Earning Your Customers' and Employees' Trust through Brand Storytelling

if you understand the most inspiring aspects and you get behind it and you drive it home, you create people that are very, very loyal, man. And when you get in and you're constantly talking and letting people know who you truly are, it's not about selling them.
Certainly, you need to sell people. You put things out there.
You put together tactics to sell, take down all of these barriers that people have for financing like you're talking. You have to have smart strategies.

But in the end, people want to know who you are truly and understand what you're all about. And if you're just sales and that's what your company's about, then that's what you're about.
And there's people that will, that's all they want is a good deal. And that's it.
But for the most part, people want to trust and know you're going to be around and there's certain things you got to get across. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business.
Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert.
Today, I have Kelly Keenan on. And the way I met Kelly was because Jamie Domenico, I think he sent me the book, Everyone is an Influencer, or he told me to buy it right away and right away i called

you because i read the book on a plane and i think it's amazing i think it's it's a great book and i'll go ahead and tell everybody who you are kelly's an expert in advertising marketing brand storytelling culture and development he's based out of brandon florida he's the founder of Experts. It's an advertising agency that opened in 2009.
The agency specializes in merging marketing and culture development to bring out the best potential of the client partner organizations. He's trademarked the culture development marketing process.
It centers on the three P principles and then involves the following key key components, attitude, drive, and direction.

He's also partnered in the development of the All In app,

an internal communication app, and released a book entitled

Everyone's an Influencer, Building a Brand by Engaging the People Who Matter Most.

And that was in September of 2021.

Thank you for being here.

I called you, and it's crazy to try to get the calendars together. Yeah man i appreciate it it's great to be on with you man it actually the book was supposed to come out september and because of all the delays with coveted ended up coming out in mid-november so hasn't been quite as long but and then reprints it's always been a problem with covet but we seem to get it ironed out now though so

it's a cool book man and i agree with you you know i didn't know what influencer marketing was

several years ago and i'm in all these groups i'm in yacm in this hundred million mastermind

and now i hear myself every other thing talking about micro influencers influencer marketing

my old partner his name is joss lychee he's got this company called snow and it's a teeth whitening

Thank you. micro-influencers, influencer marketing.
My old partner, his name's Joss Leachie. He's got this company called Snow, and it's a teeth whitening.
He just signed up the Kardashians. I mean, he is by far the best I've ever seen at getting influencers.
And that's what the new world is coming to is I met this girl, Amanda Tress. And if you were to look up Amanda Tress, influencer, and then you put Forbes in in it she'll explain how she took a company from 5 million to 65 million using micro influencers yeah and one of the things i'm working on right now and i just want to give some some merit to some of the stuff you've talked about is i'm building my internal ambassador program where everybody's involved if you're on a little league if you want to be part of a bni group if you are good at social media we teach you how to do it step by step and then you get attribution so when you recruit somebody you get a job they get paid out for this stuff i've got 500 employees now and if half of them get on the bandwagon and just do this lms i'm training them how to do how to recruit how to post on social media how to get your little league involved how to get the high school involved how to get the local charities involved and how everybody wins and makes money this becomes the biggest organic movement there's ever been in home service so yeah so tell us a little bit about you uh you got started at the the young age of 24 and but everything you're working on a little bit about the book and your agency yeah i mean i i got started right out of college in marketing i went to school for marketing and i came out and i worked with a group of franchise stores was the first company i worked with and uh what was cool about that is when you're working with franchisees you know they don't really like to do programs because i feel like like they're being force fed stuff that they don't want to do.
It doesn't pertain to them. So it was a quick lesson in participation doesn't happen when people don't feel like they're really part of something.
And, you know, quickly in, you know, just about a year, I realized that I got to, you know, go away from the national programs and really kind of work with the individual operators and bring out the best in them and what they want to do and make the program about who they are and not just about this easy program that was put from the national office. So what that ended up doing is I ended up getting, you know, having great participation with them.
I wrote a little bit about it in my book and, you know, begin to use some influencers involved in working on the things that they could do the best. And that's enabled me to start my first advertising agency.
I left there and it was a 37 store chain. I ended up picking up, you know, 400 of the stores in seven states and as a client and started my first agency from that.
But the real valuable lesson that it taught me is that you got to get people involved if you want to have success and they got to feel like they're part of something. And, you know, that was the first lesson in that.
And as I grew that agency, which was my first agency, I just really took that and applied it to anything that I did. And even whenever I did a lot of work with iHeartRadio and worked with them in a market and quadrupled their revenue very quickly by doing the

same thing, ignoring the national programs and working with the program directors and bringing

out the best in what they wanted to do and making it about every station was unique, every opportunity

is unique. And when you treat things like cookie cutter, that's good for like a small brand.
But, you know, if you want to grow and you want to develop people who are passionate about working for you and you want to develop people that are passionate about your business to support as customers, then you got to be yourself and you got to tell them what's different about you and really empower people to be a part of what you're doing. So that's kind of how that happened.
And in 2009, actually, in 2009, I went and got a trademark. That process, I got trained as a coach because coaching the process, I really wanted to learn that because our whole basis of what I do is about bringing out the best in other people and organizations and companies and so that's what coaching is about coaching is is really about taking something functional and making it optimal so i'm not trying to change it and make it about my idea or your idea or whoever the company thinks they are it's like bringing out the best so that that's the basis and how I got into this.
I started Brand Story Experts right after I trademarked that process. And every single client that we've worked with since that time has began with that process.
Because that's, I mean, to me, if you don't know the company and you don't understand their story, I don't know how you can really set them up for success in utilizing all of these channels. And you talked about a bunch of them.
And hell, you're going so deep into the channels. That's because you get it.
And when people get it, it's a light bulb, man. I love the work with the clients we work with because it's educating people on something you're very proud of.
And it becomes very natural. So that's what we do.
And it's a lot of fun. And the one thing you said, man, that was key, and I'll let you talk, but you said it improves the experience.
It gets better for everyone. And I believe that when you educate people on who you are and what you're all about, and you use influencers who really care about your product and people who relate to it, the experience does get better for everyone because you get the right customers.
You get like-minded people. You're building trust.
You don't have to sell people. They believe in you.
They don't feel like you're going to cheat them. They know who you are.
You pre-qualify people with the story. And your team members, when they go into homes, they don't have to push and sell because that trust is there.
They already know, you know, it's like people love reviews so much. Reviews are like the baby step into, you know, this whole process because it's about taking people to everyone who writes a review is an influencer for you.
But what are you doing with those people? How are you taking an offensive strategy? How are you going out and cultivating those people? How are you making your team, you know, those influencers? And I mean, so that's really where it's at for us, man. You know, it's interesting because I had a buddy of mine that was literally here a little bit ago and he's doing some stuff for podcasts and syndication.
And I said, I'll do anything you want. Where do you want me to post it? Do you want that podcast on my website? Where do you want it? I said, you need to hand feed everybody.
So like when I create my LMS, you think about this for home shows, I'm going to work on a program for getting past clients. You know, like I've got these 65 year old people in these communities and you get somebody there saying i was his client and this is why i believe in him you'll 10 times your sales and it's someone local that knows all the people coming in there and then yelp yelp has their elite trusted reviews that go right to the top google has a verified by google so if you help take pictures and educate people on hours and all this stuff, Google trusts your reviews more too.
So the deal is when I'm building my internal things, one of the things I found out is nobody really believes the program's real because they don't understand attribution. and they're saying what's in it for me so we had to build almost a foolproof way of making sure they get credit for when they get a book job, a self-generated lead or a recruit or a review.
So that's been tricky. But ultimately, I don't think my people knew how to ask.
So I went out and I recorded a bunch of videos two weekends ago. I said, I went to Discount Tire.
I went to Great Clips. I went to a bar.
And I said, well, you mind if I record me talking to you? And I said, just exactly what I do. Hey, listen, you're amazing at what you do.
What's your, should I talk about them, talk about where they're from? And I say, would you ever consider doing a ride along? Here's a little bit about our program. We teach you how to do the work.
You get a job, blah, blah, blah. And I had the guy from Discount Tire brought four other people with him.
So what I love about this thing is micro-influencer is different. You can find someone that's big that just had a baby, that has a thousand people in their Facebook group.
And all they need to do is discuss it, but the deal is they need to believe in the product. And so Amanda Tress cured herself of diabetes by eating right and the right exercise so her story brand was i want to make mothers and kids across the country not have to deal through the illnesses that i've dealt with it's a bigger why and so now she's got all these micro influencers and what i'm telling you it's crazy to go to 65 million within two two years.
Al Levy said, I am the 65-year-old influencer in my HOA. So we did Al's garage door and we did his brother's garage door.
Hopefully they're all using us as a garage door company. And it's that easy.
Your HOA, your school board, your high school football team, your high school wrestling team. Everybody knows somebody.

Listen, if you're not an influencer, you like to go home and sit on your ass to watch hockey and you're an introvert, your wife or your kids are probably able to do something.

So get involved.

So how important is that brand to tell the story and connect with its audience?

I mean, I've read the book, The Brand Story 2.

I think the best person at it is Gettle. He's done a great job.
He spends a fortune with the Wizard of Hands. But how do you get the story out there? And how do you come up with a story? Just explain the process.
You know, really the process is about, we do an assessment. We take a look at 120 attributes and we form a list of people who are new customers.
Actually, we start with your internal list. It's got to start internal because if you have 500 people like you do, let's just say, you have 500 team members, those are going to return, let's just say, at 30% to 35% return rate.
We're going to double or triple that number with customers because we want an equal 360 impression analysis with vantage points from everywhere. So you're going to go out and you're going to ask those people, what are the most, out of 120 attributes, once we have the list, what are the most inspiring aspects? What do you see most clearly and most dominantly, you know, in A1? And they're going to give us their top 20.
We'll ask them to pick 20 attributes first, then we'll ask them to narrow it to 10. It's a forced ranking exercise.
And then we ask them to drag them and drop an order of dominance, one being the most dominant impression that they see. And just the psychology of the force ranking, it matters to them.
So when they take it and say what they see, you know, it's just not a multiple choice when they're checking it around. And so we get to top 15 and we are able to see collectively what people see unmistakably through your brand and those attributes that you can group them and see patterns.
And then we take a look at a survey that, as you said, in the opening that goes over your attitude, drive and direction, three components of the brand, because those are the three ways that people build trust. You know, and some people are emotional.
They build it with the attitude. They want to understand.
They want to listen to their heart. Some people are, you know, operationally minded and they want to trust the process.
And so you got to ask questions around the habit systems and processes and then find that out. And then you got to understand that some people just want our results oriented.
You know, they're very empirical. And so you want to ask questions around the results and so associated with the brand and once you get that story together and you start you ask those questions then you begin to see how they've earned those attributes it's very easy to see because if you look at the impression analysis first and somebody's known for community oriented up at the top and it's it's a solid number one you're going to see shit to tell you how they've earned that period it's going to happen if you see that all these things the dependability reliability all these trust attributes and they're right at the top you're going to see why that is and you will understand how they've earned that reputation so you summarize that and really what you're in that process, many times you get made aware of negative attributes, you get made aware of disconnect.
But the brand story is about understanding the most inspiring aspects of the brand. And that's where you show up, no matter what.
I don't have to worry about whether or not I'm going to connect if I talk about you being friendly or community oriented, if it's number one. I know people are going to chime in and they're going to talk about it.
It's just like you just talked about saying I got a 65 year old influencer. And then all of a sudden you've got somebody chiming in saying, that's me for my HOA.
You don't have to worry about it. If you have it out there, you're going to connect.
So we just do a cheat code for connection by understanding that impression

analysis is extremely valuable. And then, you know, really by taking a look at the brand principles

and learning from them in the survey, you may say, hey, Kelly, we're community oriented.

And it didn't even show up. But we've had that happen.
I got a story in my book about it. And

what happens is you could be spending a ton of money, but nobody really realizes what you're doing in the community because you're not doing it the right way. And that's what we found out through that process with the book.
But it's really about understanding who you are, the most inspiring aspects of the brand and getting a plan to celebrate that story. And that's what today with social media, what I always tell groups is is no matter what you think you can think facebook is bullshit and linkedin is a bunch of shit whatever you think for personal it doesn't matter for what it is for business is an opportunity to educate and that's what it is man and you got to utilize it that way you do it tremendously but what i always say is the difference between telling to sell.
When a brand tells a story, it's the brand telling it. It's one, you know, that you have the idea to get a conversion.
You have a result that you're going after and you're telling the story. You're sharing it in one vision, in one version.
But when you involve other people, when you involve that 65-year-old influencer who's talking to his HOA group, his version and vision of your company is different. Somebody else that's different who's a 30-year-old first-time homebuyer who used you, and they have a different version.
Somebody else who you helped out late at night, and they have a different version. And the key is really taking these people and having an offensive strategy to put them at work for you.
And then in addition to that, your team is the most underutilized tool around. It's not only getting them involved to help you celebrate the story, but it's also getting your team involved to solidify who you are.
That's the other big thing. When I say culture development marketing, we've been on it

since 2009 about getting your team involved to solidify your values and who you are and the most inspiring aspects of your brand. You're multiplying those things because now you're showing them and what happens when you feature best behaviors that you end up multiplying those things so that's a whole whole nother aspect of it.
It's a lot to digest because I talk about Google's God. Google is so great for direct response.
And where do people go when they need to Google? But it's so crazy what you can do on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook too, and LinkedIn and YouTube and Twitter. But you really got to figure out, we've got some tools that we could syndicate with every one of our employees so we could test out before and afters on the door and what gets the most engagement.
And we can pay for that. And then we're going to have a cool story with it or a cool video.
And we can say, this story did the best based on a $20 spend on Facebook. We tested 10 days.
And then we had them share that through a tool. And what's really cool is they can put their link but here's what the coolest thing is when guys take a picture at the bowling alley and their graduation day they got their certificate up and they say this was awesome i'm gonna make six figures my first year they share that and then all of a sudden their five friends apply but one of the things i'm trying to teach people is they don't know what to post.
They don't know how to expand their audience. And I think that you got to build step by step by step.
And that's why I'm building an LMS. You don't have to do this.
But if you do, I promise you, you're going to make a lot of money. We're going to get money for your bowling league, your kids leagues.
We're going to donate a lot of money. We're going to get your church involved.
You're going to make a lot of money. And more importantly, people are like, why would you teach your people to be mini marketers? You're almost teaching your competition.
And I'm like, if they want to leave great, but I think I'm creating a better environment to show them. Can you imagine if each and every employee and their wives or husbands got 10 jobs a week and recruited one guy a month if each of my employees recruited

one person a month what would happen next month i'd be double the size right yeah isn't that crazy

and i'll tell you the allure of that is fantastic i do and the reason why we go with the the app

is it's central source it all comes in all the content from your team comes into one source. And then if it's your agency or marketing person, whoever they post it, and they understand how to relate it to the story.
And that to me is the best way. I've done it for since 2009, I've been pumping it.
And, you know, I always tell people, you can look at any of our clients and I will show you engagement that just fucking kills it period and it's because of the fact that we come in it comes in central source distribution comes into one source and we know how to make the most of it that picture of the bowling alley of somebody standing up there if the content distributor knows about what the story is they can make the most of it and then they can fuel it and put ad spend. As soon as ad spend came into play six, seven years ago, it's lights out.
It beats reviews. It beats everything because you can not only word the story to matter most, you can hit the people that matter most, and then you can retarget them and keep educating.
So that content, although I think it's 100% a great tactic to get people to share on their own and to be involved, it's very difficult to make people, you know, mini marketers and to get them to say the things that really are going to maximize the results of the content internally. You know, your customers are going to say it in their own way.
That's not where want to get central source distribution but with your team if you want to get participation it's got to come in and you have to make the most of it and that is the truth i mean you're right you know here's what i ask people like we do a lot of press releases when someone made it to our our special we took uh 30 people to Mexico. We did a press release for each of the employees because they made, they made the program that we wanted.
And so these press releases, what do you think they did when their name was in the free press, their local free press, they share it all over the place. It didn't, it was a great story to pick it up.
There's a place like Haro, which are old school, but ultimately there's a lot of places to syndicate.

There's a lot of ways to get things picked up.

And as you start to build these things, I'm always like this.

Anytime we're doing something fun, I make everybody go live on their, I'm like, everybody take out their phone.

We're doing something fun.

Just spend three minutes and say what you like about it and then use your link so they can apply.

And they do it most of the time.

Somebody told me in a podcast like two years ago, they're like, anytime you have pizza and you're drinking beers with your teammates, go live. You know, not the Trump.
Yeah, that's good. Yeah.
So it's crazy. It's crazy because the people that I have will do it.
Not every one of them. But all I need is one guy to make an extra $10,000 one month.
100%. And then everybody's in the difference is is they don't want to know post on facebook they want to know when how what who and people go i don't understand why can't they just do these simple things well your directions suck the stuff that you told us to do is horrible like you didn't give any instructions you said post on facebook every once in a while and you didn't go any of the right

steps of delegating and and i have a hard time with some of these business owners because they're like i don't understand i wrote a manual i made a video i did this i did this and i'm like this is crap yeah you gotta have content i mean i you clarify the story first and then you get storylines associated with it i mean i again i look at your website you have an understanding of different ways in content buckets and to put it into play. Most people do not.
I look at films, we've been shooting brand story films since 2009, killing it with them. But there's a difference between, and people now, they just shoot talking heads with good cameras, but there's no message.
There's no story. They don't have a plan.
And it's just empty. It doesn't do anything.
And you do have a way of measuring the watch-through rates and who's completing the films and which things are working. And I think what you see is you get all these guys with 50 views, 100 views on content that they produce because they're not telling the right story.
Well, they're not getting it in the right places either. And I feel like I want to show you guys something here in a minute, but the problem is, is what good is a story if no one knows about it? I mean, I'm sorry, but if you don't get it out there, I'm going to forward this to myself and share it because it's super simple what we did here.
So there's another question that Just tell me a little bit why I do this.

Well, first of all, we had a question from the audience. She said,

as my mindset changes about how to do things better, the staff band-aids I hired are trying

to meet my standards, but it's not moving fast enough for me. Every day I wake up and think,

where is the talent I need in my office? Am I alone? What do you have to say about that?

Where is the talent she needs in her office? i alone what do you have to say about that where is the talent she needs in her office she's not getting yeah she's not getting the right people yeah i think when it comes down to recruitment what's great about celebrating your story and and putting out films about your recruitment films you're educating people you have to take a leadership role in educating people on not just your company, but your culture. And you got to make it a place that people want to be a part of.
I mean, I get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of applicants for job positions here. I never want for people to come here and work because we talk about our company, we talk about our culture, and it's very easy to see what it's like to be a part of the organization.
And that doesn't mean you're going to get everybody. You're not going to get everybody.
You're going to get the people that really are like minded and the people that appreciate. And when Tommy, if you're on Facebook Live of people hanging out and drinking and having a great time, are you going to get the people that are introverts? you're probably not going to get them to go look at that video and go, oh my God, I want to be part of that company because I'm missing something where I'm at.
But who you will get is you will get the person who's sitting there thinking, Jesus, I hate this job. I wish I had hung out with fun people and I wish I had a company that had some direction.
And oh shit, let me look at all the other stuff they're doing. They actually have their shit together.
They're growing. And I want to be a part of that.
So if you want to get more people and the people that really fit within your organization and people that are going to stay, you got to get loud and proud about your culture, about what it's like to be part of the team, what you stand for, what your core values are. I mean, many of the films that we do, it used to be just brand story films for customers.
Now we're doing so much shit for team members to really understand the core values, understand the game plan so they can get on board and be a part of it. And so I would say if you look around and you're not finding the people that really want to be there and are excited and you don't have a flood of people coming in, then you got to get louder and prouder about celebrating who you are.

And you'll get more like-minded customers and you'll get more like-minded team members.

Yeah.

You know, Al Levy said something.

He said it is the process.

If you're relying on people to do everything and with not a manual, what I've learned is

even on my morning call today, one of my virtual product specialists said, you guys got it

Thank you. everything and with not a manual notice what i've learned is even on my morning call today one of my my virtual product specialists said you guys gotta tell me what the most important thing for the client is in a garage door and i called them up right afterwards i said we need to put that as a question on the checklist so that way you have it every single time because they follow the checklist to a t because we got a data team that makes sure that happens well it's really about getting various perspectives because you hear a wife's perspective it's new it's fresh you're not used to hearing it just imagine if you heard a kid that it wouldn't be long but if it was about my dad works here i watch him get in feel like he's a superhero he's he fixes things he does this and that kid's talking about how proud he is of his dad and you run that as a recruitment ad and somebody's got it's all about connecting with the right audience man and you never know what things are going to move them and as you said it's in this case it's the wife and that's a tremendous perspective because it's something that not everybody's doing and they're not hearing that perspective so it resonates and it stands out and that's what you get when you you're taking other people and everybody's celebrating their their vision and version and and uh if you got 10 videos i'm sure they're all gonna have their own kind of spin man so that's the thing is what i've learned is my podcast i consider pretty good but here's the secret sauce i'm here every single week i haven't missed a week i haven't missed a session i'm out here every week putting out content it might not be the best it might not be perfect but guess what alan roars one of my dear dear friends i love her yeah she started a podcast three months later she just didn't have time for it and she always says she regrets it but the thing is you listen to my early podcast the guests weren't the same quality but the deal is i never stop and we're always putting out content and that's what i wanted to talk to you about is how does the all-in app work because i want to understand how that feeds it tell me the whole process of the on how you get content and how you get it syndicated.
Yeah. So we started because I would do rollout meetings after I do an assessment.
And I do the brand process and I would speak to teams and I'd ask them to send in content. And we first started with email and that shit didn't work.
And so then we started with an uploader and we developed an uploader for a mobile site and what happened was because people would upload content and you can't use everything right can't be seen and it was a little bit like when you say you put people in a press release they get all excited well when you do put people's content up they get excited they participate more but we saw that people weren't you know there was a lull and people were like hey well you're not doing my content's not making it so we ended up making it to where we have an app now that has an internal feed and then we're like okay well we have an internal feed so we show the posts all posts that go in unless they're offensive we put them in there and people can see the internal feed so now you have an internal social media feed that may not isn't for everybody the brand owns it and then the content you mark the contents we did a point system we gamified the things that make it the social media they get a higher point total then we're like okay well let's take this and you make it a communication tool as well and so we're like okay what's the worst thing these monthly newsletters that people get news and it's old news. Nobody gives a shit about it.
And you spend all this time because you need to keep your team in the know. The number one problem with companies today is communication, period.
That's it. You get companies growing like crazy.
Nobody knows what the hell's going on. Communication is key, but a monthly newsletter is old news.
So we did this post-style newsletter and put that in there. And so then we end up putting announcements in quick things that aren't big news stories.
And we got everything as point totals. You know who's opening things, who's looking at feeds.
And really, it's a way of letting people also have a submission tool for them to, they get a goal for the month for submitting content. And the key is, it's extremely simple.
And we made it so everybody can participate. And to your point earlier, there's some people that it's difficult to get them to understand about why they should participate and why they should send in content.
So what ends up happening is you end up getting, let's just say 5% of your team starts participating. And what I love about this app is that people see the content come in.
And so that participation grows. And now you go from 5% to 10% to 15%.
You're never going to be at 100%. But there's a score in there for people to get it.
They can get an 80% out of 100. It goes up to 100 score you know you get five points or 20 points just for opening the app you know 20 points for reading all the news 20 points for reading all the alerts 20 points for just going through the feed and the last 20 points is reserved for submissions now you're still getting an 80 just opening things and not submitting and being a part of it.
And that's going to be a lot of people. And that's a minimum that you can look for.
People being informed, getting educated. And then you know who's all in and who's not.
And then there's the leaderboard score for the people who want to submit the most content. And you can reward those people.
It's great, man, because we started the first uploader in 2012. And then every year, a different version, a different version.
We got a conference coming up on July 18th to the 21st in Hollywood Beach and above Miami. And we're unveiling our newest version.
And it's awesome. So to me, man, we do it.
It's not one of these companies that say oh that's a good idea we've been working with content with home service companies solid since 2009 i can show you pages back 2009 that's been doing the same shit so it's a cool process so is the all in app is that something that only is available if you work with no agency it's available to any type of business you know i would get the all in app if i wanted to go check it out right now uh the all in app.com is the website and so i like that and then let me ask you this so you've got all these people posting you got stuff making it to social media is there any way to measure attribution like if someone's really making a difference because i don't give a shit who posts anything if they got three friends my buddy mike keenan made an app a long time ago that gave an influencer score how big your social media is and how engaged people are it's how it would figure out an algorithm to score the person and the more they grew like if i've got kim kardashian posting versus maybe a janitorial staff that doesn't speak english i'm not saying that i'm it's a fictional person but my question is there's certain people that just have a much bigger following. Like I've got two profiles because one's kept out at 5,000.
That is why everything, I mean, influencer marketing is really something that first of all, you have to realize that anybody can multiply in any moment. It's got to be the right story.
Like you said, somebody who's, you know, cured of a disease and cured of a disease, if they hit the right audience, it can freaking explode. But the other side of it is you do have to have someone who understands the brand, what the brand needs are, and what things are valuable.
That's why the content comes into one source and you take it in and say, okay, this I want to promote on Facebook. This I want to promote on LinkedIn.
And I want to put this message around it. And then when you get something that's more valuable, sometimes you go and you say, I want to make a bigger story.
I'll give you a great example that we just did. And I can send you the video.
You can put it into the notes. We had a kid who did when he was younger, he did a sign language for Cool Today, a company in Florida.
Yeah. He did sign language in a commercial.
And, you know, he's working as a technician. We get an upload on this.
We get notified and say, OK, well, shit, we need to make a film out of this and tell this story and make more out of it. Now, this film, which you'll see, will tell the story, but it makes the most of it.
A post gets it out there. And a lot of people say, oh, I remember that.
And maybe you get 100 people, 150 people who can comment or like on it, and you get a lot of engagement. But what it tells you as a marketer is to say, okay, there's a possibility here for me to do something more with it.
Now let's go and do that. So when we do this film, what it turns into is a super recruiting film because there's messages.
And when you watch it, it's about a younger kid who didn't realize and recognize the opportunity and the trades and his mom's in there and how happy she is. And then the owner of the company is in there talking about how proud he is of this kid.
But what you don't realize is all of these other people, the moms are getting educated. They're thinking, oh, my kid can do the same thing.
The kids are going there and saying, shit, I could do that, too. It's a valuable story.
And that's influencer marketing at its finest is recognizing stories that come through and how to make the most of how to recognize the stories that matter most. So anyways, the story will back it up.
I mean, I can talk shit all I want. And that's the one thing I love about social media.
There's no shit talking. It either is a good story and people will appreciate it or it is, you know, that's the thing about engagement.
There are stories out there that just seem like they're sales driven. And there are other stories that are like real like i don't think anything will ever go super viral unless it's funny because google and youtube don't allow that to happen anymore like the dollar shave club that'll never happen again because they want people to pay for that right so i talked to the uh one of those guys called the brothers in Utah that did the poopery and

stuff.

I was on their podcast and they said,

viralality is just harder to get now,

unless it's a little glimpse that doesn't have a product in it.

So what I think is being authentic,

but also you can say,

Hey,

I help out all these charities.

It's that and the other we're donating back.

We're do background checks.

But what I love about Gettle story is Gettle's like's like hey i used to hold the flashlight for my dad and my dad was the biggest hero to mine and that's why ghetto he used to install ghetto back in the 60s and 70s and that's why we partnered with ghetto and it's a quality product that we can stand behind then he talked about his dog sadie and for us i had a customer yesterday we were on our morning mojo call today and the guy we asked him to come on and tell us about the story and he goes the minute i walked up he goes the garage is the smile of my home he goes i want you guys to increase my smile and i'm not going to go the cheap route so give me my options and that's what we say the garage. The garage is the smile of your home.
He's telling them our exact branding, which is trademark. Yeah.
And it just was so cool to see. Another big thing that I think is a unique selling position for us is we're working a lot with financing, but we don't call it financing.
We call it a promotion. And we're giving customers an easy way to get it.
And I think that I'd be embarrassed if I had bad credit or just a ding on my credit to go in front of the technician and just to get denied. So we want an easy way to just kind of see if you qualify real quick.
And maybe you didn't even want a garage door, but there's a want now that you want it because now it's got some cool systems. It comes with storage racks.
And so people are like, shoot, for 40 bucks a month, I might as well do it. There's no prepayment penalty and the interest doesn't start for two years.
By that time, my house worth way more money inflation takes over. So I just feel like there's certain people, they have no idea.
So you get all these attributes and then how do you build it into a story? Yeah. You put a brand story summary together.
You got a perfect one on your site. And that summary becomes the barometer for good content.
And when you have your people who are doing your social media that are doing films, whenever that content comes through, what they need to be finding is, how can we make this content educate people about this story? Or the storylines that are subsets of that story so you have a content

plan strategy for good content and you're always educating on the story and that's the key and the story is the driver the main story like you just said ghetto story the flashlight i saw on your page you're like hey if you're not getting the service titans pantheon i made more connections and it's fantastic.

Hell of an endorsement.

How about service type of story

with the two sons doing the software for their father i mean fuck it doesn't get any better than that and people remember it so that stuff is it's really about people's appreciation for the story getting on board and there's a reason why you that's credibility. There's a story in my book, and you read it about Halo Water, for contractor, by contractor, his brand.
And many people didn't know that about Halo and Glymbleday. And you tell that story, we do a founder story, you watch that founder story.
And if you're not a fan of Halo Water, you will be as soon as you're done watching that. And it's because of the fact that it's real.
And that's who he is. And so if you understand the most inspiring aspects, and you get behind it, and you drive it home, you create people that are very, very loyal, man.
And when you get in, and you're constantly talking and letting people know who you truly are, it's not about selling them.

Certainly, you need to sell people.

You put things out there.

You put together tactics to sell,

take down all of these barriers that people have for financing like you're talking.

You have to have smart strategies.

But in the end, people want to know who you are truly

and understand what you're all about.

And if you're just sales and that's what your company's about, then that's what you're about. And there's people that will, that's all they want.
It's a good deal, and that's it. But for the most part, people want to trust and know you're going to be around, and there's certain things you've got to get across.
And especially for your employer brand. What do you think is the most important part of your story that makes people want to work for A1? The biggest thing is, number one, is they have the ability to move up.
They're always at a dead-end job and they feel like they're never going to go anywhere and they're shrinking. So they say, I want to go for a company that's growing.
That's what I hear every single time. And then number two is, oh, my gosh, we celebrate homeownership, having babies, vacations.
We celebrate that. And I say this to every single person that comes in.
I'm like, there's nobody that I'm selfish. I want you to win.
I want you to own a home. I want you to have zero credit card debt.
I want you to have an 800 credit card score. I want you to have two cars paid off.
I want you to have two rental houses. And I'm going to see to it that you get there if we do it together.
I have a dream manager that helps you accomplish your dreams and help you stay focused. We've got the Dave Ramsey program.
We have a person that comes and talks about how to get a mortgage. We have a person to get you out of credit card debt that actually will help you raise your score, get all the hard inquiries removed.
And the thing is, they know that they're like, it's different there. We thought it was bullshit.
We thought it was like an MLM scheme because it can't be this good. And then they like the fact that we train.

We train from scratch.

I'm not looking for lightning in a bottle, as I would say.

I'm looking for somebody that can come in,

that I say, can you smile?

Can you make eye contact with me?

Are you genuinely a happy person that I'd want to have a beer with?

Because if you are, this is perfect for you.

You could be a dishwasher. You could work at some type of a mechanic shop.

You could work at Amazon in the warehouse. What I found is i don't bring a lot of people from our industry and that's the key to success is hire for attitude and then train and then give them systems and if the system's not simple and easy and a 10 year old can't figure it out in about 10 minutes as a b student then i feel like the system's broken and you know there are complicated things man i'll tell you financing used to be impossible to figure out apr flex loan all this crap and then software came out made it simple inventory man it can be really difficult to figure out spoilage rates and that you know all this different stuff and shrinkage and na na na na there's software out there that you put an rf chip and things and it monitors everything and keeps track and tells you when things spoil it's got uh some type of tracking on it to tell you if it's a bad manufacturing batch it's crazy what software can do and just innovation and i feel like you know you asked me what do people want most people want a place that they are respected at because millennials don't care about money as much they got to make a a wage that they can pay their bills comfortably.
And then they want to be involved and they want to get knowledge and they want to be trained. Every single person that works around me knows that their input is valid and that I don't want to make all the decisions.
In fact, I don't want to be in a lot of the meetings. You guys go figure out our budget.
Don't come back to me with some bullshit. I want a want a big ass budget you know this year's 151 million next year's going to be even bigger but when they figured it out they had to figure out a way to hit it and i asked you what is the part of your story that makes people want to work for you and what you did was you just verbalized a ton of reasons why people would want to work for you.
And many of them were centered around the fact that you care about their growth and their success and their family and helping them to be, have a better life. Right.
But what people really come to work there is because you're good at verbalizing your story. You're good at sharing the story and what your intents are, what the most inspiring aspects of coming to work there.
And what happens is if you do it well and you do it credibly, and that's very important because somebody can listen to you and say the same shit that you just said. Same exact stuff.
But if it's not real and they don't have the passion and intensity and people don't pick up on it, that's why I say you've got to build trust. Hearing it everybody knows you're not an actor you're not saying those things you can tell that you're saying them with with fire because you're passionate about it and they believe in it and then the next step after belief and trust is they have to see their own role in that so when people see you say all those things then they they can say, oh, that applies to me.

Oh, that applies to my sister, my brother, whoever it is.

And then they reach out and they get a hold of those people.

So that's why it's so valuable for you to go out and talk.

I mean, the biggest influencer they can have is a CEO or a president who's on board with celebrating the story,

whether it's Elon Musk or you or Jamie DiDomenico or Glenn Blavvee or whoever you have to be your own story celebrator number one i always say it's not the size of the company that dictates whether we'll work with them it's the owner and the people who who matter and running the company that are like fuck we got a story to tell we want to celebrate it we're doing great things here we just need more people to figure out what we're doing and how we're doing it. And let's tell that story.
That's what it is. And you do that effortlessly because you're proud of what you're doing.
You're proud of what you're doing for other families. You're proud of what you're doing for your employees.
You're proud of what you're doing for your customers. And then your team sees it and they can do it.
People pick up on it. And the more people you can make influencers that understand it at the level you do, it's just a runaway train.
So that to me is what we try to do. It's just try to build that understanding, that awareness, the platform to share the story.
And why we do so many films is because it's exactly like watching you speak nothing builds trust like seeing somebody who really believes something is passionate it isn't an actor you know nobody likes to be sold and i i want to say a few comments so al said absolutely need to know the why before the what and then dan said being authentic is the most critical aspect I think one thing for me is I don't trust people

in the before the what and then dan said being authentic is the most critical aspect great dan i think one thing for me is i don't trust people unless i like them and i always tell my guys i've never been like man i hate that guy but i trust him i'm not like that guy's boring as shit but i trust i want to like you first and i say guys how do you make people like you read the book how to win friends to Make Friends and Influence People. Because here's the deal.
People like to talk about themselves. They like to hear their own name.
They like to be respected. They like to get someone that's in the military likes to talk about the military and serving for the military.
And if you work hard enough in the garage door for the first 20 minutes, you'll find something that you find in common. Whether it's a cat, a dog, an occupation, a material thing.
And no matter what it is, it's not hard. And that's what we teach peers.
Listen, you don't need to fake it. It's pretty easy.
Find something that you have in common. And then you earn trust because they like you.
If someone offers me a Kool-Aid, I say, absolutely, I'd love a Kool-Aid. And the thing is, they want to get you a Kool-Aid.
Say yes. I offer stuff on the way.
I play with the dog. All these things matter.
It's authentic. If you hate dogs, don't play with the dog.
If you hate dogs, it shouldn't probably work for me. So everyone's an influencer.
Tell me a little bit about the book. I mean, I know it.
I read it. But why should everybody buy it? I think it's going to give you a lot of great perspective on the opportunity in front of you.
The greatest opportunity in business today is the opportunity to celebrate your story and to get clear on who you are and to really understand the most inspiring aspects of who you are and pass that along. You can't be everything to all people.
You can't look at other brands and say, oh, I'm going to do that too. What you said about that people want to like people.
Absolutely. But the most distasteful people that are out there are the ones that are liars, man, that are not truthful.
They're saying things that seem like they're being disingenuine. And just get real about who you are and celebrate that.
You don't have to beat everything. Just figure out your most inspiring aspects and celebrate those.
And the book will show you how to do that. It tells great stories.
There's a lot of tremendous leaders in there that are discussed, a lot of great brands. But it really gets down to understanding that it's a participatory sport.
Content development and sharing content is about really having a strategy for all of those areas. And it all centers around your story and taking that leadership role.
And the real secret is it's a blast. I mean, it is truly a blast to celebrate your story.
And the companies that we work with, we have a lot of fun. Everyone that works here, we love what we do because it's great to be a part of sharing the story, building success, familiarity.
It's all relationships. The best part of any business is the relationships that you build, taking care of people, building relationships.
And that's what you're doing. You're bringing yourself in contact with like-minded people, people who, the more you share and educate, and if you're real, you're only going to get people to work for you that understand and appreciate who you are.
You're only going to get customers that understand and appreciate who you are on a greater level. And that improves the experience for everyone.
It improves it for your bottom line. It improves it for your success rate long-term because you have stronger relationships.
It improves your hiring, your retention. Everything improves when you celebrate the story.
And that's what the whole book's about. And I mean, I can't be any clearer than that.
And I'm real excited. It's won three awards in a row.
My publisher entered it three awards, won first prize, Axiom Award, International Book Award. And it's doing great.
And I like the conversations that come out of it because it's it's a light bulb in the light bulb and the last thing i'll say it changes it for you if you understand to get ignited with passion about your brand about what you're doing it's your legacy man and the people work too damn hard in your company to have their story not be celebrated. Conversions and sales will happen if you just get real and celebrate your story.
And that's, that's what it is, man. And everything becomes more meaningful, you know, for you, for what you're doing, your job, you get more respect, everything.
I feel so strongly about it. I wrote that book.
It took me fucking 12 years, man. I'm not an author, but I'm passionate about what I do.
And I designed it and developed it for companies and leaders to get more enjoyment out of what they're doing. So it's a great book.
It's a great message. It's quick and easy.
What I love about the title, what I've read about the whole message is something I'm trying to do with my book. I haven't got it dialed down yet, the next one.
But E-Myth is work on the business, not in it. And if it's that simple as understand everyone's an influencer, it's that simple.
And it explains it with stories. So how does somebody get ahold of you if they want to reach out to you, Kelly? I'm at Brand Story Experts.
It's our company. And we've been here in Bradenton for 12 years.
I'll put the conference. We have this all in event.
I'd love for you to go, man. Like I said, it's in Hollywood Beach.
That's something you can contact you through. Come to that event.
You'll get educated. We got Clint Hurdle.
Make sure to invite me. I will.
I'll invite you. Send it right after this meeting, man.
But Clint Hurdle is going to speak. He's in my book.
He's a tremendous manager forittsburgh pirates and uh he had an all-in like clint is the story in the book if you remember that tommy yeah and he's a tremendous motivator i'm so happy to have him there we got img mindset development from img institute it's going to be a ton of stuff great content and if you want to email me at ke Story Experts, you can also get ahold of me there. What are three books that really moved you in a big way? If you got any at the top of your head, I ask every podcast guest that.
I read a lot of books, man. And you mentioned how to win friends and influence people.
I like that Dale Carnegie story, man, because like my publisher told me, it took him 20 years to write that book. And I took a lot of shit because it took me so long to write mine.
And I like the fact that that's a masterpiece, man. It's always on the top because it's got great content in there and it's very valuable.
I like Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. My dad was my dad was in strategic planning and for school systems across the country

when I grew up, both my parents were doctors in education,

both my brothers.

And that strategic planning

and really Stephen Covey's book,

it changed my life because it really illustrated to me,

man, there's so much that goes into

really building a company and a culture

and building a mindset.

And I would say that's probably

lines up into my last, I'd say mindset by Carol Dweck is a killer. When you understand mindset and the power of mindset, whether it's for athletics or academics or business or whatever, it drives everything.
You know, your mindset, when you take pride and say, I get up every day or every week and I do this podcast.

That's commitment, right?

I mean, there's a heavy value in that mindset. So I love books on mindset.
I love that book in particular because it's the Bible of mindset, man. I read Game Set Life.
Ed Seng put a quote on my book and Pam Slim's on there. She's a tremendous author.
I love reading people's books on

mindset development and all I read, I don't

read any fiction.

No fluff. I was thinking about

a book this morning, The Five Second Rule

and I just got out of bed. I was like

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, get up.

It's so cool, these little things

you learn in these books. I want to close

out with one question. Everybody said great stuff.

They love it. They're buying your book.
Dan Ancinelli said said kelly big fan of your work and your book thank you man how is the best there is on brand design man he is so i respect him as well he is man i went to a shop about two months ago and it's just he lives exactly what he preaches so how would you describe the relationship between the visual aspects of branding with the storytelling aspect? That's a great question, man. Somebody says, hey, here's all the hidden meanings in these logos.
You ever seen that in FedEx and they got Amazon with a smile and all that? I really love to take the visual aspects and make them mean something to the brand. I mean, and that's something I try to do, whether it's the graphics interior, and I know you're probably doing a ton of interior graphics in companies.
We're doing that as well. That shit matters.
And it's walking around and it's taking that mindset and really putting that, educating people on an ongoing basis. And if your graphics can do that, whether it's a truck that people see time and time again and the messaging on there that just solidifies or if it's, you know, Tommy's on his truck because he's the brand.
He's the brand impact and brand definer. So having in there, there is a recall.
And understanding that is something that guys like you understand. And really the things that really matter to add up to, you know, hey, they they've seen him that's his truck it's going to really connect with all of the things that they associate with his messaging so I like to really have it the visual attached to the brand a lot of people just put things together and think they look good and that's what it's about but that's to me that's just bullshit you know it's got to connect you know dan's got all formula he literally checks out all the competition understands different colors how they work he put the pinstripes on mine because i said i want to feel like that old 1960s when someone came to your house you trusted him you built a connection with them we used a bright color brie goes to me the other day she goes dude she goes i know everybody else's trucks i hear their brands she goes i know i'm a little biased but i can see our trucks from a mile away she's like everybody says that and then on top of that we got our timeline and i learned a lot from just going to dan's place if you know i don't want to bury dan but if anybody gets a chance in new jersey to check out dan antonelli's place i mean he, he's the living, breathing, real deal.

But listen, Kelly, I think you're amazing.

Invite me to where you're going to go as long as the dates work.

I want to spend a lot more time with you.

I've learned a lot from you today.

I endorse your book.

If I could ever do anything to endorse it

to the next level, you let me know what you need.

Send me a free t-shirt with everybody's an influencer.

You got it.

I got it.

I have a picture.

And you did fabulous today.

I really appreciate it. All right, man.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it, brother.
You too, man. Hey, guys.
I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me.
And I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses

and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, please, please,

please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts.
You're going to be able to ask me

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It

really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review, make it four or five sentences, tell us how we're doing. And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership.
It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company.
And we're just we're telling everybody our secrets, basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually

trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program.
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check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club.
It's cheap. It's a monthly

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I really appreciate it.