Author: Brittany Crockett

So without further ado, Kevin I hate to be the guy that asked to use the microphone, but do I need to use the microphone? Can you all hear me? Perfect. That’s way more preferable for me. So yeah, Kevin Adelsberg, we’ve been in business for about eight years now. We do digital marketing. We lead companies to conquer digital marketing. We work with a wide variety of businesses, everything from boring accountants to things that are a little bit more exciting, like churches. Well, that’s not fair. What else do we do, Alex? We did make a fun hype video for accounting. Did you know you can make a hype video for accounting? You should go to ATA’s LinkedIn page. You can see that. So we do a lot of different types of marketing. And what I’m going to do today is do a quick overview of the marketing landscape for 2023. And so if we’ve got time, I already know that I’m going to run out of time. And so I’m not going to be that person that keeps you from going to work. But if you have time for questions afterwards, we’d be happy to talk to you about that.

So what’s not hot in marketing right now? Vr and Augmented Reality. That was a big push last year. I think that was really a consequence of COVID, people being locked in their houses more or less. And so Facebook and Meta, or Meta as it’s known now, is really trying to push that. But I don’t think it’s going to take off for a couple of reasons. One, people are just not excited about it. A lot of people would rather go and do something in real life like this right here. And who’s had one too many Zoom meetings in the last three years. And so there’s something nice, even though it’s a hassle to like, well, I got up at 3 30 this morning to get here. But there’s something nice about being like, Hey, Mike, nice to meet you. There’s something nice about that in personness. For something like metaverse or VR or being able to work in the metaverse, you have to have a ubiquity. You have to have a critical mass of people using that thing. And that’s what makes social media work is because there’s a critical mass of people using it. And I don’t anticipate a critical mass of people hitting that.

And then also, we’re going to see less development in these spaces for a little bit because of FONG. Does anybody know what FONG stands for? Oh, let’s drop it. Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google. Very good. This guy, high five. So Facebook. Fong is an acronym for Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google. There’s a couple of different versions of that acronym, and it’s a way people in the tech world shorten naming all the big companies. They’re laying off people like crazy. Some of you have probably seen those business headlines. So this is an extra thing that’s not earning revenue right now. So I would imagine budget cuts are coming to those departments. So the other thing that’s not hot is NFTs. Anybody know what this is? Apeyachtc lub. The blockchain technology is not going anywhere. It’s very valuable. It’s going to be super helpful to our society as we move forward. But individual NFTs are probably, I think they may have had their heyday for the moment. And I think the pump and dump schemes are starting to fall off. And so less and less people are going to be using those. I think they will have a place in our community, but a lot of people are pushing them for marketing purposes.

And I think it was just a little bit ahead of that self. So that’s not as hot anymore either. Newspapers. There’s no newspaper reps in here, right? Go ahead. Okay. I live in Jackson, very involved in the Jackson community. And the Jackson Sun, which is owned by Gannett, is a joke. I don’t think they even have a reporter on staff. Jackson is a town of 60,000 people and 110,000 in the county, and we don’t have a reporter on the local newspaper staff. Gannett is a poorly run company and it’s going to continue to shrink. Even the Tennesseean is having less and less reporters on its staff. And so local newspapers are not hot right now. And some of the ones that are starting up to try to combat that, like we have a startup newspaper in Jackson called the Jackson Post, they don’t really have the technology back end to make it work. So I’m hopeful for it because I think as a culture, we need journalism deeply to help keep power and check. But I think there is some hope. The Daily Minfian, I know you guys are not really on the Memphis side of things, but there’s an organization called the Daily Minfian, which is an online only newspaper that is a nonprofit, and so they don’t have to worry about getting sold to a company like Gnette and then Gnette running it into the ground.

All right. What are some big headlines that you can use? And yes, I’m going really fast because David said I started at eight and I started at eight, ten. So big headlines. Tiktok demographics are continuing to change. And so 70 % of TikTok’s US audience are 19 plus. So what does that mean for you? That means it’s hard to ignore TikTok anymore if you are doing any advertising. And now on the flip side, TikTok keeps getting banned places. And so Texas, Tennessee, some other states have actually banned it on all government devices. So if you were to go to the University of Tennessee at Austin’s, which is the big UT, their sports accounts that have hundreds of thousands of followers stopped posting at the end of December because that’s when the ban took effect for Texas and Texas state employees. And so while TikTok is super popular, the federal government is also considering a ban, which I don’t think it’s going to happen. I don’t think that’s going to happen. But Tennessee has banned it on state devices, and so you can’t find the University of Tennessee on TikTok. So if you think about that, where all their target demographics attention is, they’re not allowed to be for marketing.

It’s a weird thing. Now, there are security concerns, but you notice nobody actually says what the security concerns are. They just say their security concerns, but they don’t get the details. Now, we go into a whole geopolitical discussion. We could do that later. But TikTok continues to get restricted in places. And some customers that we’ve had, like we work with a couple of financial institutions in the Jackson area, they don’t feel like they are safe enough to get on TikTok. So you might want to check with your industry things depending on what industry you’re in. But there’s a lot of opportunity there for TikTok. Also, big headline you need to know about is data protection, which is related. Does anybody know what GDPR is? Gdpr was enacted by the European Union a few years ago, and that’s why you get all those stupid pop ups on a website saying, Can I use cookies on this website? Surely you’ve all seen those, right? The reason you get all those is because of this law from the EU. Now, the European Union, for whatever its pluses and minuses are politically, are very data privacy conscious, and the US historically isn’t, except that that’s changing.

So California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Virginia have passed their own specific data privacy regulations, which is probably not a bad thing as a marketer, as a person, it’s not a bad thing. As a marketer, it’s slightly annoying because if you do business, if you are actively doing business with California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, or Virginia, and you have customers in those locations, I don’t know if that applies to anybody here, but you need to be aware of these data privacy restrictions because they’ll apply to you because you’re doing business in that state. I don’t anticipate that happening in Tennessee under the current governor. That’s not something that our legislature, they have other things they’re worried about. But I would definitely be in favor of a nationwide type of policy instead of someone trying to mishmash all the different rules from all the different states and then try to make sure that you follow everybody and not get fined. So data protection is super important and that’s changing. The availability of data and protecting people’s data is super important. So you need to start owning your own data. So who does Facebook ads in here? Anybody doing Facebook ads?

Two people. Okay, cool. Three? Okay. If you’ll notice, now we do a lot of Facebook ads and we do a lot of Facebook ads for a lot of different types of businesses. And one of the things that you may or may not have noticed is that the types of audiences that you can target have greatly reduced over the last several years. Some of that is because they’re getting sued by people for being able to target certain groups of people using those in bad ways. So you need to be thinking about how can you own your own data? That’s a big thing to think about. An easy way to own your own data is by building an email list of customers. If you have an email list of customers, when Facebook shuts it off, and I’ll talk more about email in a minute, you can still reach those people. And you own that data, you own that email list. I’m not suggesting spam people. Don’t buy an email list. Don’t do it. It’s not a good idea. Build your own or build an audience of people who interact with your website. Because if they come to your website, that’s your data, you own that.

So you have to figure out a way to build your own data and be less reliant on third party data. So stuff from Facebook or YouTube or things like that. In the same vein, who knew Google Analytics is sun setting? One, right? What’s your name? Debbie. Debbie, what do you do? How did you know that? I get alerts from them. That’s right. Good job. So we host like 50 or 60 websites or something like that, and we have Google Analytics on all of them because that’s a responsible thing to do as a marketer. And Google is killing off the Google Analytics we all have installed on our websites. So if you are a local company that has a website and your developer hasn’t talked to you about it, which I haven’t talked to my people about it yet because we’re still working on our plans and what to do with about it, they’re pushing everybody to GA4 or Google Analytics 4. On June 30th will be the last day that Google Analytics takes data. So if Google Analytics is important to how you run your business, you need to have this set up before June 30th.

Now, in the last two weeks, Google has announced that they’re going to start helping people migrate. But up until two weeks ago, they’re just like, you’re on your own, as Google is so prone to do. Some of this is because of data privacy. Google Analytics is going to have, in some ways more data, more specific data. Ga4 actually captures more data, but it anonymizes it more than GA Google Analytics. Google will still know all the data that is taking it in, but they just won’t share it with you because they’re so kind and helpful. So keep that in mind. Other things that are headlines that may affect you is Twitter drama. If you use Twitter as part of your business, just know that the drama is not over there. It’s just going to keep picking up and being exciting over there. I just love this exchange because sometimes you get what you ask for. But what that’s causing is, so I’m a Twitter addict. If I try, the less self discipline I have in the day, the more time I spend on Twitter. And so I was able to watch as masses of people that I follow start leaving Twitter because they have objections to Elon Musk buying it.

And so that’s moving people to other social media networks. So Facebook is not cool anymore. Tiktok has security concerns. Twitter has an owner that some people find objectionable. Instagram is owned by Facebook, so it’s toxic by relation. And so what are people to do? Because people still have this desire to be social. So there’s things like Mastodon. Has anybody heard of Mastodon? Okay, I feel like I’m making this worth your time this morning, so that’s great. Mastodon is a new social media platform that is way more complicated that you have to install your own server and things. That is way more complicated than any of this stuff. But people are thinking about moving there because they’re mad at Elon or whatever. So just know that that’s a headline you should know about.

 

Well, welcome to the Content Machine Podcast. This week, we are joined by Ricky Santos. Ricky was the first hire we made at Adelsberg Marketing, and we’ve been thankful to have him on the team ever since. It’s going on, what, five?

Five, no, almost six years.

Almost six years. And it’s amazing that he’s been able to put up with me for so long. But Ricky is one of our designers and our lead motion graphic artist. And so this week on the podcast, we’re just going to interview Ricky and talk about some design trends. So, Ricky, tell us about a design trend that you’re seeing.

Yeah. So I guess one of the thing we can think about first is when it comes to trends, it’s not something that everyone might be doing. Although we’re not selling all of me switching to using these things. It’s just something that I’ve seen around areas in graphic design, motion design, website design, that more people are starting picking it up. The one of the first things I’ve seen is a little bit more pulling in some vintage elements, but not necessarily copying designs from 1960s, 1970s. But maybe we’re just pulling in colors or fonts or some of the language that they were using at the time.

And we’re not just talking like putting distressed things on.

Stuff, right? Yeah, it’s not making it.

Look old. When you mean colors and fonts, what’s an example of that?

So for one of the things, you look at a home goods company called Pine Apple Collaborative. And one of the things they use a lot of is just pulling in mid century modern colors. A lot of mid century modern design was very busy in some areas. We have a lot of patterns and shapes, and I think a lot of that people don’t really like right now. But the colors and so they feel more homey. They look good on an olive oil bottle. They look good on… Your laundry detergent doesn’t just look like a tied laundry detergent. It looks more esthetically pleasing. Yeah, exactly. Then something else, another company that is doing some of that is CNET, the online electronic and lifestyle review website. They had this went through the recent redesign and from their old logo, which is a very… Not lifeless, it’s not good way to put it, but didn’t have much personality. But their new logo pulling in the older font, some of their illustrations that they use throughout the site have some of that retro cyber punk look to it as well. More 80s looks.

Looking at the logo here, it has extremely aggressive seriffs. Too much, in my opinion. The T almost looks like a Times New Roman T, but everything else is.

Out there. I think that’s one of the things that looks like something we see from the Art Deco style that happened around the ’70s and ’60s. All of the fonts were elongated, and each little element of the font was a design feature in itself. It wasn’t just a little addition to the font.

Yeah, that is a whole identity just in that font style for sure.

But compared to other text sites that is not. It’s very different. Yeah, that we see everywhere else.

So vintage, but then you also say that retro.

Is being seen. Yeah. So when I think of retro, I think of bolder lines, bolder colors, bolder fonts, really. And I think I’m thinking more of the hippie, trippy styles that we see some places, but also pulling in some of the maximumism style, which is having a lot of bright colors, a lot of patterns and taking up the visual space using all those elements. We can see one here. This is a designer’s heat. This is his profile. Gleb.

I’m going to get, sorry. Sabrin is enough.

That’s as close as anyone can get. But he’s using these old looking… I think of my Game Boy Advanced.

Yeah, very Game Boy original boxes and fonts and shading.

To create a very easy to read website that is more fun. That’s a lot of his styles is that he is… This is the thing he’s known for is doing this work.

His domain name is gleb. Sexy.

You got to have a very bold personality to have that as your domain name. Absolutely.

But very retro.

But also, it’s something we can look at is what Target is doing and the new styles that they’re putting up for their clothing and their interior design. One of the things right now is skinny jeans are gone. And same way I feel like in design, a lot of very structured grid systems, very structured print layouts where your header is always the largest thing. And then you have other little events that follow a very hierarchical… Hierarchical? Yeah. Words are hard today. Yeah. The big words. So you know the structure of everything is little bit, but I think the more retro design, it’s a little bit looser in terms of the rules that you can follow. So another example is, it’s a fan favorite and some of our team members is Olly Pop.

Alex on our team can’t help but drink Olly Pop. Olly Pop, if you’re listening, we got a brand deal for you.

But you can see there, it’s not just like a the Coca Cola logo or some bubbles on it. They’re using some of the little bit more retro illustration style to make that the center of attention. And then also on their website, the fonts they used are fonts that we see in old magazines instead of websites.

And there’s an interesting juxtaposition here with a new soda written in a very old font style. And then you mentioned here that black is taking over.

Our screens. Yeah. So once Apple finally started to implement dark modes on their phone, a lot of websites, a lot of apps started to have black as the main color instead of white. I think a lot of that has to do with our phones are better at showing black. Most people have iPhones. in America. I love that a lot of the screens can show the text on black is right now because of how good Apple has designed the screens. I think that has driven a lot of people to start designing in black. Instead of having white space, your main element is darker.

Well, because you’ve got the technology that shows the screen better, shows true black. That way you can have the contrast to read it. And then I think just big point about you bringing up about dark mode is dark mode makes it where everybody gets used to seeing that. So it’s not as weird to just see it all. It’s like not a goth website because it’s all black. It’s just like this is normal now.

And I think we also, from the pandemic, everybody started to watch content on their screens a lot more. Watching in a dark room, if you go out from your show and it’s a really bright screen, that’s going to be a bad experience. And so having a darker screen that helps your eyes not have that such stark change all of a sudden, I feel like that’s another big reason I live. When you go on Apple TV or Netflix, it’s mostly all black.

And then you had an example here with a Fay app?

Yeah. So they are a… I don’t know too much about the app itself, what they do. I think it’s more of an investing dashboard, but they have a very dark dashboard look. I mean, the whole website is basically black. It’s like probably 90 % black. It’s beautiful. Yeah. And then I think because of the darkness of it, it looks more premium as well. It’s got to have the black Lexus feel. You have to think of that. But also Apple, when you look at Apple, some of their products, like the AirP ods Pro, that’s all in black as well. They have some of the products in white. They have some of the products in black. I think they’re more premium products. They show in the black screen to make it look a bit more, make it feel more premium.

Absolutely. Now, the last thing that you had here was AI Art, which is a controversial subject and one that we should be thinking about. What are your thoughts on the AI Art?

I think there’s two branches of views on the AI Art. Right now, there’s a lot of people who are worried that people are just going to stop making art and just use AI to make everything. But then there’s another group of people who are looking into AI Art as another tool in their toolbox to help them quickly find… Maybe they have an idea in the end of their head and they’re having a hard time getting it out of their head into paper. And so it’s a quick way to push it onto the paper and just have different variations that they can jump off from. This is using Midjour AI, which is a really advanced AI system that does pretty realistic stuff.

Yeah, because that’s an AI image right there. Yeah, this is AI. So we’re looking at a Prata bag AI image that has a wine bottle holder in it and it looks real.

I do a lot of the work on the side. One of the things I’ve thought about doing is, if I was to make a new type of backpack, what might that look like? I know how to make all the hardware points for it, but having weird shapes or different ideas, that might be a little bit harder too.

And you might be able to test market it, too.

Another example is in architecture. It’s a lot easier to quickly change up shapes of a building than to actually build up a building and just see if.

It works on that. So we’re seeing an example of a Nike concept store and it looks like potentially Japan. I think so. That looks brilliant. Looks like a cross between Nike and Apple Store.

Then on the other end of it, there’s a couple of products, AI products that are built into Photoshop and illustrator where you can… Let’s say I’m designing something for a website and I need an icon of a tree. Instead of going out and spending some time designing that icon of a simple little tree or going out to another website to pull an icon off of that. You can quickly type in there and it’ll make a one out of one icon for you real quick. So you can pull that out real quick and start using that and then you maybe can change some elements of that to make it your own still or.

In Photoshop. Or if you’re making just a sample or a concept that saves a lot of time. I think that’s going to be something that we continually have to confront over the next couple of years. And it’ll be interesting to see where the legal ramifications fall out at, and ownership, because AI is just regurgitating other things that it finds. And there’s already been lawsuits filed. And then also the legal ramifications of… Some people are putting stuff into AI generators that the public doesn’t need to know. And so it’s going to be interesting to see how people, if their data is as safe as they think it is and all that things. But those are things that we don’t know the answer to for a few years, probably. Well, Ricky, thank you so much for sharing some design trends that we should be aware of. And where can we find you online?

Instagram? Instagram, yeah. I don’t have much on there, just @RickySantos955.

But you can find your leather working stuff.

Yeah, it’s on there.

Everyone’s got one. What’s it called?

It’s the same name. Ricky Santos.

So I’ve got some Ricky Santos leather stuff at my house. I approve and encourage people to go buy that. But thank you guys for checking out the Content Machine podcast. Thank you to Ricky for joining us this week. And be sure to subscribe. And if you found something in this episode helpful, share it with a friend, text it to him, send them an email, check it out. We’ll be putting these out weekly, and we look forward to being back in your feed soon. Thank you.

 

We think about direction changing books for our business, The checklist Manifesto is one of those. As a creative marketing agency, we do a lot of different projects, and each project is different within itself, and we never want to feel too corporate. So for a long time, we didn’t lean into standard operating procedures. But this book changed that. A checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande is a look at Atul’s work in the public health world and shows how fallible the human condition is. The story centers on doctors and nurses in surgery rooms. Doctors and nurses are some of our smartest citizens. But a tool notes that for many years, simple mistakes were leading to many, many unnecessary complications and deaths of patients. Why? Because humans are bad at remembering all the things that they are supposed to remember. In enters the simple checklist, and the numbers of complications decline nearly miraculously because of a simple, humble checklist. Some things like confirming the name of a patient with the team and the paperwork can make sure that the right person has their kidney removed. But without a checklist, a lot of assumptions and mistakes are made. So how does this apply to a marketing business?

Well, I think it applies to all businesses and organizations because anyone who does anything can benefit from a checklist. To air is human, right? Humans are prone to make mistakes and forget things. Checklists can help mitigate that. Do you have something that happens every day? every week? Or once a quarter? Do you remember all the steps it takes to make it happen? We launch websites approximately once a month around here, but as they have grown in complexity and our business has gotten busier, it can be easier to forget a simple thing like submitting to Google search console. Checklist for hiring can make sure that we give employees and interns a smooth start to their work here and not forget, for example, their payroll paperwork to make sure that that gets taken care of. We think checklists are ever evolving. We encourage our team to update SOPs regularly if something changes or we need to add something new. Our team has the authority to speak up if they see someone else missing a step. These are living documents that allow us to be better so that everyone is encouraged to be involved. We started building checklists for lots of things, most anything that is repeatable.

I have a template I use to guide brainstorming sessions. We have new lead and closed project checklists. We have a video export standard operating procedure. We have a logo design package delivery SOP. We want to make sure that the routine things that we do that we do not forget something simple like sending an invoice or something less common like asking ourselves, are we going to add this project to our website? The second most powerful thing, besides not forgetting things, is that it allows us to decentralize authority. One of the things that we are trying to grow through right now is me being less involved with every single thing that happens in the business. We are working to decentralize my authority to empower more people throughout the team. Sops are one way we do that. A checklist for a process that I used to do, or another tenured member used to do, allows us to keep quality up and minimize mistakes as more people touch projects. In fact, during the pilot phase of making this podcast, we built an SOP for both production and distribution, and then we handed that off to our interns who are doing the production and distribution of this podcast, which allowed them to get up to speed much more quickly.

A good shout out to Eric, who’s sitting right there, Cameron, who’s editing this, and Addie, who’s distributing it. If you’re in a business that is not typically a checklist type of company, you should think about this book. If you are in an industry that does use checklists, but you have some people like me who might think that they’re ridiculous, you should also read this book. I give the checklist Manifesto by Atul Grande, a five out of five. Be sure to add it to your reading list. And thank you for checking out the content machine podcast. If you found this episode helpful or insightful or know someone that would, please send it to them. We will be releasing these episodes weekly, so be sure to subscribe to get more helpful content on marketing and leadership. Thank you for listening.

Now, the reason I want to have you on here is because I know that you get marketing, and I think you can see that in your company. So what role has marketing played in Jackson Fence company?

Wow. So marketing. So I’m curious how you’re going to respond to this. Okay, all right, so I actually went to college. That’s crazy. I know. But now Kevin, I have a PhD. I call that a postal digger. Right? So anyways, I went to college and kind of similar to building fence. They want you to pick a major. What do you study? I’m like biology, looking, all this stuff. I’m like marketing. That sounds awesome, you know what I mean? So I chose marketing. That sounds fancy. On it my collegiate path. And I’ll never forget, man, I might even have the book somewhere. I opened this textbook up, my marketing textbook, and it was like it’s not verbatim. I’m always bad at remembering exactly what people said, but I do remember how I felt, you know what I mean? That’s just always my thing. I’m not good at details, but I remember the gist of it. But it’s something to the tune of, like, first of all, kiddos, marketing is not advertising. All right? So let’s just start.

There two different things.

Yeah. It’s like marketing is the overall delivery of a good or a service. And that goes everything from the very beginning of, hey, we have an idea through the financial department, through the manufacturing department, whatever, to, hey, the end user, the end consumer now has this piece of good and they give you money for it and it goes back to the very beginning and starts over. That’s marketing. It’s more the whole entire business operation rather than just always in marketing. And it’s always in regards to advertising. And that’s fair.

Yeah, there’s a lot of people who will define it differently depending on who you’re talking.

I see marketing, and advertising is related, but marketing is the overall operation. And how do you go from conception to delivery and repeat, repeat, repeat where advertising is, hey, I want you to buy this drink and I’m going to make the logo really cool and bright and big, and we’re going to face it just a certain way. So when you walk in, you’ll see it, you know what I mean?

We kind of delineate the two between. Marketing is like, maybe marketing is the design of the can, but advertising is like the payment of placement to make sure that people know that the can exists.

I like that too.

So marketing in the Fence company has been very intentional about your branding. So you see it as an entire business process. So how does that work out throughout the whole business?

So in our company, everything goes back to like, this is going to sound really dumb or simple, overly simple, maybe awesome. So it all goes back to two things. If it makes sense, do it. If it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it. And that comes from a corporate red tape structure, which I grew to like, absolutely. I learned a lot, but like, oh, wow, that’s not the way that I want to do things. And just because it makes sense, that doesn’t mean you can do it. Canon you have to still ask 17 other people who we don’t know, and then they’ll let you know if you can. So we just have a business model of like, hey, if it makes sense, do it. If it doesn’t make sense, don’t do it. And as it relates to advertising, I’m like, look, I want to be familiar. So everything has to have blue on it, right? Everything has to have blue. And that’s even a dress code item is like, hey, look, you’re welcome to wear whatever you want to to work. You got to have boots on. That’s one thing. We have different colored items, and we’ll give those out.

Swag, we call it. But just because I give you a black shirt with a white logo, don’t take it for granted. You still got to have some blue on. So you can wear your black shirt, but you got to have a blue cap on. You got to have a blue beanie on. You got to have a blue t shirt on. So my dress code is pretty simple. Just boots get to have the logo showing somewhere and get to have blue on. And I’m not talking about just the outline here.

I’m talking about, like, a blue primary blue.

That is blue up there in it. What do you have? I’m not breaking the rule. I got blue here. But that becomes to be synonymous with the brand. And I want when people see people building fence, period, in blue shirts, I don’t want there to be a discussion or conversation. I wonder who they got to build their fence. I want it to be that must be Jackson Fence Company, aka. Team Blue, building that fence, you know, and so everything’s blue, even the the roof of the trucks, you know, hey, everybody’s got blue hats on. Well, guess what? Let’s take out all these trucks. We got to the rap shop and, hey, rap. Yeah, I need all these roofs blue because that looks like us. So when we pull up, you see a blue roof, and the guy just had with a blue hat. You don’t have to warn to what the size of the trucks is, but it says Jackson Fence in blue. Yeah, absolutely.

Except for yours, which is black. Right?

Well, I got rid of that one.

Oh, did you?

Yeah, because it didn’t fit.

It didn’t it didn’t?

They brought the dress code.

Yeah.

Awesome. But no, I didn’t have a black one, but I thought that was kind of cool, too.

So when you when you’re getting started and you’re starting to sell more fences because really fencing is like a one time a life purchase, probably for a lot of people.

You’d be surprised.

People break their fences or whip. No, but so or once every ten or 20 years.

So, yeah, what we know is people typically the average stay in in a household now is seven years. Okay, all right. So people are generally moving houses every seven years. That’s not me. It’s also not my parents. But on average, we take everybody, the people that move every year, because we know those people, too, and we know the people that stay in the same house for 40 years that’s my parents take all those people together and add them up and divide them by whatever, seven years people are moving. So you might buy a fence from us now, 2023, but 2030, you’re at a new property. And the other thing, too, Kevin, is if you’ve looked around, there’s a whole lot of new houses going in, and.

It’S going to be keeping being like that, right?

Yeah. And so for us, people always think, hey, man, did I get all those new houses? I’m like, well, we got some. But to me, as long as new houses mean more than just new houses, that means that people are moving from the older houses into the new houses. So now that house has become available, too. So now that’s two opportunities to build a fence. And then not only are those two opportunities, but where are these people coming from? Well, they got to be coming from somewhere. We’re not just moving people from left to right. They’re trickling in from somewhere. And so what does that mean? Now we got to build another school. We got to build Pope elementary. They’re going to have a playground with a fence around it. And then because we have another school and all these other houses, now, we can have another fire department. And then it just keeps on expanding and expanding. And right now, I don’t know if you noticed, but there’s three high rise apartments going up right now in Jackson, Tennessee. I say high rise. They all have fences. Every one of them has a fence around it.

But to answer your question about the repeat business thing, so when we keep up with people through our accounting software, QuickBooks, I was actually doing that this morning, going through and doing job costs, and it’s amazing how many of the same people are on that report. You know, you got 50 names, and one person’s name might be on the other three times. It’s like, well, why? You know? Well, you know, we had a lady, she bought a fence for herself. She liked it so much, she bought one for her daughter. Now we had the same lady’s name in there twice. And so we’re having it’s such a common thing that in QuickBooks and our CRM system, you have contacts, and then you have jobs. And so we’re having to figure out how to not just say Kevin outersberger, but now we got Kevin outersberger as a contact, and then we’ve got Adisburger marketing, we got Kevin’s private residence, we got Kevin’s church, we got these different jobs that are separate from Kevin, but they fall under Kevin’s thing. So we’re having to figure out how to we’re figuring it out because it’s so common that I don’t know, I think people just love us, bro.

Well, and that’s repeat business, which is the best kind, we love them.

So what are you doing to I mean, what’s the thought process on trying to get new business in what’s been working for you?

Yeah, so I never really know. So fencing is a hustle. It’s very fast, and it goes back to our team, eric and Corey and Mike and Brandon Swain. All these guys, man, they’re freaking rock stars. And they build fence really, really fast and good, you know? But so when I say that, I mean, we’re probably build this week six or seven fences, maybe eight. It just depends on the size of them, you know, we built like 500 fences last year, and so it’s a lot of fences, you know, so so we’re always on the hunt for the next one. And leads, you know, you gotta we call them leads. I hate to refer to people or people’s homes as leads, but in sales, you got to lead something. So it’s an opportunity or whatever you want to call it. And where are these people coming from? SEO? Google Ads? That’s not attractive to say, but yeah, we paid Google to put our name at the top. Sure. We actually just bought six billboards, man. We never done that either. Okay. Lexington, Mackenzie, Alamo, Jackson, Medina, Humboat, those are the six towns that they’ve got. Now I got a Jackson Fence billboard.

I don’t know how well it’s going to work either, but our plan is to grow the fence company, and the only way to grow the fence company is to have really good people and really good quality leads. And I don’t know how to do it exactly, other than be everywhere, put your name on everything you could possibly put it on, and be the only when people think about a fence, I want to think about Jackson fence.

Absolutely.

Did I answer your question?

I think so. Maybe if you were to start over again, what would be the first thing that you do to be successful?

The first thing? Man, that’s hard. Not much different. I always said before, we worry about making money, let’s worry about doing a good job. And I think that’s one thing I advise new fence companies now to do, too, is a lot of them, lot of new companies get all this advice about how to make more money, and I’m kind of the different guy. I’m like, hey, no, figure out how to be really good at what you do first. And be affordable and just name out there. And then once you start getting really good at it, then just worry about how to make money. I don’t know that I would change a whole lot out of the three or 1004 customers that we’ve had. A couple of them don’t like me, and that still bothers me, really happens. And I wish that I could handle some of these things differently than I did. And not that I handled it wrong, but at the end of the day, when people do business with me, I take that sincerely, and I really want people to like this. I had a guy that we didn’t see eye to eye with a year ago, and about three weeks ago, I called him up, and I said, hey, man, I’ve been thinking about this, and let’s get together.

Let’s figure out what we can do. It’s bothering me to know that I got some guy, like, 45 minutes away that doesn’t like Cannon, doesn’t like Jackson Smith. I’m not okay with that. And we’ve had a really good year, and, look, I want to meet with you. I want to figure out what we can do to bring this back to zero, and then maybe we can be friends. So, I don’t know. I might take it too personal sometimes, but that’s the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night, man. This is a dude that doesn’t like me. I don’t like that at all.

That’s okay. That’s good. Now, it’s a really competitive labor market. Yeah. And you are specifically in the all I hear we hear from lots of people, I can’t hire enough people, can’t hire enough people, can’t get enough people, can’t keep people. You’re in a very labor intensive industry. It’s not an easy job to do. You’re out in the elements. People are sweating and working hard. How are you continuing to grow? Because you have to have people to build defenses. So what’s important to getting people and keeping people, and how are you being successful in that?

Wow. So in six years, I told a guy that this morning. I was like, hey, I may be wrong, and I don’t want this to air and be wrong, but I think in six years and we got 2020 people working for us now, I’ve had three people give me their resignation in six years. And I like to think that goes on record or whatever that speaks to the team that we’ve found and that we’ve worked with and that we have right now. People say these kind of cliche things like, hey, higher, slow, fire fast. To a degree, there’s truth to that. Like, if somebody who gets fired from jack’s fence, those are the people that don’t fit the culture more than anything. But, hey, these other guys, they don’t like you, man. And I don’t know, and that’s real. Hey, bro, I cannot put you out here with these guys in this truck. They’ve got a brotherhood going, and they’re kicking butt and taking names, man. If for some reason you’re not fitting in with them, and that’s not a me versus you thing, and it’s also not a veteran versus you thing, just, hey, I don’t think that we are the right fit for you and vice versa.

And we’ve had to have those conversations. But I think Jackson fence company, it’s not just me anymore. It’s like the people around me are genuinely smarter. I’m not just saying that they build better fence. They sell better fence, they have less anxiety, they’re cooler, they have better jokes, all that stuff, man, they bring better lunch to work every day, seriously. And I’m eating out of a peanut butter jar. So I’m not the guy that people are coming to work for. They’re coming to work with other people. But I’ll tell you this, Kevin. There’s a mechanic shop in our town that burnt down a couple of weeks ago, and there’s a guy that works there, and I know he’s very talented, and I interviewed him this morning, and when I say I interviewed him, it’s kind of like this just a casual he had a coffee. We’re just talking, and we don’t need I was very honest. I said, look, man, I don’t even need nobody right now. But I have this, like, what is it called?

A Vision.

A vision that when somebody good becomes available, you bring them into the equation some way, somehow draft the best player.

Available instead of maybe by need.

And so, hey, look, man, I want you to work here. I know that. I don’t know what I want you to do, but we want you on our team, and we’ll figure that out in time. But if you’ll take that leap with me, I’ll never let you down. That’s kind of the way I look at it. Take the best people you can possibly find and put them on your team.

And then so that’s a part of the culture. It’s like, we want good people, but, like, what else is about culture? How would you define the culture at Jackson’s, man?

So the culture at Jackson’s fence or anything that I want to be a part of is look, this is a story that I like to paint. Look, in the bible, Jesus had disciples. These are people that followed him, all right? These people are dirty. These people are not like him. And then what did Jesus do? He took their sandals off and he washed their feet. That’s called servant leadership. Now, I’m not saying that you’ve come to Jackson fence and I’m watching all these guys feet or walking on water, and that’s right, but I want to take care of these people, you know what I mean? And if Jesus can get on his hands and knees and wash somebody’s feet so that they’ll follow him and work with him, what can I do? Just a little example in the wintertime, this past winter, everybody got new pair of boots. And the thing is, like, hey, if you’re at work, you’re wearing the Jackson fence name, you’re doing a great job. It’s important to me that you’re in a good mood, that you’re happy, and if you’re walking around all day in these uneven terrains on your feet, that’s the foundation of your body.

And if your feet don’t feel good and if your feet aren’t safe or if your feet are getting wet because the dew on the grass is seeping through your shoes or your boots where you’re not going to have a great day and your body’s not going to feel good. And you’ll never be able to get away from the sore. 80 wet feet. And so one thing that we like to do is we like to buy everybody boots because I want you to come to work and I want you to be comfortable. I want you to be safe. I want you to take your boots off the end of day and your socks are dry. I guess that’s my example. Like washing feet, that’s literally the bottom of your body and you’re on it all day long. Get Jackson fence. And so it’s important to me that we take care of your feet, so.

You take care of people. Servant leadership. You clearly have a good rat track record of keeping people.

What else about culture, man? Just treat people the way that you want them to treat you. We’ve all had jobs before you worked at Burrito Truck.

I did help with marketing for Burrito Meal back in the day.

I remember that story. But do unto to others as you want them to do under you. And we’ve all heard stories of people becoming targeted or becoming, hey, I think they’re trying to fire me or whatever. There is none of that at Jacksonville. It’s like, hey, if we don’t want you here, we’re going to probably let you know. You know what I mean? Just that cut and dry, really. But we owe it to the team. We owe it to the people. We owe it to all the families. I’m begging you, hey, come to work. Be a team player. No drama. Do a good job. If you mess something up, say, hey, I mess it up. We’ll go fix it. Just do that. That’s all. That’s all we need at the end of the day. And I think what we’re doing is helping people be better husbands and wives and me, I want to believe that anyways.

And not everybody thinks about that when they think about places to work.

That’s right.

Well, Cannon, I appreciate you coming in. I appreciate the friendship we’ve been able to have. And you’ve helped my fences out.

I know that.

So if someone wants to get their fences mended or a new fence installed, how do they get a hold of you?

Yeah, look here. So we talk about technology and bringing stuff back to the table. So, Jacksonfencecompany.com, you can literally draw your own fence via satellite imagery like Google would do, and get a free instant online quote in minutes. I’m not talking about you just fill out a form and we’re going to call you. No, you’ll fill out a form. Yes. And then next thing you know, you’re drawing and then you’ll get a price right there. There’s no emails, there’s no back and forth, nothing.

Just instant quick price conversion rate on that.

It’s 50 50. So there’s a lot of people, too, that don’t understand what defense costs, you know, and so we won’t yeah, it’s probably the same in marketing. You know, we don’t know what the cost to do a do a short commercial, you know?

Yeah.

And so rather than them wasting their time and, you know, us going out and spending our time with it, you know, we just cut to the chase. Hey, look, you’re going to be somewhere between $5,000 you want to do it, and if that’s way more than they can possibly do. Well, let me tell you about the financing options that we have. There you go. We want to build you a fence. We want your backyard to have the best fence. So make it easy for you.

All right? So Jackson Fence website. What’s the website?

Jacksonfencecompany.com good enough.

All right. Thanks, Cannon.