt, I'm stoked to be here.
I can't wait to get into it andtalk opportunities and
everything else around thosethings.
Excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Awesome man.
Well, you know, we we candefinitely talk um some personal
branding as well for anybodylistening to this podcast, cause
I I think that, um, one of thebiggest things that is important
in any kind of deal that youget into is people need to know
who you are, and people need toyou know there's, there's some
virtue signaling that has tohappen today, like I think that
(02:06):
that's starting to become thenew social capital, you know
like, absolutely agree.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
That's one of the reasons why I'm on, and I'm sure
your other guests do the same.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Right, like so.
So I mean now, uh, you're goingto go meet somebody, right,
whether it be sales or you knowyou're, you're doing a deal of
any sort.
You're going to go search themon Google, right, you're going
to go look at their LinkedInprofile.
You're going to try to, likeyou know, weigh them up, value
them up, like who?
Who is this person I'm meeting?
And and then you can find outso much more.
(02:38):
One of the things I did is whenI was in in sales, I I got, I
won this pharmaceutical contestright out of school for
GlaxoSmithKline and so I becamea farm rep out in Florida.
That was like kind of my firstcareer, first job from sales,
but I always leveraged marketing.
I won that contest throughmarketing, and when I was
(03:01):
selling people, I used to havetwo business cards.
Okay, one was the business cardof who I was representing at
the business and the other onewas my personal blog because I
wanted people to see who I was.
And this is when, like, you'rebuilding like a, a really wanky
site, okay, um, and I mean thesewere in the websites when the
(03:22):
stuff like moving gifts were thething, right, like the whole
site, like, like, like.
So I just trying to trying todate myself there, um, but it
was really important that.
I mean, you know, facebook waswas, uh, only in colleges, right
, like it was only in collegesand and it was the cool thing to
(03:42):
be part of.
But not everybody had aFacebook.
People couldn't go look up yourFacebook and you were just
poking people at that point onFacebook, if you remember, and
so you know, social media wasn'tdeveloped that much.
I can tell you I was probablyone of the first people on
LinkedIn and I was.
I was doing I was running astaffing company, so I flipped
(04:03):
the staffing company.
In my 20s.
Everybody would go on LinkedInand they would put their resume
on there.
If you knew, if they werebuilding out their profile, they
were looking for a job.
It was great vision.
This is where I grew up.
Also, I would tell you that mymom was one of the first people
(04:24):
from Microsoft, and so I wasplaying online games with her
employees and became friendswith a number of people from
Microsoft that went on to docrazy things.
I mean like, if you look at the, you know people that came out
of Microsoft.
I mean someone that used to runStarbucks.
I mean I can go down the list,like venture capital, but like,
(04:48):
okay, this is about you, dude,and one of the things that I'm
seeing, okay, is there's a lotof people that listen, that know
marketing and have anentrepreneurial flair, whether
they're at the end of theircareer and they're stepping out.
I'm seeing a lot of people moveinto the consulting space when
they worked at a big company andwhat they're realizing is they
(05:10):
don't have that big brand behindthem anymore.
It doesn't open the doors,right, and so they have to step
back and they have to buildtheir, their personal reputation
, right, and who they are andwhat they did.
And you got to tell that story.
And so give me your pitch as weget into this.
Give me your pitch on who youare and what you do, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, I would love to .
So in a nutshell, I am alifelong entrepreneur.
I'm 34 years old, so I like tosay I'm still early-ish in my
journey, but I've been involvedin real estate from flipping
houses to managing them togetting into multifamily.
I managed a quarter billiondollars of assets under
(05:51):
management.
That's when I really learnedthe space.
I built companies for high networth individuals.
They would hire me.
I would be a consultant.
Hey, I need to build this thing, help me out here and you just
learn how to structure things.
Fast forward.
I got involved in managingmultifamily apartments, like I
mentioned, and when I was in italthough it was corporate
(06:15):
America, it was a big job andall those good things I got to
brag at the family reunion aboutthem.
I hated it.
And that's when I saw theopportunity for the companies I
left to start and today I own acompany called TurnServe and
that is a platform of brands.
I got to start them all.
It's my playground, for lack ofbetter words.
And in a nutshell, we provideturnover services and solutions
(06:36):
for the largest propertymanagers in the US and we
provide convenience turnkeyservices such as painting
Example, I own the companyapartmentpainterscom, I own
apartmentflooringcom, I ownLiquid Liner and all these other
ones and all of those roll upand we go to market as turn
serve and we say, hey, we couldhelp you with convenience here,
(06:57):
we can get your units ready foryou.
We've innovated, we've builtsome products.
We've patented a coupleproducts in that space as well,
and we've innovated, we've builtsome products, we've patented a
couple products in that spaceas well, and we're building out
software in addition to allthose things to bring it all
together.
So, collectively, I am just arelentless entrepreneur.
I'm always busy in a good way.
I can't sit still to save mylife, and I just love creating
solutions that can scale.
(07:18):
I don't want a job forever, soI always build companies with
the exit in mind, and a lot ofthat is around sales and
marketing first and then thesolution second, and that's also
something that we can dive intotoday about some of the largest
service brands in the worldbeing sales and marketing
agencies first.
So, in a nutshell, that's me.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, no, the world started to flip on its head
right the world started to flipon its head as, uh, as I mean,
today you can reach more peoplethrough marketing, uh, in more
ways than the big brands coulddream of years ago.
Right, um, I mean, you know oneof the one of the, the key
things that no one's doing?
Okay, post once a day onwhatever platform you say.
(08:03):
I'll tell you, 4% of people, Ithink or 5% of people maybe it's
a little bit higher than that,I think, but it's probably
pretty close to that Globallyare the ones that actually post
once a week on LinkedIn.
That's it.
Everybody else is consumingcontent.
Wow, right, like, look at thatopportunity.
There's so much opportunity.
Youtube is the platform thatmore people are on longer than
(08:27):
any other platform.
People want to get their news,people want to get their
information, and if you're aheavy YouTube user, you know
that there are gaps.
There are gaps in what you'researching for, what you want.
So, like, the industry startingto mature, but there's still
huge opportunity.
Right, there's people that have, but there's always going to be
people ahead of you.
(08:48):
There's going to be peoplebehind you, but, but every
platform, there's an opportunityto build your personal brand on
that, right, and and and.
Marketing for companies helpsthem tell their story, right,
and that means you can connectwith more customers.
So you know, let's say there'ssome property managers out here,
(09:08):
right, and they've heard aboutyou.
I mean one to many.
You're reaching so many people,right, you don't even know how
many people you're reaching.
And then there's repurposingtheir sharing of the content,
like the number one thing thatGary Vanderchuck says
everybody's heard of Gary Veecause he cusses all the time,
right, um, or, or, if you like,wine, um, uh.
(09:29):
I've heard him on at South bySouthwest and some marketing
conferences and he's actuallylike a super nice dude and he's
very smart.
Like, if you get through thecuss words of like, what are you
saying?
He's saying like social media,you're going to grow your.
You're going to grow yourcompany, leveraging it more than
any other thing that you coulddo.
He goes, you'll cancel yourmeetings.
(09:50):
You know your sales meetings.
If you knew that you could justget on social media and you can
tell your story, I can tell you.
Right now we're landing at ouragency, ewr digital, a hundred
million dollar companies leftand right.
Okay, inbound.
That changes all the the the B2Bsales process on his head,
cause, man, I get sucked intolike these lunches.
(10:11):
I do not want to sit down for atwo hour lunch in the middle of
day.
That crushes my whole day Right.
And in Houston I got to drivesomewhere.
I got to sit down.
I don't know who these peopleare, but what?
What is that?
What are people doing?
Okay, they're trying to, um,get to seven hours.
Okay, they're trying to get toknow you for seven hours.
(10:32):
That's what conferences areabout.
That's what everything's about.
Getting to seven hours.
Then you're going to know, likeand trust somebody.
That's like the magic threshold.
Um, actually, in dating, too,you know I'm I'm married, but
you know, in dating too, it'sseven hours, different locations
, multiple platforms.
Okay, 7-11-4.
That's the magic number thatGoogle's done a lot of research
(10:55):
to come up with Seven hours ofcontent.
See your brand name 11 times onfour different platforms.
That's the framework that weoperate under, and if you think
about any major brand, anythingthat you bought in, anything
that you've had interest inmovies, I mean, it goes anywhere
.
That that's what people arelooking for, and and so you can
take marketing, you can apply itto any product, and I know
(11:17):
you've done that, and so I wantto hear about some of these
businesses uh, maybe some casestudies of things that you've
done.
You've identified thisopportunity which, when you're
trying to sell something,identify something that's very
expensive.
What's the most expensive thingthat people own?
What's their biggest asset?
It's their house.
When you get into biggernumbers, you manage more money.
(11:38):
You get a bigger percentage.
You make more value forsomebody.
Based on that, mostmillionaires in the past have
made their money in real estate.
So I think it's a great placefor people and I think there's a
lot of opportunity.
Tell me how archaic it is,where you kind of saw
opportunities early on.
Tell me a little bit more aboutthe origin story.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, of course.
So you said it well, sellsomething that's expensive,
right, or go after things whereit generates a lot of money.
It well, sell something that'sexpensive, right, or go after
things where it generates a lotof money.
And for me, when I was younger,you look up to people that are
successful and killing it,crushing it, all those things
and they were in real estate Isaid, okay, cool, I have no
money, but I'm willing to work,let me try it out.
Well, same concept.
You look at a house.
(12:18):
You can buy it for 70 grand,put a hundred into it and sell
for 300, you know that printscash.
For me, that wasn't quite bigenough yet, and so that's when I
started to look at the marketholistically All right, what's
bigger than single family realestate?
It's multifamily.
And so what I do when I look atsomething, I want to make sure
that I'm not getting involvedwith a dying dinosaur of a space
(12:39):
.
Sometimes that createsopportunity.
A lot of the times it's gettingabandoned for a reason, and
that's you have to look like.
For me in the in themultifamily housing space, it's
old, it's archaic, but it'spredictable, it's steady and
it's growing.
50% of renters move every year,and so I flipped the framework.
Instead of trying to find oneor two houses to do, instead, I
(13:00):
would go after one or twoproperty manager, property
management companies that havethousands of apartments under
management.
And so today, if we land oneclient, the LTV of that client
could be $500,000, it could be$5 million, and we only had to
sell them once.
And so that's where we look atthe high ticket offerings,
because it's reoccurring.
I don't need to go sell 10,000homeowners, so to say I can, but
(13:23):
my time is better spent, from amarketing and effort standpoint
, going after the whales forlack of better words, and so I
always look at the market first.
Second thing I look at is whatcould I improve?
Like, I don't want to getinvolved and just be another cog
here.
Like, can I seriously improve,update or innovate the space?
For me, my background, it wasabsolutely yes, in the industry
(13:43):
I got involved in because I knewit well, I spoke the language,
I felt the pain in that industry, and so that's also something I
always try to be conscious of.
What is my offer, what is myvalue proposition?
And if it's a hypothetical thatI can achieve, I'm probably not
going to do well in there.
So I need to make sure that Icould add value and I understand
firsthand.
What is the process?
What am I solving everythingaround that?
(14:05):
And then, little by little,once you're in that space, for
me there's a book called EdgeStrategy.
I don't know if you've ever readthis, but once you have
something going on in one space,you see what else is within
arm's reach.
Like, hey, I'm already here, Ialready have resources being
deployed here.
What if I just did this oneextra thing?
And so for us.
So TurnServe as a parentcompany.
Today.
It started off as one companyand now I have over 10 LLCs
(14:28):
underneath the umbrella and eachone is producing millions of
dollars.
And that didn't happen by chance.
It's because we had our eyesopen and our heads on a swivel,
trying to find opportunities tocreate better offers and
solutions for our customers.
And that's exactly how we wentfrom a painting brand to a
flooring, to a bathtub brand, tonow a patented product brand
and now bringing it all togetherwith software, so on and so
(14:49):
forth.
All of those things are withinarm's reach and it all has to do
with the industry I gotinvolved in and focusing on what
I'm good at.
So those are the first things Ialways look at and consider
before getting involved.
I get pitched business ideasevery day.
There's people that havecompanies that want to join our
platform.
Pitch business ideas every day.
There's people that havecompanies that want to join our
platform, and it's one of thosethings to where you say like,
(15:10):
hey, there's probably arepurpose here somewhere, but
it's probably not going to be apaving company.
That's going to, you know, likethink of the boring company
versus some old excavatingcompany.
You just want to make sureyou're getting involved in
something where there's a futureversus a dead end.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, you know one of the things you said and it
probably flushes it out in thatedge strategy.
I actually haven't read thatand I'm an avid reader, so I got
something new for my readinglist there.
It sounds like what you'vedeveloped is network effects
within your own business.
So those are the businessesthat are growing today of you
(15:43):
bring somebody else into thenetwork and then it helps
everybody else.
So you bring on a client Well,it benefits all the different
companies you have.
You bring in another supplier.
Those suppliers might beworking with other people that
they might be touching orwhatever, but the strength of
the network as that networkgrows, it becomes more powerful
and more valuable based uponwhat you have, and so it's like
(16:08):
an ecosystem.
You built like a hub and spokeecosystem it seems like yeah,
that's exactly it.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Then you you get into cross selling and other
opportunities and you talk aboutsocial validation.
If you're already in the space,you already have a name, your
brand is coming up, whatever itmight be.
It's way easier to sell peoplethat you already do life and
business with.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, One of the other things that you said that
that I definitely resonate on,uh, is um, you have to know what
the problem is that you'resolving and you have to, you
have to really zero in on thatand understand the value of that
problem.
And once you have a problemthat nobody else is solving or
not solving in a way that youcan solve better, that, uh, you
(16:50):
know, has a lot of value as faras what it does for somebody.
Um, now you have a businessidea.
A lot of people just have crazybusiness ideas, Okay, but they
don't think about is this, isthis a product market fit?
There's like I've had some IPattorneys on and so they're
(17:12):
telling me all kinds of peoplehave all kinds of crazy ideas
and you can patent whatever, butif people don't need that
patent or you're going to marketsomething that people don't
want.
So that's the cool thing aboutsocial media.
There's a lot with marketresearch, um, that you can start
doing.
Uh, you can test out.
Um, uh, you, you can reallytest out before you.
(17:33):
Uh, cement branding, okay For,like, different products.
If you put stuff out there, youcan, you can do polls, you can
ask questions about it, but youcan see what people are buying,
like.
One of the things that, uh, Ihad somebody on that's doing and
it really was impressed, isthey were running ads for a
product they hadn't developedyet to put them on a waiting
(17:56):
list.
Okay, now you, you, you, youget into this area of clarity
and and and and all that.
But they were, I think, thatthink that they had a true
intention of developing thatproduct, and then they were
running that product with allkinds of different copy.
Does that make sense?
So they were going to developthat product, but they wanted to
decide on the branding, thelook, the language, how they
(18:19):
were going to communicate thatmessage, and so they ran all
these different ads and you canmeasure the click rate.
You can measure, you know, doesthat person sign up, like, so
you can create some KPIs andwhat becomes clear when you do
email testing or anything elseis there's a couple that work
really well over others If youtest enough, right?
(18:40):
I like, actually like testinglike the whole alphabet, like I
like to start one variable at atime and I'll test 26 different
titles and then you know I'lltest the copy.
Copy doesn't have to changethat much.
You just got to get them intothe copy and you're kind of
speaking to different people andyou got to see how that copy
works.
But you test, like differentvariables and you can see that.
So anything that you're tryingto do or create or message
(19:03):
you're, you're able to kind ofput that together.
I mean, tell us how you didthat with, like, your first
business, right Of like, okay,like you had this big vision,
you knew you had this problem.
Um, you, you, you started toget into the contracts but you
kept expanding, right, like, youkept seeing those opportunities
.
So how did you identify that?
(19:25):
What did you?
You know, like, like, like.
Why did you make thosedecisions?
To, to, to spin it up the wayyou did?
Sure?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So so it was twofold.
One, we in in the, the, theservice space, not so much the
product business, I'll talkabout that in a second but in
the service space, we wereliterally like running into
other providers and we wouldlike what are you doing?
And that's how I started mybathtub refinishing brand,
because my painting brandcouldn't service a unit because
there was somebody refinishing abathtub and I just organically
(19:56):
stumbled upon it and I was like,oh, that's interesting, what's
going on here.
And then you learn and you seeother vendors and they're, you
know, within arm's reach, so tosay.
So, observing them is one thing.
However, go beyond that.
When we started selling our coreservices initially, we
discovered that the multifamilyspace is very contingent on
budgets, and so we got to thepoint to where we realized, hey,
(20:18):
if we could analyze a budget,not only for the service we're
offering today, for the servicewe're offering today, a lot of
these mega firms that with, withbillions of dollars under
management, we'll literallywould send us their budget for
allowance on, on a spend on our,our services and everybody
else's as well.
So not even just the online,you know, for marketing and
everything else.
We we learned their budgets forhow much are they going to
(20:40):
spend on floors this year?
What about outside, exterior?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
about landscaping.
You got basically RFQs foreverything, right Everything.
Yeah, you knew what they wanted, and so what?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
we did.
We took that initial conceptand we reached out to a few core
clients and we said, hey, ourassumption, based off of some
data that we have, is you mighthave 14% of your maintenance
budget to spend towards this.
Is that remotely close?
And, surprisingly, it was spoton almost everything that we
tested, and so we built outframeworks around that.
Now, granted, we got a littlebit lucky there.
(21:12):
Admittedly, we didn't have tofish quite as much, but
interpreting that data, it savedus a ton of time.
But then we would look at okay,how do we monetize that?
All right, how do we build aservice that or a solution that
could fill that void?
And then, once we did it, uh,our first version of our website
had there was like sixdifferent versions, and each one
is built by either somebodydifferent or it was a template,
(21:34):
and it wasn't the fact.
I wanted to live forever.
I wanted to know am I, am Ispeaking to a residential person
right now?
Am I speaking to a propertymanager?
Am I speaking to a propertyowner now?
And crafting that in a way?
We tested, we had over 70versions of our initial test and
what we found out was it'sproperty managers driving it
when, initially, I was marketingand trying to sell property
(21:55):
owners, and so just a subtlelittle shift there helped us
realize that, hey, we couldprobably improve our funnel here
astronomically just by changingthe scope and who we're
marketing to and understandingour ideal client profile and
their characteristics and whatthey're searching for and
everything else.
So it's and we didn't start offperfectly.
Obviously we stumbled upon somethings and we we we got a
little bit lucky here and there,but really just interpreting
(22:17):
that data and deciding what todo with it allowed us to keep on
moving.
And then that that actually thelast part I'll share on that is
this that actually tiptoed usinto our own product business.
So I love service companies, Ilove all those things.
I've always had a wish just tocreate something meaningful and
be able to show it in my handsto somebody, versus saying like,
oh, I'll do this service foryou, that service for you.
(22:38):
You know, as an entrepreneur, Ihave 10 service companies and I
have, like, I can't show you.
You know, you got to visit mywebsite, so to say and so I
wanted to build a product thatwas useful, and it was actually
in that bathtub business I wasmentioning, where we saw a
vendor doing it in an outdatedway, and I and and we
essentially took what he wasdoing.
We said there's a better way todo this.
(22:58):
We didn't know what it was yetOne.
We looked at the data how muchis spent every year in the
service?
Okay, cool.
And then what about the market?
How big is the actual space?
How much do people spend onthis product every year?
And it was massive,surprisingly massive, and so we
took two years and around aquarter million dollars in R&D.
We actually patented a productthat was third-party tested
(23:19):
against Sherwin-Williams, homeDepot, lowe's, you name it, and
it beat them all.
Repo, lowe's, you name it, andit beat them all.
It beat every single one forwhat we do.
And then we started sellingoffers via email cold emails,
we're testing clicks who'slikely to sign up for a
newsletter, who's likely to signup for a free orientation,
whatever it might be, and all ofthose things just go back to
(23:39):
refining the offer and makingsure that we're tracking the
success on those things.
So we look at the analyticsprobably more than anybody else,
especially as a service companyon our side.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
You know, taylor, I'm thinking what we should do is I
have been contemplating movinginto a long-form format of a
podcast.
Okay, so, like typically, thesepodcasts are another 10 minutes
from here.
Like we're going really fastthrough all this stuff, right?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I think what we could do is people would like
listening to how you are lookingat things as a business, cause
there's a lot of people thatlisten, that are at an agency or
work for an agency.
You're kind of peeling back onwhere I see marketers lacking
today.
What young marketers lackingtoday in agencies I'm coaching
(24:36):
is they got to get inside theheads of the clients that
understand the marketing.
A lot of times they're doingmarketing for big companies that
have big moats, big logos,whatever that are actually just
now starting to have to domarketing Okay.
Or small companies that don'thave the budget to do anything
fancy, or people that are justtoo busy to even look at it.
(24:56):
Like I can tell you at EWR,when I talked to the account
managers, there's a handful ofclients.
When I talked to them becauseI've started to open up office
hours, they're like yeah, yeah,we get the reports, they're
looking good, blah, blah, blah,but they don't even know what
they mean.
The clients don't even knowwhat the reports mean, right?
(25:20):
So how does that translate tobusiness?
And I think that there's a lotof people that do find this
podcast, that know that there'sa digital transformation going
on.
There's a what is it?
75% of baby boomer businessesare going to change hands in the
next couple of years.
Okay, huge opportunities,massive, huge opportunities.
And and no one knows, like noneof the old marketers know
anything about analytics I mean,some of them do, but I've been
(25:44):
on a number of cross-functionalteams that you buy the print ad,
you buy the radio ad, you buythe billboard, you buy in the
magazine and your job's done,okay, and you're like I guess
you got your views, like I hopeyou sold your business.
Um, and it's frustrating for me, right, and and and I feel like
when I'm on thosecross-functional teams, they're
(26:04):
all asking me and my team fordata and all this kind of stuff
and I'm like like they haven'tmade the transition yet.
And if you look at TV spots, um, you know, I knew one well, I
still know, but he sold hisbusiness, one of the biggest TV
advertising companies.
Okay, the ad, the ad spots aregoing down by so much because
(26:24):
they don't have analytics, butCTV over the top, like streaming
, all going up, right, so it's,it's shifting and there, and
there's this big, there's allthese changes happening.
But I can see that there's alot of businesses, especially in
businesses that have beenrunning the same way for a long
time, haven't made that change.
So you're you've made thechange to understanding the
(26:46):
analytics that helps you drivethe decision-making, and also
leveraging the marketing to getthe things done that you want
done, and also in multipleverticals, right.
So, like you know, okay, we cantalk painting, we can talk
carpet cleaning.
I mean, these are all differentmarketing strategies and you
have different companies thatare making a lot of money, and
then there's operating thosecompanies and finding the right
(27:09):
people to put in those places.
There's a lot I think to talkabout, and I think that putting
together maybe a long formpodcast of people that are
looking to make that transitionfrom corporate America okay,
because the gig economy is notgoing anywhere.
It's certainly on the rise.
I think that there's going tobe layoffs that that are going
(27:29):
to be coming in short order.
Right, I think housing isactually going to be a big issue
too, but I won't go into that.
There's a lot of stuff comingand there's going to be a lot of
people retiring and they stillneed to make revenue.
And and I'm I've done somecoaching, or check out my
LinkedIn, like I uh, undersecretary of the energy
(27:49):
department, cause I work a lotin oil and gas uh, helped her
get her podcast up and goingLike, I mean, there's people
that have great skillsets, okayOf you know you want to get in
with the government, you want to, you know you want to get some
things approved, whatever.
But how do they marketthemselves, right, how do they
market their businesses?
And I just think that from yourperspective and from my
(28:11):
perspective, we could slow thisdown.
We could talk about some ofthese different things and we
could and I personally listen to.
I don't like the short, shortpodcast, okay, and I've been
looking to move to the longerform podcast.
But you gotta you know it's notas easy as people think to to
make that transition and to findthat content.
(28:32):
But uh.
I think, I think that I thinkthat that's what we should do.
I think we should should wrapon this podcast and and it'll
it'll publish in a couple ofweeks, but we'll get, um, we'll
set up a time to do a long formand we'll we can map some of
this stuff out and dig into alittle bit more, and I think it
would create a lot of value forpeople and then, uh, people get
(28:53):
to know you, um, a lot better.
And and also, like what I thinkI want to communicate to the
audience uh, audience, is thethinking right, how you're
identifying things, what you'rethinking about.
How does that translate in thebusiness?
What are the struggles you'redealing with?
How to overcome it?
But also, I want to keepinterjecting data, because I am
(29:18):
such a proponent of data-drivenmarketing and I think it makes
all the effort, because it waslike, yeah, I think this could
work, but let's just run it andA-B test it and we'll just see
what the right answer is,because what I think might be
the right answer is not what themarket thinks right, and I was
like I always let the marketdecide and so we have a really
good company culture because,well, hey, everybody puts up
(29:39):
their ideas.
We have a really good companyculture because, well, you know,
hey, everybody puts up theirideas.
We take the best ideas, we trythem out and then we figure out
what actually wins based on thedata Right, and so everybody's
always kind of um, optimizing tothat Um, but I would love to do
that I.
I I also have a startup hardstop here.
So, um, let let's go ahead andwrap, and then we'll, we'll talk
more and we'll reschedulesomething.
(30:00):
Let's go ahead and wrap andthen we'll, we'll talk more and
we'll reschedule something.
So hopefully everybody got somevalue.
But the one question that I doask people and I want it to give
an opportunity for anybodythat's listening to contact you
but what is the one biggestunknown secret of internet
marketing in your mind, ofgrowing these businesses?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Oh, okay.
So I think it's nothing superclever.
If I'm going to be honest withyou, I'm going to double down on
what I said before, and youhinted at it as well.
It's understanding who you'remarketing and your target, and
understanding.
You are inherently biased toassume you know what they're
looking for.
You don't.
You need to interpret the data,you need to understand their
(30:40):
pain points.
If you could, just you mighthave the best, most strongest
gun, the you name it, it's soaccurate.
But if you have that scope aimjust a little bit left, you're
not going to hit.
Understanding who you're goingafter and why, and then not
knowing how to interpret thedata to where you're not fooling
yourself, is the number onesuperpower.
You have to start there.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, people don't start with strategy, okay,
people don't start with researchand data, they just want to
jump into it.
And that's why I think peoplefail a lot on social media
strategies.
They just jump in like it'sabout posting a lot.
No, it's not about posting alot.
Right, it's very strategic.
And that's why I've kind ofstepped away from the agency a
(31:20):
little bit.
I still oversee all thestrategy and everything going on
there.
But, matthewburchamcom, likeI'm doing a lot of helping
people get out of ditches withtheir kind of problems.
But it's all like thoughtprocess and it's strategy work.
And we always start with who'syour target audience, what is
that customer journey?
And then we start testing outoffers to figure out what they
(31:43):
want.
Okay, and, and to your point,you tweak something just a
little bit could make a hugedifference.
It is wild how much difference.
So, so, so you know, thispodcast used to be predominantly
, for 10 plus years, about SEO,and SEO now has become well, I
want more leads, I want morebusiness.
(32:04):
How do I make that happen?
It's everything.
How do I use the social mediaplatforms?
Right Cause their algorithms,how their algorithms work, how
how it all works together.
And and it's now about well,getting that message to the
right person, which you can dotoday, but then converting them
and it's about conversion rateoptimization is, I think, one of
the biggest things, and that'sthat's the biggest thing is like
(32:26):
get the fish on the hook andthen reel them in.
And so I would love to uh, uh,get, get, get some time with you
where we can, like, maybe evensit down and, um, really have a
long form conversation about, uh, how to think about this and
how to do it, and I think thatfrom that, I think a lot of
people will be.
(32:46):
Really, I want I want them to bein our conversation.
I have a lot of theseconversations with certain
people and I you know, I'm in acouple of text groups with some
some great people that itdeletes like the messaging, you
know, after about a week, right,and all that stuff is so
(33:07):
valuable, but it it's like noone gets to see behind the
curtain.
That's what I want to do.
I want to pull back the curtainand I want to like really look
at stuff and and and help peoplethat are searching online, that
are struggling, that are tryingto find the answers to what
they're looking for.
And I mean it's out there and Ithink we could lay it out for
(33:31):
them.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
So that's what I'm gonna do.
Yeah, let's do it.
And I have so much to revealbehind the curtain, so to say.
Like you said, and in mycompanies, I have investors and
people on my cap table andwhatnot, and a lot of these
folks have sold businesses forbillions of dollars and they're
in the service space, they're inthe online space.
What I'm learning is they are asales and marketing agency
first and understanding what arethey looking at?
(33:53):
They're looking at win ratesand all these offers and you
name it, and they are growinglike crazy.
I have friends in the homeimprovement space that did a
hundred million dollars in theirthird year in business because
they are sales and marketinganalytics interpreters.
They know what they're doingand I would definitely love to
sit long form Things that I'velearned, even the past 12 months
(34:13):
, six months and even morerecent than that, things you
would never assume, andcolliding analytics and
marketing to operations andscale, and so much more.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Awesome.
So if people want to hear more,we just gave everybody just a
taste of what we're going to betalking about.
How can they reach out to youright now If they're like I got
it.
I got to talk to you right nowNumber one space.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I'm super involved in LinkedIn.
I will respond to every message, unless it's an automated AI
message and it doesn't do a goodjob of covering its tracks.
Reach out to me there Also.
Dunnigancollectivecom it's justmy last name, collectivecom.
I have a snapshot of some of mycompanies on there, some blogs
and things like that.
Linkedin any socials really andas long as you're real, I'll
(34:56):
respond to you.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Awesome.
Well, everybody, go check thatout.
Today is an exciting timebecause you have access to AI,
you have access to the internet,you have access to all the
social media platforms.
You can reach people, like Italked about at the beginning of
this podcast, in a way that,like businesses, marketers would
drool.
Okay, like 30 years ago, likenow is the best time to start.
(35:23):
If you haven't started, ifyou're stuck, there's answers,
there's solutions, there'sopportunities and there's people
that can help.
And so, if you want to growyour business with that tool,
reach out to EWR Digital formore revenue in your business.
We'll give you a freeconsultation, no pressure.
We can see if we're a fit.
We can point you in the rightdirection.
We have a lot of connectionsand we want to get you the help
(35:46):
you're looking for.
Stay tuned for the mastermindgroup that's going to be coming
out next month and then we aregoing to be turning that those
into trainings that you can getIf, if a mastermind group's not
for you.
I've been having people ask meabout it for at least three
years now and we finally got tothat point.
We've launched it for theenergy category and I've taken a
(36:10):
lot of those trainings that arehelping CMOs of Fortune 500
companies in the energy space,and then I've applied it to the
small business category.
So stay tuned for that.
Uh, stay tuned for the namechange.
Um, so, unknown secrets ofinternet marketing.
And we'll still redirect it.
Uh, best SEO podcastcom.
Uh, but we are launchingsomething new.
(36:33):
I just feel there's the timeschanging and a lot of uh, a lot
of things from uh, the lining ofthe stars to the, to the, to
the politics, to the life cycle.
I just feel like there's changeeverywhere.
Hopefully y'all feel it too.
Look positive, know whereyou're gonna go, drive in that
direction and until next time,my name is Matt Bertram.
(36:55):
Bye-bye for now.
This is the Unknown Secrets of Internet Marketing,
your insider guide to thestrategies top marketers use to
crush the competition.
Ready to unlock your businessfull potential, let's get
started.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Howdy.
Welcome back to anotherfun-filled episode of the
Unknown Secrets of InternetMarketing.
I am your host, matt Bertram.
I am changing a lot aboutwhat's going on, as you know.
I've been talking about thepodcast name's going to be
changing.
We're doing additional branding, we're doing the mastermind
group.
We've been growing as a companyand we've been exploring new
(00:42):
avenues and hopefully you'lllike the new format.
As we've expanded out.
We're going to build these intoplaylists.
So, if you have a particularinterest, a lot of people ask
well, hey, where do I getstarted with this, where do I
get started with that?
And you know this podcast isgoing to fall into the like
entrepreneurial category forpeople that want to make some
(01:04):
money.
I think a lot of people want tomake a lot of money and they
think the internet can do it,and they're absolutely right.
And so I wanted to bring on aguest that has done that same
thing multiple times.
He's on the Inc 5000 list, he'sgrown and scaled multiple
(01:24):
companies.
He's actually in a niche spacethat I recently heard about that
I do believe is booming, and heagreed to come on.
So, tyler, great to have you on, buddy.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
Matt, I'm stoked to be here.
I can't wait to get into it andtalk opportunities and
everything else around thosethings.
Excited to be here.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Awesome man.
Well, you know, we we candefinitely talk um some personal
branding as well for anybodylistening to this podcast, cause
I I think that, um, one of thebiggest things that is important
in any kind of deal that youget into is people need to know
who you are, and people need toyou know there's, there's some
virtue signaling that has tohappen today, like I think that
(02:06):
that's starting to become thenew social capital, you know
like, absolutely agree.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
That's one of the reasons why I'm on, and I'm sure
your other guests do the same.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Right, like so.
So I mean now, uh, you're goingto go meet somebody, right,
whether it be sales or you knowyou're, you're doing a deal of
any sort.
You're going to go search themon Google, right, you're going
to go look at their LinkedInprofile.
You're going to try to, likeyou know, weigh them up, value
them up, like who?
Who is this person I'm meeting?
And and then you can find outso much more.
(02:38):
One of the things I did is whenI was in in sales, I I got, I
won this pharmaceutical contestright out of school for
GlaxoSmithKline and so I becamea farm rep out in Florida.
That was like kind of my firstcareer, first job from sales,
but I always leveraged marketing.
I won that contest throughmarketing, and when I was
(03:01):
selling people, I used to havetwo business cards.
Okay, one was the business cardof who I was representing at
the business and the other onewas my personal blog because I
wanted people to see who I was.
And this is when, like, you'rebuilding like a, a really wanky
site, okay, um, and I mean thesewere in the websites when the
(03:22):
stuff like moving gifts were thething, right, like the whole
site, like, like, like.
So I just trying to trying todate myself there, um, but it
was really important that.
I mean, you know, facebook waswas, uh, only in colleges, right
, like it was only in collegesand and it was the cool thing to
(03:42):
be part of.
But not everybody had aFacebook.
People couldn't go look up yourFacebook and you were just
poking people at that point onFacebook, if you remember, and
so you know, social media wasn'tdeveloped that much.
I can tell you I was probablyone of the first people on
LinkedIn and I was.
I was doing I was running astaffing company, so I flipped
(04:03):
the staffing company.
In my 20s.
Everybody would go on LinkedInand they would put their resume
on there.
If you knew, if they werebuilding out their profile, they
were looking for a job.
It was great vision.
This is where I grew up.
Also, I would tell you that mymom was one of the first people
(04:24):
from Microsoft, and so I wasplaying online games with her
employees and became friendswith a number of people from
Microsoft that went on to docrazy things.
I mean like, if you look at the, you know people that came out
of Microsoft.
I mean someone that used to runStarbucks.
I mean I can go down the list,like venture capital, but like,
(04:48):
okay, this is about you, dude,and one of the things that I'm
seeing, okay, is there's a lotof people that listen, that know
marketing and have anentrepreneurial flair, whether
they're at the end of theircareer and they're stepping out.
I'm seeing a lot of people moveinto the consulting space when
they worked at a big company andwhat they're realizing is they
(05:10):
don't have that big brand behindthem anymore.
It doesn't open the doors,right, and so they have to step
back and they have to buildtheir, their personal reputation
, right, and who they are andwhat they did.
And you got to tell that story.
And so give me your pitch as weget into this.
Give me your pitch on who youare and what you do, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, I would love to .
So in a nutshell, I am alifelong entrepreneur.
I'm 34 years old, so I like tosay I'm still early-ish in my
journey, but I've been involvedin real estate from flipping
houses to managing them togetting into multifamily.
I managed a quarter billiondollars of assets under
(05:51):
management.
That's when I really learnedthe space.
I built companies for high networth individuals.
They would hire me.
I would be a consultant.
Hey, I need to build this thing, help me out here and you just
learn how to structure things.
Fast forward.
I got involved in managingmultifamily apartments, like I
mentioned, and when I was in italthough it was corporate
(06:15):
America, it was a big job andall those good things I got to
brag at the family reunion aboutthem.
I hated it.
And that's when I saw theopportunity for the companies I
left to start and today I own acompany called TurnServe and
that is a platform of brands.
I got to start them all.
It's my playground, for lack ofbetter words.
And in a nutshell, we provideturnover services and solutions
(06:36):
for the largest propertymanagers in the US and we
provide convenience turnkeyservices such as painting
Example, I own the companyapartmentpainterscom, I own
apartmentflooringcom, I ownLiquid Liner and all these other
ones and all of those roll upand we go to market as turn
serve and we say, hey, we couldhelp you with convenience here,
(06:57):
we can get your units ready foryou.
We've innovated, we've builtsome products.
We've patented a coupleproducts in that space as well,
and we've innovated, we've builtsome products, we've patented a
couple products in that spaceas well, and we're building out
software in addition to allthose things to bring it all
together.
So, collectively, I am just arelentless entrepreneur.
I'm always busy in a good way.
I can't sit still to save mylife, and I just love creating
solutions that can scale.
(07:18):
I don't want a job forever, soI always build companies with
the exit in mind, and a lot ofthat is around sales and
marketing first and then thesolution second, and that's also
something that we can dive intotoday about some of the largest
service brands in the worldbeing sales and marketing
agencies first.
So, in a nutshell, that's me.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Yeah, no, the world started to flip on its head
right the world started to flipon its head as, uh, as I mean,
today you can reach more peoplethrough marketing, uh, in more
ways than the big brands coulddream of years ago.
Right, um, I mean, you know oneof the one of the, the key
things that no one's doing?
Okay, post once a day onwhatever platform you say.
(08:03):
I'll tell you, 4% of people, Ithink or 5% of people maybe it's
a little bit higher than that,I think, but it's probably
pretty close to that Globallyare the ones that actually post
once a week on LinkedIn.
That's it.
Everybody else is consumingcontent.
Wow, right, like, look at thatopportunity.
There's so much opportunity.
Youtube is the platform thatmore people are on longer than
(08:27):
any other platform.
People want to get their news,people want to get their
information, and if you're aheavy YouTube user, you know
that there are gaps.
There are gaps in what you'researching for, what you want.
So, like, the industry startingto mature, but there's still
huge opportunity.
Right, there's people that have, but there's always going to be
people ahead of you.
(08:48):
There's going to be peoplebehind you, but, but every
platform, there's an opportunityto build your personal brand on
that, right, and and and.
Marketing for companies helpsthem tell their story, right,
and that means you can connectwith more customers.
So you know, let's say there'ssome property managers out here,
(09:08):
right, and they've heard aboutyou.
I mean one to many.
You're reaching so many people,right, you don't even know how
many people you're reaching.
And then there's repurposingtheir sharing of the content,
like the number one thing thatGary Vanderchuck says
everybody's heard of Gary Veecause he cusses all the time,
right, um, or, or, if you like,wine, um, uh.
(09:29):
I've heard him on at South bySouthwest and some marketing
conferences and he's actuallylike a super nice dude and he's
very smart.
Like, if you get through thecuss words of like, what are you
saying?
He's saying like social media,you're going to grow your.
You're going to grow yourcompany, leveraging it more than
any other thing that you coulddo.
He goes, you'll cancel yourmeetings.
(09:50):
You know your sales meetings.
If you knew that you could justget on social media and you can
tell your story, I can tell you.
Right now we're landing at ouragency, ewr digital, a hundred
million dollar companies leftand right.
Okay, inbound.
That changes all the the the B2Bsales process on his head,
cause, man, I get sucked intolike these lunches.
(10:11):
I do not want to sit down for atwo hour lunch in the middle of
day.
That crushes my whole day Right.
And in Houston I got to drivesomewhere.
I got to sit down.
I don't know who these peopleare, but what?
What is that?
What are people doing?
Okay, they're trying to, um,get to seven hours.
Okay, they're trying to get toknow you for seven hours.
(10:32):
That's what conferences areabout.
That's what everything's about.
Getting to seven hours.
Then you're going to know, likeand trust somebody.
That's like the magic threshold.
Um, actually, in dating, too,you know I'm I'm married, but
you know, in dating too, it'sseven hours, different locations
, multiple platforms.
Okay, 7-11-4.
That's the magic number thatGoogle's done a lot of research
(10:55):
to come up with Seven hours ofcontent.
See your brand name 11 times onfour different platforms.
That's the framework that weoperate under, and if you think
about any major brand, anythingthat you bought in, anything
that you've had interest inmovies, I mean, it goes anywhere
.
That that's what people arelooking for, and and so you can
take marketing, you can apply itto any product, and I know
(11:17):
you've done that, and so I wantto hear about some of these
businesses uh, maybe some casestudies of things that you've
done.
You've identified thisopportunity which, when you're
trying to sell something,identify something that's very
expensive.
What's the most expensive thingthat people own?
What's their biggest asset?
It's their house.
When you get into biggernumbers, you manage more money.
(11:38):
You get a bigger percentage.
You make more value forsomebody.
Based on that, mostmillionaires in the past have
made their money in real estate.
So I think it's a great placefor people and I think there's a
lot of opportunity.
Tell me how archaic it is,where you kind of saw
opportunities early on.
Tell me a little bit more aboutthe origin story.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Yeah, of course.
So you said it well, sellsomething that's expensive,
right, or go after things whereit generates a lot of money.
It well, sell something that'sexpensive, right, or go after
things where it generates a lotof money.
And for me, when I was younger,you look up to people that are
successful and killing it,crushing it, all those things
and they were in real estate Isaid, okay, cool, I have no
money, but I'm willing to work,let me try it out.
Well, same concept.
You look at a house.
(12:18):
You can buy it for 70 grand,put a hundred into it and sell
for 300, you know that printscash.
For me, that wasn't quite bigenough yet, and so that's when I
started to look at the marketholistically All right, what's
bigger than single family realestate?
It's multifamily.
And so what I do when I look atsomething, I want to make sure
that I'm not getting involvedwith a dying dinosaur of a space
(12:39):
.
Sometimes that createsopportunity.
A lot of the times it's gettingabandoned for a reason, and
that's you have to look like.
For me in the in themultifamily housing space, it's
old, it's archaic, but it'spredictable, it's steady and
it's growing.
50% of renters move every year,and so I flipped the framework.
Instead of trying to find oneor two houses to do, instead, I
(13:00):
would go after one or twoproperty manager, property
management companies that havethousands of apartments under
management.
And so today, if we land oneclient, the LTV of that client
could be $500,000, it could be$5 million, and we only had to
sell them once.
And so that's where we look atthe high ticket offerings,
because it's reoccurring.
I don't need to go sell 10,000homeowners, so to say I can, but
(13:23):
my time is better spent, from amarketing and effort standpoint
, going after the whales forlack of better words, and so I
always look at the market first.
Second thing I look at is whatcould I improve?
Like, I don't want to getinvolved and just be another cog
here.
Like, can I seriously improve,update or innovate the space?
For me, my background, it wasabsolutely yes, in the industry
(13:43):
I got involved in because I knewit well, I spoke the language,
I felt the pain in that industry, and so that's also something I
always try to be conscious of.
What is my offer, what is myvalue proposition?
And if it's a hypothetical thatI can achieve, I'm probably not
going to do well in there.
So I need to make sure that Icould add value and I understand
firsthand.
What is the process?
What am I solving everythingaround that?
(14:05):
And then, little by little,once you're in that space, for
me there's a book called EdgeStrategy.
I don't know if you've ever readthis, but once you have
something going on in one space,you see what else is within
arm's reach.
Like, hey, I'm already here, Ialready have resources being
deployed here.
What if I just did this oneextra thing?
And so for us.
So TurnServe as a parentcompany.
Today.
It started off as one companyand now I have over 10 LLCs
(14:28):
underneath the umbrella and eachone is producing millions of
dollars.
And that didn't happen by chance.
It's because we had our eyesopen and our heads on a swivel,
trying to find opportunities tocreate better offers and
solutions for our customers.
And that's exactly how we wentfrom a painting brand to a
flooring, to a bathtub brand, tonow a patented product brand
and now bringing it all togetherwith software, so on and so
(14:49):
forth.
All of those things are withinarm's reach and it all has to do
with the industry I gotinvolved in and focusing on what
I'm good at.
So those are the first things Ialways look at and consider
before getting involved.
I get pitched business ideasevery day.
There's people that havecompanies that want to join our
platform.
Pitch business ideas every day.
There's people that havecompanies that want to join our
platform, and it's one of thosethings to where you say like,
(15:10):
hey, there's probably arepurpose here somewhere, but
it's probably not going to be apaving company.
That's going to, you know, likethink of the boring company
versus some old excavatingcompany.
You just want to make sureyou're getting involved in
something where there's a futureversus a dead end.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, you know one of the things you said and it
probably flushes it out in thatedge strategy.
I actually haven't read thatand I'm an avid reader, so I got
something new for my readinglist there.
It sounds like what you'vedeveloped is network effects
within your own business.
So those are the businessesthat are growing today of you
(15:43):
bring somebody else into thenetwork and then it helps
everybody else.
So you bring on a client Well,it benefits all the different
companies you have.
You bring in another supplier.
Those suppliers might beworking with other people that
they might be touching orwhatever, but the strength of
the network as that networkgrows, it becomes more powerful
and more valuable based uponwhat you have, and so it's like
(16:08):
an ecosystem.
You built like a hub and spokeecosystem it seems like yeah,
that's exactly it.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Then you you get into cross selling and other
opportunities and you talk aboutsocial validation.
If you're already in the space,you already have a name, your
brand is coming up, whatever itmight be.
It's way easier to sell peoplethat you already do life and
business with.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
Yeah, One of the other things that you said that
that I definitely resonate on,uh, is um, you have to know what
the problem is that you'resolving and you have to, you
have to really zero in on thatand understand the value of that
problem.
And once you have a problemthat nobody else is solving or
not solving in a way that youcan solve better, that, uh, you
(16:50):
know, has a lot of value as faras what it does for somebody.
Um, now you have a businessidea.
A lot of people just have crazybusiness ideas, Okay, but they
don't think about is this, isthis a product market fit?
There's like I've had some IPattorneys on and so they're
(17:12):
telling me all kinds of peoplehave all kinds of crazy ideas
and you can patent whatever, butif people don't need that
patent or you're going to marketsomething that people don't
want.
So that's the cool thing aboutsocial media.
There's a lot with marketresearch, um, that you can start
doing.
Uh, you can test out.
Um, uh, you, you can reallytest out before you.
(17:33):
Uh, cement branding, okay For,like, different products.
If you put stuff out there, youcan, you can do polls, you can
ask questions about it, but youcan see what people are buying,
like.
One of the things that, uh, Ihad somebody on that's doing and
it really was impressed, isthey were running ads for a
product they hadn't developedyet to put them on a waiting
(17:56):
list.
Okay, now you, you, you, youget into this area of clarity
and and and and all that.
But they were, I think, thatthink that they had a true
intention of developing thatproduct, and then they were
running that product with allkinds of different copy.
Does that make sense?
So they were going to developthat product, but they wanted to
decide on the branding, thelook, the language, how they
(18:19):
were going to communicate thatmessage, and so they ran all
these different ads and you canmeasure the click rate.
You can measure, you know, doesthat person sign up, like, so
you can create some KPIs andwhat becomes clear when you do
email testing or anything elseis there's a couple that work
really well over others If youtest enough, right?
(18:40):
I like, actually like testinglike the whole alphabet, like I
like to start one variable at atime and I'll test 26 different
titles and then you know I'lltest the copy.
Copy doesn't have to changethat much.
You just got to get them intothe copy and you're kind of
speaking to different people andyou got to see how that copy
works.
But you test, like differentvariables and you can see that.
So anything that you're tryingto do or create or message
(19:03):
you're, you're able to kind ofput that together.
I mean, tell us how you didthat with, like, your first
business, right Of like, okay,like you had this big vision,
you knew you had this problem.
Um, you, you, you started toget into the contracts but you
kept expanding, right, like, youkept seeing those opportunities
.
So how did you identify that?
(19:25):
What did you?
You know, like, like, like.
Why did you make thosedecisions?
To, to, to spin it up the wayyou did?
Sure?
Speaker 3 (19:34):
So so it was twofold.
One, we in in the, the, theservice space, not so much the
product business, I'll talkabout that in a second but in
the service space, we wereliterally like running into
other providers and we wouldlike what are you doing?
And that's how I started mybathtub refinishing brand,
because my painting brandcouldn't service a unit because
there was somebody refinishing abathtub and I just organically
(19:56):
stumbled upon it and I was like,oh, that's interesting, what's
going on here.
And then you learn and you seeother vendors and they're, you
know, within arm's reach, so tosay.
So, observing them is one thing.
However, go beyond that.
When we started selling our coreservices initially, we
discovered that the multifamilyspace is very contingent on
budgets, and so we got to thepoint to where we realized, hey,
(20:18):
if we could analyze a budget,not only for the service we're
offering today, for the servicewe're offering today, a lot of
these mega firms that with, withbillions of dollars under
management, we'll literallywould send us their budget for
allowance on, on a spend on our,our services and everybody
else's as well.
So not even just the online,you know, for marketing and
everything else.
We we learned their budgets forhow much are they going to
(20:40):
spend on floors this year?
What about outside, exterior?
Speaker 2 (20:42):
about landscaping.
You got basically RFQs foreverything, right Everything.
Yeah, you knew what they wanted, and so what?
Speaker 3 (20:50):
we did.
We took that initial conceptand we reached out to a few core
clients and we said, hey, ourassumption, based off of some
data that we have, is you mighthave 14% of your maintenance
budget to spend towards this.
Is that remotely close?
And, surprisingly, it was spoton almost everything that we
tested, and so we built outframeworks around that.
Now, granted, we got a littlebit lucky there.
(21:12):
Admittedly, we didn't have tofish quite as much, but
interpreting that data, it savedus a ton of time.
But then we would look at okay,how do we monetize that?
All right, how do we build aservice that or a solution that
could fill that void?
And then, once we did it, uh,our first version of our website
had there was like sixdifferent versions, and each one
is built by either somebodydifferent or it was a template,
(21:34):
and it wasn't the fact.
I wanted to live forever.
I wanted to know am I, am Ispeaking to a residential person
right now?
Am I speaking to a propertymanager?
Am I speaking to a propertyowner now?
And crafting that in a way?
We tested, we had over 70versions of our initial test and
what we found out was it'sproperty managers driving it
when, initially, I was marketingand trying to sell property
(21:55):
owners, and so just a subtlelittle shift there helped us
realize that, hey, we couldprobably improve our funnel here
astronomically just by changingthe scope and who we're
marketing to and understandingour ideal client profile and
their characteristics and whatthey're searching for and
everything else.
So it's and we didn't start offperfectly.
Obviously we stumbled upon somethings and we we we got a
little bit lucky here and there,but really just interpreting
(22:17):
that data and deciding what todo with it allowed us to keep on
moving.
And then that that actually thelast part I'll share on that is
this that actually tiptoed usinto our own product business.
So I love service companies, Ilove all those things.
I've always had a wish just tocreate something meaningful and
be able to show it in my handsto somebody, versus saying like,
oh, I'll do this service foryou, that service for you.
(22:38):
You know, as an entrepreneur, Ihave 10 service companies and I
have, like, I can't show you.
You know, you got to visit mywebsite, so to say and so I
wanted to build a product thatwas useful, and it was actually
in that bathtub business I wasmentioning, where we saw a
vendor doing it in an outdatedway, and I and and we
essentially took what he wasdoing.
We said there's a better way todo this.
(22:58):
We didn't know what it was yetOne.
We looked at the data how muchis spent every year in the
service?
Okay, cool.
And then what about the market?
How big is the actual space?
How much do people spend onthis product every year?
And it was massive,surprisingly massive, and so we
took two years and around aquarter million dollars in R&D.
We actually patented a productthat was third-party tested
(23:19):
against Sherwin-Williams, homeDepot, lowe's, you name it, and
it beat them all.
Repo, lowe's, you name it, andit beat them all.
It beat every single one forwhat we do.
And then we started sellingoffers via email cold emails,
we're testing clicks who'slikely to sign up for a
newsletter, who's likely to signup for a free orientation,
whatever it might be, and all ofthose things just go back to
(23:39):
refining the offer and makingsure that we're tracking the
success on those things.
So we look at the analyticsprobably more than anybody else,
especially as a service companyon our side.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
You know, taylor, I'm thinking what we should do is I
have been contemplating movinginto a long-form format of a
podcast.
Okay, so, like typically, thesepodcasts are another 10 minutes
from here.
Like we're going really fastthrough all this stuff, right?
Speaker 3 (24:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I think what we could do is people would like
listening to how you are lookingat things as a business, cause
there's a lot of people thatlisten, that are at an agency or
work for an agency.
You're kind of peeling back onwhere I see marketers lacking
today.
What young marketers lackingtoday in agencies I'm coaching
(24:36):
is they got to get inside theheads of the clients that
understand the marketing.
A lot of times they're doingmarketing for big companies that
have big moats, big logos,whatever that are actually just
now starting to have to domarketing Okay.
Or small companies that don'thave the budget to do anything
fancy, or people that are justtoo busy to even look at it.
(24:56):
Like I can tell you at EWR,when I talked to the account
managers, there's a handful ofclients.
When I talked to them becauseI've started to open up office
hours, they're like yeah, yeah,we get the reports, they're
looking good, blah, blah, blah,but they don't even know what
they mean.
The clients don't even knowwhat the reports mean, right?
(25:20):
So how does that translate tobusiness?
And I think that there's a lotof people that do find this
podcast, that know that there'sa digital transformation going
on.
There's a what is it?
75% of baby boomer businessesare going to change hands in the
next couple of years.
Okay, huge opportunities,massive, huge opportunities.
And and no one knows, like noneof the old marketers know
anything about analytics I mean,some of them do, but I've been
(25:44):
on a number of cross-functionalteams that you buy the print ad,
you buy the radio ad, you buythe billboard, you buy in the
magazine and your job's done,okay, and you're like I guess
you got your views, like I hopeyou sold your business.
Um, and it's frustrating for me, right, and and and I feel like
when I'm on thosecross-functional teams, they're
(26:04):
all asking me and my team fordata and all this kind of stuff
and I'm like like they haven'tmade the transition yet.
And if you look at TV spots, um, you know, I knew one well, I
still know, but he sold hisbusiness, one of the biggest TV
advertising companies.
Okay, the ad, the ad spots aregoing down by so much because
(26:24):
they don't have analytics, butCTV over the top, like streaming
, all going up, right, so it's,it's shifting and there, and
there's this big, there's allthese changes happening.
But I can see that there's alot of businesses, especially in
businesses that have beenrunning the same way for a long
time, haven't made that change.
So you're you've made thechange to understanding the
(26:46):
analytics that helps you drivethe decision-making, and also
leveraging the marketing to getthe things done that you want
done, and also in multipleverticals, right.
So, like you know, okay, we cantalk painting, we can talk
carpet cleaning.
I mean, these are all differentmarketing strategies and you
have different companies thatare making a lot of money, and
then there's operating thosecompanies and finding the right
(27:09):
people to put in those places.
There's a lot I think to talkabout, and I think that putting
together maybe a long formpodcast of people that are
looking to make that transitionfrom corporate America okay,
because the gig economy is notgoing anywhere.
It's certainly on the rise.
I think that there's going tobe layoffs that that are going
(27:29):
to be coming in short order.
Right, I think housing isactually going to be a big issue
too, but I won't go into that.
There's a lot of stuff comingand there's going to be a lot of
people retiring and they stillneed to make revenue.
And and I'm I've done somecoaching, or check out my
LinkedIn, like I uh, undersecretary of the energy
(27:49):
department, cause I work a lotin oil and gas uh, helped her
get her podcast up and goingLike, I mean, there's people
that have great skillsets, okayOf you know you want to get in
with the government, you want to, you know you want to get some
things approved, whatever.
But how do they marketthemselves, right, how do they
market their businesses?
And I just think that from yourperspective and from my
(28:11):
perspective, we could slow thisdown.
We could talk about some ofthese different things and we
could and I personally listen to.
I don't like the short, shortpodcast, okay, and I've been
looking to move to the longerform podcast.
But you gotta you know it's notas easy as people think to to
make that transition and to findthat content.
(28:32):
But uh.
I think, I think that I thinkthat that's what we should do.
I think we should should wrapon this podcast and and it'll
it'll publish in a couple ofweeks, but we'll get, um, we'll
set up a time to do a long formand we'll we can map some of
this stuff out and dig into alittle bit more, and I think it
would create a lot of value forpeople and then, uh, people get
(28:53):
to know you, um, a lot better.
And and also, like what I thinkI want to communicate to the
audience uh, audience, is thethinking right, how you're
identifying things, what you'rethinking about.
How does that translate in thebusiness?
What are the struggles you'redealing with?
How to overcome it?
But also, I want to keepinterjecting data, because I am
(29:18):
such a proponent of data-drivenmarketing and I think it makes
all the effort, because it waslike, yeah, I think this could
work, but let's just run it andA-B test it and we'll just see
what the right answer is,because what I think might be
the right answer is not what themarket thinks right, and I was
like I always let the marketdecide and so we have a really
good company culture because,well, hey, everybody puts up
(29:39):
their ideas.
We have a really good companyculture because, well, you know,
hey, everybody puts up theirideas.
We take the best ideas, we trythem out and then we figure out
what actually wins based on thedata Right, and so everybody's
always kind of um, optimizing tothat Um, but I would love to do
that I.
I I also have a startup hardstop here.
So, um, let let's go ahead andwrap, and then we'll, we'll talk
more and we'll reschedulesomething.
(30:00):
Let's go ahead and wrap andthen we'll, we'll talk more and
we'll reschedule something.
So hopefully everybody got somevalue.
But the one question that I doask people and I want it to give
an opportunity for anybodythat's listening to contact you
but what is the one biggestunknown secret of internet
marketing in your mind, ofgrowing these businesses?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Oh, okay.
So I think it's nothing superclever.
If I'm going to be honest withyou, I'm going to double down on
what I said before, and youhinted at it as well.
It's understanding who you'remarketing and your target, and
understanding.
You are inherently biased toassume you know what they're
looking for.
You don't.
You need to interpret the data,you need to understand their
(30:40):
pain points.
If you could, just you mighthave the best, most strongest
gun, the you name it, it's soaccurate.
But if you have that scope aimjust a little bit left, you're
not going to hit.
Understanding who you're goingafter and why, and then not
knowing how to interpret thedata to where you're not fooling
yourself, is the number onesuperpower.
You have to start there.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Well, people don't start with strategy, okay,
people don't start with researchand data, they just want to
jump into it.
And that's why I think peoplefail a lot on social media
strategies.
They just jump in like it'sabout posting a lot.
No, it's not about posting alot.
Right, it's very strategic.
And that's why I've kind ofstepped away from the agency a
(31:20):
little bit.
I still oversee all thestrategy and everything going on
there.
But, matthewburchamcom, likeI'm doing a lot of helping
people get out of ditches withtheir kind of problems.
But it's all like thoughtprocess and it's strategy work.
And we always start with who'syour target audience, what is
that customer journey?
And then we start testing outoffers to figure out what they
(31:43):
want.
Okay, and, and to your point,you tweak something just a
little bit could make a hugedifference.
It is wild how much difference.
So, so, so you know, thispodcast used to be predominantly
, for 10 plus years, about SEO,and SEO now has become well, I
want more leads, I want morebusiness.
(32:04):
How do I make that happen?
It's everything.
How do I use the social mediaplatforms?
Right Cause their algorithms,how their algorithms work, how
how it all works together.
And and it's now about well,getting that message to the
right person, which you can dotoday, but then converting them
and it's about conversion rateoptimization is, I think, one of
the biggest things, and that'sthat's the biggest thing is like
(32:26):
get the fish on the hook andthen reel them in.
And so I would love to uh, uh,get, get, get some time with you
where we can, like, maybe evensit down and, um, really have a
long form conversation about, uh, how to think about this and
how to do it, and I think thatfrom that, I think a lot of
people will be.
(32:46):
Really, I want I want them to bein our conversation.
I have a lot of theseconversations with certain
people and I you know, I'm in acouple of text groups with some
some great people that itdeletes like the messaging, you
know, after about a week, right,and all that stuff is so
(33:07):
valuable, but it it's like noone gets to see behind the
curtain.
That's what I want to do.
I want to pull back the curtainand I want to like really look
at stuff and and and help peoplethat are searching online, that
are struggling, that are tryingto find the answers to what
they're looking for.
And I mean it's out there and Ithink we could lay it out for
(33:31):
them.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
So that's what I'm gonna do.
Yeah, let's do it.
And I have so much to revealbehind the curtain, so to say.
Like you said, and in mycompanies, I have investors and
people on my cap table andwhatnot, and a lot of these
folks have sold businesses forbillions of dollars and they're
in the service space, they're inthe online space.
What I'm learning is they are asales and marketing agency
first and understanding what arethey looking at?
(33:53):
They're looking at win ratesand all these offers and you
name it, and they are growinglike crazy.
I have friends in the homeimprovement space that did a
hundred million dollars in theirthird year in business because
they are sales and marketinganalytics interpreters.
They know what they're doingand I would definitely love to
sit long form Things that I'velearned, even the past 12 months
(34:13):
, six months and even morerecent than that, things you
would never assume, andcolliding analytics and
marketing to operations andscale, and so much more.
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Awesome.
So if people want to hear more,we just gave everybody just a
taste of what we're going to betalking about.
How can they reach out to youright now If they're like I got
it.
I got to talk to you right nowNumber one space.
Speaker 3 (34:34):
I'm super involved in LinkedIn.
I will respond to every message, unless it's an automated AI
message and it doesn't do a goodjob of covering its tracks.
Reach out to me there Also.
Dunnigancollectivecom it's justmy last name, collectivecom.
I have a snapshot of some of mycompanies on there, some blogs
and things like that.
Linkedin any socials really andas long as you're real, I'll
(34:56):
respond to you.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
Awesome.
Well, everybody, go check thatout.
Today is an exciting timebecause you have access to AI,
you have access to the internet,you have access to all the
social media platforms.
You can reach people, like Italked about at the beginning of
this podcast, in a way that,like businesses, marketers would
drool.
Okay, like 30 years ago, likenow is the best time to start.
(35:23):
If you haven't started, ifyou're stuck, there's answers,
there's solutions, there'sopportunities and there's people
that can help.
And so, if you want to growyour business with that tool,
reach out to EWR Digital formore revenue in your business.
We'll give you a freeconsultation, no pressure.
We can see if we're a fit.
We can point you in the rightdirection.
We have a lot of connectionsand we want to get you the help
(35:46):
you're looking for.
Stay tuned for the mastermindgroup that's going to be coming
out next month and then we aregoing to be turning that those
into trainings that you can getIf, if a mastermind group's not
for you.
I've been having people ask meabout it for at least three
years now and we finally got tothat point.
We've launched it for theenergy category and I've taken a
(36:10):
lot of those trainings that arehelping CMOs of Fortune 500
companies in the energy space,and then I've applied it to the
small business category.
So stay tuned for that.
Uh, stay tuned for the namechange.
Um, so, unknown secrets ofinternet marketing.
And we'll still redirect it.
Uh, best SEO podcastcom.
Uh, but we are launchingsomething new.
(36:33):
I just feel there's the timeschanging and a lot of uh, a lot
of things from uh, the lining ofthe stars to the, to the, to
the politics, to the life cycle.
I just feel like there's changeeverywhere.
Hopefully y'all feel it too.
Look positive, know whereyou're gonna go, drive in that
direction and until next time,my name is Matt Bertram.
(36:55):
Bye-bye for now.
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