Expert Advice About Lead Generation with Tim Brown from Hook Agency

Mission Control Podcast

In this episode, Mike invites Tim Brown, owner and CEO of Hook Agency, to discuss lead generation. Tim shares insightful tips on what you should be cautious about when buying seller leads. They also dive into the importance of referrals and why they should remain a significant focus even when business is booming.

Interested in learning more about Roofr? Get your first roof measurement report for free: https://shorturl.at/quCQ5

Contact us : [e-mail]

Let's Connect! ==== ==== ====

Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK

Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT

Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:00.738) So did you hear about the crustacean accused of promoting his own shellfish interests?

Tim Brown (00:08.179) I had not.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:11.622) I mean, okay, they don't all land, but you keep trying. Shoot your shot, and if you miss, shoot the ball again.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (00:44.27) Well, welcome back to another episode of the Mission Control podcast with yours truly Mike Stearns of Ascend Digital Agency. Today we've got Tim Brown. Welcome, Tim. Thanks for coming.

Tim Brown (00:58.242) Thanks for having me, bro. I appreciate you putting me on.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:01.994) Yeah, man, of course. And as always, thanks to Rufr. Great company. You need instant quotes, roof measurements, clean and pristine proposals that give your prospects no choice but to buy it up the team at Rufr. Down in the description will be a link y'all know what to do. Tell them I sent you, you'll be happy you did. Okay. Moving on. So what is lead gentem? I mean, people ask me all the time and they're like, Hey,

You guys do lead gen? And I'm like, well, yeah, I guess technically speaking, we do generate leads. But I feel as if there's usually a disconnect as far as what I perceive their question as and the lens that they're looking through. So what does lead gen mean to you?

Tim Brown (01:45.994) I think the most concerning is when somebody is like, do you got leads? It's like, what, what leads? You got any more of the leads? And they're kind of, they're talking about purchased leads. They're talking about like, if they're used to Angie or home advisor or one of these resellers of, or sellers of leads, right. Which is honestly, if you're for real as the bottom of the barrel of leads.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (01:51.902) Y'all got any more of them leads, man?

Tim Brown (02:15.346) It's right up there. It's just because they are often, where do these leads come from? You've got different sources, right? You've got one place that commonly they come from is call centers, which there was no intent to purchase originally until they got called. They got called and then they got shoved into this label of lead. And then on Angie and Home Advisor,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (02:16.462) Why is that?

Tim Brown (02:44.194) they are using every possible way to get out onto the internet, including very vigorous, they purchase next door and put their ads everywhere on there. Right. And then calculators and then advertising so that people with some interest. And that's the thing is like some interest, not necessarily like they're looking per se, but maybe they're looking for a price and they have calculators on their site and they're

they call that a lead. And then it's all deteriorated a little bit by the fact that they sell it more than once. Right, if you sell a lead four times, it's really 25% of a lead. Because now, and it's the worst part is, is that you're competing with people, you have to lower your prices and you actually could wear out your salespeople from it. So those are what people sometimes are calling leads. And even worse, I had people at Rooftop

that came up to us and like, hey, do you have any like, ah.

Like people that are going to go sell these to somebody else that are talking about like, do we buy aged leads? Aged leads? That's not a lead anymore. That's a contact, bro. You're going to give me some something that I've got in my CRM from six months ago and sell it back to somebody else as a lead. Like. I don't know.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:10.531) Mm.

Tim Brown (04:11.498) why people still fall for this. So the real contrast with a marketing partner and a leads company, and I like that, like I do think of myself as lead generation, but we're not like a lead selling company. The real contrast is that somebody's trying to help you build up your own house and somebody else is just trying to.

kind of sell you stuff that's like rehashed and garbage. I don't know. I mean, like, obviously I'm saying that too strong for somebody to think I'm impartial. But the point is, is like we're talking about selling context. It's context more than a lead. So I just wish there would be people would be more accurate about what they're saying when they're talking about selling leads.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (04:59.606) Yeah, and that's kind of, I too think of our company as one that generates leads, but I also think that, I think that most contractors, and this is through my experience, and I guess I shouldn't paint with a broad stroke, but I'm going to. Most contractors I've dealt with when they're asking for a lead gen, they're asking for a fixed cost per lead, right? I wanna buy leads at this dollar amount from you, and I wanna make money from doing that. And it sounds well and good, but as Tim mentioned,

you know unintended consequences of that pursuit is that you get recycled leads you get people that are like straight up I never asked anyone for a roofing contractor to come out With that being said Have you found instances where it's beneficial for a contractor to leverage a platform like an Angie or a thumbtack? Or any other type of lead aggregation service?

Tim Brown (05:55.518) Yeah, I mean, well, I hear stories. I hear, I hear stories of it being successful, right? Like few people in the industry that I respect that talk about lead aggregation, Chuck Tokey talks about it. Chuck Tokey says you have to have a system. Most people that use buying leads, they don't have a good enough system, which what he's really saying is you better be super on it super quick.

And I think it's also understanding that it's more of like a, it's a partially interested contact than it is like a super ripe lead. So you have to be much more. Aggressive with that prospect. Like you should almost treat it like we're going to go door knock again to this house that like we got a lead from, you know, like you, you almost have to take it a different route, like it's a different, just like with Google is a different route than like door knocking or like.

If somebody doesn't know how to close a local service ad lead, then maybe they're not going to close a Google ad lead that because there's a different route, right? People don't know you that well. Same with these. So I respect his take on that. Um, Jonathan bros has said, you know, they use this, you know, sometimes they buy Angie leads or, you know, different things he has said, I think he's his active prospect.

to confirm whether it's a real lead. I think that system essentially, it even provides a screen recording of them filling out the form on the website just to confirm that it's a real human being and to give a second, you need almost like a second party accountability structure in place for Angie. Because here's the deal, like that company is kind of known for some shadier ethics.

And like, that is where it comes down to like, from my point of view, it's like, if you gotta do all that, maybe I don't want your leads in the first place. But I mean, with a company like his, where they are a big growth company and they're taking every conceivable option for getting more leads, if you have a system in place, those are two people that I know that have talked about it in a positive way that I respect.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (07:49.19) Sure.

Tim Brown (08:16.414) Some of the people that I hear talking about on a positive I'm like, I don't know if I, you know, like sometimes it's like one year it's good and then one year is bad, so it's just hard to know who's accurate when they're talking about it, those two people I do respect though.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (08:19.403) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (08:31.746) Yeah, yeah, likewise. Shout out to John and Chuck. What I find is, yeah, for companies that use it with success, so these lead aggregation companies, there's a process around how the lead's going to be handled and that process is actually followed. Big difference.

between having a process and following the process. And there's somebody who's responsible for consistently keeping them honest, right? So, you know, checking in on the quality of the leads and then disputing and going through, it's not as easy as like, you know, a lot of the times Google local services is where if you're disputing a lead, you click a button, you get an email, four days later, your lead dispute has been resolved. Energy doesn't make it that easy. So you have to have somebody that has the time and...

Tim Brown (08:54.72) Yeah.

Tim Brown (09:11.55) Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:17.558) the perseverance, the grit, the moxie to deal with the Angians on the other end of the line to potentially hold them accountable in that event that takes place. And I think that's, and it's been helpful. I've talked to some younger guys that are smaller companies and they've had success with it.

Tim Brown (09:21.516) Yeah.

Tim Brown (09:28.279) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (09:36.234) you know, because I think that, you know, if you don't have leads coming in from seven different venues, it's a lot easier to pay attention to that one avenue that's bringing you opportunities outside of repeat referrals, word of mouth and things like that. So yeah, that's what it's my two cents for what it's worth.

Tim Brown (09:53.43) Great. Two cents. I didn't think like, you know, so just so people know Angie's the biggest one. We've got call centers is another big one. Um, Angie has their stock has been slipping. Right. For the last few years, stock slipping Angie's list purchased home advisor, or, uh, sorry, home advisor purchased Angie's list for the positive brand association.

and then applied all their systems to it and call it Angie. They fucked up their SEO. They're like, and I, my little known fact, one of our SEOs got, got grabbed by the company doing SEO for Angie. And it was right about the time that everything was

And I was like watching, I was like, Oh God, that was sucked out. The dude it's giant website, total redirect from Angie's list.com to Angie. And we know how annoying these projects can be. You have to like try to redirect every single page on the website to the corresponding page on the new website. And it's just this giant monster. And I'm sure some resources were lost when you have like all these tools, these calculators on these websites and stuff like that. Probably lost a bunch of this stuff that was driving some traffic.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (10:59.416) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (11:07.658) at the same time their stock was going down. But good news for the stockholders are the, uh, the, uh, there was an increase in revenue at the same time that they're having less leads. How did that happen? I don't know. I don't know exactly. And I wasn't, this wasn't like now, like we've got a, this was like a year ago. So there was like.

Right now there's a decrease in, well, there is increase, decrease in inquiries in general for home services, right? So I don't want to like rip on them for any of that, but it's just, it was funny that the decrease in inquiries was also at the time where the revenue was going up, which means they were just selling less leads for more money. And that's funny. That's funny to me for some reason.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (11:57.53) Right.

Supply and demand baby.

Tim Brown (12:02.482) Yeah, exactly.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:05.594) Yeah, let's talk about that for a minute. Search volume goes down. We could speculate, right? Interest rates, borrowing money, cost more, right? People, because of that, the economy's not great, or at least perceived, it seems like. So in light of that, people tend to hold onto their money with a tighter fist, are more apprehensive to buy, and because of that,

Tim Brown (12:08.02) Yeah.

Tim Brown (12:14.085) Yep.

Yeah.

Tim Brown (12:28.938) Yes.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (12:32.982) If you got 10 people clicking through to your website, they're probably less likely to get a higher percentage of those to actually submit a form than maybe two years ago. And then when you're having sales meetings, you're probably, if you're closing at 40% two years ago, maybe you're not closing at 40% now, just because everything is becoming much more challenging to ultimately convince that customer it's time. And then when you convince that customer it's time convincing them that you're the best for the project.

Tim Brown (12:40.558) Mm-hmm. Yep.

Tim Brown (12:50.452) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:01.102) What are you seeing on your side as it relates to those statements?

Tim Brown (13:01.742) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (13:05.854) Yeah, you know, pressure on lead price going up, right? There's there's pressure and probably every market, but particularly ones without storms, that's not super unusual. But yeah, we and I don't know, I'm guessing you do something like that. But we talk about like closed deals, right? Like we talk about what's closed. And so that conversation gets a little hairier when conversion, like when.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:32.792) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (13:35.842) sales conversion rate goes down because then it's like, is the lead quality down? What's going on? You know, like it's lead quality is down, I think, in more places, but it's not it can't like, wow, it's I was like, is it marketing's fault? It's you know what I mean? Like it's the angel. Like, yeah, exactly. We're all pointed. Then it's not really.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (13:54.09) Right. The salesors are marketing and it's just like the Spider-Man meme, right?

Tim Brown (14:03.166) I think our smartest customers almost lead with it. They lead with like, Hey, I know what's happening in the broader market. We still got to try to like keep a positive look and try to get the best results we possibly can under these circumstances. The worst customers of a marketing, the worst partners of a marketing agency are the ones that go.

They don't have one finger pointed at them, pointed at you. They've got both fingers pointed at you and they're thinking agencies fault, agencies fault, agencies faults. And those are usually the ones that go through seven agencies in seven years. Right? Like it's going to be tough, dude. It's going to be a tough next year. Like we're not dealing with like ideal circumstances in roofing or any kind of contract or home service business right now. We're lucky that people just still need roofs.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (14:55.415) Yeah.

Tim Brown (14:56.214) We're lucky that we're lucky that people still need roofs. And maybe some of this pressure that we're experiencing now is a foreshadow of insurance companies tightening up, you know, over the next five, 10 years where there's going to be less covered coverage on these roofs in general. Right. Like the difficulty it's going to be harder to close. So what do we have control over?

You know, that's all that we can do. And my company is different than in a roofing company. If I'm a roofing company owner, I'm thinking, how can I get more referrals? How can I implement? I like shout them out constantly, but, you know, Matt Danskin's restoration referral system, how can I? You know, there's a new game. There's a new game in the market. Restoration referrals dot com. Or sorry, it's actually sorry, it's roofing referrals dot com. And it's by.

the dude, Randy Hurtado from DT Roofing. And there, it's like kind of around insurance agents, realtors and other people that often refer. And it's essentially like their recommendations plus an app, plus a community. Anything you can do to increase referrals and anything we can do to make it easier to purchase. And it's all complicated by the fact that like my game.

I've been suggesting financing for a long time and now that's getting harder too. So it's getting to a harder game. We're getting to a harder game. That's what I feel right now for roofers. And that's not, it's not the same for everybody though. So maybe you just have less competitors in a few years.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (16:29.411) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (16:36.694) Yeah, I mean, that's the silver lining of it. And I mean, if any of my clients are listening to this or are going to listen to it, you know, you've heard it from me, it's probably gonna get worse before it gets better, right? Buckle up and like, this is why the conversations that we had a year ago, two years ago, three years ago, are so important as far as like building your brand, building a community of brand ambassadors, educating your previous, current and future customers as far as how they can actually

Tim Brown (16:47.918) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (17:05.934) do the most for you as far as being your brand ambassadors with loyalty programs or referral programs, having a sticky name to that referral program. We got a client, his name's RainWorks. So we created the Make It Rain referral campaign, right? So you get X amount of dollars for every roof, here's a trackable link, show them, educate the customer how to share it, where to share it, next door, Facebook groups, on their Facebook, whatever. But if you're...

Tim Brown (17:12.043) Yeah.

Tim Brown (17:21.547) Oh, that's awesome.

Tim Brown (17:34.51) That's incredible.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (17:35.542) If you're intentional about doing that systematically all the time, it's just a matter of time until you start making it rain for them and yourselves. And it's a little, I hate to say it this way, but I think this is how it's perceived. It's less important when everyone's in the street getting fat because things are coming so easy. But, but when, you know, shit really starts to shrink and constrain, that's where you get the fruits of the labor and the massive payoff. Because you know, if you're, your lead cost goes from

Tim Brown (17:52.38) Oh yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (18:02.758) $189 to $247, that sucks, but it sucks a lot less if you still have 30% of your business being referral as opposed to 17% of your business being referral, right? Yeah, it's hard out here in these streets, bruh.

Tim Brown (18:14.359) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (18:19.558) Dude, no, for real. No, this is so important, the things you're talking about, though. We can just hope that some people go. I mean, it's hard to say, because if you're one of those people that goes out of business, it's sad. But that will happen. That probably is happening. We're seeing people that are eminently employable unemployed. We're seeing things that are.

indicator early indicators of kind of more. Pinched economic circumstances. So, yeah, I'm like hoping for a. Not a hard recession in 2024, but just like a little like. Just like a little bit more of like a.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:01.318) Cheers.

Tim Brown (19:05.866) clear because I feel like when it's like unclear because this year was unclear, I feel like. And now it's getting a little bit more clear. There's a little bit unclear than people like do different things or you're, you know, like you're just not taking massive action when you should be right. Like those types of things. Um, and we talked to, we, so you and I had the podcast one year ago and we were talking about this and I think

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:10.415) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (19:31.05) I didn't think it was going to be as hardcore as I feel like we're seeing the look now. Maybe it's just a year behind what we thought it might do. I think I was hopeful and I was like, you know, it's a little bit more hopeful. But we were trying like I think like it's real. It's real. You know, hey. Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:45.947) Mm-hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (19:53.078) It's not real. I'll say that.

Tim Brown (19:56.982) Speaking of referrals though, you referred to us, McCormick Renovations in Pittsburgh. And they're working with us. So you gotta tell me what I can get you as a gift.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:05.144) Okay.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:13.518) This is under referral back, bruh.

Tim Brown (20:16.182) Michael and I have, we didn't ever give each other any money for referrals. Like we've got a different game going, which was like, kind of like we were ramping up the gifts a little bit. Like, so I got somehow, like I think I got Mike a fridge, a Bill's fridge, and like a few other like trinkets. And then Bill, and then I don't know which order happened, but then Michael hit me back with a.

a very nice bottle of cologne and I've been still using it. Now I think I'm addicted to it. So I'm probably gonna, it's very good. But basically like gifting is another strategy for referrals. So we might as well throw that real behind the scenes in here like.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (20:47.846) It's a great cologne. It's a good one to be addicted to. Yeah.

Tim Brown (20:59.866) I think sometimes those are more impactful than money, you know, for certain people. You ask, you talk to certain people. I think it's people with money. And I'm not saying like Mike and I have a bunch of money, but like for instance, like people in the industry I've found in roofing industry, like it's definitely more impact because it's like kind of feels a little weird sometimes getting money because we're all trying to like in the in the industry, we're all trying to refer only the ones we really feel like are doing a good job and like

So money feels a little weird because it feels like you're being affected by money. Sometimes. I don't know. I haven't had as much success with that for roofing industry referrals. Not, not to go too far into that. Cause I know this is for roofers, but.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (21:41.474) Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, gifts are great. Like, like.

And I think it's worth noting, like there wasn't an agreement struck where it's like, hey, if you start giving me referrals, I'll do this for you. It's kind of something that happened just by virtue of like, you inspected our roofs, we inspected your roofs, and we approved of the work that you were doing and vice versa. You know, so when I gotten a referral from you, and it panned out, it's like, let me do something nice for Tim, right? Tim and his team, or advice versa, right? So it's like,

And gifts, they hit a little bit different than money, for being honest. Like if you go to a 14 year old kid's birthday party and give them 50 bucks, they're gonna be happy. Maybe a 14 year old kid's not great. Maybe a 30 year old, right? If you got a friend who's 30 and it's his 30th birthday, if you give them 50 or 100 bucks, it's like, eh. But if you get them something personalized, it'll actually mean something to them. I think it goes a little bit longer, of a way.

Tim Brown (22:17.874) Yeah, like, think about it.

Tim Brown (22:34.802) Yeah, I think that probably applies like my sister-in-law is a realtor and no amount of money, she's doing very well. And no amount of money, my brother is a stay at home dad and he loves it. And he's like, I like anyways, but he...

Or like if I gave them a hundred, like $500, I just don't think he's like, they're even gonna like, they probably won't even open the envelope for a whole month or two, you know what I mean? But if you gave them a pat, like something based on what I knew he was interested in, if I gave him, fuck it, I won't even say a huge thing. I'll say like a bunch of pool toys for the kids for their third home in Florida.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:09.466) Yeah.

Tim Brown (23:25.706) they would open it up and be like, that was so thoughtful. And we're so excited and we're going to bring those and have a great time in Florida. You know what I mean? Like, so just certain things, when you put it on a monetary level, I don't think anyone's going to be offended, but there's a, like kind of a friend level. This, the book that goes into this stuff in real depth is giftology. There's some...

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (23:52.037) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (23:54.134) relationships, if they can live on the gift side of things, it's like almost more impact, like you're saying. I think that's a great book. If anyone hasn't checked that out, check out Giftology. It's a very fun thing to get into, and it does take work, but it is fun.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (24:12.83) Yeah, and I think that I think where most people fail on like the referral side is making it a systematic every single time approach like this is our process for educating the consumer like that this exists and that they have an opportunity to earn and show and then Show them the opportunity like take that opportunity to show them the transparency right like we can actually track it. We can show you you're going to compensate and here's what you can expect. I think that's one part of where people fail a little bit.

Tim Brown (24:23.499) Yeah.

Tim Brown (24:41.178) Oh yeah, yeah for sure.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (24:42.684) like actually like paying people and going through with it. Unfortunately, you know, you like, you gotta keep track of this shit. Like if you're gonna put it out there, otherwise it's gonna have the exact opposite effect on the brand that you want, right? The idea is that we could build goodwill by looking out for people that are looking out for us and that compounds very, very quickly.

Tim Brown (24:48.394) Yeah.

Tim Brown (24:55.854) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (24:59.572) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:03.514) And hey, there's financial gain from it, which never hurts in a capitalist society, but go ahead and not pay people for referring you and see how quickly that fucks your game up. That's a problem. But there's like some...

Tim Brown (25:11.462) Yeah. Oh yeah, there's some psychology in there. Like the, there's the, they talked about when you pay like your kid to read a book, weirdly it has the opposite effect sometimes because like, especially it has a very, very negative effect if you ever don't pay them.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:33.634) Yeah.

Tim Brown (25:34.77) It will literally stop them in their tracks. Like the Pavlov's dog effect, if there's one time where it doesn't happen and you had been, it like has very, like the studies on that are crazy. That has a very negative effect on them ever reading. So your kid will just stop reading.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (25:51.941) Right.

And you know, this guy will stop referring and he'll probably blast down Google for being a crook. So we don't want that. That will have a detrimental effect to our brand. Don't do that. Make sure that you pay your people for referrals if you say you're gonna pay them. And you get creative with it, right? Like, I don't know, like, what kind of gifts can you give people like custom doormat? If you're doing referral program, and you're giving them 250 bucks a roof, get like, get custom visa cards made like with picture of your team or picture of something like it's an opportunity for you to

Tim Brown (26:19.208) Mmm, that's cool.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:22.581) them right which like

Tim Brown (26:24.13) I think like one big one that like you could do for, you know, insurance agents or realtors or people with a brand too. Like I think like their brand is huge, right? Like if you get their brand on like a bottle of whiskey or their brand in a like cake or their brain or like for some reason people love that and also you might get an additional benefit of like the social media posts, you know, that type of thing. So like.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:35.779) Yeah.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:51.011) Right.

Tim Brown (26:54.218) for B2B referrals, that's a huge one.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (26:59.126) Yeah, right. Like if I sent him in a sun shirt, how often he's gonna wear it. But if I send him some dope hook swag, which I haven't so shame on me. You'd be much more excited about it, right? Because it's your thing. I mean, it just it just makes sense. Just makes sense.

Tim Brown (27:14.186) Yeah, what would you, what do you really wear a lot? Like, what do you, what would you like, you know, just hypothetically, you know, like you think about like, what is something somebody really actually would enjoy wearing? Like I did try, I tried with somebody in the industry and I did like a, their logo on the back of a jacket. I didn't think they really wear it. But you know, you gotta take shots. You gotta spend a little money on these things and take some shots. It's, it's,

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:21.622) My heart on my sleeve.

Tim Brown (27:43.31) probably going to be the ones that you go a little bit hard on. But I didn't mean to say hard on.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:48.681) What about like company branded cougar paws?

Tim Brown (27:51.746) Oh yeah, that'd be sweet. That would be super cool.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (27:55.714) It would have to be more so for the owner operator, not the guy that's removed, right? So that would know your audience and it would be relevant to somebody like that.

Tim Brown (27:58.27) Yeah. Alright.

Tim Brown (28:03.966) Yeah. Think about like, if you did like a

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:07.246) Or you can buy him a bunch of branded synthetic underlayment.

Tim Brown (28:13.63) Oh, I've thought about that a lot, Michael, by the way. I've thought about, we, I looked into pricing and everything. The, it's like $20,000 for like the minimum order on branded underlayment.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:16.41) Ha ha ha.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:27.331) You got it, ball out.

Tim Brown (28:27.382) And I'm like, well, okay, I, yeah, yeah. Exactly. I mean, no, it could be a strategy though. Like as far as like talking to roofers, think about the, what are their branded items with some, like if you're talking to realtors and insurance, like, could you do like their logo on the inside of a suit jacket, the liner?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (28:49.319) Mmm, yeah.

Tim Brown (28:49.518) I feel like the only problem with that is like the, but like something like a little bit more creative where like they would like be really proud of it and excited. Like those are the types of swag items. Obviously if you get them like a hundred pens, they're probably gonna be like kind of happy, but it's not like, you know what? A hundred pens would probably work, but you know, the point is, is like trying to do creative stuff. So it's remarkable, right? Like we're trying to do stuff that like kind of gets stuck in their head and they want to talk about.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:03.93) Pants suck.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:16.719) Hmm.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (29:19.898) real estate agents and insurance agents.

Tim Brown (29:23.154) Even like, I was saying like three quarters zip, like what could you do that's like a little higher? Embroidery is always cute. Like if you could do embroidered items. And then it's like kind of getting your partners for this stuff. Like it's like, can you...

Can you roll it out kind of quick? Like, can you get something to somebody in like three weeks? Like, if you have a partner on embroidery, if you have somebody that's, like, then you can roll stuff out quicker. You could do 10 quarter zips for your referral partner versus like bigger companies might need like 100 for a run or something like that. So I just think it's like, yeah. I'm trying to do.

Right now, I don't think I can share my screen, but I'm working on a best damn roof. Okay, you got the good, good Riverside hub. I think mine is limited. I'm trying to do a, here, I'll share my screen here. Window, entire screen, uh-oh.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:13.891) You can share.

Tim Brown (30:34.99) Let's see, oh, here it is. So I'm trying to do a little label for Fireball whiskey for a roofing process. And then we're going to hand out these little bottles of Fireball. But I'm trying to co-brand it with BDR.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (30:47.343) Mm-hmm.

Tim Brown (31:03.294) So referrals are fire. And then maybe the back is like our three unique value propositions or something. Because he's going to be there playing music in our booth. So that was like our activation style thing for roofing process. So we'll see how that goes. I mean, I know something. Hey, you coming?

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:10.262) Yeah. That's it.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:22.414) Nice. Maybe maybe I'll come by and drink a couple bottles.

Probably not. Yeah. Baby's doing like a week, so.

Tim Brown (31:29.21) Oh, really? OK. Oh, OK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That happened to me last RoofCon where there's a baby in the middle. And like, I know, like. I wanted to be there pretty bad. It was like a little like I was a little bit like, yeah, that looks fun as shit. I was watching videos come out, I was like, oh, man. But, you know, I think this year might have been a little bit better than last year on RoofCon. But.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (31:58.798) Yeah, that's good. Looked like fun from the outside looking in.

Tim Brown (32:02.472) Yeah. Well, it's always it's a spoiler alert. It's usually more fun outside looking in the FOMO thing happens.

Tim Brown (32:14.55) Cause last year, I think, I mean, like, I don't think it's a secret. Vendors were a little like, eh, with.

Michael Stearns | Ascend Digital Agency (32:18.626) Well, we lost him, but I want to take a moment to thank all of you who have taken a minute to take a listen to our conversation. You guys are the real MVPs. Once again, shout out to Rufor, and we'll see you guys again soon.