Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey guys, it's Carolyn Kroons. Welcome back to the Quickening Screwed Podcast, where we talk about all the ways not to get screwed in the construction industry, and really great tips on how to run a better business. And on that, I have somebody who's here to help us with the marketing side of things. That is, you know, not everybody's favorite thing to do, but so necessary in today's world is Gordon Henry. Hey, Gordon, how are you?
Speaker 1 00:00:22 Hi, Caroline, nice to see you.
Speaker 0 00:00:24 Hey, so I know you have the winning on Main Street podcast and you're also in charge of Thrive. So before we dive into all the questions I have for you, tell us a little bit about your background and about winning on Main Street and on about Thrive.
Speaker 1 00:00:37 Yeah, sure. So, um, I started my career, uh, a long time ago now, few decades, uh, really in the marketing space, specifically in the direct marketing space. And you know, what that really means is marketing directly to customers, kind of one-to-one as opposed to, you know, more broad-based advertising, uh, and being able to measure the results. And I would say by the way, that anybody who's listening to this should seriously be thinking about their direct marketing approach. How do they identify who are their target customers? How do they I, uh, bring them into them and measure the effectiveness of that recruitment effort, uh, you know, in terms of, uh, what's the ROI or, or the cost, uh, versus the return, uh, on that, on that investment. But I started doing that back in the nineties. Used to be through direct mail, less that now more digital.
Speaker 1 00:01:26 Um, in, uh, uh, 2000, I met up with, uh, the CEO of a company called Yellow Book, Joe Walsh. Uh, ended up wor working for Joe, uh, still worked for Joe. 23 years later. Um, yellow Book was, uh, uh, an independent, uh, sort of upstart, uh, yellow page advertiser going up against the phone companies. We did a tremendous job, really, uh, um, beating the phone companies, uh, built a $2 billion business, uh, became part of a $4 billion international, uh, company that included the UK and Spain and Latin America all selling Yellow Pages. And the whole premise was to charge less for the same advertising as the competitors, uh, businesses were getting overcharged for Yellow Pages advertising, just like they might get overcharged for anything. It was really, uh, a monopoly that we were up against and we were able to deliver the same product for less money.
Speaker 1 00:02:16 And, and, uh, small businesses loved it. Our customers were always and still our small businesses. We left exited Yellow Book in the late two thousands and came back together a few years later, uh, to do the same thing with another company, which was called Dex Media. And we've renamed it Thrive and Dex Media was, uh, one of the last remaining big Yellow Pages players. Uh, we still publish Yellow Pages. Uh, we all should also do all sorts of online advertising. And our real growth business now is Thrive Software. And, uh, the focus of the software is, it's really a communications platform so that small businesses can know their customers, communicate properly with their customers. And when I say communicate, that means everything from an appointment to a reminder to getting paid to asking for a review in the future. So the full sort of gamut of how you communicate with your customers, which is I think is a really, really important thing.
Speaker 1 00:03:11 Hopefully we'll talk about support. So that's what I have been doing. Um, I joined the company as the CMO now became, uh, chief Strategy Officer. Uh, but yeah, we've been doing this for another decade and, uh, it's been a great run. Uh, winning on Main Street is just a podcast we do on behalf of Thrive and is speaking with small business players every week, uh, asking them about, uh, the trials and tribulations of running a small business, what they do for communications with their customers, uh, and, uh, what are their tips for success. So that's just something we do as a way to help small businesses and also get the Thrive name out there.
Speaker 0 00:03:45 So tell me a little bit more about Thrive. Like h how does it keep you in contact? Is it an add-on with other software is its own thing? Tell me a little bit more.
Speaker 1 00:03:54 Yeah, so, um, thrive is, I guess what you typically call a crm, a customer relationship management system. That can mean different things to different people, but at the base of it, you know, you think, okay, I'm running a small business. Who are my clients? I could write those names down on a piece of paper, I could put 'em into an Excel spreadsheet or I could have 'em in a database, in a digital database where I can do other things with them. And so it starts really with that database of customers. And you might build up that database through your Google or Facebook advertising. Someone cl someone clicks and fills out a form that data, that name and a, and in, you know, address and information gets dumped into your database. If they, uh, you know, sign up for an ebook on your website, that name gets dumped into your database.
Speaker 1 00:04:41 If they call up your assistant, that name gets da dumped into your database. No matter how someone communicates you with you, you want those names and I say names, all the information, address, telephone, et cetera, in that database. And then how do you communicate with them in the future? Now, obviously, if assuming you have approvals and you can ask for those with the click, you can email them, you can text them, you can, uh, if they wanna book an appointment, they book that appointment and now you can automatically, uh, reply and say, yes, I'm available at that time. Um, and then when you need to send them future information, uh, if it's an invoice, an estimate, uh, some other email or text, it makes Thrive, makes it super easy to send that information. You have a digital record of it, by the way, so your staff can see it.
Speaker 1 00:05:26 It's not just you, you know, if you have a staff, they can see what's go and you can see what they're doing. And then as I mentioned before, if you do something on social and they reply that information, you have it all recorded in one place, and then in the future you have basically a history on every customer. And one of the things I think is so important about this is, first of all, it coordinates and organizes your business. So, you know, you look professional, you look like you have your act together, really makes you look like a big business. You might be a two man staff or a two woman staff, but you look big because you look like you have your act together. Um, and I think it's super important for small businesses these days to have something like a Thrive. Why? Because like it or not, you, me and everybody else, I know we live on our phones, phones.
Speaker 1 00:06:16 And if you're not communicating with people the way they wanna be communicated with, they're gonna forget about you and they're probably gonna go somewhere else because somebody else is gonna make it easier. I know me, I like to be paying for things with one click. I like to be getting electronic, um, receipts. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, you know, all that stuff makes, you know, doing your taxes easier, right? So you need to be doing business with people digitally the way they want to do business. And then the other piece is, in the future, if you ever intend to sell your business or even bring in a new partner, selling your business is like so much easier and so much more profitable, I think if you have that record. Because what is the buyer buying? You know, they're buying your digital database, they're buying your customer list. And so now you've got this perfect customer list to sell somebody.
Speaker 0 00:07:06 So is it its own independent software or does it build with other softwares? How does, how does
Speaker 1 00:07:11 That work? It's its own independent software. And by the way, we're introducing new modules like a marketing center, which obviously focuses on making it easier for you to advertise, not just on Google and Facebook, but across the internet. You can sort of dial that up and, and down and ma measure it and watch it yourself. And that all plugs into your DA digital database. Um, it does, the, the internet is an ecosystem these days. You know, think of the app store on your, on your iPhone. Uh, everything's gotta fit together. We realize that most small businesses use QuickBooks for their accounting. Many of them have used MailChimp or Constant Contact for their email in the past. They may want to come into Thrive and use our email, but they may wanna stick with what they've been using. And so we've made it super easy to integrate with pretty much all the popular software with one click. We have our own app marketplace, we're adding to it every day. You know, it's an 80 20 on the internet, like 80% of the usage of apps is in like 20% of the apps. Like I mentioned, if you go like QuickBooks kind of a few more and you've covered most of what small businesses use, and then, you know, we do add, uh, new ones all the time. So yeah, it, it's totally integrable, uh, so that the data flows easily back and forth.
Speaker 0 00:08:29 Gotcha. And you can tell where they came from and what's working.
Speaker 1 00:08:32 Totally. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, I mean, cuz that's a common, uh, complaint or some or objection, somebody will say, Hey, you know, I've been using this QuickBooks for years, I can't give that up. I gotta be able to continue to use that while I'm using your new system. Uh, because you know, they got all their history in there and they're com familiar with it. So we get that.
Speaker 0 00:08:51 That's awesome. So in your opinion, why do successful businesses have systems and what do those systems look like?
Speaker 1 00:08:59 Yeah, so, you know, it's, it's all about making your business, uh, this is an invented word, but like replicatable, right? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you need to make it so that the customer experience is kind of the same day after day. And regardless if you're there, or maybe your partner's there or different employees sitting in front of the customer, you want to have the same experience. It's kind of like, you know, McDonald's or Amazon, right? I mean, you think about it like, big businesses are very good at making your experience the same every time you use them. And part of that is the way you communicate with them. And that gets back to having a system for communication. Just like you hopefully have a system for building whatever it is you build, if it's a construction crew or creating whatever product is you're delivering, you want that to be something that the customer can rely on.
Speaker 1 00:09:49 And similarly with your, you really should have, I think, a communication plan for how every customer exp you know, what their experience is with you, right from that first appointment. You know, you should have that information, they should get the notification, do you promise that you're gonna show up in two days? Do you show up that the guy is gonna show up in a uniform or put the booties on when he goes into the house? You know, like that experience should be very predictable and that becomes part of your brand, you know, that becomes who you are. It's like we do it in a certain way. And part of that is that client communication. Uh, and so that's why I think it's important where, um, everything is, uh, predictable from a client experience standpoint. And that can be built into your systems, whether it's communication or any other system.
Speaker 1 00:10:40 You have, you know, a lot of construction and a lot of other businesses who I've interviewed, they talk about, so p standard operating procedure, documenting your standard operating procedure, all the things we just talked about, how you do what you do, and putting it in, you know, used to being a binder now hopefully in maybe a digital binder, uh, and getting your customer or your, uh, employees to understand what that is and behave that way is a lot of what it takes to be successful so that it's not just, uh, make it up fresh every day.
Speaker 0 00:11:14 No, I agree. And especially in the construction industry, right? And I think in every industry you're hiring somebody to do something you don't know how to do, which means you don't know a whole lot about it. And from, from my world, uh, you know, I've been in construction litigation forever, and most of the cases where builders get sued or contractors get sued could have been prevented if they had properly communicated expectations. Like, here's a realistic completion date and just answering questions on a timely basis and just being upfront. So I think communication is key to every business, but especially in the construction business where, you know, there's unrealistic expectations like HGTV and things out there that they don't, don't, you know, the client doesn't know any better and if you don't tell 'em, those are the standards you're judged against them, that's when we get in trouble in my experience. So I think communication is huge and especially being able to track it and make it easy for everybody and have all the information in there. Absolutely. Um, so something else, I know you know a lot about that I am trying to figure out how to do my own business. How do you build a business that doesn't need you, that doesn't need the boss?
Speaker 1 00:12:17 Yeah, <laugh>. So it really, I think we sort of laid the foundation for it, and it is a really important goal to have because nobody wants to buy you. They wanna buy your business without you. Uh, and so, you know, and, and too many entrepreneurs go into business and it's like that old email book, you know, they just think, oh, I gotta work harder, harder, harder, harder to, you know, get the pies out the door. And, um, it's not so, I mean, you really have to think about, um, what are those systems you're gonna build in order that you don't need to be ba there and how does your business run without you having to be there? Now it'd be nice to think, oh, I can just hire a bunch of people, but we can't all afford to do that. But I do think that back to the technology can, technology can do a lot of the work.
Speaker 1 00:13:03 Lemme give you a simple example, thrive. Uh, I mean, by the way, thrive costs the, the, you know, the basic package starts at 1 99 a month. So, uh, if we can save you, you know, a few days or if we can, you know, one, one more job or something, you know, depending on your business, uh, it's, it's not super expensive compared to a lot of what's out there. Um, and then we have some more expensive packages. Um, but a lot of people think for me to send out an email or a notice or do my social, I need an assistant. Okay? For, if you have a package like ours, the emails can be automated, the texts can be automated, the bills can be automated, the receipts can largely be automated. All that stuff can be automated now, essentially saving you the cost of hiring an assistant.
Speaker 1 00:14:00 Um, and if we can save you one assistant, just one, you know, that pace of the package multiple times. So you really should be thinking about how much can I do digitally? I mean, there are people who run businesses with no employees, you know, how do they do that? They do it because they automate everything. Now, you know, not everybody can do that, but, you know, start thinking about what can the sy what can the technology do for me the most simple being, if you have a list of a thousand customers or prospects and you wanna send out a quarterly email newsletter, you can sit there on January 1st and program that thing for the whole year and never think about it again.
Speaker 0 00:14:38 Yeah. And that's really, I mean, that's how you run a business with that doesn't absolutely need you. And then, so once you can get that set up, how do you do, like how do you plan for your exit strategy or if you want to sell, what does that, what does that look like once you get all the pieces set up? <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:14:55 I, I, and I've talked to, you know, a lot of experts on that subject too. Um, you know, being able to point to think about it from the other guy's perspective. So perspective buyer walks in, what do they wanna see? They wanna see clean financials for at least three years. Okay. Um, they wanna see your customer list, they wanna see a history of those jobs. Um, if you have employees, obviously they wanna understand, you know, what does the team look like? Um, and they would wanna understand how you do the projects you do. And so somehow having that captured in a documented fashion, um, so that they could basically say, great, you can leave now, here's your money and the thing will continue to run by itself. I mean, you would never think, boy, if I somehow bought, um, you know, a big business today, I don't know, you know, uh, Chili's restaurants or something, how much would that actually depend on me? Like very, very little other than a few decisions, right? I mean, most of it's just running, you want to get your smaller business to sort of be like that, where somebody can step in and basically sit in their chair making just a few decisions, but not have to, you know, figure out how to make the products, deliver the products every day.
Speaker 0 00:16:06 Hmm. Um, so, and getting those customers and all of that. How, how do you use digital marketing to get leads? How, in your experience, what's the most successful way to do that?
Speaker 1 00:16:18 Yeah, so as I mentioned at the beginning, Carolyn, um, you know, anything to do with the information world has changed so much just in my, you know, 30 years or so in the business. Uh, you know, you used to have mostly, you know, printed yellow pages that a lot of local businesses would buy and ad in. Now that went to online, then it went to Google search and Facebook search. Um, and now there's many other ways people get, you know, information. But you've gotta be, uh, you've gotta be building a digital advertising campaign, um, so that people know you're out there and, you know, most of your listeners are probably doing this to some extent, but you gotta be, you know, testing, what are the keywords I'm buying? Um, how am I building my social media presence? It's a really important thing that a lot of businesses don't think about as much. They think maybe just like buy any Facebook ad or something, but in addition to building your website, um, you know, you should have a social, uh, um, presence because so many people are, you know, on social looking for things. Um, and I think not just having a nice logo and having, you know, a few nice words about your business, but actually having pictures and even videos of what you do. One thing I think small businesses really underestimate and could do much better with is video.
Speaker 0 00:17:41 Mm,
Speaker 1 00:17:41 Definitely. And what I'm talking about is actually showing potential customers how you do what you do. Um, so like if I go to your website, can I actually see your, your workers inside the house, building the house or on the roof nailing in the roof or in the backyard doing the landscaping? Can I see that? Because, you know, nobody wants to be advertised to and nobody wants to be sold to, but everybody likes to buy when they're ready to buy that thing. And they really research it a lot. I mean, you think about it like, I don't wanna see car ads until I'm ready to buy a car, and then suddenly I'm really interested in the car ads. <laugh>. Well, if I'm interested in buying a house and you're a home builder, okay, I really wanna see how you do what you do. And if I can see a video of your guys onsite building the house and getting a sense of what it's gonna be like, or, you know, that's super valuable.
Speaker 1 00:18:33 And it's true, I think for small businesses too, we underestimate, I mean, YouTube is like the most searched engine in the world. Why? Because people love consuming this video information. I mean, it's crazy. A lot of it's silly like cat videos, but they also consume, I mean, I'll, I'll tell you like, you know, I, I like to do stuff around the house. I'm not very good at it, but I like to do it. Um, you know, and if it's like fixing a fence or, you know, cleaning out my, the engine on my boat or whatever, I'll usually look at v you know, YouTube and say like, who's had a Volvo engine that needed to have, you know, water circulating through it or before or something, you know, like, you'll, you'll google all this stuff and you'll get a YouTube video and you'll, you know, so you should think about creating that content so that people can find you.
Speaker 1 00:19:21 Because when people are looking for your business, they're gonna do their homework. That's what everybody does. Every used to be that the sale, you know, quote salesman supplied most of the information that the consumer got. Now the salesman has to realize that the consumer has more information than they do because they've done all this homework. I mean, again, you go into a car, most people when they buy a car now, they pretty much have, they know the brand, they know the model, they know all the, you know, inside configurations they want, they know everything. And they walk into the car dealer and they know more about the car than the car dealer does practically, you know, used to be very different. So think about it that way, that you're supplying that information. Cons, your future consumer wants to, uh, get access to.
Speaker 0 00:20:04 What if you can't do like professional videos? What if it's, is it, does it have to be professional? What, what are you seeing?
Speaker 1 00:20:12 You know, I, I, I, I would, I would, um, uh, adjust or modulate a little bit based on the size of your business, but basically don't worry about it because, um, you know, first of all, the phones today are pretty amazing. And so you can get a pretty good quality video for, you know, free relief if you have an iPhone. Um, so I, I would err on the side of get it done, get started, and then maybe you get better at it and you decide, I wanna get something a little, little bit better. But I, I think for most of what you're talking about, um, the point is get the message across. You know, if you, you know, know especially like a lot of home stuff. I mean, you know, you just think about things people are needing help on. Like, I needed help recently, I'm a heating system. I just wanted to see, do you fix the kind of heater I have? So if I could go to, you know, Google you and you, and you're showing me a video of you fixing my exact type of heater, great. You know, it doesn't have to be, you know, Hollywood, you know, it just needs to show me what you do.
Speaker 0 00:21:13 How do you think all this stuff has changed Customer expectations?
Speaker 1 00:21:18 You know, it's a little bit unfortunate cuz my passion of small businesses, but what's changed is the big guys have set the bar that everybody has to follow. Um, so what do I mean by that? Amazon has, I don't know, you'd tell me 24 hour delivery, 48 hour delivery. I mean, you basically push a button and you're, you're looking at a tracking system that's showing, well, the package left the warehouse, it's on the truck, it's at my local mo you know, postal sorting center, it's on the way to my house. You, you see that package going to your house the entire way. And so if you're in the package delivery business or you know, they, people wanna see that too. They expect you're somehow gonna have that, even though you're not Amazon sim you know, similarly, they like think about Uber, you know, they show the little car driving up to your driveway.
Speaker 1 00:22:06 How can you put up the local taxi service that, you know, Doug barely answers the phone, let alone shows you when you're gonna show up. <laugh> my biggest frustration as a, as a, as a homeowner, there's so many, I I, we bought the Homer in relatively recently. So, you know, new homeowner, you always have lots of deliveries and so many of the businesses that deliver things to you, the, that, they're like, well, we'll be there Tuesday <laugh> when Tuesday, you know, am I supposed to sit here? It's not 1950, you know, I'm supposed to sit here all day waiting for your truck to show up. And that's the expectation. And so you're like, I don't wanna do business with you because I can't waste my whole day and neither can my wife. Yeah. So, so use the technology available there is that, you know, um, in Thrive we, it's not there yet, but it's gonna be there soon. We're gonna have a dispatch software that shows the truck going to your house, um, start to introduce those technologies that give people more information. Everybody wants more information.
Speaker 0 00:23:08 Absolutely.
Speaker 1 00:23:09 And it's cheaper. It's cheaper. It's not as expensive as it used
Speaker 0 00:23:12 To be. No, I, I absolutely agree. So what is one key thing that you would leave our small businesses with to try to run a better successful business? They're gonna start with one thing. Where would, where would they start? Kind of give, you know, and then the next thing
Speaker 1 00:23:28 I think it, if I was gonna start someplace, it's have a digital database of your customers have, have, if somebody wants to know, show me every customer you do business with, you should be able to pull up a file and show name, address, not just name and address and telephone and email address, but the history of your interactions with that customer. That's, that's the richness that we deliver for you. You can literally see when I say richness, you can see every text and email that's corresponded between you and your customer, uh, an entire history and your staff. So, so you know, if you, you know, I don't know how you, you know, sometimes I'll have a random, oh, I remember I took a picture of that thing two years ago, but I can't find it and you can search for this information now and it's all sitting there. Or, you know, what if God forbid somebody sues you and says, well, um, your assistant promised me X, Y, z when they, when I started working with you, you would have all that information in your database and you could prove to them, no, actually you thought she said this. I have a record of it. She said that
Speaker 0 00:24:37 Absolutely. And I have to go find it and spend hours looking for it. <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:24:43 Yeah. You, you don't want to have that, you know, in a box on a piece of paper in the garage where it's gonna, you know, get moldy and not even be recognizable in 12 to 24 months.
Speaker 0 00:24:55 So if people wanted to find more about Thrive or uh, winning on Main Streete podcast, where would they go?
Speaker 1 00:25:01 Sure. Well, thrive is easy. It's, uh, thrive.com and it's spelled, uh, t h r Y v.com. Uh, and, uh, winning on Main Street, you can just Google winning on Main Street, um, to find me in the podcast or you can also find it on our website. But, um, yeah, we'd love to have more listeners, uh, checking us out and uh, uh, you know, again, we we're all about helping small businesses. All of our customers are small to medium sized is usually a one to 25 employees. Uh, that's who we're here to help. And, uh, you know, we welcome your listeners to, uh, check us out. Yes. By the way, I do wanna say, uh, if you want to, if you're interested in the software, uh, you can get a free demo. You don't have to make any kind of commitment, just go to the site, click get a demo, and you'll speak to a really whipper snapper smart young person who's really good with the software, who can show you how to do it and explain to you how easy it can be. It's not, it's not, it doesn't take technical genius to use this. It's actually designed to be consumer. Great.
Speaker 0 00:25:59 Awesome. Well thank you so much, Gordon. I appreciate you being on the show and taking the time.
Speaker 1 00:26:03 Yeah, great. Uh, speaking with you. And thank you, by the way, for being on winning on Main Street that, uh, episode's coming out soon.
Speaker 0 00:26:09 Yeah, I know I had a great time. I definitely check out the podcast and Thrive guys, uh, and it really help you get a lot more reach being a smaller business for not that much money. I mean, honestly. So thank you guys for listening to the podcast again. Thanks.
Speaker 2 00:26:25 Hey guys, Carolyn Crow means I hope you're enjoying the podcast. Uh, I've made a promise to never had paid ads in my podcast cause I truly want it to be an educational series. But as part of that, then you're gonna have to hear the things that I have to sell and the causes that are near and dear to my heart. I want to introduce you to a charity called Heroes for Children. Uh, they can be
[email protected]. They are in the business of helping families with children who have cancer. Uh, and I think as a parent of healthy children, we take for granted the fact that our kids are healthy and we don't have to deal with a terminal illness or an illness that's gonna change the way the family works. One parent's gonna have to take off work and, and deal with being in the hospital all the time. So this charity is like immediate assistance helping families with children who have cancer. So I check it out, heroes for children.org. They're always having events of poker nights, easy ways to donate. So if you're getting anything at all out of this podcast, I ask that you give back in a way such as this. Go to Heroes for children.org.
