hi guys I'm Amanda Joyce and I'm Devin Hayes welcome to trade secrets where we reveal what you can be doing today to improve your marketing welcome to trade secrets where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks this is for you if you're a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights learn from Home Services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies let's dive into today's trade secret foreign is a fun episode we are just kind of diving in and talking about uh who we are yeah Who We Are Who elevation marketing is what Trade Secrets is all about and kind of why we're here um and really where we hope you guys are going to join us every week to learn from us and get to know us and just kind of be in this journey with us um this is our first um entry into the podcasting world and we feel like we've got a lot of information to share so welcome yes welcome so we'll start Amanda and I we've known each other for [Music] um 2012 is my menu yeah yeah it was our 10 year anniversary this year actually this past year so yeah it was so we've known each other for about 10 years and then we've both been in the marketing world for 15 plus years professional careers right you know after you left the Navy and I got out of college we both go straight in yes yes so your experience like you had like kind of what I picture on TV when I hear people say they're in marketing and advertising you like so you worked at like a big like this big agency right yes so I got hired straight out of college to work at icrossing which that's like person I remember the word SEO I sat down and during my um interview and they pulled up the computer and we're like imagine they're like explaining search results to me and you know it was 2005 I'm like you've never at the time I'd never even given any thought to my search experience you just use Google like a 21 and it's just so funny now to think about like yeah how different life is and how I've spent my entire career focused on trying to help people figure out how to be relevant and those those search results uh I have to ask was it like a new age Mad Men in the office there there are there are some me too moments for sure but it really was not very glamorous I had I was in a cubicle but it was it was that fun environment where I was with a bunch of like young college graduates learning you know the ropes of marketing probably being given way too much responsibility with some really big accounts that I'm like are you sure I should be doing this but it was trial by fire and I I learned a ton and I met so many really smart people um after I left the company and started doing my own thing then they moved into this big fancy space and you know it was probably much more what you're envisioning but it wasn't so you had so you had like this like I love that you had this like confidence in this like I don't know just like this drive so you're like an entrepreneur at heart you're like you know what youthful arrogance I mean I was there for like two years and then I'm like I could do this on my own but that was also back in the day when you could just go buy Private health insurance and be a consultant what you know like that was a thing at the time so I I was like it was so I was just so fortunate that that everything kind of aligned like that and I was able to take I mean I just got my chops and specifically paid media AdWords as it was called at the time and learn how to run those ads and just went out and started running them for companies and I you know I worked with some some pretty big companies even after I left um the agency umbrella um and just continued my my journey through all this and it was the the piece of it that was missing was I would always meet people and start working with them and do all their paid ads but SEO was never my focus so that's why I'm so glad that do an idea yeah so um as a background Amanda and I we both had our own kind of indep independent agencies but we were kind of sharing work and sending it to one another she's a Content marketing Mastermind as well as paid media Guru and so and I'd always focused on kind of SEO local technical kind of um that realm and I I dabbled in the content World um and in the content marketing a lot of analysis and research goes into that which is kind of my wheelhouse too but um so anyway so we each had our own agencies and then we combined is it three four years ago it was four years ago because it was yeah yeah it was right before I got married and yeah so yeah yes so yeah so fast yeah absolutely so then okay so um for everyone listening Amanda you so like personal side I mean your wife your mom two beautiful boys you've got lovely little fat doggy Ruby we'd love exactly it just listed your everything you could possibly tag right I just threw it all out there for you and it's just so funny because it just so happens that I just really feel like this stage of my life all started right when we started this company I mean we we started we when we when we combined our companies we combine our companies in November of 2019 or 2018 I got married at the end of that month and then I had a baby the next November I mean it's just it's kind of crazy like how how intertwined our lives are and how we've started we've started our our you know joint effort together at like such an amazing time in my life and I just I'm so grateful and um it's awesome so what okay so what's the difference between like what we do which I know that we love but I would love to just hear your take on you know agency world to um you know being an independent contractor to now we have this agency and we are primarily focused um on Home Services contractors um like you know what is that I guess transition like yeah to me about that say the thing that I love the most about what we do and even what I was doing previously when I was an independent contractor was at an agency level there were times that I just literally felt like I was just plain whack and really like just trying to manage so much and it felt unfortunately often times people were numbers they had to be I mean you just to to run an agency at a high level and have that many clients going it's there's it's hard to keep consistency and I'm not talk you know I'm not throwing any shade but it's just a different approach they did have all the tools and bells and whistles and there were a lot of great things we were able to deliver to clients then but what I love about what you and I are doing is we know every one of our clients we know them personally and we know what's going on in their businesses we we we're intentionally not big so we can do all of that and that is like the huge difference to it you know absolutely and we've worked with the same team of people the same developers content writers um we've got Pam who I don't even know what her official title is because she helps us with everything but we've had you know the same team of people even prior to us merging over these past four years we've worked with the same people for like 10 plus years so while we aren't like this giant agency and we never want to be a giant agency um we do have like a solid team of people and we've like worked together for for like I said 10 plus years and it has been it's like a true team and we really do it's not like you and I are the only sales people right so we don't sell something and then pass it off to someone else and be like okay bye peace out um we actually we're like we're we are actually your partner we care very much we're very much invested and I love that you know our kind of the way we've scaled we've been able to stay involved with every client and um really have like a relationship with with all of our clients um exactly I love that we closed the sales cycle and then we immediately have a kickoff call and then we move into like regular communication with the client and it's just the whole time yes that's how we get to know them we get to be their friends and I also love that you and I both came into this with such great contacts in the in the industry that we together have brought this team of like just brilliant marketers together that you get to work with absolutely and for the record this podcast is not about selling our agency we want you guys to understand who we are so that you understand why you know what we bring to the table and why you should why would you like you to lean on us for our marketing advice so um on that note I want to talk about you a little bit yeah yes yes um yeah so I think um you know I I think I got into marketing um working for myself uh I don't know because I was kind of tired of the corporate grind I worked I was in the Navy uh right out of high school and I worked I.T so I really knew I liked that technical side and I did love traveling the world but immediately you know kind of thrown into a man's world uh some might say and then after the Navy I went to college and I got a job after graduating with Mass Electric who is a subsidiary of Kiewit which is like one of the you know biggest Builders out there I think they did like 10.2 billion a couple years ago so kind of giant giant giant Construction Company and so you know I just I'm comfortable in that realm my dad is a contractor my husband is a contractor my uncle um my cousin you know just all these all these important people in my life and I I love um I love the trades I love um you know kind of those like salt to the Earth people as as we call them because they're just hard-working um honest and and out there just like trying to do right by people and and grow their businesses and so you know those are the people like I I that's who we want to help that's who we like working with we love those people they're our favorite clients and so um you know we've shifted we've worked in all verticals all markets cannabis dog training um managed IIT services like we've literally worked in we have experienced medical uh Dental like we have experience across the board but our bread and butter has always been with contractors and those have always been our favorite types of contractors so um I love that this year we've decided to focus very intentionally on contractors and the trades um electricians plumbers roofers I mean shoot iron workers Pest Control landscapers we have experienced literally with all of those trades but only now in 2023 are we really focusing on kind of growing our business and and expanding kind of our reach um and just like Amanda said yes we're growing our business on the side but this podcast is actually about just giving free information things we've learned along the way waves ways that we have seen mean contractors burned in the worst ways and trying to help give us a bad name as marketers and we yes it just it's us it's just awful we are um I don't know we're like very I don't know we're just very open honest transparent people if Even in our reporting if something's sucking we tell our clients that's also Pro tip look for that if you uh if everything always look like looks like uh Rose's something ain't right but um yeah so love focusing on this always like worked in construction uh I worked for vertex engineering which um that's a huge uh international company now and that so worked in the engineering space and um and then I touched and I dabbled in finance for about a second as a marketing director for a big lender here in Colorado and you know a year that was enough so uh you know kind of learned some lessons and then have been on my own since 2014.
so anyways that's kind of uh that's a little bit of my story and a little bit of why I'm kind of passionate about like the trades and Home Services and um you know like I guess I guess why why we're here ultimately we're like I said we we we both agree Amanda and I like we love putting our families first we never want to be the largest agency but we have so much information that we just want to give away for free we just want to genuinely help you grow your business um and not get not get screwed over I'm I'm gonna say it we see contractors get screwed over every single day every Discovery call there's something new where we're like [ __ ] but what happens yeah and it's it's at the detriment of their business sometimes we see people having spent thousands of dollars in years with an agency and then they walk away and we realize that it was all smoke and mirrors and they don't have anything to show for it I mean yeah so we are here to be your Honest Abe your your gal Pals in the marketing World um we we love engaging we love interacting with you we want your questions we're here to give free advice it's no skin off our back we we just we're just here to help um we've even helped contractors like you know sort through contracts they've gotten from other SEO agencies um to to suss out kind of what's what they should be looking for because you don't sometimes you don't even know you don't know what you don't know if you if you ask me to um install a pond in somebody's backyard I would probably dig a hole and put a hose in it so the same way that you don't expect me to know how to professionally install a pond or a roof we don't expect you to understand the industry jargon understand we want to help you understand the reports you may you might already be getting from your agency we just kind of want to be your friend in contractor marketing I want to be the people that you think of like that buddy that you would call before you'd ever make a big marketing decision just to make sure you're you know you're doing it right so we aim to provide that Insight so you can you know be bold and dive into marketing but do it in a way that it's going to really benefit your business and in the end give marketers a good name yeah so tune in listen to us we will have all kinds of information on um it's either something you can pass on to your admin who's maybe doing a little bit of marketing for you we'll have um you know if you're working with an agency maybe some tips on what to look for what to ask for maybe some changes they're not aware of um you know we're we're here to work as a partner and you know this this is a huge this is a huge industry we don't we're not yeah can't be everything to everyone just like you can't but we can help you make educated decisions and good choices and teach you a little bit and hopefully make you laugh along the way absolutely and we're also going to try to keep it to a snackable link that you can maybe listen to it from one job site to the next to the next um and kind of playing off what you just said Devin I I really most of the insights we're going to give they're going to work whether you're doing it yourself or you just need to know how to speak the lingo to your agency we really do want this to be broad a broad scope of information that no matter where you are in your marketing Journey it's going to make sense and you're going to have actionable things you can do with Dallas gonna make Dallas and cents I'm gonna make some money yeah so at the end of the day you just want to make more money we want to help you make more money not not just kind of throw money at a problem and watch it disappear so I think that's it is that that's it that's us that's us in a nutshell yeah yes well tune in and we we hope to um you know see you on future podcasts to see people in a podcast I don't really not well maybe in a video from time to time you'll actually check us out on YouTube but you can listen to us as well we're here awesome take care and we'll see you soon thanks guys that was today's trade secret thanks for listening did you find this helpful we're just getting started subscribe and don't miss our next reveal until next time