Everyone in construction marketing tells you to “be authentic” — Simon Bowler is one of the few who’s held onto it with 700k people watching, and this episode is about how he’s done it, and whether that audience actually does anything for the business.

A former car salesman turned master carpenter who builds bespoke gazebos and garden rooms — with two Harrogate Flower Show Golds to show for it — he’s grown one of the biggest construction accounts in the UK by doing something simple: filming the work as he does it, and never pretending to be something he isn’t.

He’s sharp on why some posts fly and others flop (it’s nearly always the hook), the homage video that bombed and taught him to stay in his lane, and why he still shoots every brand collaboration like the brand’s watching — because it is.

He’s also honest about the hate that comes with reach, the people sliding into his DMs to sell him followers, and the paradox that a trade creator with hundreds of thousands of followers still isn’t taken seriously by parts of the industry.

He closes on the marketing itself — why a brand needs a vibe, not a personality, the biggest mistake he sees marketers make in construction, and why brands don’t need engagement, they just need to be seen. It’s part one of two: the story and the craft here, the brands-and-marketing one next.

Follow Simon Bowler

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simonbowlerltd

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@simon_bowler

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simonbowlerltd

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@simonbowler1

Sponsor

This episode is sponsored by Big Wipes - bigwipes.com

Stay connected with dissident creative agency

https://linktr.ee/dissidentagency

Subscribe now and don’t miss future episodes of The Build Up Podcast.

Social media is very fragile.

That will come, I daresay in the fullness of time it will go.

Oh, I love that word exposure.

Think of the exposure. I'm. Sounds odd, doesn't it?

But I expose myself perfectly well.

Just get in front of the camera, foster.

Okay, let's just cut straight to the chase.

Get your face and your voice in front of the camera.

of your niche almost finds you.

I was just about to say that.

Yeah. The reason why we're in construction, it found us.

It found us Hello. Welcome back to the build up.

I'm Dan, the creative director at distant.

And today I'm very excited because I'm joined with Simon Bowler, who is arguably

one of the biggest content creators in the construction space, certainly one of

the best respected. In this particular episode, which is sort of part one of two

we're going to be diving into, I guess, how we started out on social media, the

the rise, what steps he took to achieve that.

And we'll be talking a little bit about how he manages that alongside his

carpentry business, how the to support each other and things like that.

So really, really excited for that.

massive thank you to Big Wipes for sponsoring this episode.

Our first ever sponsor. I'm so excited about this.

So really appreciate them supporting the show, making episodes like this

possible more about those guys later.

In the meantime, enjoy the episode, please.

Simon. Bloody bowler. Welcome to the podcast, mate.

The first ever podcast sponsored by our good friends of big wives.

And we'll talk about those guys a bit later.

Thank you so much for taking the journey over here.

First time the Dissonance Studios and things like that.

It's seen as a bit of a writer passage for for tradespeople on social media.

What did you make of the space?

It's interesting. I've seen the studios and the sets on various pieces of

content for quite a while, and so I kind of knew what I was going to be facing.

And I've seen what certain people have done, certain familiar faces have been

here and done crazy things that have done really well on socials.

But it's just it's cool to actually get eyes on and get amongst its.

You've built a really, really cool setup.

It's my expectations are very high and it's met them.

Bless you, bless you. Well well well you know we'll see if we can take on the

home studio later on as a production going on.

But we'll hang out. We can get crushed that right.

Yeah.

So again, it's only one of our biggest problems.

Not a big deal at all. I don't really want to introduce you, Simon, because I

guarantee I'll get it wrong.

I'd love to just get your your take on.

I find your take on who you are.

Kind of like what? And what do you do?

Like what? Like what? You know what?

Who is Simon Bowler? Okay, so I am a carpenter,

first and foremost, from North Yorkshire.

We build oak frame things, gazebos, porches, that type of thing.

The other thing that I do is content creation.

It's about 5050 now. Love it.

And,

so carpentry like

oak, big bespoke cool stuff like that.

Sounds like it's all out of house stuff.

Is that. Is that so? All outdoors?

Yeah. I spend my life outdoors, which I love.

It's challenging in the winter, but that's the bill that I pay to be able to

work outside in the summer and make sure my my head gets nice and tanned.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

I really wouldn't. I like the big pieces of timber.

I like the big tools that you need to be able to to work on those big pieces of

timber, and I like to be able to stand back at the at the end of the project and

say,

that's a pretty cool thing. And I built it all myself and Mark, who I work with

every day. We build that from scratch.

It's extremely satisfying. Long way.

Continue. I've been an admirer of your content and the way that you approach

content for, for a while, ever since you came on my radar years ago

and it was through,

other content creators that had spoken to, not necessarily just on the podcast,

but,

you know, I'm very interested in the content creation space because of my job

and stuff like that. And whenever I remember putting out a bit of a thing about

the sort of the content creator paradox, which is this kind of thing of it's not

just construction, but it's quite a prevalent construction where

once you get past a certain threshold of numbers and the and the types of

content and things like that, there's there's a potential to sort of lose

credibility to some extent with your with your audience.

It's not always the case, but it it happens, unfortunately.

And a lot of the time

it's not the content creators fault.

It's like a it's like a mentality shift of somebody doing well and all of a

sudden they can't

relate. Or something along those lines quite figure out the psychology of it.

But I remember putting out something that said, but then is there anyone that

challenges that is there? Are there are there people out there that are

challenging this paradox? And overwhelmingly the response was Simon Bowler,

somehow you figured out

the the the way of

doing what you do without losing credibility with your audience or,

you know, seeming like a sellout.

It sounds ridiculous to say, like, why?

Why would someone who's just continuing to do well be a sellout or whatever?

But it's kind of a weird mentality shift.

It's that kind of I get the impression it's a bit like I attributed it to the

guy who's like, building their business and doing doing really well, and you're

like, rooting for them. And then as soon as they buy their Ferrari, you think

they're a toss up and it's like, oh, come on guys.

Like same thing. You know, it's just that's you're seeing the fruits of the hard

work.

So we'll go on to that a little bit later.

But can you give us like,

a bit of a,

I guess, a journey of social media because this starts somewhere, right?

Of course. And then there's a progression like, can you talk us through like,

you know, the early days, like what?

How did it come about and how did it grow?

So Mark, who I worked with every day for a long time, this is pre-COVID.

This is before

reels. This is when Instagram was photographs only.

Remember that. It feels like a long time ago, Mark said.

We really need to put in our stuff on Instagram.

It'll do well. And I kind of poo pooed in.

I thought, I just haven't got time.

I've got the headspace to introduce another thing.

I'm busy running the carpentry business.

Let's just stay as we are. And he kind of bullied me into it and he was like,

just put some stuff on Instagram, let's just see what happens.

So we started taking a few photographs and putting them on Instagram, and I

realized that actually this was a benefit to the carpenter business because I'm

not a tech guy. Like I'm not able to update websites.

It's just completely beyond me.

So what Instagram provided was a simple platform for me to put photographs on of

what we did, so that I could show clients in the moment what we'd been up to.

Let's say, for example, I'm going to go see Mr. and Mrs. Smith next Tuesday at

6:00. They won't have a chat about because

I would tell them before I get there, just have a look at Instagram.

You'll see daily updates of what we do and how we do it.

And we can we can talk more about what you're looking at when I get to see you

next Tuesday at six then, and it worked for that.

It was a way, simpler way of me documenting what we did and how we did it.

And it worked. And then

reels came out. So Instagram takes a massive shift from photographs only no

one knows what you sound like.

You've never done a piece of camera.

You've never done anything. Moving on is to come to now all of a sudden, right?

We can put videos out. How long were the first reels?

Were they,

were they a minute? I can't remember, I think they were.

Anyway, I remember profoundly right reels and everything.

And I thought to myself,

if reels have only just come out today, there isn't going to be a great deal of

reels out there. People just like the only reels that are going to be out there,

the ones that people have made today.

So I shot real and it was terrible.

But because it was one of a few, it did really well.

It was a real I remember, I'll never forget it.

I had all my batteries lined up and they were all charged and I did.

I just got my phone and I kind of went along, pressed all the buttons on them,

showing that with the full, and went, there you go.

That never happens, does it?

All my batteries are full. That was it.

That was the real. It didn't do millions and millions of views, but it did way

better than that type of content should have done.

And I thought, all right

to this works. And then Covid hits

and for a period of seven days I couldn't go to work.

Builders merchants for sure, couldn't go to work, couldn't make the pieces of

what clients are happy to have us on their site and what materials can I get

from. I couldn't make all these components fit for a period of seven working

days, so I decided to take myself off to the workshop and make some videos.

And I made a dog kennel. I made an oak frame, cedar roofed insulated dog kennel

and I got the GoPro. It was all very rudimentary.

I had an old tripod and I stood there and I started shooting some pieces to

camera, and I was the most nervous that I've ever been.

In fact, the first one I did, I never said anything.

It was just me drawing to scale.

But in big on the whiteboard in the workshop, this dog kennel that I was going

to kind of thought I was going to make this at some point,

and I put that on Facebook and because it was over a minute, it couldn't go on

reals, it had to go on iGTV, remember, iGTV.

So if you shot a piece content that was over a minute couldn't be real, could go

out on iGTV. So we went on on iGTV and Facebook and it did

surprisingly well. Not because it was good, probably just because people were

sponges for content at the time, because they were sat there doing nothing.

So I thought, well, I'd better see this through.

I'd better build this. I better build this, this, this fancy dog kennel.

And I kind of grew up hair and started talking to the camera, although I was so

nervous. If you could have had if there was CCTV footage of me in the workshop

pacing up and down, kind of sweating, thinking, oh God, I'm going to talk to

this camera. There was nobody watching.

There was no audience. It was just me.

But I was terrified. Anyway, shot these videos and then I had to kind of

hustle to get the series done, because I could see when I was going to be going

back to work. So I was shooting these videos all day and then editing late at

night and posting them the next day, and it all got a bit hectic, but I got to

the end of it. But that allowed me to break the ice

of talking to the camera and standing in front of the camera, which I took those

skills. Newfound kind of confidence, I suppose, of talking to the camera.

Back to Instagram, into the rails and into stories, because I hadn't really done

any talking stories for forever, really.

To now. Right. Okay, let's talk to the camera.

Let's try and just see what happens.

And then fast forward a little bit.

The following grows slightly I think at this point.

Now this is just after Covid and I've got to 10-K and it's rang me up

and they said Simon, can we can we send you 1 or 2 bits and pieces rather than a

sale? Maybe you just talk about them.

I was like,

my mind blown somebody. This is the this is the first opportunity of kind of

seeing how,

time and effort at the front end translates into

a financial opportunity. Was there a strategy behind that, or was this like a

was was there an intention somewhere within your sort of content creation sort

of journey getting up to that, those 10-K, that was it a thought in your head of

like, I could be doing sort of.

No, not up to that point. But but that point was, fairly pivotal.

So prior to that, it was 85% work related content and 15% me riding my bike and

me just doing my thing. And then I thought, if companies are watching, which

clearly they are, they're probably not interested in me riding down the hill in

Wales like a maniac on the bike.

They're probably more interested in me just focusing on work.

So at that point

I dialed pretty much all of the personal stuff off and tuned

into, I think probably a switch flipped inside thinking, well, these companies

that are watching, hopefully they want to get involved with me and my audience.

They're going to want their my audience needs to be their target market.

So if I can attract their target market as my audience,

that's only good news for future opportunities.

So I

strategically tailored the content to attract a trades audience in the

hope that it might lead to bigger opportunities.

And it was a natural thing, I imagine, isn't it?

Because if you're already making that stuff and then you kind of like figuring

out, like, I'm making this as fun as this is fun to make as well, I put this out

and stuff. But when you start to see an opportunity for curation of your feed

and of your audience to be like, oh, know there's enough of me in my

construction based content for it to still be relevant and still, still tick

that box of like, this is still made the personality and stuff like that.

It's not just like work, work, work,

but. So you saw an opportunity, but it wasn't necessarily I'm building this

audience for the opportunity to be able to work with brands.

That kind of happened somewhat naturally.

They kind of grew together. I thought, well, maybe I should try and tailor this

audience to be appropriate for for some brands who may or may not want to work

with me in the future, it kind of

slowly unfolded, and then 1 or 2 other companies came on board and I thought,

this is this is this is kind of working.

Although I never set my stall out pre-COVID to do what I do now,

it just kind of grew and I thought, well, what I've done is working, so maybe

I'll do a bit more of that. And the kind of the levels go up, because that was

around the time that like, you know, just after Covid, was this kind of like

there was like a trickle feed of like, oh, like we should start working from

speaking from an agency that works brand side.

We should start working with content career.

That's that's kind of interesting.

But then kind of around Covid and pre-COVID it wasn't as prevalent.

Like like were you like inspired by anybody?

Was there anybody in the industry kind of already doing stuff like that?

You were like, well, that's interesting.

Like we was there a certain creator that you saw that's like, oh, they're

working

one of the one of the first builders to get to 100 K was

Ryan from SC2. He subsequently moved to America now, and he really paved the way

in terms of construction based content creation on Instagram and TikTok.

D5 from Birmingham. He was also one of the one of the first,

who's going to still going D5 still going.

Yeah. SC2 he's moved to America.

He was great SC2 because he was raw.

He was showing the successes, showing the cock ups.

He was just. Yeah, he really did.

It was a bit of a bit of a trailblazer and known for it at the time.

So they were pretty inspirational in terms of, well, actually, if we, if we

filmed this kind of stuff, people, people are interested in it.

And then Mark and I, as consumers of short form social media of all kinds of

different things, as the following grew and as the the appetite to put more

content out there grew from, from from me, Mark and I as we're consuming.

I remember having a conversation, actually.

We kind of need to make sure that our content is good.

Well, how do we do that? What does good look like?

So

we had a chat in the morning, as we do every day.

And I thought, well, all right.

Whilst we're both consuming Instagram Reels and TikToks in the evening, as we

do,

let's when we find a video that we like, let's watch it again.

And let's not just accept the fact that we like it, let's understand why we like

it. Why is this piece of content?

It didn't matter what the general was irrelevant.

Why do we like this content?

What's good? What's triggered our minds to hit like?

Or what's triggered our brains to want to watch it again?

What's going on in the edit?

What what's happening? And how do we

learn from that? How do we not replicate it?

But how do we take tricks, tips, cues from all kinds of different

content and filter that into our content and make better content?

And we still do that now, you know, as new creators pop up, or as we find

already successful creators will watch their content and think, this is good.

Why is it good? What have they done?

How have they edited? What? What have they done?

And let's not copy it because that's them.

And we don't want to copy, but we can learn from it.

And that happens all the So you were creating videos, you were evaluating, you

were testing things out, getting inspiration from other people in your field,

and kind of adapting that to your own style and things that were there.

Any things like, I love it when you try something you didn't cut out the shit

like Lesson Learned because that's that's obviously important part of the

process. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Was there any sort of times where you were just like, won't do that again or

any major flops? It's happened.

It's happened recently. And actually the more I think about it, the more

detrimental that was, which is a real shame.

So I did,

I did a video

well, a couple of months ago, and it was in the style of another content creator

who I speak to. He's a huge creator.

I'm not going to I'm not going to name him.

He might not want that to happen, but some people will work out anyway.

And I messaged him saying, I really want to shoot.

This video is going to be in your style.

It's, it's, it's a, it's a homage to you and what you do.

It's all good. I'm not taking the piss.

It's just like, I love what you do and I want to have a go.

He was like, yeah, absolutely.

And we did it. And it was glaringly obvious that I'd done it, and I'd done it in

his style. And it was humorous and funny.

And Mark and I shot it, and I edited it and I thought, this is brilliant.

This is hilarious. We've nailed it.

We've absolutely taken this guy and done it my way, and it's going to do well.

And we'd pinched a lot of content from him and kind of interspersed it.

In fact, just help me, help me edit it.

Just being plumbing. Plumbing, Jess.

Plumbing. Jess. Yeah, yeah. My partner.

We've worked with lots, and

she is. She helped me stitch it up and we put it out there, and he was like, oh.

And then I realized

what this creator does works for his audience.

And his audience were expecting to see that type of content.

My audience is completely different.

Yeah. You broken the trust. Broken the trust, broken the trend.

It's not what people wanted to see.

Unfortunately, it was still a good piece of content and it still did okay.

And most people were able to see through it and kind of stick with us.

TikTok,

which isn't as brutal as Facebook but is still quite savage.

TikTok hated it,

and it was part of a long series that I was doing.

I'd kind of geared up to do this big project and broken it up into various

different parts, and the trajectory of the parts before that was really good.

They were all doing really, really well, which is good news.

And then this particular episode dropped and it.

No. And then because

because

the algorithm is what it is, people weren't interacting with that piece of

content. Let's say that was part four.

Can't remember what it was, but let's say it was part four.

People watch part one, the watch, part two.

The watch part three didn't really like part four.

Nobody got shown. Part five nightmare.

The lesson learned, right? Absolutely.

And I have no regrets for doing that piece of content.

It was great to shoot. It was a lot of fun to edit.

It was

the other guy was absolutely on board with it and

no regrets. Would I do it again?

No. I'm gonna stay. My line.

His lane. His lane is his lane.

He's earned that. Lane is his.

I'm going to stay my own. There's a lot to be said for staying in your life.

You know, we've had lengthy discussions prior to prior to the podcast on the

phone and things like that, and it's a topic that comes up a lot in those kinds

of conversations, isn't it? It's just, do you you do you?

and you learn from. You learn more from your mistakes than you do from your

successes. It's

tougher to look at the flops and break those down and learn from them because

it's not nice. Or this one didn't really do very well.

Why is that? Let's get into the nitty gritty of that.

That's a hard thing to do, to look at the one that's gone to the moon and think,

well, why is that done? Well, that's important to do.

But you learn more from this But we've had some flops.

We've had some big old flops on our on our clients dime as well.

You know,

great marketers should always test

try new things.

If you're not innovating, you know, you're not doing anything not going forward.

Exactly. But we've done we've made some stuff here like this is this is

brilliant. This is genius. But our most famous flop ever

was almost damaging to the to the client.

I won't say who the client was.

We had this idea to create a,

It was a scene from ghost in the scene where Patrick Swayze is on the back of a

client. The actress's name. This is really bad.

Gradually watched the film. We'll go with it.

Was before your time. A little bit before my time.

Only just. But anyway, law on the pottery.

We'll

open a row and stuff like this.

And it's all very kind of romantic.

And

it's a very, very classic scene.

Everyone knows that scene. Even if you've not seen the film, you've seen that

scene, you've heard the music.

And so we recreated that in the studio, drilling into like a

random concrete block.

It was like a breeze block or something like that.

So it really created this scene.

I can't remember why we did it.

It was just something fun to do.

We just had this idea we wanted to do it so and then so the team had had

had done this. They come up with this concept and I will preface the fact that

although,

you know, it shouldn't make that much of a difference, but the producer was

female and the marketer, the main market of the brand was female as well.

So they'd come up with this idea, brilliant.

They'd done all the storyboarding and stuff, and they basically got one of one

of Molly who works here. She was like the the woman.

And they got her boyfriend, which was the which was the Patrick's character.

And she's like

drilling into this concrete block for no reason.

First of all, there's no rhyme or reason why she should be doing this on a

bench. Was it pertinent to the brand?

It was kind of. It was because we were kind of.

We were. I think we were putting in a fixing.

It was such a random like like it didn't.

None of it made sense. Why were you why were you drilling into a concrete block

to put fixing in to fix nothing to it?

And it was it was meant to be really, really silly and an obvious kind of

parody of ghost, in my opinion, for Valentine's Day or something like that.

It was such a good film. It was so funny.

It was right on point. The music was spot on, the timing was absolutely

excellent, and anybody that kind of

the Molly's boyfriend, his t shirt off exactly like Patrick.

Everything was bang on. We're like, this is brilliant.

So funny. And it got absolutely slated for sexism.

Oh. Did it. Oh. Oh, no. Like, I was like.

But I couldn't understand it.

And it was like all these kind of everybody was coming out of the woodwork.

And I was like, for me, I was like, you know what?

Good luck. Let's let it. It isn't.

It objectively isn't sexist.

It's a parody. It's funny. You know, she's.

No no one's being objectified here.

It's it's a joke. It's a joke about ghost.

I don't I don't think ghost was ever considered to be sexist.

There was certainly about seeing it was meant to be romantic, but I get it.

There was a comment about the fact that women are having a hard time already in

construction. So why is this go like like, you know, it need to be held by a man

to, to, to sort of drill into a concrete block and like, let's ask the question,

why is she drilling into a concrete block when they reason?

There was lots of things that it was obviously silly, but I can see how you can

maybe construed it to, but not really.

It was obviously a joke and a well-meaning joke made by made by women.

But then. So I was like, I don't understand where these people are coming from.

And then I watched it without the music, and I was like, oh,

because most people watch short form social media content with no sound.

But also and I was like, okay.

And also, you know, I am old enough to get understand the reference for all of

my teeth and most part of the reference because some people didn't I think so.

And you can't as the brand go, no, no, no, it's a parody of ghost.

Surely you know, this is that, you know, like you can't explain it to relate.

Then it's not only that

and big learning curve. Like we were like we were all about this film.

Like, this is so funny. And it was just like a little bit, you know, it was well

produced, but like kind of a piece of work

that didn't necessarily get us in trouble because it was fine.

I think most people got the joke and it was, but there was a few that were just

like, I think they were, you know, offended for the sake of being offended.

But, lesson learned. Don't mess with sexism.

Like, even if you had, I had no idea that it could be construed as that.

I've got that filter in my head now of like, damn, I can't upset people on the

brands behind. Certainly.

So yeah, we've had we've had a few of those in the past.

I think Mark and I will shoot something, whether it's a story or a proper piece

of content, and we'll watch it back and we'll just make sure

that you're you really can't take offense to it.

And sometimes we'll watch a story back there, the usual ones that get deleted.

We'll watch it back. Something's happened in the moment.

It's funny. We're falling about tears rolling down our face and watch it back

and we're like, we know why that's funny.

But if you look at it through this selection of eyes or this selection of eyes,

yes, let's just not post it.

And as soon as we've had that thought process, that's it.

It can never go out. Even if it's a 1% chance.

Just don't it. Too risky. Just don't send it out.

Just shoot it again or forget about it.

And we'll just we'll have enjoyed the moment, I love that.

I love the flops. I love the things that go wrong because it's just, you know,

if, like you said, it's like it's that kind of it's the learning that you get

from that. It's, you know, that that was a powerful moment of like, I felt

outraged that people would actually think this, think like, think that even went

through our heads. But you worked it out.

You went back and you studied it and you thought, I can see that.

I can see that. Now let's not do that again.

On the flip side of that, are there pieces of content that you've been

absolutely like, blown away with?

How well they've done, not expecting them to do so well.

But have you have you accidentally come across like certain types of content,

certain things that you go, oh, my audience loves this, and I wasn't expecting

it.

I think.

In the early days. Yes. When you when you do something and it goes to the moon,

you think didn't see that coming, but now I think I don't know how many pieces

of content have made now 1500 or something like that.

After 1500 videos, you kind of know what the audience wants.

So you know, when you've got an opportunity to to shoot a certain type of video.

Like every time I change the van, it gets racked out with Milwaukee pack out.

I kind of know, unless I do something catastrophically wrong and go out of my

way to shoot a bad video, which obviously I'm never going to do,

that video is going to do

is going to do well, and it might go crazy.

You always know it's going to do well.

Anything with,

really big, outrageous pieces of power tool equipment, they always do.

Well, yeah.

Do you typically find, like, you know, if you look at your audience, it's just

like 99% men, so but that's, that's something that I've steered

towards on purpose, I think.

I haven't checked for a few days.

Last time I checked, it was 94 and 95% male following.

Because

one thing I say. Given what we've just been talking about.

But that is, that is

that is the it's the target market of the of the brands that I'm, that,

that I represent. So I purposefully the point of making is I purposefully

haven't gone down the route of trying to achieve a.

Non trade based following. I probably could have achieved a slightly different

following through tuning the content slightly differently, but a purposefully

didn't.

You can't be everything for everyone.

No old time. No. You do have to.

Like you say, stay in your lane.

You know, you know who your audience is and you can double down on that and,

things like if you could, and we're talking pre-COVID, were all kind of started

to some extent. Right.

If you could go back and do anything differently, perhaps to accelerate that

growth, perhaps to,

you know, you could do this for any reason, to switch up the way that you make

content or something like that, or if you like the idea of like, I wish I could

have done this, but now I've gone so far, I can't do that.

Is there anything you'd do differently now?

Just get in front of the camera, foster.

Okay, let's just cut straight to the chase.

Get your face and your voice in front of the camera.

The the I get asked a lot. Well, how do I grow up?

How do I how do I achieve this?

How do I just get in front of the camera or.

I can't what? You can, and you're going to have to if you want to grow following

because your pictures are great and your videos POV videos are great, but the

people want to know. Your audience wants to know who you are.

They want to know what you, what you look like, what you sound like.

They want to. They want to build a relationship vicarious vicariously.

Is that the right word through you?

We'll go with that.

They want to understand more about you, and the only way to do that is to is to

get in front of the camera. I think people have a real problem with the way that

they sound on camera.

It's not new news to everybody.

It's only new news to you. You sound like the way you sound and what comes out

of the what comes out the speaker.

When you play back your content, that's what you sound like.

Got news for you. It's not. It's that's you.

So everybody else is already over it.

It was never a hurdle. It's only a hurdle.

It's only a hurdle in your own, in your own mind.

So just get over that. Get in front of the camera.

Yeah. That's that's the advice I get myself.

Just

just get on with friends. Quick interlude.

Just to talk about our sponsor for this episode, big wipes.

Big thank you to those guys for supporting the podcast and this episode

specifically. You guys probably know what big wipes are, right?

One of the most useful tools you can have in your bag in your van.

They allow for tradies to be able to clean their tools, clean surfaces on the

go, saving time allowing you to work more efficiently.

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The multi surface is now completely plastic free, which is very exciting, which

means better for the environment and you can feel a little bit more comfortable

about chucking those in the bin As well as that, the heavy duty has now been

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spray is super safe for your skin because of all the different skin conditioners

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It means big wipes is not only looking after your time, but also your skin.

So thanks again, Big Wipes for sponsoring this episode.

Now back to the conversation with Simon Bowler.

So you built up this, following you across all these different platforms,

engaging with your audience and stuff like that, working with different brands

and things. If we park the brand type stuff to the side for a second and just

focus on Simon Bolivar. Carpenter

has this social media presence act.

How is it affected your business, good or bad?

Can you talk us through kind of like just the carpentry side of what you do.

So the way that I've steered the content to attract the audience that I've

attracted,

it hasn't led to a dramatic increase in carpentry business as a

direct result of the content that I put out, because it's not geared for Mr. and

Mrs.. Mr. and Mrs. Smith who want an oak frame porch is geared for other trades

guys to to to to watch and be engaged with.

It does generate inquiries a few of them.

They're very national. I get a lot of inquiries from the home counties, from

Cheshire, from all over the country and never say no, because at some point

someone's just going to turn around and say, Simon, I just I'm not bothered how

much it costs, just come build it.

And of course we will. So it's affected it a little bit with the inquiry

volume

but it's more upbeat. Yeah.

It's added credibility for the if you remember, the original reason why I set

Instagram up was because I can show people what I do, how I do it, go and have a

look on Instagram I can upload.

It's easy for me to do. It still serves that purpose.

So it's it's helped the business there.

But I haven't geared it towards generating more inquiries in my

locality that I want to service.

Obviously some of them do. It's going to happen.

But without social media, your business would still be quite.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah it would. Yeah.

They're not. If I switch social media off, the carpentry business would, would,

would, would be unaffected,

which is important to me from a business perspective.

It's important for me not to have all magazine one basket.

Social media is very fragile.

That will come, I daresay in the fullness of time it will go.

Yeah, I've still got to pay mortgage.

There's one way that social media has affected the carpentry business.

It's

allowed me.

But on the same hand, on a different hand, forced me to cherry pick the jobs

that I actually do. I thought you were going to say that.

Yes. Because. Because you have to.

You have to. There's only a certain amount of time that you can if you're

balancing the two together. Yeah.

You obviously have flexibility, financial flexibility to some extent to be able

to pick and choose. But then you've got a limited time as well.

It's more about whether the clients are happy for us to to shoot the content

whilst on time. Okay.

Once or twice, once or twice.

Clients have come at halfway through the job and said, we don't want you filming

anymore, Simon, even though I've said at the beginning, this is going to happen.

Don't worry, we respect your privacy.

No one's going to know where we're at.

No one's going to know who we're working for once or twice for no real, no good,

justifiable reason. Clients.

And I said, that's it. That's the end of it.

And I've kind of taken an oath to make sure that doesn't happen again, because

it's crippling. The social media business has to thrive off the carpentry

business because that's what we film.

So if this gets if we get told not to film here, how does that work?

It's a problem.

I went to see the biggest job I've ever seen with the most ongoing amount of

work imaginable. Probably would have gone on for years.

There was a lot of money flying around.

It wasn't a case of discharge what you want, but it was a case of you can

do well out of this. Simon, that's.

That was the invite that was given to me by the people that I was talking to at

this particular property. You don't need to worry about how much it costs within

reason. Make sure you do. Okay?

Yeah, but you can't film.

So. And it was it was the first chapter was like six months worth of really sexy

work. Right up my street was gonna look beautiful.

But I thought to myself, it doesn't matter if I can earn

an extra 10 or 15%.

The ramifications of not being able to film for six months, six months, the

there's too much I can't I can't stomach that.

It would turn the social media business off for the sake of a six month or maybe

a year's worth of work. So I had to park that one.

So that was one that I cherry picked not to do.

the carpentry business will always exist.

The social media business needs the carpentry business to feed it with the

content. So you have to kind of

keep eyes on both of them. Is there a.

By through growing the following.

Have you

they sound strange. Have you had like I call it say higher profile.

Have you had like almost like celebrities, influencers, you know, people from

pop culture kind of find you through that is that is that developed anything

that makes life better or worse.

But you know, like it's not like famous people being like, oh, I saw him on

Instagram once, once or twice.

People with a much bigger following than me have contacted me and tried to

sell me the concept of going to work for them, okay, to deliver their project.

But I can't do it for nothing.

Oh, they wanted to do it for free.

Yeah,

I know, I said I can't do it.

Well, what do you mean? Think of the exposure.

Oh, I love that word exposure.

Think of the exposure. I'm. Sounds odd, doesn't it?

But I expose myself perfectly well.

Yeah.

Working for you for free for three weeks or a month will cost me.

And thousands and thousands of pounds.

And I don't know how, I don't know, I can't see how I can recoup that.

I think the only way that that works is through YouTube, which I have a YouTube

channel. I haven't got the time or the headspace, unfortunately, to really get

my teeth into at the moment, I think.

I think that's a future thing.

and I'm busy enough. Fortunately,

I'm busy enough to not have to go to do work for for free.

A grown man has to pay his bills and go to work.

Contrary to popular belief, I've still got a mortgage.

It's mad, isn't it? I mean, what what a different world.

I get it, you know, I respect the hustle.

They want something. They think they can help.

In many respects. They would be able to.

It will work for some people.

It doesn't. It doesn't work for me.

But I absolutely respect the hustle I do.

Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting one.

I never ask for free stuff from from brands.

I ask for the stuff that they want me to talk about and show to my audience,

nothing more.

Yeah. Because, like, you're struggling with it gets you.

You end up with a storage problem.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. And I'm like, yeah, I've got, I've got that many screws and

bolts and nuts and stuff that it's actually going to cost me to get rid of them.

You know, because they just, they send it and sending, send it.

But also at the same time, please don't stop sending the stuff because I need

it. Yeah. It can't seem to be ungrateful, but similarly, like, just I just I've

got enough. I like, you know, one or.

And now as a person who isn't at all practical or in a trade,

half a ton of screws is not that useful to me.

Unfortunately, not really.

Although I have come in an empty van.

Okay. Just saying. We can pick something up.

The, yeah, we got that much stuff though.

I'm like, so, you know, we try and send people away with this stuff and be good

advocates for the brands that we work with, things like that.

But after that, if I was a tradesperson, I'm very aware that were in a

privileged position where we get sent stuff that other people would like be

like, excited about.

I'm excited to a certain point because we had to film something and do something

cool. But, yeah, you know, the thing is different because we don't have any tall

brand clients or any hand tools.

We have any hands or

we specialize in the non sexy products.

So I think that's. But you do make them sexy.

Thank you. Bless you.

Carhartt is about as you know they're pretty sexy aren't you?

So like we've done some stuff with those guys

and they've given us some t shirts, so fair play to them.

I like that, but yeah. No. Yeah, yeah, I was sort of.

I was like half of the studio is basically a builders merchants, but it's all

just like washers.

Lifetime supply of

cleaning lights and stuff, big wipes.

Obviously, we're very grateful for all the big wipes

that we have in the, in the studio.

I think that this is kind of getting a little bit in, perhaps too much into the

new ones and things like that.

But can you talk us through like the channels we don't have to go into, have to

go into strategies for each one.

But the channels that you do use, you mentioned YouTube.

It exists, but it's kind of somewhat stagnant, like one of the channels you're

using. You're kind of overview of how you use them.

And you're you're sort of, I guess,

thoughts. Sure.

Instagram is the one that carries the most weight.

It's the one that gets your attention.

The first thing you check check out in the morning.

What Instagram done overnight.

What's going on on Instagram?

That's the first one you check.

Which is ironic, isn't it? Because Instagram doesn't pay, you know.

Yeah. No money comes from Instagram.

It's I consider it to be the nicest.

It's the nicest. It's the coziest.

It's not hate free, but it is

the warmest place is the safest place to put your content out there.

It doesn't pay, but it's the one that the brands watch me through.

Okay, I found all of the opportunities that have come my way and very fortunate

to have had quite a few. All of them have come through Instagram, and I think

that's why Instagram is the one that that carries most wait for me and will

always get my attention first and foremost.

Tick tock is like the wild west of social media.

It's a bit better now. A few years ago it was just this mad, crazy place.

Anything goes and the the, the the audience like is so difficult to report on

as a marketing. And just like, oh, that that post got, you know,

8 million views or something.

I look at the sort of demographic I'm like, it's everybody.

Yeah, it's yeah, the whole lot.

And it's so you can never predict whether a

I've probably got to the point now where I can, I can confidently predict when a

post is going to do

okay and above average, and I can predict when a post is going to do not so well

for whatever reason. And both of those pieces of content go out.

You can never predict when one's going to go to the moon.

That will always catch you out.

You can think you've got an absolute golden nugget of a piece of content you

like. This is going to do millions.

This is hold on tight, folks.

Plug your phone and it needs charging already and you can't predict it.

But you can predict when one's going to do well and just above average.

And you can predict when one's not going to do so well on Instagram.

TikTok.

No chance. Yeah. No chance. One.

That's one that's blown up or done above average on Instagram.

You think? Oh well, that's obviously a good piece of content.

Let's see what what TikTok thing.

Oh, TikTok hates it. Why?

It's just unpredictable. It really is.

But it pays. Pays per view.

And my content ends up on TikTok anyway, whether it's me that post it or not,

because there's any amount of

accounts that perpetually Nicki content and put it out there.

So that's why TikTok started, because I thought my face is on there anyway.

Best it's me that posts it. That's what happens is that people like sort of

pinch your videos and posted themselves to get views or something, or to get

views to get to, to get money.

They're not commenting on these things.

They're not like making a commentary about it.

They're just literally just like rifle and you rifle and you content off.

So

it's not policed and it doesn't get stopped particularly quickly, whether it's

actually legal or illegal. I don't know the answer to that, but that's that's

why TikTok was born for me because, well, there anyway, so but it's me that puts

it there. But it's a pretty savage place.

It is. But it's palatable and it pays a few quid.

Facebook. Oh my goodness me.

Yeah. What's happening with Facebook these days?

I mean it's it's grown.

I forget how many followers are on there now.

A couple hundred thousand I think.

But it is brutal. Do not go on as a content creator.

If you have not got rhino hide grade skin,

do not go there. Don't don't, don't just don't go there.

It is awful.

But on the board of just like well

fine you do you Mr. Keyboard Warrior, you keep posting those comments, you keep

posting those comments because other people are commenting and that's just yeah.

Yeah. And it and it and it pays a few quid.

So it's it's kind of worth doing.

But yeah you you post your content on their mark runs that when we realized that

we had to be on all three platforms Instagram, TikTok, on Facebook, I said to

Mark, look.

Just you do it. You will will share it and I'll do the editing cuz I'm doing it

for Instagram and TikTok anyway.

You just manage it, take it off my plate, and he does a brilliant job of it and

he's growing it very well. But it is savage is laughable really.

It is laughable the the hurt that people are trying to inflict on you with

comments. Like I said, unfortunate.

I've got thick skin.

Some of that's going to creep in though, isn't it?

You know, some of that stuff's got fall through them there and it's like, you

know, even if you feel like it doesn't affect you like, you know, so

occasionally it one gets on the skin, occasionally you think, oh, that one.

Yeah. It's not a constant hate, but it's, it's, it's of the three platforms.

It's the, it's the one where the trolls live.

That's where the rat.

And I think every content creator, almost without fail, would agree with me.

It's typically when you get these haters, it's somebody with a profile picture,

which isn't the picture of a cat or something.

Yeah, it's not their face as a dog or it's like it's or something like that.

They never post anything them selves.

There's no evidence of what they do at work.

It's a, it's a it's almost like a bot that's been designed just to spread hate.

And there's trends like you can

Friday night and Saturday night, the haters tend to come out

and it's it's alcohol induced because I've had the haters hate.

And then the next day this has happened quite a few times the next day.

Oh sorry Simon, I just I had a few too many scoops.

I will say though I've mentioned this before on other other podcasts, I do feel

like construction is one of the worst industries for comment, because there's a

million different ways to skin a cat.

There's everybody does the thing their way and not there isn't one way to solve

every single construction based problems.

There's usually a number of ways or perfectly acceptable or structurally sound.

But because this guy thinks that his way is the only way, he wants to tell the

world, and the reality is that's different.

I talked about this paradox earlier and

I have,

I have I have a theory about like why this why this hasn't worked for you.

So this paradox of you grow your following to X amount and you have

success in your content creation space, and, you know, with all the other stuff

that you do,

and there's there's a lot of accounts out there that I observe that essentially

are not no longer relevant to this industry.

The following still exists and they still create content.

But I know from speaking to people in the industry, they don't take their

opinion seriously. They they don't really like they might look at their stuff,

but they're not influenced by it necessarily.

They're seen as like sort of in a bit of a sell out or whatever.

Rightly or wrongly, a lot of times it's wrongly, unfortunately.

It's just a human nature thing, but you don't seem to have that problem.

Are you? First of all, we are you aware of that paradox?

And were you aware of it, you know.

And

how do you think you've navigated that?

Had you seen other. I do, I have seen some accounts that have grown and grown

and grown and grown and they've done really, really well.

And then the contents just kind of

not the content that I followed them for.

I think that that goes some way to them not being relevant or not not having not

mean not being able to take their opinion seriously.

Not that I don't like them. They're good guys.

Their content is still good.

It's just not what I signed up for.

And that's fine.

How have I navigated that?

I think.

I oh, I just remind myself that the reason people tune in is to see the things

that we make, the tools that we use.

Yes. Me not taking myself too seriously.

And it's important to stay those those ingredients

work. So just keep tipping those ingredients in, tune them, you know, tweak them

as necessary and keep looking for improvements.

But those ingredients, what we do, how we do it, the tools that we use, the

things that we build, that's what people tune in for.

So just stay in your lane. That is my lane, I think.

And then

again, was that like. Was that a strategy as in like I should I should continue

to I'm aware of this thing. But if I just stay me and continue

doing the stuff that I think is relevant, I should be okay.

Or is this just something that happened naturally that you are working?

I think it goes back to a former career.

I was trying to to, to,

deploy a process.

And the moment that you deviated from that process, you may well see some

small short term success, but it would drop off a cliff.

And when it dropped off a cliff,

return to the process? Yes. Just returned to the process.

The process works. Trust the process.

The process for me, for social media is what we do, the tools we use, the

environments we work in, that kind of content.

So I just stick to the process.

You know what? There's so many marketers in, in this industry

that need to learn that the trust, the process.

Because so much of marketing in our industry, in construction,

especially for businesses that have got high targets that are funded or

whatever, they're jumping from this to that to try and get quick wins

and, you know, deviating, constantly changing their messaging.

We gave this five seconds of thought of of time to do something.

It's not doing it. Okay. Let's move on to something else.

And they end up creating this kind of mishmash of nothing, saying so many things

to not enough people. And it's it's just a mess.

And, you know, the classic thing of marketing takes time.

Trust the process, get the strategy right in the first place.

You know, do your research.

We can change things, but

but just stay the course of long game and and eventually you'll

come through it as long as, as long as

exactly you'll come through it.

I mean, social media, it ebbs and flows.

Sometimes the algorithm is with you and you and you can't miss.

Sometimes the algorithm is absolutely against you, and it seems to feel like

whatever you're putting out there, no one's watching it.

Yeah,

it's easy when the algorithm is with you and when you can't miss that, that's

the easy way to ride. When it drops off and drop off, it will

is very difficult to keep putting the content out there.

But it's it's at the

it's in the troughs that you have to just stick to the process.

Remember what worked, remember what you've learned, stick to the process and

keep marching forward. So so I think you've nailed it on the head there when it

comes to how to stay relevant to it.

And when you, when you grow your audience is you stay in your lane and you stay

you continue to be yourself.

I think you've got to navigate brand deals quite carefully and stuff like that.

But I think the most important thing that you've done is your first and foremost

are Carpenter. And I think that's that's the crucial element to this.

It's the social media hasn't got in the way of the carpentry.

The carpentry feeds, the social media.

It's just a byproduct of it as opposed to the way around.

When it comes to I don't know.

I don't know if you're you're comfortable talking about this, but any given

time,

like how many kind of brands are you typically working with are sort of doesn't

have to be a regular basis, but that might give it an interesting kind of

insight into there's one, there's one major one, the obvious one.

Milwaukee I've been partnering with them for three years,

just about three years, probably a bit more now.

The, the the main one,

they're brilliant. Yeah, they're just brilliant.

Great to work with.

Dream client. Great to work with.

I get to speak from direct.

Yeah. They're just fabulous.

They, they trust me to represent them in a professional Simon Bowler social

media fashion.

So that they're a dream. They make a lot of stuff.

So I represent them for quite a lot of

groups of tools and clothes and PPE and that kind of thing.

So that doesn't that means that I don't have that many opportunities to work

with other brands, because it

is actually. Exactly. And I knew that going into it.

But that's fine. That's fine.

It makes my life a little bit simpler.

It makes the content more carries more clarity for the audience.

And. Exactly. Well, he's wearing the Milwaukee.

And because we know what's going on.

That's great. I do get to work ad hoc with some really oddball

ones.

And they kind of pop up. They usually

1 or 2 video kind of kind of contracts.

They come and they go put their unusual national cybersecurity center.

Okay. Basically the government, we did it.

We did a job for them. Earlier this year Amazon Business did a job for them.

NatWest. The job for them there's loads.

Insurance companies the loads.

But any given time where you kind of, you know, like let's say within a month,

a typical month, if there is such a thing.

Other.

Like is there an average of how many potential kind of I guess, collaborations

you have,

because I wonder whether it's actually, you know, some of the problems where

these creators that blow up and then,

lose credibility is because they're working with 20 brands in that given month,

you know, so everything is very disjointed and weird and stuff like that.

But what does that look like for you?

Is it typically a lot less than 20 years?

A lot less than 20? It's usually I mean, some months go by and and there's,

there's just Milwaukee and that's absolutely fine.

There's someone's go by and there's another kind of 2 or 3 in the mix, but I try

and spread them out.

I think that makes you just got to try and spread her out.

I feel like

the, the audience is now sort of like

it's another one, another, another, another brand and other social search and

things like that. And if it's, if it's every other day.

Yeah. It's a different I'm now I'm talking about this.

And so all you can do is I mean sometimes you end up in a situation where you've

got to put that content out and they end up being a bit too close to each other.

All you can do is dial up the volume of organic content that you put out.

So just dilute them. If you've got two pieces of content going out, you probably

need another

half a dozen ten pieces of content just to just to just to sprinkle in the mix

just so that the audience still gets to see what they signed up for.

I think that's really smart.

This is the thing that it's not it's not easy.

You know, if you've got two pieces of paid for content that have to go out in

the same week, which which can happen, you think right now I've got a,

I've got, I've got I've got to get on with this, I've got, I've got to shoot

another few pieces of content just for myself, just to.

And they can't just be, it can't just be crap content.

It can't be really see through.

Like I was just posted, that

there have to be the standard of content

that the audience has signed up for.

It's almost like a reward for the audience stick and sticking with it.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly.

I think it's a really nice way of putting it that.

I think that goes a long way to the credibility thing.

I think

the staying, the staying real is like, not every third post is an

ad for a different brand. You're known as the Milwaukee guy, I think, for the

most part. Right? Everyone everyone knows she was, you know, like a big advocate

for Milwaukee. So it makes sense for Milwaukee to feature in everything.

Yeah, but almost everything.

And that's never weird I don't think.

No. And but yeah, I think the other thing is like like we've mentioned

it's the content is carpentry.

You know, it's it's still it's still real.

And

I think that's, that's why. And then you just are a genuine person.

And when you are speaking about

a brand or whatever it

the transitions nice. It's very obvious they're not tricking people.

No. It's this is cool I like this.

Yeah. This could work for you.

Have a go with I'm going to finish on a question, but I don't want it to be like

a super obvious question because

I typically say if someone was looking to be in your shoes or do a similar

thing, what would be your advice?

And I think that's just kind of like a played out question.

And it's a it's a question that I kind of get asked fairly frequently on

socials. How do I how do I, for want of a better phrase, achieve what you've

done in terms of the opportunities to work with these really cool companies?

And I always say, just forget about working with them for now.

Yeah, just learn your craft, learn how to make engaging, interesting, exciting

content that people want to watch.

Grow your audience, feed them what they want and learn what they want to be fed.

The byproduct of that is that you will be discovered by

all kinds of different people.

Just relax, enjoy the ride and the

the opportunities will come.

if you

had any advice for somebody

in terms of somebody who's has a career as a content, as a, as a trade,

and they are building their following on

social media as well, and they're trying to combine the two.

What would you care for? Don't don't let yourself down in terms of,

Watch your content back through your audience's eyes before you post it.

Super important. Watch it back.

Can that be taken as offensive?

Is can that upset anybody? If the answer is yes, it could.

It can't go. It can't go. If you're building an audience.

Specific to achieving opportunities to work with companies, you have to be brand

friendly.

And that means watching your content back and not posting it if it's in any way,

shape or form,

upsetting, offensive, anything like that.

And that's very difficult to do because you can shoot a piece of content and you

can convince yourself that this is going to do really well, because it's a

little bit edgy and it's a little bit out there, and it might upset a few

people, it might ruffle a few others, and that kind of content is usually easy

to shoot. It usually does well and usually closely following, but the brands are

watching.

And if they see you do that once,

what's stopping you doing it again or stopping you doing it in their t shirt?

What's stopping you doing it with one of their products in your hand?

There's nothing, is the answer.

So the brands, they're going to stay clear, watch your content back through

audience's eyes and watch it through

the brand's eyes as well. Whoever the brands are you.

Maybe you haven't got any opportunity to work with anybody yet, but so what?

They're watching, so watch it through their eyes.

And only then, once you've convinced yourself that it's safe,

post it now. That doesn't mean it all has to be boring and super turbo

corporate. That's not the case.

I don't take myself seriously.

I do daft ish things. And that's fine.

But there's nothing upsetting.

There's nothing offensive. There's nothing.

There's nothing that's gonna get up people's noses.

No. And things like what? Mine.

What you say. Don't swear. You read off the video I put out last night, I swore.

I swore at the beginning, in the first second on purpose.

It got bleeped out. Yeah, that was strategic.

Very strategic. And it was sanctioned by the by by Milwaukee.

The video went out and it worked very well.

But if you sat there in your van swearing your head off, the people looking at

us and came, wow, that's that's a bit much.

That's a bit in my opinion, a lot of people disagree with that and that's fine.

But this is my opinion.

Keep your shirt on whilst you working like off camera.

I've got news for you. I'm wearing very little other than factor 50 on camera,

very small shorts on camera.

As soon as cameras on shirts back on.

Yeah, that's just that's just how I am.

Because, you know, it just, I don't know, maybe these maybe my opinions are a

bit, a bit too straight laced.

Maybe they're a bit controversial, but that's just my opinion.

Just just think about what the brand is looking to think about what your

audience are thinking. And remember that

even if you're not representing a company at the moment, you want to

park yourself in a position whereby you're a safe bet to to be representative of

a brand. That's the end goal, which is what we're talking about here.

Absolutely. Yeah. If there's a situation where you're like, do you know what?

I would like to supplement my income with my content creation because I feel

like I'm a good entertainer, and this is something I'd like to do.

Be a safe bet, set yourself up for that safe bet without being without being

boring. Well, and also, like two content creator ish.

Yeah, you know what I mean. But yourself is it?

A lot of people say, well, just find your niche.

You've got to find your niche.

That's really difficult. But you kind of your niche almost finds you.

I was just about to say that.

Yeah. The reason why we're in construction, it found us.

It found us the way I. The way I shoot and edit content.

That's an amalgamation of

a lot of other creators that I've taken inspiration from, and a bit of what I

like to do and a bit of actually, this is all I'm capable of doing.

I haven't got the skills to edit super flashy short form content, I just

haven't. But I do it in my style.

The Nisha's found me, I'm not sure.

Flashy, super high end content that it doesn't do well.

It's got its place. Of course it has its place.

But if it gets too over edited to

too polished to corporate for for everyday content, it

people switch off to him proven that we prove that over and over again.

It works for the brands, that works for the brands.

They're kind of obliged to do the the high end, polished, slick edits, and

I like being part of those. It's great when you get to watch them back in

Christ, that is me. Yeah. But for, for the, for the daily content that we

produce stories or a shot on the phone and,

reels and what have you there shot on a on nothing fancy than The, the

interesting thing about Lo-Fi content, it kind of depends on the channel.

Of course, as a marketer, you should you should try and appreciate that each

channel has their own,

not rules, but,

expectations. The audience expectation x

you know, some some will say, well, TikToks should feel native to a phone, it

should feel lo fi and,

you know, authentic and stuff like that.

I don't believe in rules like that at all.

You may have an opinion on specifics, but, you know, with the rule breakers.

So if everybody's saying it should do that, you know, why not?

Why not stand out and do the complete do the opposite here.

But also, again, I'm not I don't believe in that rule necessarily.

But but I do understand that stuff that works for a brand isn't necessarily the

same as what works for a content creators.

There are there are genuinely different rules because different expectations to

each of them. And one of the big mistakes I see marketers

using specially in the construction industry is applying the rules that work for

content creators to a brand, but the way that you interact with a brand is so

different to how you interact with a person that the brand doesn't have to have

a personality. No, it can have a vibe, can have an avatar, can have valued.

It doesn't have to have a personality necessarily.

Excuse me. And

a lot of marketers get that wrong.

So what they do is they go sign them.

Simon's TikTok starts working really well, like and and

these videos do incredibly well.

What we're going to do as the brand is we're going to make them.

But instead of signing, I'm going to put the junior marketing manager in front

of the camera, and I'm going to

I'm going to kind of mimic all the stuff that he's doing, which is kind of

self-deprecating, not taking himself too seriously and stuff.

Not except I can't back it up with, like, you know, a career of skills in

carpentry. I'm just like the junior marketing manager that got hired six months

ago, and before then I worked at boots.

So.

So they're applying all these rules that kind of, like, only exist for you

because you're a person and personal brand and an actual brand has slightly

different rules and environment.

And if I were to ever give any marketers advice is just like, you know, just

because it works, assignment doesn't work for the brand.

And it's also okay if the content that you make that is polished doesn't do

well. Yeah that's fine. Yeah.

It's kind of, you know,

I think as marketers was so fixated on assignment content gets a million views.

And my polished video that cost us 20 grand,

got 2000 was happening there.

And like, well, again, different rules apply.

You have to put ad spend behind our stuff to get it.

Simon's videos got Simon in it and people are expecting to see Simon.

So that's you know, and and and your type of content is the type of content that

it entertains, right? Your people come to you for entertainment.

Brands can entertain. Were mostly there to advertise with you.

We associate with content creators for the entertainment side of things.

Eventually have to sell you a product that's wicked, and therefore we need to

create something that

educates and communicates that in a way that's

aligns with the brand's positioning, values, goals,

target, all that kind of stuff while also being differentiating.

It's very difficult to do all this stuff, and it usually means lots of money and

polished kind of stuff. It's okay to do Lo-Fi stuff every now and again, going

quite careful with that, but the classic kind of like thing that I always say

like like a lot of marketers wrongly

put engagement as their top thing that they're trying to trying to get brands

don't need to be engaged with, they just need to be seen.

I would say, yeah, most advertising, they just need to be seen.

And we shouldn't be trying to create content as the brands, as the marketers

behind the brands. So they're chasing the views rather than the comments and the

likes. I would, I would, depending on the type of content, I would lean towards

views more than more than engagement, for sure.

And the way that you guarantee views is paying for it.

It's just a brands get penalized on social media for being a brand is paid to

play for us. Unfortunately, gone are the days of organic.

You can still do it. It's very, very hard.

But you can still do make a really great organic brand.

But so that what happens is the types of content that gets great engagement for

a brand is the stuff that doesn't sell the product particularly well.

It doesn't generate

an action to think highly of the brand and go out and purchase the product

product from a merchant. It's not always the case.

The types of content that get engagement are the ones that don't really talk

about a product necessarily.

They're doing something else.

You just find it's okay to pepper that stuff there, and that could be part of

your strategy. But if that's your only strategy is getting engagement, you won't

sell a thing. You're relying on other sources of marketing to sell that product.

And, and that's so it's okay to make that glossy film, have it talk

about the features of benefits, still try and be all the right things and

educational entertaining provide value to some extent, but be okay with the fact

that the engagement was pretty low, because I can't remember the last time I

on an Instagram post from bands, and yet I still buy their trainers regularly.

You know, I can't remember the last time I engaged with

a post from Morrisons, and yet I shop there every week.

Still. You know, I see the content, I see advertising, you know, I see all of

this stuff. I'm not sharing it to my mates.

Anything like that from Morrisons, Wicked and it just doesn't happen.

I think these kind of conversations that we're having now about the real nitty

gritty of marketing is something that I found fascinating.

As a tradesperson, you kind of extremely unlikely to be able to open the door to

the back end of people like you and marketing strategies and global brands and

how they work, and the nuts and bolts and what actually goes on behind the shop

window. And that's one of the real positive byproducts of doing what I've ended

up doing. I get to talk to people like you and senior marketing members from all

kinds of different companies and understand the messages that they're trying to

deliver, but why they're trying to deliver those messages.

It's not without its frustrations on occasion.

Yeah. They'll try and weasel you into that strategy, and especially if they

don't really understand

how content creation works.

Yeah, I think that's probably something we're going to talk about in episode

two, which I'm looking forward to

have some lunch or move on to episode two.

Yeah, we'll go into more into the of the brand.

So yeah. Yeah, I've kind of I probably like jumped the gun a little bit on kind

of like those kinds of things.

But I find stuff like that fascinating because this is why I'm really

interested. I really love getting people who have made a name for themselves on

social media on here, because the rules are so different to brands.

You know, with brands, it's it's a very different ruleset.

And I wish

like we could get away with,

like just doing the kinds of stuff that that you guys do, but we don't have the

resources to that there's no personality behind,

I don't know, pull a stable pull, pull a brand or something like that.

Stable as a name. It's a heritage.

It's got whatever big wipes.

It's a it's a brand. You associate it with a, with an action, not a person.

And so different rules, different different rules have likely dead easy.

We could just, you know,

get our phones out. I'm sure at some point someone's going to cut this isn't

completely loose and just say, on you go, lovely music to your ears, I think,

wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

The interesting thing, though, is

my last point on the kind of the rules thing is,

the stuff that there's a little bit of crossover between what content creators

do people the face and the personality and experience and value

to give. There's a little bit of crossover to that, to merchants, that's

slightly different. Merchants are very people orientated businesses.

You're not really a merchant, isn't?

I guess it is a product you think Screwfix tool station, whoever.

When I think about a merchant, I kind of think about people because I'm

eventually when you go into a merchant, you have an interaction with a person.

When I purchase a,

a tub of big wipes, I'm never interacting with them by I'm interacting with a

merchant and or something like that, and obviously their personalities.

There's someone friendly behind the counter question that's so important.

I am so fussy with the places that I've spent all night

to the point of ridicule. It really is like, if I can't get particular.

Oh yeah. Yeah, not a particular

chain of merchants, but just

odd places that I think I just can't get on with those guys.

Or it's probably different to that.

They can't get on with me. The problem here is not them.

It's me that's that have to remember that.

Like, I'm not brilliant at getting on with everybody.

I can't go in there because I just I just don't like me or I don't like whatever

it is. But when you find a builders merchants that you do get on with, the price

becomes not totally secondary, but

drops down the list. Yeah, it just does.

It just does. That's really cool.

And that's a good insight as well to market.

I had this conversation with somebody the other day they were talking about.

How they wanted to. This was a.

An initial conversation with the new brand that we were talking about, the, you

know, the things that they were up against.

And they've been an underdog.

And, you know, you know, we know that our product is better than X, Y and Z

brand. We know that it holds better.

We know that it's cheaper and stuff.

So how do we communicate that.

And you know, they're navigating those kinds of things that I was I was you

know, I was talking to them about I said the beauty of

marketing is when you're really good at it, like we are,

you can be not as good as another brand that in almost every

way and still win.

You can objectively be a worse product.

I can think of a number of brands that have achieved exactly that, and you much

prefer that. You much prefer to buy them.

I know that there's a better product here.

It's cheaper, but I don't align with it.

I just don't associate with it for whatever reason.

I'm going to keep going back to it.

A great example of this is I wear a pair of trainers, a brand called Kahu, which

basically if you're if you're a creative director, you wear car who trainers.

So that is like like dentist wearing Crocs.

That's just how that is exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of one of these weird kind of I think that like

Scandinavian or

then it's a it's an interesting brand.

I've never heard of him. Yeah.

Like nobody has. But like you can spot like I'm like, if I see someone wearing

these, like, you work in nature and see data, you just know.

And they are objectively rubbish trainers.

Every single pair of trainers that I get of theirs, the toe like the the the I

can, I got like five pairs at home that are like, I just can't get rid of

trainers even though I probably wherever where am I going?

The stitching goes on the big toe there every single time, without fail, in a

really short space of time, like six months, something like that.

And they're really expensive.

And I know that there's better trainers out there, and I know that these, these

are inferior quality. I keep coming back to them because I align with the brand

so much because I've injected myself, or it's injected itself into the culture

of creatives and creativity and whatever reason I'm like, it feels weird, me not

buying that brand.

And it's like, great marketing can do that.

It can. It can make you feel weird about not buying a brand, even though you

know it's not that good.

I think in the construction arena, perhaps slightly less so

because the brands that just aren't that good that would soon get smelt out, I

think so. So this is that fair or is it this like all like most.

Products has to be good regardless.

Okay. So

there's a it's product price place there.

The three piece right

there. Was this supposed to be A445 member.

Now I'm not the best marketer ever.

So the product is the one product is the first P of it's got to be good.

If it's rubbish, it's no matter how much marketing you do, no one's going to buy

that product to some extent.

Oh, there will be short lived.

It was short lived. So the expectation is it has to perform an acceptable level.

So most of the time at the top end of.

Most products, let's, let's say sealants is a pretty good example, right.

They all kind of ceilings and a decent most of them kind of do the same thing

roughly to a similar level within a certain tolerance.

There are some slightly better, some that are slightly worse, the ones that are

objectively terrible. No one buys that.

They're gone.

But there's still available.

Still available. Yeah, yeah.

The that somehow there'll be you know, the thing is incredibly cheap to make.

So I get the impression so but but whatever reason

there are certain things that exist that they can get by.

The sales are terrible. There may be the ceilings maybe piggyback off other

sales of the brand. And they just if you're there buying this from that brand,

you can also buy the ceiling.

There's lots of different sales things around that.

But but essentially you get like the top dogs in in the sealant range.

I won't mention the names, but x, y and z x y and z x, y and z.

You know, all of those are pretty good.

They've they've prove their worth.

But you know that that one there is better.

And yet I still prefer this one.

But the very least this has to do the job right.

And this other one here might be slightly cheaper and also slightly better.

But I still pick this one because I just there for me.

But whatever reason, I align with that brand in a certain way.

And that's what great marketing can do, is, you know.

Just

throw logic to the wind and go, no, I know that's better, but I'm not.

I just can't bring myself to do it the same way that I bought the Fuji camera

instead of instead of the Sony camera back in the day, because I know I liked

it. It was an underdog. I still own the Fuji camera, I think as well, but there

was something about that that made me feel right.

It made me feel like that was the camera that kind of was built for people like

me, and therefore I should buy it for great marketing to do.

And on that note, I think we should call it a day,

because I could speak to you forever, but I'm really like, what you back to talk

about the more nitty gritty stuff about being a content creator, how brands can

navigate that space and things like that.

So stay tuned for episode two of Simon Baller, where we gained a little bit

more in depth into the marketing.

It's been absolute pleasure having you here.

I really appreciate you coming on someone.

I hope you've enjoyed it. Absolutely.

And I really hope the audience has got something of value that they can utilize,

either in their content creation kind of journey

in the with a view to growing more audience and potentially

getting the interest of other brands, but also from a business perspective as

well, because I feel like those two things can be aligned to each other.

So thank you so much. Very welcome.

Thanks for having me.