VGTM_Ep 52_Tim Brown_Transcript_Edited_v1
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Corey Quinn: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Vertical Go To Market Podcast, where you'll discover new opportunities to grow your business from seven figures to eight, from the world's most successful agency and B2B SaaS executives. I'm your host, Corey Quinn. Let's jump into the show. Today, I'm joined by the founder and CEO of Hook Agency, Tim Brown.
Welcome Tim!
Tim Brown: Hey, thanks for having me Corey!
Corey Quinn: Ah, it's great to have you. I'm excited for our conversation. Could you share with the audience a little bit about who you are and a little bit about Hook Agency?
Tim Brown: Yeah, hook agency is right now it's heavy in roofing marketing agency. I started as. Web designer developer about 10 years ago out of college and then worked for another agency.
And then went out on my own after about three years, I was their marketing director. At the end of that three years, there's a smaller agency as well, 25 people. And now we're just like really heavy in home services. and roofing, and we're kind of like making the, [00:01:00] the way over into HVAC and plumbing a little bit.
And so, yeah, home services is huge, really. There's this mess.
Corey Quinn: It's an industry. It's massive.
Tim Brown: And if people know you as, you know, people know you in roofing, they don't necessarily know you in HVAC. So like, there's just this. There's totally different ecosystems and influencers and content and all these different things, because, you know, people want something that's very specific to their situation.
Just like the listeners to this podcast, very niche topic, but there's people that really probably enjoy it. I am one of those, by the way, because I am directly in that. So, like just not being afraid also to just create content for a very tight target market has been a big principle to our growth.
Corey Quinn: Can't wait to get into all of that.
What could you share as far as you're seven years in for, for your agency? What could you share for the listeners about [00:02:00] maybe the size of your agency, number of employees, clients, revenue, whatever you're comfortable with sharing?
Tim Brown: Yeah, it's, uh, 29 people today and it's, we just hit 4 million at revenue and we're trying to go for 6 million this year.
So yeah, I don't know, you know, 80 plus clients and yeah, I'm trying to think about any other pertinent details.
Corey Quinn: What percentage of your client are in roofing specifically?
Tim Brown: Yeah, probably about 80, 85.
Corey Quinn: Okay, beautiful. And what is your role there as the founder and CEO? What is
Tim Brown: your day to day like? Yeah, so.
For years and years, I always got like this feeling, like I was like, tell people, I'm like, it is they first, they let anyone make a business. That's cool. And like, and you don't have to have any credentials and to like, I am surprised that some of the stuff that we've been able to do in the, in seven short years or six, seven short years.
And I also, I think I'm going to be surprised many more times [00:03:00] because I think we're going to keep growing. I am currently kind of leader of leaders. So more strategic leadership stuff, although I have like an ops person and somebody leading business development and. You know, we have a money person, it's just my wife and she's a lot of the detail oriented little stuff too.
And then as far as myself goes, like marketing. So I'm still, I'm marketing heavy. Okay. Client facing. One thing I haven't quite been able to extricate myself from. It's kind of like, I hope to do that this year. I have a video guy, so I'm like, kind of like. Tim plus three outside vendors and an internal video guy, but like, I'm very much at the center of our marketing, which is, you know, if you're talking to a private equity would be a key man problem.
Corey Quinn: Indeed. So when you say marketing, are you marketing for your clients or are you marketing the agency and the brand? The
Tim Brown: agency and the brand. So yes, we have really [00:04:00] good systems in place. Usually about like three person, three people per role for every. Fulfillment thing, SEO, people, PPC, designers, developers.
So redundancies with those people too, just to make sure that like, if one person leaves, everything's okay. Three echo managers, that kind of stuff.
Corey Quinn: And so what are you doing for roofers?
Tim Brown: Yeah, we do SEO, PPC and websites. And like SEO was our kind of, well, websites was my. But pretty quick as soon as we started, because recurring is such a big deal and important for your agency.
We got really into SEO fairly quickly and I had learned it and how to do it for our agency previously. And at my freelancer website that turned into the agency website, I was ranking for like Minneapolis web design. That was such a big deal for me when I was ranking for it. And it is like. Good to learn SEO on your own [00:05:00] company's website sometimes, and then applying those principles then to clients who are like, how'd you do that?
Corey Quinn: And so seven years ago, when you were leaving the other agency. What, what was sort of the motivation to start your own agency? And at that time, was it, were you focused on roofers or did that come down the road?
Tim Brown: Yeah, I was motivated to do it for freedom and like the ability to affect the processes. I think that like, I have opinions, you know, and resentments, you know, like I, I want the freedom to do as I think is appropriate for clients.
And like, sometimes there's things that I didn't feel. I wouldn't say they're an ethical issue, but they felt like a, a stylistic difference with just ethical tinges at my other agency, and I felt compelled to do something that I felt really good about. Cause essentially we grow and we get better and better when we really believe in what we're doing.
So it's like to [00:06:00] enjoy my work and to, to get better, but I had built it on the side, so I had more revenue, the overlap method. I had built enough revenue that it was exceeding my, my salary, which wasn't tiny, but it wasn't huge. It was like 70 or something like that. So I was like, you know, I think there is something that needs to be said about like, if you have a hundred plus salary, sometimes it's hard to make that leap.
I didn't have this massive salary. But I, it was still very, very scary. And then I was not niched right away. I worked with a coach, Gene Hammett. I
Corey Quinn: don't know, Gene.
Tim Brown: That's the first time I've heard my trenches is his podcast, but anyways, he's a good guy and he was teaching me a little bit about sales and he's pushing me to, I would, my breakdown is always, I go harder on marketing than I go on sales because it's safe and comfortable and I'm behind a computer and it feels good.
So he pushed me a lot to increase that amount of sales. Into the amount of marketing. So I was, he would always push me [00:07:00] every week to push into sales. And then part of it was like, Hey, where's your concentration of clients and let's say I had three out of five clients and home services or contractors, it was like a roofer, a remodeler and a asphalt company.
So like, I just. Kind of quickly found concentration there. And I, I also enjoyed the people and I also felt like what we were doing was useful and they didn't, they didn't have unrealistic expectations for what was possible. So I just started to move into that where it's like, let's say for software, I had clients in software and food and all these different things.
I just felt like they kept on, they're a little bit needy on things that, you know, there's different niches that require more intimate deliverables. Right. So like, kind of like for me, it was like a little bit of avoiding niches that needed like this super personalized thing. Cause from the beginning, [00:08:00] I, you know, I read the e myth and I wanted to make systems and I wanted to make a.
Basically a productized approach to our services. And so I have, I tried to kind of go towards something that would allow me to do that, which it was difficult, but, uh, you know, two, three, four, I think it's probably, it's 2021, summer of 2021, July, we said no more other stuff. Okay. Even though for the last couple of years, we had been really focused on contractors.
Okay.
Corey Quinn: So I'm going to dig into that real quick before we go in there. I wanted to talk a little bit more about your, your transition from a full time employee to stepping over and leaving that into your, your agency, which. As you shared, you took the overlap method, which I'm assuming is you're, you're doing the side hustle and you're building it up to a certain point.
Did you, looking back on that now, did you feel like you made the transition at the right time? Did you wait too long? Or did you go
Tim Brown: too early? I think I, I waited long enough. I think it's just kind of like for, [00:09:00] I really am grateful to that job because I, one, they let me be marketing director and I doubled their leads in like.
which was crazy, but I like, I knew how to make leads happen for a marketing agency. Right. And I got that experience and that confidence at that role. And I tried to make the transition seamless for them. But I, I basically like learned a ton about recurring cause I knew how to make websites. Design and develop websites personally, like, so, but I learning about recurring was the biggest thing that that job gave me, which is like, if you don't have recurring services, it's just, it's kind of, there's a weakness there, right?
Like it's a beautiful thing about agencies that we can create recurring services and be useful to our clients on a monthly basis. So that was probably the biggest thing that that one taught me, but I learned so much there, like crazy amounts of things just with client relationships and all of that type of stuff.
So. Yeah, I learned a lot there. I'm glad I went out when I did [00:10:00] though, because I was at a point where I was. Could have gotten really comfortable. Yeah. I could have relaxed into that role and just kind of taken my 5, 10 K pay raise every year and could have just, just, they would allowed me to relax into the role.
And I think certainly you could need to ideally maybe 10 years at an agency would be best before you went out on your own, but like you can get comfortable. You could get really comfortable and then you could say, no, what? Not the right time. So I kind of knew that I could, I could be capable of just relaxing and getting comfortable.
And I, it scared me. And so I went out on my own because I knew my vision eventually was to do that. How far along
Corey Quinn: was the agency at that point? As far as, um, revenue or, or clients. When I went out on my own. Yeah.
Tim Brown: Like your, your, your agency. I wasn't actually offering a ton of recurring. I had the first couple of recurring clients were like, [00:11:00] I'm on retainer, but like the, the deliverables are unclear.
Like I'm, I'm going to make a white paper for you this month that I'm going to do like a new landing page, you know what I mean? Like I was just, it was like small retainers and stuff like that. So what I did is I took the. Website revenue that I was getting as I was selling, like, let's say 7 to 10 K websites.
I was taking that and kind of breaking it down over a year or six months and saying like, if it was recurring, this is how much recurring it would be. Cause then I knew, okay, at least I have 10, 15, 20 K of. Monthly revenue, putting it away, but I'm thinking of it that way.
Corey Quinn: What's interesting is that there's now website design companies who only do a productized monthly sort of monthly fee for a relatively straightforward website, but in some cases, home services.
They don't need necessarily a super sexy [00:12:00] website in any event in 2021, you decided, okay, enough is enough. We're going to focus on roofers. What was happening in the business at that time that led you to that realization?
Tim Brown: Yeah. A little bit of complexity there. We said, we're going to only focus on contractors for contract.
That was July. And then by December we were saying roofers. So like there was a six month period where we were. Unclear about how beneficial niching would be. And then I became personally clear on how the hyper niching would be a pretty big deal for us. And that foreshadows all that was to come, which is lots of good things from my perspective.
But the earlier thing that had happened was walks with my wife, love walking with my wife and she's always, we just always talk about business. And that's weird about being, uh, in a company with your wife, but it is also really cool because you have a lot of the same context and stories and feelings. And [00:13:00] she was saying like, I'm just frustrated with some of these out of niche clients.
And like, we don't know that we don't know medical insurance auto adjudication and why are they angry at us about this content that. Probably a shitty about this topic, you know, like it wasn't super unclear looking back on what the writing on the wall was for us to go niche as soon as possible and as hard as possible.
But we resisted because Probably because we were looking at revenue more than profit. You know what I mean? Like, and sometimes you got to do that, right? The early years, you just got to like get revenue and figure it out sometimes. But I, and I'm glad I did that. I'm glad I, we did those things. I'm glad I learned and cut our teeth and kind of came to these conclusions, but yeah, it was a walk and my wife said, no, I think we need to set a date.
And we set a date for July 1 and we made it a whole party and we did a big [00:14:00] gold balloons that said Nitching Day. And we were saying no to all their stuff outside the niche.
Corey Quinn: Did you, did you, did you fire all your non vertical clients at
Tim Brown: that point? We did not. That was a good, it was good like to say, we're saying no to them new, but we're not going to, right.
Like we still have like a lawyer and a wealth management company. We still have like four or five OG clients, but like nothing else new.
Corey Quinn: That makes sense. And so at that point you said yes to contractors, no to nothing else new. Well, how did you define contractors?
Tim Brown: Yeah, we, um, I think at that time too, we were like thinking like, I don't know, like it all went together.
When you're outside of a niche, the niches look tiny. And when you go inside of a niche, you're like, Oh, there's like 20 different types of contractors that like, literally when you say the word contractor, it [00:15:00] could mean anything. It could mean excavation company. It could mean commercial buildings. It could mean remodelers and builders in which we don't even really Focus on it all like we're over here and really I'm realizing more of the word, the phrase is home services and it takes time to learn all this.
Like from my point of view, it took me a while, right? We went contractors and then we meant home service contractors. We meant like, but like we took some commercial stuff. We still have a commercial construction client and stuff like that. We wouldn't turn that down per se, but like home owners. It's just understanding the problems that they have, and it's understanding like ideal customers and how do we find them.
And I think like for us, it's like the best niches are kind of like the same types of problems. And like, and I know you're from your person from Scorpion, the other, I know you're [00:16:00] from there, but your other person from there, you guys talk about the, Oh shit, I'm not going to lie, I use that now, because it's very similar because.
When you think about it that like, I do like higher ticket, kind of intense, urgent. We need this now. Like I was talking to a garage, sorry, I'm a little ADD. I was talking to a garage floor guy and I'm like, it's just not, Oh shit enough. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, that's a considered purchase. What is the problem that you guys are solving?
And it's like, Well, it's ugly and it could be non functional space. And it's like, like, I'm like, is it dangerous though? You know, like, I like, I like, you know, like, I like a problem that you can zoom in on. Yeah, we need a good story. Yeah, that's good. Like, if there's a problem, like if your family is going to be cold or you're going to get like sick from water coming in from the roof or like the heat's out and you're literally like at risk, like, I love that niche.
Great. Yeah. You know, [00:17:00] there's just an element of like urgency there that helps push through leads. And I like that urgency. I like that need. And that's why, yeah, we went really into roofing partly because we had a number of coaches and influencers. So later on that year, I realized People don't think of themselves as contractors and what we need is an identity to go after and people think of themselves as roofers.
And we were just starting to get more and more roofers from a particular influencer. And so we just kept on getting those. And then we were closing on, we're getting case studies and like that just starts to snowball, right? You get good, 10 good clients in one niche. It can really snowball. So
Corey Quinn: does roofers or an urgent.
Tim Brown: Oh, absolutely. Yes. And
Corey Quinn: I wouldn't even know. I'm genuinely
Tim Brown: curious. Yeah. Because the roof's leaking. And then the other thing is, is that storm [00:18:00] happens and like one that is, yeah, a leak in the roof is not comfortable and it's like, makes life really bad. Right? Like, so, and then also insurance is part of it.
Like part of the reason it's a good industry is because insurance. helps pay for roofs and so thus that kind of greases the wheels of money in the roofing industry. Yeah, makes
Corey Quinn: it, makes the purchase a lot easier from the consumer's perspective.
Tim Brown: But I don't need to create any more roofing marketing companies because God knows it is a saturated space.
It is very saturated. Unless you're going to go really hard, which frankly you will have to do, because it's, they have a resistance to it. Sure. Because there's so many people targeting roofers, there's like a resistance, you have to go very hard. It becomes very hard. I would say it's probably true with a lot of niches, right?
Like, unless you're going really hard and in it there, in it with them. They're going to resist you. So niching down into one really tight niche is why that's another reason we [00:19:00] had to do it.
Corey Quinn: I think, I think you're right. I think every niche that's worth pursuing is probably have, uh, you know, at least a handful of really sharp, savvy entrepreneurs and agencies trying to pursue them.
So in that,
Tim Brown: I wouldn't say there was any sharp or savvy. Well,
Corey Quinn: given the fact that you have a, let's call it an unsophisticated buyer, roofer who's not able to discern from a You know, a fly by night dude for someone versus someone like yourself who's fully committed. How do you differentiate yourself?
Tim Brown: I would say you, you had mentioned Joseph Hughes from Contractor Dynamics.
I would say our, there are other companies in our space doing the hard work of educating and we are educating our clients. We are essentially always putting out information to try to help them get smarter, but we have other people in the space too that are educating them well. And they're doing really good work.
There's, there's like coaches and people that are doing that. And it's also us teaming up with [00:20:00] those people. So I would say for us, sales coaches and, and leadership coaches and marketing consultants and stuff like that is really, that's part of how we align ourselves with the right people. And we've tried to align ourselves with people that are attracting a little bit higher caliber of.
Roofers, although we're not going after the 20 million plus crowd. So for us, because people do hire internally at a certain point, and then their marketing organizations get not more, it's funny, not always more sophisticated. Sometimes they just get more bloat internally. Like, you know, that you've probably dealt with some internal marketing managers that, you know, it goes over their head.
But the point is, is that you, you get a bigger or marketing organization internally. So we kind of don't target that. And I know that there are, are some of our competitors that do target that and have their pricing down for that and like [00:21:00] respect, because I don't necessarily always like or enjoy dealing with the bureaucracy and my people don't always enjoy dealing with the bureaucracy of those organizations.
So yeah, we've got that kind of like 5 to 15 million cool, calm, not agitated roofer that we're targeting that's family oriented and trying to pass things off their plate that maybe they were doing. And maybe they have an internal marketer, but maybe not. And ultimately they need somebody to get shit done.
So that's why I say we're a get shit done workhorse agency. We're not sitting around wasting a bunch of their money and time on fluff. We spend a lot of our, our time and effort on real deliverables. And we show those in a really transparent way to our clients. So just kind of like, that's our positioning.
And then we just have to push that out there over and over and over again. And then also help one, our client, our prospects know that, but also help the coaches and the, the influencers and the. [00:22:00] And the referral partners in the space actually know why we're different. We help them own their marketing and those kinds of differentiates, we know our differentiating features, but we have to say it a lot.
So I wouldn't guess that a lot of my referral partners are going to be watching this, but I know mine, right? I know my differentiating features compared to the half the people that have been on this podcast and they're super cool, super smart people. But I know my differentiating features and I, I just, I.
The hard part is when you're bored of saying it over and over and over again to the market. Cause like no one hears, everyone's hearing 1 percent of the stuff you're saying or less, right? So you have to get really repetitive in your marketing, which it gets a little tiring as like somebody who's, I actually feel like an expert at marketing and I just get a little bored of it.
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What I think is interesting is that through this process of being a generalist and then niching down in 2021 to contractors and then going down to roofers and now going to roofers specifically who are between, did you say five and 15 or two and 15? Five
Tim Brown: and 15. We do, we do accept clients, anything over two, but we actually like turn people down under two, which is weird.
Corey Quinn: So, so that is all, to me, that is all positioning. Right. That is like we're built for the roofers who are between 5 and 15. If you're below that, you're above that, you know, maybe we could probably help you out, but that's not what we're built for. And that in itself is a differentiator versus let's say an agency who's going to market and saying, well, we work with.
Yeah. Home service businesses and attorneys and dentists and so on and so forth. It's a completely different positioning. Yeah. And respect
Tim Brown: to like, for instance, [00:25:00] Scorpion, where it's like, you have the teams tight and all the principles apply, just like the 30 person unit inside of your 1500 person company versus for us, it's the whole unit.
And so it's just figuring out how to probably, if I was talking to them, it'd be like how to be nimble. I should, I have no. Business giving any advice to them, but it's like being as that unit you're tight in and speaking so directly to people. And I know that that's just from listening to the other podcasts.
I'm sure that's how they operate, but do you employ any salespeople? Yes. We just hired our second and our first is incredible. She sold 3 million last year. And so, and I taught her from nothing. She had a 35, 000 job before that. And so I had to change my identity. As somebody who said, I don't, I, cause I said, I don't know sales a lot.
I said that, and I had to stop saying that when I hired her and I had to start saying not [00:26:00] to her, that would be weird, but I started saying to myself, I am a sales sensei and for me, that was a sticky and memorable thing for me to change, help change my identity and my mindset around this. And I needed to act as if I had something of value to share with her and.
In that process of training her, one, I sharpened my own skills and I was looking for great new tactics and strategies. And two, I, I clarified my real thoughts about sales, which are be a cool person, be nice and try to be helpful. And then you learned other ideal things, like little things with like positioning and stuff.
There's nuances, tons of nuances, and you should be a student of sales. But it's the, kind of the basis of the type of person you are, if you can be helpful and friendly, the other stuff will come. Be helpful and friendly and [00:27:00] relentless. Like you do have to be like consistent, follow up and give a
Corey Quinn: shit, right?
Yeah. There's a book on my desk that's called Go for No, right? That's a good one.
Tim Brown: It's all about. I read all the books. Like I'm not, I'm, I'm a student of sales. Yeah. And I used to think I'm, I wasn't good at sales and now I know I'm, I am good at sales and I believe sales is a, is a really important part of running any business and being a professional, really.
Corey Quinn: When did you realize that you had to rewire or sort of reframe the self talk about I'm not a sales expert? Like what, what made you realize
Tim Brown: that? Yeah, I went through that twice, once right at the beginning of the agency where I spent a year learning like Grant Cardone or whatever, you know, I went through this whole thing and did all the exercises in his course, you know, and then the other time was two years ago when I was really training this person up and she needed guidance and we just had another salesperson leave.
And it was really just, yeah, you, you [00:28:00] see how that recurring thought pattern about whatever it is. And lately it's been leadership, right? Like, Oh, I'm not a leader. I'm not a manager. You know, you say that enough times to yourself, then you're going to act as if that's the case, right? You're going to avoid hard conversations.
You're going to act a little squirrelly in a really difficult. Situation with your people, but if you say to yourself, I am a leader of leaders, you know, if I say to myself, I actually know how to handle difficult conversations and dang, I'm becoming an expert at like leading people and motivating them.
It goes hand in hand with how I behave. It's weird, but yeah, the sales one, I just, I usually, it was around the, the new year, two years ago. And I love the new year push. I love doing the new year. Everyone talks smack about resolutions, but I love a good new year push. It's fun. And at that same time, it happens to be that roofers also are making decisions on their marketing.
So we had a lot of at bats, you know? So. So [00:29:00] that experience of just going through reps with her, trying to, I don't know what, I don't know what really instigated I got to change is it was just, I keep on putting myself in situations where the business is getting bigger. I'm hiring a little bit ahead of our need.
I've done that. It's scary. You should probably watch that, but I've done that. So I have to sell, I have to figure out, I am building, I am building the structures of an organization. A bit bigger than we are now, right? Like I'm always kind of building that. And it's kind of like, and I've told our people we're going to do it.
Yeah. So I've got to go hard and it's so much on marketing because you have to create those opportunities. And for us, we don't have Corey, we don't have a good outbound sales system. So we should, we should learn it. Right. Because it's good to have multiple, you should have [00:30:00] multiple legs on the stool.
Otherwise it was something could bump you and you're falling down. That's right. I know that my business needed me to step up and it's kind of been that way from the beginning. It's like, I just keep on putting myself in uncomfortable situations and I need to step up. And I need to grow as a human being.
And part of it right now is just learning how to not be burnt out and learning how to rest and learning how to like treat me like I would treat an employee that was burned out. You know, like, which was, I feel better. I had the holidays and I got some good rest, but I was burnt out there for a little while.
Corey Quinn: I admire your self awareness. That's really great. And growing through these opportunities. So that's really cool. When did you hire your first salesperson? At what point in the agency? Yeah, I think I did it a little
Tim Brown: sooner than some people would. I think I was like a five, six people.
Corey Quinn: Okay. And what was the conditions in the business that caused you to say, okay, I'm going to hire someone.
Tim Brown: Yeah. I think I was trying to get into the, I was trying to, you know, you're trying to balance [00:31:00] operations and sales and we did have a, some flow, some lead flow. I was always like the guy that said like the wellspring of leads is like. The whole, like where the whole thing comes from. That was for me, that was like tenant.
So the leads were pretty, you know, pretty rhythmic and I just needed to go like fix some operations stuff and like hire my first, you know, 10, 15 people. Like I was like. Cause I'm on, I was on HR and hiring, so I'm trying to get that over here. And there's also like, because of the way we did inbound, like SEO for ourselves and stuff like that, there was a lot of low quality leads.
You know, like that is a source of some low quality leads, like organic, whatever. So it was like dealing with those too. Right. So that was a, that was a little bit of like, it had to have somebody on it. And if, even if you have low quality [00:32:00] leads mixed in with your good ones. If you don't treat them right, if you're rude or you don't have somebody that's like paying attention, you could burn your reputation in a market like now, the way we deal, like we have enough effort and time and energy on those opportunities.
Cause we pre we found that they become real leads later, half the time that they refer us sometimes now, like, cause we're just being cool. And we like try to, you know. Help them. But yeah, that was the, you know, that was the impetus. Like I can't do both. I can't do operations and sales. Yeah. Um, at the same time.
Corey Quinn: Any lessons learned from that first
Tim Brown: hour? Yeah. Don't think you're going to go grab from a competitor and they're going to be brilliant. Like, and if they're easy to grab from a competitor, they're probably not their highest performer. Like I promise you any badass from [00:33:00] Rhino or Scorpion or like these other, like kind of leaders.
are probably going to be sticky to the org. Like they're stoked because they're like, they sold themselves on this company. Right. And they're like, they're closing deals and they're, their personal income is going up and up and up and they're not, they're not easy to just, you know, and I don't want to waste the time, I want to waste the time, get somebody else from a different organization, like get somebody from outside, get them into sales and show them that you can make over a hundred K.
I don't know. That's, that's my take, but I'm sure like there's different levels of sophistication on that and executive hires and stuff. But yeah, we've been a kind of build from scratch kind of work.
Corey Quinn: Well, it sounds like the, at least the latest salesperson that's really working for you. What role does thought leadership play in your growth?
Content marketing, that type of
Tim Brown: stuff. It's interesting because I think honestly, I've been moving a little bit into [00:34:00] more entertainment. Like I'm trying to be the entertainment a little bit for my industry. I've learned that from Dimitri. Who is a, a, a marketing, kind of a YouTube, he's a YouTuber in the roofing industry, and I've learned it from other ones like Victor Rancor in HVAC.
Like he's a personality and he's entertaining. Like he's not just doing sales training on his reels, you know, and his TikToks. He's. He's like saying controversial stuff and he's kind of slapping people across the face. And he's, you could call him like an instigator. Like these are the, I'm learning from these people a little bit because they know how to get attention.
And then I am trying to position myself as a thought leader. I am, I definitely like. a year or two ago, I said to myself, I want to, I'm going to try to be an influencer and thought or thought leader. Like those [00:35:00] could be interchangeable. Right. Right. So I tried it's fucking hard, Corey. I don't know. It's hard and it's hard.
It's
Corey Quinn: a long game for sure.
Tim Brown: Especially in an industry where I'm Yeah, I've put a couple of shingles on a roof, but like, I'm not a, I'm not a roofer and I'm not a roofing business owner. Like to try to be an influencer in that market is crazy. Why
Corey Quinn: is that? Why is that important? Being a roofer, like being one
Tim Brown: of them.
Yeah. Like it's easy. It's way easier if you were, because yeah, it's, it's an identity and we have a resistance to people that don't have our identity, you know, like. And there's, there's a natural, especially resistance to marketers. What is the Seth Godin book? Everyone hates marketers. Like they hate us and they hate us one because we're on the computer and we got soft hands, you know, like we're, we've.
We've got, and they might [00:36:00] think we got a silver spoon or something because like, whatever, like business, but business is hard everywhere, but it's like people don't see it. So it's not like you can pretend your way into that. So what I've done instead, and this is my go to market strategy, is I have been a student and I throw myself into the The niche with all of the vigor of who will become a high performing student of the business, not necessarily of roofing.
I'm a, I did roof a house. I did trade places with a CEO for a roofing company for a day. I do, I did shadow the 18. 5 million roofing sales guy for a day. I do roofing office tours. I throw my, and I go in with video and I do that. That's my go to market and it's positioning alongside of them in no way, shape or form.
Or am I trying to be this, the hero of that story? I am pointing a spotlight on these high performing [00:37:00] people. And I think if the amazing people that listened to this podcast could get anything. would be that you can be a student and people will still respect you. You don't have to pretend to be the king of that industry.
If you go to the king and you say, Hey, how can I make you look good? Then that is access. Especially if you have actual valuable things to give the king, you know what I mean? So that's like been my go to market strategy. I keep on doing that. I keep on doing that. I'm going to do that in HVAC. And I, I know that.
I already see the people that have, but the thing about market, like it is soft, like people hate marketers. You know what I mean? So like, it's easy to drop one and get a new one. You know what I mean? So like, that's the tough part about trying to go into a new market is I know somebody's coming. I can see it.
Like I'll go to like an HVAC event and then I see [00:38:00] my competitor going to the roofing event. Kind of like. Creating them at my base of power. It's like, when you ever play those war games, those computer games where it's like, you're attacking somebody's base and they're attacking yours. I feel that, you know what I mean?
So we do it, we do it. It's fun. I do think in competition, I think that like people that pretend that that's not a real thing is kind of BS, but I also am confident enough in what we're doing that I think. Eventually HVAC will accept us as one of them and roofing, they already, a lot, a lot of it is they, they appreciate what we, what we do for the industry.
And I think that we've done enough and we will continue to do more that like they actually appreciate us even though we are marketers.
Corey Quinn: So you actually care. It's not like you're just trying to come in and capitalize on all these naive roofers and take all their money and not
Tim Brown: really provide value. No, yeah, we actually, we actually give away everything we do for free.
Like as far as like our information and I know how to do it. And so I [00:39:00] share that information and I show them how to do it step by step. And I in no way think they have to work with us. Like they could easily just follow all of my YouTube video tutorials and exactly what to do step by step, every step of the way.
It just so happens that most people are making more money. Like our ideal customers, making more money, doing their real main thing. Professionalization, right? I'm making more money selling roofs, leading people and creating a badass business than I would if I went and learned SEO for 300 hours. You know, so like that, that's probably what it would take to be kind of an expert or at least like proficient at SEO or something like that.
So I'll show them everything I've got, but people respect us, I think partly because we're just bold and we're, we will give it all away and we're not scared.
Corey Quinn: So you, you've gone down this road a couple of years now, almost three years with regard to the roofers. Now you're expanding into HVAC. What's [00:40:00] happening in the business that's causing this to become a priority?
Tim Brown: Yeah, so there is something to be said about having too many clients in one market. So we've identified 500, 000 people to 500, 000 population to one client ratio is what we're trying to do. So as we see the pressure on certain cities, Like let's say Dayton, Ohio, where we have too many, you know, like we can't take any more roofers.
We would like to essentially create this additional, it's not a bad, it's not bad pressure right now. It's not like, but we are one out of every 30 prospects or whatever is too many in their market and we can't take them. So we've decided to, instead of just loosening up on that restriction for ourselves, cause it's, you know.
We've decided to go ahead and, and build out these separate ones. So it's something that if we talked about it openly that our customers would be really excited about. And so as I do this, I'm even saying just in case my roofing [00:41:00] clients watch a podcast on HVAC, I say, this is why we did it. And I hope that our respecters are, uh, roofers respect us for that.
Like that they like why we went into it. And that we bring everything we learned back from this like niche within a niche to their niche within a niche. And there are so many things to learn because HVAC is like sophisticated on a level that roofing is not right now because of the. Private equity and stuff like that, that rolled through.
So we're, yeah, we're just trying to, it's three to five years out really, Corey, where it's going to be a problem, like it would be a problem. So we're, it's just kind of forecasting that three to five years and trying to build the backstory now to then we'll have 10 clients by the end of the year. And then it will snowball to 30 next year in HGAC.
That's great.
Corey Quinn: So just a few more questions before we wrap up here. So what [00:42:00] are the negatives to verticalizing, you know, an agency? You've already mentioned that there can be a client concentration issue. What else comes to mind when you think of like, you know, a negative? Yeah,
Tim Brown: creative burnout. I think that creatives like designers, like you have to hedge with them a little bit on the front end of the job.
And so we've had. Designers leave that we realize if the way we talk about it now with new designers coming in, it has to be like, how can you make this constraint a creative problem that is, we do custom design every time. So like, how can you make that constraint of doing only for roofers or a lot of roofers, right?
How can you make that constraint into like something that helps you. And that's something you have to learn how to talk about to creative people because they have a different perspective and it doesn't, honestly, it doesn't even half the time matter how much money they're making. [00:43:00] They're, they're concerned with career growth and opportunity growth.
And understanding how this is going to help their long term career. What if they got pigeonholed and they could never work at another agency that's not roofers or HVAC, right? So it's kind of figuring out how to position that because it is, even if we're the best in the world at HVAC and roofing marketing and websites, like it is going to be boring.
So we got to figure out how to talk to that about our people and just, you get really sick of like, there's a lot of infighting squabbles with your direct competitor. There's weird stuff that happens with competitors and you, you, there's risk, reputational risk. If somebody blows up on you and like the niche groups or something like that, it can hurt your chances.
Or like if you were that niche, like. And you have a couple big event, like people for [00:44:00] big events say, no, what, you can't come to these events anymore because of some reason, then you're kind of held back. So you gotta, like, if, and this is what I'm recognizing as I go into the secondary niche is like, it may feel unimportant now.
As I'm like having these little like, whatever, like, cause I put myself out there. So some hater or some, you know, cool person, probably that's just saying something annoying to me on Facebook or something like that. Like I got to watch it. Cause you don't know how influential that person is in that new niche.
And you got to watch how you, everything matters. You got to watch how you talk to people because every single one of those people could either be an advocate or a detractor from your marketing agency. And that's the toughest part is now dealing with this ego that I got in roofing a little bit. Like I do have a little bit of an ego because they treat me nice over there.
They think I'm cool. And I'm going over this new niche where they don't, they don't care at all. Yeah. And, and I [00:45:00] have to be like, I have to bring the ego down and go, every one of these people could be like important. I don't know, it's hard to say it like that because it's kind of mean, because it's like, I'm kind of saying there are unimportant people and more important people.
But it's like some of the people in roofing that you wouldn't think are influential. They're not influencers or anything. They're just roofers. They're just, but they're like, they advocate for us, man, because we, we sent them a piece of swag or we, you know, like, we're just nice to them at a trade show, or we made a piece of content that they, that really helped their career or whatever.
Because of that, we have advocates all over the place for us. So don't come at us. Cause we like have people that will defend us. Like even other roofers that go after us, there'll be five people in their comments kind of messing with them. I'm not saying that's like a guarantee. But I don't have that now going into this new niche.
So that's, it's just a totally, it's a fun world. Cause it's like, there's nothing better than [00:46:00] getting humbled and like, just starting from scratch. It feels good. Cause like ego is completely like nonsense half the time. So great
Corey Quinn: answer. Two more questions. What would be your party advice, particularly for agency owners who are struggling with scaling?
Tim Brown: It's a really good question. If you're struggling with scaling, all the things, right? Niche, hyper niche. Try to niche harder. Dare you. Recurring. As you move it, like culture is not bullshit. Like, if you can figure out how to start to create like a little bit of culture to keep your people and get them excited, like what's the mission, what's the real mission?
Like our mission is to help people recognize the truth about the trades and that there's, it's, it's incredibly lucrative, it's anchored and it's important for your community. Like if you get a bigger [00:47:00] why and like that, why it's so, it's all this, it's all the basic stuff, Corey, you know, it's just the. It's the simple stuff that you have to have as an organization, but that stuff is weirdly important as you get your sixth and your 10th and your 12th employee, because if you don't have that stuff.
Then it's just like you, and I've been through it, right. Where you're just shedding an employee for every employee you get, or like, it's just tough to build an organization without a little bit bigger why, and like, you got to believe it. You know, the best salespeople believe in it and the best leaders believe in it.
So like, that's what I'm working on is like, how can I get more belief? Around what we're doing. And if I need to modify it to believe in it, I'm glad I get to do that.
Corey Quinn: Oh, that was a great answer. Last question. What's your motivation?
Tim Brown: Money and my child and I say, I'm, I'm greedy. And I, when I say I'm greedy, I say, I don't just want money.[00:48:00]
I want money. I want to enjoy my work. I want to think it's really cool. And I want to do something that's like good for other people where it makes my long term life. Like something that has a legacy and people remember me fondly as somebody that inspired them. Like, so I'm greedy. Cause I want all of that.
I don't think I just have to like, just to get money. But you know, like when you're early, you got to cover that.
Corey Quinn: That's awesome. Where can people reach out to you to ask a follow up question if they're interested?
Tim Brown: Tim Brown on LinkedIn might be a good spot. Tim Brown, Hook Agency. Maybe just throw that in there with it and you'll find me and I'm happy to answer anything and be of service
Corey Quinn: if I can.
Beautiful. Well, you've been of service for this entire episode. So thanks again for coming on. It was great. All right, folks, that's it for today. I'm Corey Quinn, and I hope [00:49:00] you join me again next time for the Vertical Go To Market Podcast. If you receive value from this show, I would love a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
Thanks, and we'll see you soon.
