Struggling to make your marketing actually work for your home service business? 

In this episode, Hook Agency’s Tim Brown  breaks down how niching down, aligning your sales and marketing, and building a personal brand can lead to real growth. 

This episode is sponsored by Telelink, 24/7 live answering services for the trades.

Access the full show notes here: https://reflectivemarketing.com/podcast/tim-brown-how-to-hook-more-homeowners-with-a-personal-brand/

Welcome back to Beyond the Tools. On today's episode, I am thrilled to introduce Tim Brown of Hook Agency. I have really admired how Tim has marketed himself and his company in the trades and more recently in HVAC. I think they've made a huge splash in the industry and Tim is absolutely a marketing mastermind. This conversation was a lot of fun.

And Tim has so many insights on personal branding, what's actually working in marketing in HVAC and other home services right now. Building a culture and team, how that process goes, we cover so much in here. And I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. So let's hop on in and chat with Tim.

Tim, welcome to the Beyond the Tools podcast. Super excited to have you on the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me. So for those of us who don't know much about Hook Agency and what you're all about, maybe you give us the quick overview of what you're all about. Sure. Internet marketing nerds for home services.

run it with my wife and we're a somewhat scrappy team. I think that there's a lot of big agencies out there that kind of, know, there's, there's a certain amount of bureaucracy that happens. our core value is scrappy. And I mean like resourceful is really central to our business.

Yeah, I love that. think that's a great core value to have. I'm curious, how did you get started? I think it's always interesting to hear somebody's background. So I did websites when I was in college. I was going to school for web design, Minneapolis College about 11 years ago. 11, 12 years ago.

I was doing these websites. I figured out a way to advertise in a local kind of magazine type thing. I'd also walk the street and go up to businesses and just be hey, want a website? It never worked by the way, but the paper advertising thing that I did it in trade.

And that worked. And I got a few clients from that. And one of them was a local, and I was super excited about it. was a local theater, Varsity theater, which had rock shows. And so I remember bicycling to that appointment and selling what was essentially 250 bucks a month for a website type thing. And I was I pitched so hard and I was so excited. And I was

Literally got my own little tiny office and shared with a bunch of other people. And it was such a big moment to be able to get a few of those first clients. then graduated from college. I felt like you have to go get a different job, right? you have to go get a real job. You can't just make your own business out of college. So I went and got a real job and I kind of knew that I wanted to have my own agency one day and then.

three years in, they did promote me a lot. but I felt they weren't specialized in anything. So when I went out on my own, kept services very tight. And then when I,

was starting to branch out a little bit. I made niche happen. Like I basically had a business coach that said you need a niche. Right. I had three niches to begin with, which it doesn't count as niching. I found that we liked the contractors a lot and then

because that was such a...

A moment, one for your sales and marketing, right? To have a niche. And home service businesses, you have niches too, right? different types of jobs that everyone knows to refer to you. Right. And you're a specialist at those types of jobs. And then it's good for sales and marketing, but then it's also good for the internal team, right? That's getting the work done. And so.

we're known for doing excellent work because the work was better because we weren't constantly learning a new type of customer. Yeah. Yeah. It definitely gets exhausting trying to learn all these different industries and business models

for you and your wife looking at this and saying, okay, we're not gonna do these other types of businesses. What is it that makes you so passionate about home services in particular? Well, now I love it. One, because it pays me really well. That's always important. Thank you to the people that pay us. And two, I think I like the nuts and bolts. I know what it is.

we figured out that have marketing for things that are like, I don't know what it is are much harder. It's much harder. So I like marketing for things. know what it is. And that's another reason, we kind of go out on the job site and learn from people who are doing the work. Cause it's to me, it's easier to market something where I get it.

I know what the value is because I think really something that marketers need to learn is

To market it really well, you have to know why it's good. And why it's good is partly because of the way things are done and you don't know it until you look. And it's hard to do this. We don't shadow every client, but if you were, let's say you're an early marketer and you could to go out and really spend a day with somebody

Why is what you're doing special here? You know, and sometimes it's Yeah, it's harder to market that. It's harder to market that. Right. But sometimes it is. And you're looking closely, like you don't talk about that at all. You do that every time, but you don't talk about it. To me, marketing is really just talking about the good things you do. And if you don't do the good things, then.

harder to market. Yeah. That is one thing that I noticed about you early on when you came on my radar and started showing up in my feed and stuff was that I love that you are learning in depth about the industry and doing job shadowing and that sort of thing. How did that start?

So I was the video guy for a couple for some different contractors. Essentially we offered video services and it was way too cheap. I was going out there often. Well, even just once a month is a lot because it's a lot of, then you have to edit all those videos and everything. So I was out on just, just because I was getting paid for it, I was out on these job sites, but I would just take a picture of myself up on a roof or in an attic or.

some, it was a remodeler and a couple of roofers. And so as I did that, feel like it, I realized that people love that. They love that you're on a roof. They love that you're in like a attic that has frost in it. They love that like you're on the job site. And so I just, I found that for marketing us, it was very useful.

I've done that before, like memes, I got really into memes before because I got an outsized impact when I did a meme that was a niche meme because these niches don't have good memes. Or now they're starting to have much better memes. But whenever you see that outsized impact, just double down, keep doubling down until it doesn't work anymore. So it's the same, I'm sure with social, right?

You're always looking for what is that thing that kind of does more than it should. It's like this, the cute dog on the, you know, HVAC companies, Instagram, why does that one do so well? All right. We don't know, but let's just go. mean, it's, we kind of know, but let's just do it more, do it more, do it more. that's like. Partly why I got really into the, in the trenches stuff is cause it.

Frankly, it sold deals for us. Yeah. Yeah. That makes total sense. And it's so true. You don't know necessarily all the time what's going to resonate. on my personal accounts, I started doing a fountain of the day because I was traveling in Europe a lot. So I'd take pictures of water fountains and then people I didn't know, clients.

friends were sending me photos of fountains and then I would post them get people to write them. was just a silly little thing, And I, I know that personal branding has been a really big part of

what's Hook Agency to grow. tell us a little bit more about your journey with personal branding and how you can apply that to home services.

Yeah. So I've ever since I was freelancing I was trying to speak at a meetup. I was blogging. was posting on the internet and not everyone was doing that. Right? Like not everyone was tweeting and posting on their social media profiles about business or whatever. Cause it is kind of lame.

Right? I count every time I post on Facebook, I count the cost. There might be a hater. I say to myself, there might be somebody that disagrees and it might make my day a little weird because people are so weird on the internet sometimes, but I do it anyways. I count the cost and I do it anyways. And it, you kind of loosen up the inhibitions of posting. I know a lot of you do this.

You're getting ready to post and you go, somebody might disagree.

I'm gonna not post it.

What if they do? Who cares? Who cares? They don't. I posted something so spicy the other day about private equity two big leads came from it. Two big leads. was kind of mean. It's basically private equity squanders their SEO stuff. your brand is an asset. Your SEO is an asset. Don't squander it.

essentially. And it was like kind of a little bit in depth about like, I've seen millions of dollars of revenue get dropped from bad website launches or private equity squandering the SEO of a company because they didn't realize it was an asset. Maybe a million dollars isn't a lot of money to you as a private equity firm. Right. But you're wasting a million dollars like that. That doesn't sound like smart accounting, but it's

Counting people don't always get what brand is and they don't always get what SEO is. And then so two big leads came through from that, just that post, even though I know people disagreed and even though I know there's some people that were annoyed by it, but it was true. The key is that it's gotta be true, right? When we post, we wanted it to be accurate to what we really think, because there's nothing worse than if you, and I've I've experimented with all kinds of things.

And I probably have posted stuff that I didn't fully believe in. was just kind of doing it for engagement. being spicy just for engagement. That's going to annoy you later in the day when somebody disagrees and you're like, yeah, I know. But if you do it in such a way that it's true, I know, I believe this is true and this is accurate. And like, I have a strong opinion about that. Then if somebody disagrees, fine.

It's so it's kind of the motive I'm trying to say things that are true. so, but yeah, when I first started, just to give a little bit more of background of that is first started. It was Twitter. got customers from Twitter. I got the mall of America as a customer from Twitter.

got other big clients from Twitter. Interestingly, I was just tweeting a lot and basically being aggressive. And then I went to LinkedIn. got really into LinkedIn for a long time. And I realized a lot of the contractors that I'm targeting are not on LinkedIn.

He's posting it's business, it's Facebook.

then I realized I'm gonna stop hating and start participating.

Just on Facebook, you can kind of go see what what's in the ad library and see, can Google Facebook ad library and see what ones have been running a long time. Yeah.

You can tell because if somebody's a flash in the pan, maybe it doesn't work. But if you see him posting these value posts over and over again for years, I'm like, that's definitely working to get him business. So yeah, I got really into Facebook posting.

And same kind of thing, but I found my own rhythm, is not always like these long value posts for me. It was like memes and trying to be funny.

Videos. So I figured out what do you have as assets that you could use to leverage the same thing. I don't always feel comfortable writing long posts, but it does work on Facebook that and then like the, with the color background and like asking a question or saying something that, know, it is true to say things out loud that, you know, people will disagree with or that questions that people want to answer it drives a lot of traffic, but personal brand because

Facebook screwed us all on the company brands because you can't post stuff. No one cares about company brands basically in my experience, unfortunately. And so I maintain mine. I think it needs to be professional, but I really strongly recommend that people look at personal brand and see if they can leverage it. Were you always this comfortable putting out opinions and yeah.

Absolutely not. No, it's so uncomfortable. Yeah, I think people assume that like when somebody is doing this, they're like, that guy must think he's something right? or like, I guess that guy probably likes the way he looks and sounds and stuff like that. And it's like, I cringe every time I see my own shit. Like, but I just don't worry about it because that's the consequence I'm willing to accept. Yeah.

And I then it's like, okay, then stop thinking about it. Just do it. Yeah. Like stop caring. It doesn't matter. Cause the result I get is I'm willing to accept the consequences and the result I get is more leads. So I like the leads. So I'm always going to do the thing like that gets me the more leads, even if it's really annoying and uncomfortable.

However, I do the hard things that get the results. And then eventually you learn to love the hard things. Yeah. I think you hit on a couple of interesting things there. One is that it is a bit of a muscle. So if you practice it and you, you keep doing it.

You just kind of get in the rhythm of it and don't pay attention as much to the negative feedback that you get. But also when you get positive feedback, that definitely for me motivates me to keep doing it because this is helpful to people or entertaining or whatever the case may be. Absolutely. I always cut that. Like when I get a negative comment, it like, it,

negates like 30 positive comments for me. I'm built like that. Yeah. So I would encourage people on that. So I just got one yesterday and it said, I was talking over the person, which is definitely an actual flaw of mine. It hurts when it's real. Right? Like, and I was interviewing somebody at a trade show and I was talking over them, which is correct.

but it's, it hurts way more because I know it's a big flaw of mine and that one stings, but like back in the day, would mess me up.

I've gotten probably like 80 million views over this last year, which is nuts. There's so much negativity though. And honestly, part of it is because of that negativity that I was able to get that many views. And now it's down like 15 minutes or like it kind of like, it kind of lingers a little bit, but it's gone. So the more you get, the less you care.

you still care, but it just affects your behavior less. so now I'm like, I don't even like care that much because I stopped talking about it. Yeah. that makes total sense. I am curious, I guess, how, as you've grown,

have you found it difficult in some cases where when you build a personal brand, a lot of the time then everybody wants to work with you specifically? how have you managed that as your team has grown?

So one thing to note is as you get out of that, if people do request it to be you, for instance, somebody did that on a sales call recently, like I only want to talk to Tim or something like that.

I'm over that period now, like for like a while it was. And then now it's just really annoying. because literally everybody on my team that like you would talk to, like, for instance, like Sydney, our salesperson who's just right out here, like she's better than me

one sales, but at two at communicating expectations. And I'm bad at it. Like I'm actually bad at it because I'm like being all friendly and I'm like trying to be a consultant. And so I really like passing off those people. Now there are some complex sales where it makes the most sense, but as far as like the work and stuff like that, I'm just very clear in the sales calls if I do have them.

So you wouldn't be working with me, but then I introduced them to the person that they would be working with. So introducing somebody I think is the best way, especially the person that they're going to be working with. So yesterday was a big prospect from that private equity post that this is all the story. And I just brought him in and as he's talking to them, I'm seeing them because he's like, I've got boots on the ground. This is the real situation. Tim might've told you something, but this is the real situation. You know, so.

I think I just like to introduce the people that they'd be working with. And another thing is personal brands, trying to get more and more people's personal brands out there. As you may have seen with other people on our team, like putting their faces out there, getting them interacting with people, getting them to do content. So a goal for this next year for us is really around getting more faces and people on video.

And you can do that so simply, You can set up a 10 interview or 10 question interview that has like kind of hooks and like, I like a hook and then a curious lead in, right? For a real, so like an example, like, sorry, I'll finish the thing and then I'll come back to this so that I'm not, I'm really weaving here. You got the 10 question interview.

that they could do once a quarter. And then you have 10 videos, 10 reels that could be a minute or they could be 30 seconds. They can be quick. Give me 20 seconds. They give me 15 seconds, right? Of a quick answer and it's got a hook. And then you're working in all these other personal brands so that it's not just about you. And I don't want it to be about me anymore. Like it's at that point in the business. Everyone gets that point, I think, where it's like they

You're exhausted because you're not letting other people be involved. Like stop forcing yourself into everything, even when it's a little imperfect.

the biggest mistake when making a home service website. So that's the hook. So I'm starting with that. Like it could be positioned as a question, but then you restate the question, right? The worst mistake that you're making with your home service website. And then you need this. The second line is really important. That's the hook. The second line is, have you ever been to a party and somebody's just sitting there and the only thing they're doing is talking about themselves?

That's what your website is doing right now. So you got the hook and then the secondary thing. And I'm realizing I'm doing that in this conversation. I love it. It's beautiful weaving. And yeah, that makes a lot of sense too, because I think what I hear a lot from home service business owners is like, I'm not super comfortable, but I got a great sales guy. Or there's somebody else in the company, but then it's like,

Do we put everything behind this one individual, or do we elevate the voices and personalities of many people behind the company? I think sales should dictate that. I'm a big advocate for sales being more involved in marketing, and I say scale your best closer. So the guy who's selling everything, put him on camera. Yeah.

We want to scale up what's winning, And if there's two or three people, there's, doesn't have to be a sales guy. could be somebody else, a technician that's just charming the pants off of everyone. You know, that there's a person in the office that she's just a delight to be around, right? Those three people, that's a squad. That's all you need for social media. Like those three people don't put the guy on that doesn't have anything better to do.

that hasn't sold anything in a month. No offense, like love that guy, train him up.

or get rid of them or whatever. the point is, we need to put the people out there that we know already are doing well in person.

Getting to 30 employees over the last eight years you guys have been in business. Obviously there are significant hurdles in leading people, finding the right people, all those kinds of things. What has been some of the most surprising parts of managing people and growing a team?

Yeah, I think early on I was like, what is culture? I thought it was kind of bullshit. It was because it was tiny. And if it's super tiny, it's hard to make culture. It's literally just like a group of kind of friends, you know, it's not culture per se. But trying to create any kind of momentum after it was beyond my personal skit, like sphere of influence.

I've got my personal sphere of influence. It's pretty good. But at a certain point it dissipates, I can't make a personal impact on more than eight people, for instance. Once had a dream as Gary B and he was like, he was a cardboard cutout in a grocery store and he was like, can't raw raw your way past seven people. And I remember that it was like stuck in my mind and it's like,

There's gotta be something more substantive as time goes on. And like, what is it? Like to me, it was like a motto. It was core values. It was our mission. It's like story brand helped with that. Traction helped with that.

And trying story brand helps because it's like, need there to like, we created a mission, right? Like that was for the employees. So more and more employee branding, but then more and more like, this is the direction we're going. EOS has like a vision traction organizer, which puts your core values and everything else kind of, and then we put it up on the wall. made a, we found like a big whiteboard version of that and put it up on the wall with everything. We, we honor core values.

and give them money in front of everyone. Like when people are really exceed, like kind of doing the core value exemplifying that. And...

Yeah, but I lost a lot of people, great people in the process of trying to learn all that. Right? Like I, there's a lot of people that left the company that might've been good or were awesome that I didn't have enough culture.

feel like it's a muscle too, Like it's a, to be able to create a company that people want to stay at, has to be cool. It has to be comfortable in a way. It has to be motivating and it has to have systems that people can do without it being so tiring to come to work every day. So it's tiring when you're

building something new every single day, but it's not as tiring when you can run the play. Yeah. So that's why a niche was super important. Actually, I think retention went up a lot once like after we fully did the niche. And then I think retention went up once we got a talent development person. So we have an HR slash talent development person who's setting great employee expectations. We talk about setting great customer expectations, setting great employee

expectations. And then there's a light rhythmic training system for every single employee, every single

quarter that there's accountability for. when I did, I used to do this thing called office vibe back in the day that like was a pulse check-in with employees. It got a little depressing because there's always things you're working on, right? Yeah. And they could do anonymous feedback, which I got it really annoyed with and he couldn't turn off the anonymous part. So I stopped getting it. No, thank you.

One of the main problems that people always said we had was accountability, like lack of accountability. And that's just a small business problem, right? Like we don't have managers that don't do work. All of our managers do work. Yeah.

So having that outside person, when you can do it, an HR kind of talent development person, I like the dual role because then when we're not hiring, she can work on talent development.

like allows there to be an accountability person for leveling up. And that feels like not everyone can do that, but I do think if there is some light rhythmic training and there is some check-in on the training. At what point in your growth did you bring on that person? Yeah, we brought on Aaron probably like 23 people.

I didn't want somebody that's like soft and like, like trains our team to like walk on eggshells or teaches us to walk on eggshells. Cause HR can be like that at a certain point. And what I wanted was more of like a level up person.

And for some reason, the face tat to me represents like, I didn't get somebody like soft. got somebody with a little bit of edge to him. And I like.

I wanted somebody that could have direct conversations and wouldn't be scared of employees. You don't have to get one with a face tat, but in my case, I found it useful. Well, that makes sense. mean, if you're sensitive to what people think about you, you're not going to get a face tattoo. So I think that's a fit. By the way, she's so, it's crazy how cool she, I mean, she is.

A bad-ass obviously with the face tat, but she's like, she actually got the hook tatted right on her hand. my God. So she's, and she's, and we have actually had eight people tattoo the logo on them, which it's like a major transformation from where our culture was like five years ago, where no one would have gotten this tattoo on them, except maybe me and my wife. And now people want to do that. But LinkedIn hates it. I will say.

I posted a picture of all of us getting our tattoos on us and like, there's a bunch of people like, Oh, from healthcare companies actually. they're thinking about that. why you got out of that niche.

I'm wondering like, how the hell do these people get loyalty? You want loyalty on your team. And it's like, how do you get loyalty? Like, and you would know it's absolutely not a cult if you came in here because people talk like back to me and stuff like that. But there's like this like mindset, like my mindset is like, how can I create loyalty in my team? How can it?

comes down like brand. do think social media helps. Like everything you do for clients, like to create a company that looks kind of good on the internet helps create loyalty. People don't want to work for a company whose Instagram is dead these days. And I think that there's a desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves. And we all want that to some degree. So if we can create that with swag and create that with

wellness initiatives, like I've got like, you know, we do lifetime fitness for people. We do meditation app for people, you know, like I'm trying to create this like, God, why would I go anywhere else? It's so good here. Like I wanna work at a place that's helping me level up in life, not just my career.

No one wants to go anywhere else because it's like, it's too good here. Why would we leave? That's what I want to create at my company. Yeah. And I think to compete as an employer these days, it's almost a necessity. Yeah.

What do you think is the number one thing that home service companies need to do to thrive in the next year?

take more insights from sales and incorporate them into marketing because your sales team is getting the exact way people are buying and not buying right now. And you're not passing that back to marketing. You're letting marketing kind of do its thing out here for fun. You're acting like it's not a serious thing. It's very serious and it gets more and more serious and you can get

your prospects closer and closer to closed before they get to you. If you pass those insights back from sales and into marketing, for instance, if a prospect is saying,

Hey, I wish you would have brought up financing earlier. I would have said yes right away. Right? Like how are we not talking about financing more on our social media? Because y'all are scared of money. If you're scared of money, stop asking sales, what's closing deals. If you want more money, ask every week because they actually know what's closing a deal. And you have to like ask in the right way, like keep on asking and ask on a rhythm.

But like, what closed that deal and then use it in a video. So what's closing deals? Make a video. What's closing deals? Make a social post. Marketing isn't a separate thing. It's just sales at scale. Brilliant. I think that's an incredible tip. So thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So Tim, for anybody listening that wants to learn more about you, what's the best way that they can connect with you?

I would love it if you connected my personal Facebook at facebook.com slash Tim hook. And my last name is actually Brown. It's actually Tim hook agency is the Facebook facebook.com slash Tim hook agency. But I'm on, I'm on Facebook as Tim hook and home services. So I would love to connect with you there. post a lot of like,

very useful videos and I would love to just like get to know you a little bit better and be friends there. Amazing. We'll post the link in the show notes as well.

Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Tim, for being on the show. I can't wait to hear the feedback from our listeners. I know that you delivered so much value today and we had an awesome time. So thank you. Absolutely. Oh, by the way, you don't actually have to remember where my URL is. You can just Google Tim Hook. That's the, that's the good part. But if you Google Tim Brown, there's like 50 of them. So in this case, I'm like the first thing. So Tim Hook and you'll find me. That's that SEO at work. Yeah.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Tim. Yeah. Thank you. Bye.