We are delighted to announce our triumphant return after a ten-month hiatus, embarking on a fresh chapter of the Around the House Pro Insider with your hosts, Eric G and John Dudley. In this episode, we delve into the paramount importance of adapting to the evolving landscape of marketing and business management, particularly for professionals engaged in trades, design, and construction. We emphasize the necessity of leveraging modern tools, including websites and artificial intelligence, to remain competitive in an increasingly digital marketplace. Furthermore, we offer invaluable insights into the challenges faced by business owners today, particularly those operating family-run enterprises, and the imperative of effective leadership and cultural development within teams. As we navigate these complex dynamics, we aim to equip our listeners with the knowledge and strategies essential for thriving in their respective fields.

The reentry of the Around the House Pro Insider podcast heralds a revitalization of discourse pertinent to the construction and design industries, initiated by hosts Eric G and John Dudley. After an interval of ten months, this episode serves as a platform for the duo to delve into the evolving landscape of business management within the realms of carpentry, contracting, and interior design. They explore the imperative for professionals in these fields to adapt to modern marketing strategies, emphasizing the shift from traditional advertising methods to contemporary digital approaches, particularly the integration of websites and social media in their business models. Eric and John reflect on their personal journeys, highlighting the necessity of resilience and ingenuity in the face of adversity, particularly for those embarking on entrepreneurial ventures in the construction sector.

Throughout the discussion, the hosts also consider the economic challenges currently faced by many in the industry, pointing to inflation and market volatility as critical factors necessitating a thoughtful approach to business management. They recount personal experiences that underscore the realities of running a business amidst familial dynamics, while also sharing insights on effective leadership and the cultivation of a constructive company culture. The episode culminates in a commitment to provide ongoing guidance and support to listeners, aiming to foster a community of informed professionals who can navigate the complexities of the industry with confidence and competence.

In conclusion, this episode not only marks the return of the podcast but also reinforces its mission to equip industry professionals with the knowledge and tools required to thrive in a rapidly changing environment. Eric and John are poised to continue this vital conversation, inviting listeners to engage with them as they share valuable insights and practical advice in future episodes.

Takeaways:

• After a hiatus of ten months, we have returned to provide valuable insights on managing businesses effectively in the trades industry.
• The necessity of adapting to modern marketing strategies, particularly the importance of a strong online presence, cannot be underestimated.
• Business owners often make the grave mistake of attempting to manage their marketing efforts independently, which detracts from their core responsibilities.
• Establishing a culture of excellence and accountability within a team is paramount for delivering quality work and achieving long-term success.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• House Pro Insider
• SiteHype Designs
• GoDaddy
• Chown Hardware
• Home Depot
• System Pavers
• Ty Remodel Company

Foreign.

The House Pro Insider.

This is the podcast for trades pros, carpenters, contractors, interior designers and innovators building homes, renovating spaces, or creating the next big thing.

Let's dive in with your host, Eric.

G. Hey, guys, we're back.

Yes, it is the around the House Pro Insider.

Holy smokes.

It's been like 10 months and now we are back in the ring to get back at it.

To help you guys manage those businesses out there, whether you're running a design firm, a remodeling company, a house building company, or you've got the latest and greatest product that you're trying to bring to market, we have got some tips for you.

And today we got John Dudley, my friend, side Hype Design, my brother from another mother, former bandmate, former contractor that I worked as a designer with.

So welcome, John.

Oh, all the possibilities for trouble involved there.

Absolutely, man, absolutely.

I thought it would be great to bring you on because, you know, you do such a great job helping companies with websites and you've got a lot of depth.

But I really wanted to bring in because, man, you have fought the good fight.

Being a contractor started out, you didn't have some silver spoon given to you.

You were out there just trying to figure out how to make it happen.

So many else, so many other people out there that are trying to do the same thing.

Full disclosure.

When I first started that business, my new wife had to literally drive me around.

And I think my tools were hammer, screwdriver, skill saw and a makita drill.

Yeah.

And that was it, dude.

Like literally.

And she would have to drive me around.

She'd sleep in the car while I worked on the property for a year.

Yeah.

Due to some legal issues I may or may not have had, we can't talk about that.

So, yeah, that's how I turned that screwdriver in the back of a Jeep Cherokee into million dollar plus revenue company in a few years.

Yeah, yeah.

And we see.

It's funny, right now we're seeing such a huge shift out there marketing wise.

People would put themselves up in the newspaper, they'd go into the, into the trader type things that you would see out there and maybe the phone book.

And now we have jumped so far ahead that not only do you need a website, but you need to start thinking about millions of people are starting to use AI like the old yellow pages.

And all of a sudden you really need to focus on what you're doing because if you're not thinking about those things, you might as well be advertising in the Yellow Pages.

Because some of this technology is changing so fast.

Yeah.

I think the good news is the majority of folks have finally caught up to it after 20 years.

Even as close as 10 years ago, people, why do I need a website with all this marketing stuff?

And what do you mean?

Ads on Facebook and SEO.

And it got real convoluted.

Yeah.

But now everybody and their neighbor is doing it.

So anybody that's paying attention realizes, okay, I gotta jump on this fatal mistake.

They try to jump on there and do it.

Well, it's gotta be just a couple of clicks.

Try to get on there and do it themselves and really have no idea what the landscape looks like out there.

And as a professional of 15 years doing this stuff.

Yeah, it's hard for me still.

It changes every 30 seconds.

It's nuts out there.

So to think that you're gonna be a tile layer, a tile setter or a plumber and build your little wick site and people are magically gonna come, it's just, it doesn't happen.

Dude, we ran on a GoDaddy site here and around the house forever until I called you up and went, brother, help.

And we were way like.

And I did bother you about that for three years.

I'm like, dude, let's just fix this, dude.

Just.

I, I know it had a listen.

Thanks, Johnny.

No, it's a big can of worms and it.

And as a business owner, you should be running down the can of worms that is your business, not opening a new one and trying to understand something that, that takes a decade to understand correctly and really be in the game.

You don't have that kind of time as a business owner.

I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that I see business owners today doing is they're trying to be their own marketing person.

They're trying to be their own SEO optimization expert.

They're trying to develop all of this stuff all while trying to run a business, all trying to swing a hammer or trying to come up with the greatest new product.

It's a full time job.

I work in marketing and construction, remodeling now with the television show and everything else.

And I still have to call you up and go, dude, what about this?

And it's changing so fast.

Yeah.

And what worked in radio a year ago works differently in radio today.

Television is changing rapidly.

Streaming is changing rapidly.

There's so many things going on out there.

And I think one of the, one of the biggest mistakes I think is that business owners get out there and they're not managing their time correctly.

And I've stolen this from one of the guys from Shark Tank because he talks about it and I totally agree with it.

And it's that signal to noise ratio.

And you've heard me talk about it.

I've watched a bunch.

I caught this off YouTube and I'm like, it's so.

It's important.

Yeah.

If you, if you don't find that one fix, you're spinning circles, dude.

You really.

You're costing yourself money not making more, period.

That's all.

It's simple math, dude.

I'm the first to come out and say, yeah, my ADHD like yours, Johnny tends to get off sometimes and get off the rails.

And the problem is that means my noise is high.

The signal is that stuff.

And I heard that's Kevin o' Leary said that the best person that he's ever met out there was Elon Musk.

That he's a hundred percent signal.

Dude's just always on.

I don't want to be always on, but it's.

The thing is you got to balance that out.

And my trick to getting things done in the day is I start out in the day early and I have my three things I have to accomplish.

If I don't get those done the first two hours, I'm in trouble.

Yeah.

Mine starts with meditation.

To be honest, I poo pooed it and I'm not very disciplined at it.

But I've come to find it's a lifesaver for me.

And I try to skate it thin.

Some days I'm like, ah, just five minutes.

Yep, that's good.

And I'm thinking the whole time, it's not a real meditation.

My day goes to shit every time.

Every time without fail.

I'm like.

And I know it and I still do it.

It's like knowing you're going to get burned touching the stove.

Oh yeah.

It's still happens.

It still happens.

I'm seeing that challenge.

I gotta get quiet to hear the good stuff.

Oh yeah.

For me.

And the problem is we got Tik Tok and Instagram and all these things that are trying to steal our time.

Yeah.

And emails coming in so fast.

I've gotten to the point now where the emails.

I've realized that emails are really other people's schedule that are.

They're trying to get me to work in their schedule and I will respond accordingly.

But I literally get again, if I.

Don'T, if I don't take that time to stop, I don't look at a thing.

Yeah, I wash My face, I brush my teeth, I drink a huge glass of water and I go meditate.

Because if I look at.

I don't.

I didn't even look at my phone.

Nobody calls me with an emergency before 6am not gonna find it.

And that's good.

I just don't let any of that stuff touch me until I've found my center in my space.

Then I can go into the world and let it know what I'd like to see happen instead of letting it dictate what it needs me to make happen.

For it is.

It's not the boss, the world, my clients, none of it.

Yeah.

And the other thing is the economy is worse than what anybody's talking about up here in the United States.

It just is.

And that's putting so much with the inflation we had over the last few years.

It's really pushing things off the deep end.

Here in the Pacific Northwest where I'm at, our gasoline last week went up to 454 a gallon.

Now that same station that was 454 is now down to 399 a gallon today.

So back down again.

And it's because that we have, I think, what is it?

1.

You know, I think we have one refinery up in Ferndale and they put it in a Washington and they put in a pipeline and run it all the way down to Oregon.

Problem is when that pipeline shuts down, there's no gas.

So they had to truck it all.

So we had this big problem.

We're seeing those kind of things right now.

But what I'm seeing too is we're seeing these people, everyone out there struggling a little bit.

It's not the good days these days for most people.

And now they're trying to manage their business.

And when it has become a family business.

I see so many people right now going through divorces.

Heck, I just did.

And you're seeing people trying to manage their family business where you have their wife working with them, their sister, their kids, whatever.

And it's such a struggle right now.

And at the same point I see businesses like here in Portland, just an institution.

I work with them all the time.

Chown Hardware, 146 years old this year.

Fourth generation of people working.

Now their secret to success is that every kid, when they're 13, 14 years old, what are they running?

The broom.

And they work their way up and they go through the exact same thing.

They've done it all the time this way from the beginning.

Every person is in a position because they earned it.

Not because their family.

And that's how they've made it 146 years.

If they didn't, they moved them into something that would fit.

And it's been really fun to watch companies like that.

There's so much to learn watching companies like that manage it.

They're expanding, they're growing.

But the kids, when they get into that adulthood and they get to a place where they're going to be in management, they've learned from all the people that got them to where they were, which is invaluable.

That I was just gonna say that type of experience is invaluable.

I have humbled myself many a time, willingly and Lee, to, hey, I'm the new guy.

Even if I know three times what the lead guy knows, I'm the new guy.

Show me.

Because I'm always gonna learn something from other people's processes and approaches to getting things done.

And I love it.

Generally speaking, ego creeps in there for most folks.

For me, I love.

I'll be the quiet guy in the corner because I've led so many businesses and had to be the bullhorn.

No, man, that's like vacation to me.

I'm like, okay, sweep that corner.

Sure.

Yeah, exactly.

That's funny.

I dig it.

I was with my buddy Ty this last week.

We're at the.

We talk about on the.

On the national radio show and podcast.

But I was up there with my buddy Ty from the Ty Remodel Company out of Seattle and Tri Cities.

You met him before, way back in the band days.

Yep.

He was my buddy that played in the Nine and Out with me.

Play guitar.

And he.

It's so funny.

Him and I were in there and this builder comes up who he knows and gets all up on him to interview him about the house camera and the microphone and all this stuff.

And I had so much fun sitting back and just being quiet.

You didn't know who I was.

And I'm like, I'm going to sit here and I'm just.

I'm going to.

If he wants to ask a question, knock yourself out.

I'm not volunteering.

No.

Yeah.

And it was so much fun because he.

We walk away and Ty looks over to me and his wife's there and my girlfriend's there.

And Ty looks, he goes, someone's gonna.

He's gonna post that video up and somebody's gonna go, why didn't you ask Eric from the around the house show about it?

And I'm like, sometimes it's just good to be the fly on the wall versus to be this.

I'll tell you what, man, the more years go by, the more I like that position.

Yeah, it's nice.

No, but the one thing that I've learned, too, it's.

And we're running out of time here, because I like to keep these quick and short and nuggets.

But as an owner of a company, no matter if it's your wife working with you, your partner, whoever in the family is working with you, if it's your company, no matter who they are, it's your job to provide leadership, Right?

Well, my role is.

And I've run some big companies before.

I fire fast and I hire slow.

Yeah.

And it's a little more tricky with family, but you can also create a position, move over, do what you need to do.

Do what you need to do.

And as the leader, you're also the culture person.

That's the other part.

Great example.

I showed you the picture.

I had system pavers out doing a little 12 by 12 patio this last week at my house.

These guys crushed it.

Beautiful job.

They had built this grade beam that kind of one area sloped off so they could make it level so the blocks wouldn't push out, so the base wouldn't wash away.

They basically put in a footing with concrete, set these little wall blocks in there.

And then the.

Of course, the.

The patio pavers went over the top.

It was a half inch off.

If they had came in there and done it, I wouldn't have even noticed it.

Those guys in there, without me saying anything, without me doing anything.

The next day, they tore out day two.

They're setting it up, and they're like, that's not right.

They ripped it out and redid it.

Took them an extra two and a half hours.

But that culture was.

It's not right.

We're gonna do it right.

And they did.

And it's gorgeous.

And I'm like, I watch.

I come back out, I'm like, whoa.

And I got time lapse of this.

So we'll see it in an upcoming video.

But it was so cool to watch that.

And I'm like, what an amazing culture that these guys looked at.

It went, we got to do this right.

And before somebody catches us on it, we're just going to tear it out and fix it.

I probably would never have caught it because I'm not going to go down there and measure if the overhang is two and a quarter or two and a half.

I'm not.

And that comes from good leadership, and it comes from Pride and ownership with what you're doing.

Even Summit was that kind of team, like, keep the team involved.

And that's what I always tried to create as a contractor, was we're a family and I was willing to share pieces of the company, whatever.

Like, I took care of my folks.

Yep.

Because that's the only way you're going to get that kind of attention out of an employee when they won't do the good enough.

Because they feel the same way I do about the company and about the product and about client satisfaction.

But you build that from the ground up.

You show that, you tell that.

And then they do that and it's.

And gotta start at the top.

Yeah.

And the one thing I've learned as a good leader is many times when you come in and go, hey, man, I see you're struggling.

What can we do to change it?

Do I need to put you in another role?

Yeah.

90% of the time, if they're a good, aware human being, they go, oh, thank God.

Yeah.

Really?

This part is really killing me.

Yeah.

What am I not doing right?

The willingness to learn, the willingness to be humble.

Just like I said, I'll gladly sweep that corner if that's what you need me to do today.

Yeah.

And it creates this sense of the next guy that's working to you feels that.

And nobody wants to be the one dirt that's not on the team.

Yeah.

So if that guy that's a little higher up than me is willing to clean that corner, like, surely I'm willing to clean the next one.

It all leads by example.

It does.

It was funny.

I had this.

Before we go, I had this funny story when I worked for Home Depot for 366 days.

So I had a one year contract.

I had a one year contract.

And when the contract was up, I was out.

Anyway, the fun part of this was, like, three days before my contract was up, store manager comes up.

I am the kitchen design manager.

I got customers there.

He comes up and is demanding that I go clean the bathrooms.

Yeah.

See, that gets sticky because that's where I'm gonna walk out.

Right.

And I just looked at him and I just went, hey, man, first off, that's in my contract that I don't do that.

So go read my contract.

And second of all, I got people to help here.

I'm doing my job.

So if you want to go knock it out, feel free.

It's not in my contract.

And he was doing it just to be petty.

There are people that need to feed the ego and try to run companies, people, cruise, whatever you want based on ego and fear.

You will always fail.

People will not be kind to you.

No.

And you know what?

You deserve it.

You do.

You do.

And that's just because your wife kicked you in the head last night.

Not my fault, brother.

Right here, we're just doing work.

We're here to make money, not friends.

Be.

Be a decent person.

Let's all get along and have the best time we can because, look, we all got stuff.

Yep.

And we gotta work.

So let's make it cool.

Absolutely.

There is a Dudley piece of wisdom right there.

Johnny.

Thanks for coming on the show today, guys.

We're gonna be doing this a lot more often, so make sure you come back here.

My goal is that we do it every.

At least every other week.

Maybe even every week if we can pull this off, depending on what we got going.

But we're gonna.

Since you're listening to the Pro Insider, we're gonna have a new page coming up on the website soon here, guys, that we're going to be able to help with your business.

We're going to be able to do a lot with you on that.

So I'm excited to show that and stay tuned for that.

You'll hear us.

You'll see it on social media when we come out with it.

It's going to be really fun.

So we can help a lot of people out there.

There's a lot of people struggling and we got the answers to help you.

Johnny, thanks for coming on again, brother.

Thanks for having me, brother.

Oh, dude.

Yeah, dude.

We got years of wisdom.

Let's use it.

Yep.

That is just behind closed doors.

I would feel good about sharing it with good people doing good things for the right reasons, man.

The hope of this upcoming rollout.

So we'll keep you posted, brother.

Thanks for having me again.

I appreciate it.

Always good.

All right.

Thanks, Johnny.

Great to have you on here.

Looking forward to it.

Next time.

I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to the around the House Pro Insider.

Thanks for tuning in to the around the House Pro Insider.

We are happy to be back.

Make sure you subscribe so you know to catch the next episode.

We will see you next time.