Oct 13, 2022
Mike has David Caroll of Dope Marketing on the show this week! David shares it all; his childhood, turning his life around, starting multiple businesses, and his most important; being a father & husband.
David also shares his super unique approach to his marketing method that is data proven to be optimized every time.
Contact us!
takeoff@ascenddigitalexperts.com
Let's Connect!
==== ==== ====
Website: https://bit.ly/3NQXXKK
Facebook: https://bit.ly/3xH8VaT
Linkedin: https://bit.ly/3RWTSyr
==== ==== ====
[00:00:00] David: I'm not a big guy on regrets. I'm a big guy on lessons and learning from experience.
[00:00:04] Mike: What is the methodology? How does it work? How does it impact people's business?
[00:00:09] David: Who do I target? What do you sell? What do you do? What is the pain that you solve, and how much does the person's house cost that you can do that for?
[00:01:10] Mike: And we live. Welcome back, episode four, the Mission Control podcast. I'm your host, Mike Stearns. Here we got David Carroll with Dope Marketing. David, welcome.
[00:01:20] David: Thank you for having me, my friend.
[00:01:22] Mike: Yeah, no doubt, man. So for those of those that do not know who is David Carroll?
[00:01:28] David: Who is David Carroll? Uh, I am a, uh, I'm a father of four.
Uh, grew up in, uh, grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. Um, twin cities, born and raised. Um, ex knucklehead. Went to like nine high schools, Uh, got in some trouble growing up. We'll talk about that later in the interview. Um, started my first business when I was 25. I started a cleaning company here in the Twin Cities, Uh, power washing, gutter cleaning, holiday lighting.
I've had that for 13 years. Uh, have been phased outta that business for about six years now. Uh, does seven figures. I don't even run the marketing there anymore. We have a, we have an agency do that. Um, but cool business, uh, seasonal. It's like eight months outta the year. Can't really power wash here in in Minnesota in January doesn't work too well.
We had a Christmas light sets that business, uh, like five years ago. One of the better decisions we made there so that thing's kind of automated, started a data business 10 years ago. Like I'm a huge. Do we get to swear on your podcast? Yeah, sure. Great. Cause I can't help myself, so I'm a huge fucking nerd.
Um, I like data and spreadsheets and thick glasses and boring shit. And, uh, so I've had a data business for 10 years and now I was coming of the motivation behind Dope Marketing, um, CEO and founder of Dope Marketing, which does, uh, automated direct mail to the neighbors of your jobs to get you, uh, to get you more jobs from the right people.
So, home service, background, data nerd, direct mail junkie, father, husband. I like movies from the eighties. Um, I like hanging out with weirdos like Mike Stearns at trade shows. Um, yeah, I'm the most simple, complicated guy you've ever met in your life.
[00:03:16] Mike: Got it. I like the way you worked that in there. So you had touched on something that I feel like there's some digging in to be had.
Um, Acts and uncle had junkie. I feel like there's a lot unpacking there. So for those interested digging, talk
[00:03:28] David: about it, digging into be had, So my background, um, grew up, uh, I, uh, selling drugs since I was like 14. Um, didn't come from some like horrible household or anything like that, like middle class, upper middle class.
Uh, parents were married three times each. I got seven brothers and sisters. Uh, my mom and my dad had me and my little brother. So I grew up with like, older brothers and sisters and stuff like that. And, uh, I just, uh, I liked, I figured out at a young age that I really liked to do what I wanted to do all the time, regardless of the repercussion or what anyone else said.
Sure. And so I had family out from California. Uh, we were bringing, I was 17 years old, count a million dollars in a hotel room, um, scaled pretty quickly in the realm. That side of life. And, uh, right before my 21st birthday, uh, I got, I got robbed for like 150,000. Uh, these dudes broken this house I was managing when I wasn't there.
Figured out who it was, kicked their door in, hit one of 'em with a pistol. One of his buddies was hiding in the closet. I got stabbed four times, dropped my gun, got hit with it. That doesn't feel that great. I did figure out that night that I was knife proof. So that was, that was a nice, nice thing to uh, to accomplish silver lining.
Um, yeah, right. Gotta, gotta, gotta get together. So, um, I woke up in the hospital. I'll never forget this detective Barbara, Moe, I saw her on first 48. Um, she's standing on over my bed with a line with me circled with signatures next to it. It's like, You've been in some trouble in your life, but never anything like this and you look like a monster.
So you can tell us who was in this house with you. Cuz the guys I went in there with, uh, ended up getting stabbed. They left me in there, they ran away. I ended up having a great negotiation with the guy and his friend who, uh, I hit with a gun. They were gonna take me to the hospital. I ran off. Didn't think that was a great idea.
Passed out cause my lung was collapsed. That wasn't a great thing either. But when I woke up, the lady's like, You can talk to us or you can go to jail. And I'm like, Yeah, tough guy. Gangster Dave, take me to jail. Yeah, go in front of the judge. I'm in there for a couple months or whatever. I forgot what bail they were fucking around.
But, uh, go in front of the judge and they were like, uh, basically you can take, uh, you can tell you can take eight years and one felony, you can take four years and four felonies or you can tell us who you're with. Take a year in a day in the workhouse and uh, and your felonies will be expunged from your record.
I said, Fuck you. Give me the gimme the four years. Did that, uh, did like 38 months, ended up violating when I was in the halfway house. Went back for like nine months, and then I got out right when I was around 25. Went back to like the same type of lifestyle for a while. Um, and what do they say in like, sobriety?
Um, which I, I actually now recently, uh, I I, I just cracked like a hundred days of, uh, not drinking quance. So we'll talk about that in a little bit. But sobriety, they say getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. And I was sick and fucking tired of losing six figures off of doing what I was doing.
Sure. And so I was like, What the hell do I know how to do? And the only job I had ever had in my life, I worked like Arby's. When I was 16 for two weeks, I got a job at a gas station to have like a paycheck so I could get an apartment when I was 18. But they, they got me at, my buddy got me a job at a window cleaning company when I was in the halfway house the first time before I got sent back.
I was like, What do I know how to do? Let's start a fucking window cleaning company. And so fast forward 13 years later, that thing is still cranking, moving, running. Um, but that kind of was my, was my path getting me to here. I will never be the guy that's like. Felons are great business owners. No felons are people that can't get fucking jobs that have to go start businesses cuz no one will hire 'em for the good shit.
You can do sales, but if you wanna go like be an entrepreneur and do some shit, um, usually with a, with a record like mine, like some of you watching or some of your family members or friends or whatever mm-hmm. , um, business owners usually can come from bad decisions that you made previously. So I was kind of new that I was an entrepreneur.
Um, I always kind of had that feeling, but I'll never be the guy that's like, you sold drugs so you're good at running a business. Like, those are two very opposite, opposite things. And not only do I have lumps from making bad decisions, I have lumps from learning that shit also.
[00:07:31] Mike: Yeah. So it seems like, you know, there was a lot of negative consequence and repercussions that maybe you didn't consider when you're younger.
I mean, I know that I've made my fair share of bad choices and plenty still to come down the pipe for sure. Probably today. Yeah. Uhhuh in about 30 minutes. No. Um, but I think it's also, I think in taking the path that you have taken, I think there's a lot of good that has come out of that, you know, as like an unintended consequence as well.
A hundred percent. I would agree with that. So what do you feel, the path that you've taken, what do you feel like it's given you as far as like a unique ability or maybe not unique, just a, a less traditional sense or ability in being successful in running multiple businesses?
[00:08:18] David: I have an unfair advantage of self-awareness.
Um, getting to know myself and being able to take responsibility for the actions that I've done, the people that I've affected. That's kind of, I've, I've carried that with me. My whole, like, everyone wants to be like, you know, stand up guy, stand up, whatever it is. Right? Like, you wanna be true to yourself.
Yeah. I found out like if you can't deal with that person you look at in the mirror every morning, you can't contribute to a relationship. You can't deal with anyone else. And I always knew. For me, I always wanted to have children at a very young age cuz my parents had me. I think my little brother was born when my mom was 40, so she was 37 when she had me.
And I, I turned 37 this year and I have a nine year old, a six year old, a two year old and an eight month old. And it was always very important to me as I was going through what I was putting myself through in my life that I had children at like a younger age. Cuz I always felt like, you know, coming from a second marriage, um, not a super stable relationship household type of thing, where it was like, I felt like, uh, I wanted to be younger and not be that far in my journey of life when I had children.
And so, like for any with kids like you, you understand like being a, being a father, a mother, it, it changes you. You learn like it's one thing to have the relationship with your significant other, It's another thing to understand like there's something on this world that you love more than yourself. But you have to know yourself well enough to contribute to that relationship or other relationships in your life, be it business, personal, family, whatever.
And so I put a lot of pressure on myself to know who I am, how I am, what I bring to the table, how I affect relationships positively and negatively. And because of the journey that I put myself through in, in my life so far, it gave me kind of an unfair advantage or an uncanny ability to be very transparent, very much myself.
Um, I know there would be some people watching this that we, we've met in person, some people we haven't. But like Mike, you and I have spent some time together. I mean, like, dude, I'm, I am every bit of me, uh, with my parents, with my kids, with, with my homies at fucking church. It doesn't matter. Like I, I know myself and I'm, I'm very comfortable with, with who I am, and I have a lot of empathy and compassion for anyone on that journey of, of self-awareness.
But for me, my, uh, my cape. And my cryp tonight is that I, I know myself, I know myself pretty well, and it kind of came from the journey that I went through.
[00:10:42] Mike: Yeah, that's, that's a really good point. And I think, you know, self-awareness is so big, and I think, you know, everybody, obviously everyone has a different journey to become more self-awareness and ever growing process.
And it's not easy, right? We get overran with things on a day to day. When you're running a business, uh, you've got things personally going on and all these different dynamics in your life. It's easy to kind of lose sight of that personal awareness and accountability, but it's, it's ever important in order to consistently grow as a person.
And like you said, be able to, to tolerate who you're looking at in the mirror. Like that job, that's a real thing. Uh,
[00:11:20] David: there's no doubt about that, especially in the evolution. Like as you're growing, as you're growing as a parent, as you're growing as a friend, as you're growing as a business owner, it's like you shed these cocoons.
And if you don't know who you are, Along that journey. And this isn't some exercise for everyone. I mean it more like you gotta know your why. You gotta know what you're trying to accomplish, what you're trying to do, and growing to be that person. Cause you, you wake up tomorrow and just be like, I'm going to, to do this.
It's, it's a process. And so patience is, uh, is, there's no cape there. Patience is my kryptonite. And, uh, as I grow, you know, as a, as a business owner, as a father or husband, it's like, it's really important for me to understand, you know, my, my, my role, my job. Cause there are so many people that are dependent on me.
Yep. Is being patient and not being as reactive and let my actions and emotions, you know, as you get, as you, as you, as you get further in life, um, there are more people that are affected by the way that you're acting and operating every day. And I've had a lot of those realizations in the, in the very, very, very recent future.
or very
[00:12:24] Mike: recent. Yeah. And again, that's another thing that'll keep coming. And I think it's also noteworthy that like you have to be real with yourself. In regards to like that self-awareness, right? Not, you can't take it from a place of like, who, you know, you're, you gotta try to be objective as possible, which can be challenging as well as opposed to very, you know what I mean?
Uh, and I think that's, that's a huge opportunity and I know that that's something that I try to work on consistently because it's like who we are versus who we perceive ourselves to be. And I don't mean to get all existential, uh, right? But it's like, oh, sure. There, there's oftentimes a disconnect or a discrepancy between those two things.
And if you're not aware of that, it can make it challenging to, to set real expectations, be situationally and personally accountable and aware. Uh, so yeah man, that's great. You mentioned something which was terrifying to me when I was, when I was having my daughter. I had my daughter when I was 19 years old.
And my concern, I'm so naturally for you, you that use that don't know. I am a naturally selfish person and I've worked incredibly hard. To be mindful of that and to, to put a lot of intentional effort into being more selfless and yeah, I think I've done a good job. I think I've got a lot of room to grow.
Uh, and it's something that I will, I'm sure battle, you know, for the rest of my life forever. But I'm up to the challenge. My concern when having my daughter was exactly what you hit on. It's not being able to understand, especially for a selfish person, how you're gonna be able to love someone more than you love yourself.
Right. Like the concept of that to me, you know, you try to put yourself, if you're not a parent, I wasn't a parent at the time, I'm trying to put myself in the shoes of hearing exactly what David's talking about as a parent, what you feel. And I was like, for the life of me, I don't see it. Right. And I'm, I'm usually pretty good with understanding empathy and, and putting myself in someone else's shoes.
And I'm like, I'm like, I am absolutely terrified that there's no way I'm going to, to feel this passionate about this little human being. Right. I don't see it. It was terrified, was the most anxiety, riled situation I think I've ever found myself in. Absolutely. And then you hold your baby. Right? I can't communicate the, the amount, the degree, the, the range of emotions that kind of overcome overcame me at that time, and I'm sure are the same for a lot of other people.
Um, absolutely. It was, it was life changing man. So, uh, was, was a huge concern. Glad that I was able to not be a sociopath and actually feel that for somebody else. ,
[00:15:04] David: there's that, there's that, there's that self-awareness kicking
[00:15:06] Mike: in. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah. Good stuff. So, gimme a fun fact about David Carroll.
We've talked about a lot already, but gimme a random fun fact and not many people know.
[00:15:17] David: Um, I really like, uh, when I get to do what I want to mm-hmm. , I am chilling in the theater watching a movie with good dialogue by myself. This could be anything from like a romantic comedy from the early nineties to like Stranger Things to like my favorite movie all the time is, is Heat.
Um, but just anything with good dialogue. If you caught me, Bo you said Dave, you can do anything today. Um, you've hung out with your kids, you've done some work, you've done every, you know, whatever. You've checked all your boxes. Yeah. You can do anything you want. Right now I'd be in my theater with one rolled up, hanging out, watching a movie by myself.
[00:16:02] Mike: nice. I, I think, you know, that time away to digest things and unwind is, I think that's important as well. Uh, for.
[00:16:09] David: And that's what it is for me. It's therapy. It's like, it's, it's my disconnect. Some people can like, play a game on their cell phone or sit down and watch a, a ball game or whatever. My thing, my disconnect, um, is for sure movie.
Good, Good, good. Flick with some good dialogue.
[00:16:24] Mike: So you heard it here first. David Carroll. Favorite thing to do is to unplug and go watch a romcom. All right,
[00:16:30] David: So watch out . I got a DVD player. Send me one. I'll tag you. .
[00:16:36] Mike: What's the importance that, in your experience, let's pivot kind of into dope marketing in your past businesses.
The, the art of forming relationships, maturing those relationships. How important is that as a business owner?
[00:16:53] David: It's the most important thing. Um, when you look at your most valuable currency in the. Which is your time, your minutes, you're fourteen forty, fourteen hundred and forty minutes during the day that you have however many, you gotta sleep, you gotta eat, you gotta go to the bathroom, you gotta do whatever, whatever those of you have left outside of functioning like a human, that you get to give to others to share, to build relationships, to communicate, to solve problems, to whatever it is that you're doing.
I would say in my journey of being a business owner, as an entrepreneur, the best minutes that I've spent have been building relationships with others. Um, we, I love to go to trade shows, do public speaking, Catholic humans, touch, feels, smell, communicate, like in person. It's one thing, you know, it's one thing to say a conversation like this, right?
You can get to know people very well on the internet. I have great relationships with people online that I've never met in my life. That I'll probably know for the rest of my life. Mm-hmm. , do those relationships get expedited much faster from people you meet online to when you go to the trade show, you see 'em a couple times.
You get to go to dinner with them and they're sitting video other and hang out and actually see who someone is that exchange. So I have this saying, five seconds, five minutes, five days, five weeks, five years, doesn't matter. You give someone enough time, they are going to be themselves. It's guaranteed.
Now, there are things that expedite those relationships, Business, money, deep conversations or relationships. You can get closer with someone or expedite someone, or that exchange of showing who you truly, truly are to a person. And so when you look at building relationships, the investing of time into other people, I know for my, you know, my path of success that I'm trying to grow for, for me and my team.
investing time in relationships is one of the things that expedites that success or has expedited where we are going towards success for me and the people I'm involved in. For sure.
[00:18:56] Mike: Interesting. So you mentioned something as far as like everyone in due time, different timeline for everyone will show their true colors, right?
A hundred percent. What do you find to be the number one catalyst as far as realizing who that person is in your
[00:19:11] David: experience?
when someone's got their backs to the wall for anything. It could be anything. Like, look, people, people will like, things affect humans differently. We're predictable creatures. Yeah. And you could have someone that was verbally, physically abused as a kid. You could have someone that, uh, that grew up in a bad or a good neighborhood.
You could have someone that stubbed their fucking toe or whatever you went through and you could carry that completely fucking differently. Sure. Like, What someone went, put two humans in a room. Totally different people go through the same shit. They will tell a different story. Me and my younger brother, we grew up in the same house.
You ask us both the story of what happened and it would be two very different versions of a similar thing. Cause we're two very different people. Mm-hmm . And so when you get someone what, whatever you would define as having their back to the wall, and it could be something as big as you got in a fucking vicious argument all the way down to like a minor customer service issue where someone couldn't get ahold of you.
Watch how they operate when their back is to the wall and you're just like, well that's you. And guess what? I'm a believer. I totally believe you. When you show me who you are, I am not gonna second guess that I'm not gonna try to change you. I will take what you give me at face value and I'll determine the minutes that I'm gonna contribute in our relationship.
That's not a good or a bad cuz I don't talk to someone that's like, I'm not fucking with you. No, it's just. . I try to, in that self-awareness, be very aligned with, you know, where I'm trying to go, what I'm trying to do with relationships, with business, with all of it. And so when you look at, you know, uh, how do you know who someone is?
What's a situation where that person was put in a position to be themselves, and how much do you believe what they're showing you?
[00:21:06] Mike: Yeah, I like that. That's, that's smart. That's great insight. How, how important is the circle that you keep around? You kind of piggyback off that point, right? You want to be able to determine times are most important.
Currency. You want to be able to understand for where you are and where you want be, how much you wanna invest in somebody, right? Time wise, how important is the company that you keep around in your circle for those
[00:21:32] David: watching? So, as I get in bigger rooms, you know, masterminds stuff, I'm getting around just in, in kind of my journey.
What I've found is success is a world of cliches. So these things that you've heard your entire life, more money, more problems, watch who you surround yourself with, keep your circle tight. You know, the fucking boring part. It's all true. Every bit of it. Mm-hmm. . So as you know, we all have our journey and maybe you had a kid at a younger age at 19, or maybe you were doing drugs or maybe you were went to college and got a career and realized you wanted more free time.
So you started a business, whatever your, in all those , whatever your journey is. Um, You love me too. Well, yeah, my friend. Um, whatever your journey is, it's like you, you find that the people, you are the people you surround yourself. I'll say a hundred cliches right now. You are who you surround yourself with.
You're the lowest common denominator of the five people that you talk to every day. Mm-hmm. . Um, I have found, with just sharing my personal journey, I've met people over the past year or two that I will know for the rest of my life and be closer with than people that I knew for 20, 30, 37 years, whatever.
But everyone has that story. That's not unique for me. Sure. I find that the more successful people that I get around, let's just say success is defined as fun coupons. My a hundred millionaire buddies are this billionaire dude that I know. They just don't talk to a lot of people. It's not cuz they're like antisocial or introverts or whatever.
A lot of 'em are, but it's more like, how much time do you have? Like, dude, I, I fucking work all day, like, and I enjoy what I'm doing, like a lot. So I'm up, I try to exercise, I try to meditate, I try to do my, my affirmations. Just get my shit together before I get outta the house. Sure. I spend some time with the kids before I go, before I gotta give them to the world.
I go give myself to the world from 8:00 AM to five 6:00 PM. Six days a week, five days a week, um, come back, hang out with my kids. There's not that many, that much time for that many other people. Now, when I go out of town or when I'm doing some shit, or like, I hit my buddy today who owns a roofing company.
When my bu my buddy Aaron here in town, there's a Chappelle, I don't know when this is gonna go live, but it's July 21st. Dave Chappelle did a popup in Minneapolis. We got tickets. I pull it up online. I see there's four tickets. I hit my buddy like, Hey, we haven't seen each other in forever. You just bought a new house.
Do you wanna come to this thing? Um, I have my people, but like, I don't, I haven't seen Aaron in six months. You know, like, it's not like we talk every day or some shit, but I got a short list of local people that I would do some shit with. I got a list of people that I try to be intentional about when I'm at trade shows or going out of town if whether we connect or I just go to their booth or we try to sneak in a dinner or just a non-business thing.
Sure. Um, I try to do that. But it's also like, you know, the busier you getting, especially when you have a family and shit, it's hard, It's hard to spend. So I'm not directly answering the question. I understand, but my circles as small as everyone else's. I don't know. For those of you that own a business and have kids, like, can't imagine you're going to the bar every night or hanging out at the club or going, you know what I mean?
Like, so for me, travel as much as I was traveling, been in town for like four months now, it's been amazing. Yeah. But like I, as much as I was traveling, that was my kind of release to be social with people and that's where I established some amazing relationships. Um, but I'm, I'm by no means out looking to grow my circle now.
I try to put myself, if anything, I try to put myself in the right rooms now. And for me right now, it's masterminds. It's getting around people that have just accomplished things that I'm trying to accomplish in my life. And develop relationships with those people. And I've been so fortunate to get in some of these, these bigger groups of this stuff and connect with some of the leaders of these things and just develop relationships with people that if you had asked me a year or two ago if I would be communicating with some of the people I am now, like, no, it's humbling as fuck.
But it's also just intentional. Like, like anyone could do any level of communication with anyone. So I can't say I'm seek keeping my circle tight because I'm open to it growing Sure. But I'm also being conscious of the rooms that I'm spending time in for sure.
[00:25:55] Mike: Sure. That awareness. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So for those that, you know, maybe they've got a circle where, you know, there's people from their past that they're keeping in that circle and maybe they're, you know, hampering or hamstringing their ability, you know, to, to devote time elsewhere, to, to make a more meaningful impact in their personal life or in their business.
Have, has that been your experience? And if so, how have you dealt with it?
[00:26:24] David: I wouldn't say that. I'd say because I value my time so much. It's not like I'm selective who I give it to, or I talk to this person or I don't, or whatever. It's more like for me, it goes back to what you were, I'm gonna keep this answer really short. It goes back more to what you were asking about, like, you know, who do you spend your time with or, or how do you, how do you qualify?
You know, the people that you're engaging with or how do you, how do you look at who you would give your time to or not? My job right now is being like the best dad that I can be. I look at my kids every day and I'm just like, You're never gonna be this old again. Any moment that I'm on my phone fucking around, look, watching a movie, just like, Oh, I had a long day, and I just want to go upstairs and just chill by myself.
It's like, I'll hear the kids laughing downstairs. I'm like, I'm missing that moment. I'm never gonna see that again. And I'm hard on my, I'm not a big guy on regrets. I'm a big guy on lessons and learning from experience. I fear right now regretting not paying more attention right now. And I remind myself of that constantly.
So I, I very, when I look at my kids, I have them for an hour or two in the morning before I go to work, depending on what time I'm up, what time they're up. And that, that time is important to me. Now, do I catch a fire? Do I try to work out? Maybe. But I really try to be intentional by that time with my kids summer vacation, they're at home now with the nanny, but when they go to school, I'm giving 'em to the world As they grow up, they get to go do their thing for eight to 10 hours.
And what I give them at home is their foundation around what they do in that time. Then they come bring all that shit that I can't control back home. And I get to tell them how to process that I get to, to be their parent. And we talk about what they're going through, what they're thinking, how they're feeling, like that emotional intelligence.
And so I get that time when I get back. . Those are where my fucking minutes are being spent right now. I have meetings during the day. I have stuff that I enjoy doing that I have people that I like communicating with, getting on stuff like this. I love doing this stuff. Yeah. But, but I also, um, if I look right now at like, where I'm spending my minutes, where my relationships, all of it, my, because I have my kids like, like I said, nine, six, just turned two.
And, uh, Nova was born uh, in November of last year. They are my only focus right now outta anything. It's just being them to have like dad around. Cause I didn't have that like in, in my life. Um, so it's just important to me. We learn from our parents, right? It's like, as you're a parent, it's like, what's the stuff that I thought was fucked up that I'm, Now, I'm not gonna do that.
But then our kids will have the same fucking story. Like there's parenting thing. I know they write books on it, but you're, I promise you, you're not gonna get this shit totally fucking right. It's not possible. So my thing is just if I can be intentional about any, that's my big word. Like lately, it's just being very intentional.
And if I'm intentional about anything right now, it's like being a dad. That's,
[00:29:08] Mike: that's like my shit. That's amazing, dude. Yeah. And we do learn from our parents and we learn what not to do. And it's interesting cuz like sometimes there's also like overcorrections, like, you know, if my dad was really strict, I'm gonna let my kids do whatever, if my kid, whatever if, or if my parents let my sibling do whatever, and you know, when they turn out this way, well I want to hedge against that and I'm gonna be super strict.
And it's like, I think moderation in this situation and in life is important when like, you're, you're trying to, to be, to, to get a desired outcome. Right. I'm the worst with moderation. I'll tell you right now, I really am. You and me both brother, you and me both. It's an ever elusive concept to me and something that, it's another one of those things that I'll be working on every day of my life.
And the gains are never as substantial as I'd like them to be. Uh, but as long as you can move that needle right. Be aware and find like, it's like when I go golfing, right? I don't, I suck at golf. I, I've mentioned this on a show before. I'm terrible at golf, but if I hit that one shot, right, if I'm 70 yards out, I finally hit my, my 60 degree Weller.
I get that one drive, or I hit that 40 foot put, That's good for me. That's that one small win that moves that needle to say, You know what, I'll play golf again. Appreciate
[00:30:18] David: that. Yeah, no doubt. . I still have this one round of golf in my head that I played and I was like, I always knew I was pretty good. It's never happened again.
But this one time where I did this like charity golf tournament thing with my stepmom and like, I wore shorts on the golf course. I had to, I like bought a pullover. Cause I just, I look like a looked apart. I love dressing like a drug dealer. It's my favorite thing in the world. And I, I, uh, I go on the golf course and I'm, I'm with a couple other guys and I fucking just, I killed it.
I killed, I just, the best round of golf I've ever played in my life, this guy's like, Whoa, wow, you're pretty. And then like, but towards the end, it, like, I started sucking and they're like, I was like, Oh, I'm distracted. You know? I forgot what the next story. But in my head I have that memory of that round of golf.
Like I knew I could do it. I'm great. And I got like, we went into top golf with the team last month and I was just like totally Just the worst wheels
[00:31:09] Mike: Completely off. Yeah.
[00:31:11] David: Yeah. It's just, I had the one time, Right. It's progress now. So I get that one drive combined with that. I was like, I knew I was green.
[00:31:16] Mike: There you go. So David, you, you and dope marketing as a team, you've made a huge impact for a lot of people that I've worked with in the past. People that I haven't worked with, that I just know in the industry and have talked to. So tell us more about dope marketing. What is the methodology? How does it work?
How does it impact people's business?
[00:31:35] David: So we talked about this earlier in the interview, like humans or relative creatures. Mm-hmm. . And the idea is in your business, as life goes on, as the world turns, it's like you gotta keep up with best practices. That's one of your jobs. Or if you hire someone to do that, but no matter what happens, like one thing is co.
Things are gonna fucking change. Now, history repeats itself. So you can look at things you're doing well, and you can look at like what makes people do things. The buyer psychology, the human journey. So let's have a conversation quick. It'll go into what, what would dope, but a little lessen here. So Mike and Dave are 18 years old and uh, they finish high school.
They're gonna go to college, maybe, what are the whatever? And they get a house together and they're in an apartment, or they're down by a university, a college in a neighborhood where like there's probably parties at night. There's probably a lot of renters. There's probably a lot of people that don't own vehicles and are commuting.
You know, similar lifestyles in that neighborhood. Now, fast forward Dave and Mike split. Mike goes and gets married. Dave goes on his career path. Mike meets his sweetheart, gets her pregnant, and they go get a little starter home, like a little rambler or whatever. Maybe some people in the neighborhood own.
Some people rent. Most people are probably working on their own homes, like washing their car, mowing their lawn, doing that type of shit. Same size home, same lifestyle. Um, fast forward now. Dave has got to the next level of life. Dave got a good job. He's making fucking 120 K a year. The neighborhood Dave lives in, people own their home.
There's probably not any renters. Maybe they're single, maybe they're married, maybe they got a girl, maybe someone's got a bump, like having a kid making some dough. Same. The houses were built in the same year, same, uh, Mercedes in the driveway, or maybe like a new Tahoe, you know, younger or whatever. Couple blocks away.
Sally and Sally and uh, Eric, they live in a neighborhood where it's like you're established. Your kids are a little bit grown. All homeowners people are paying to get things done at their home. So like 90% of Americans, the biggest investment they'll ever make is in their home. Second, third, and fourth is like improvements, upkeep, or maintenance to that property.
So now you have these people, they've made some dough, they've collected some money, they've made some investments. They're 40, 50 years old. . They're getting shit done at their house. They're remodeling, they're building. They've been there for a while. Someone new moved in and is doing some shit. Yep. Not as many people like mowing their own grass or washing their own car in the driveway or whatever.
But the relativity in the neighborhoods, you see that, that life cycle, right from David and Mike to where they split, to Mike and his girl, to David, his path to Sally and Eric in that neighborhood. The same shit is happening. So we saw dope Marketing was like there's, there's marketing, and in marketing there's values of a touch.
So Harvard Business School did a study. It takes seven to 11 touches for a consumer that hasn't heard of some shit to remember a brand. And those touches have a value. So if I ask Mike, like, What's the last Facebook ad you saw? What's the billboard you drive by every day on your drive to the office.
You'd be like, Dave, I don't know. I'm over inundated. I see so many every day. I have no fucking clue. But then if it's like Mike, if your neighbor just got something done at their house and you saw the truck, there's yard sign in the thing, you saw the guys doing the work. They have a billboard, they're on the radio.
Like everyone's got that company in town. Real estate for us in the Twin Cities, it's Chris Lindel Roofing. There's some huge companies, but like this company, Cell Roofing did radio, tv, blitz, every, So spent all the money to make sure you knew who they were. There's, there's ways to look at the middle ground of that.
Cause not everyone's got 10 million to be doing billboards and TV and radio and flyers and smoke signals and all this shit. But the data in your business will tell a story. So what dope marketing does is we find the dope in your business, the data on previous engagement. We look at the work you did. We look at the customers you're servicing, we have this breakdown where you give us your customer list.
We break down the top three zip codes where you've done work, and then we say, That's where we need to focus the money. Let's look at that. But we focused on the neighbors of a job instead of like direct mail. That's what we do. We automate direct mail. But direct mail previously was like spray and pray meaning, right?
Send 10, 20,000 postcards all over town cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. You spray it everywhere. You pray to God, baby Jesus, the great pumpkin, your higher power, whatever it is, that enough leads come back in for all that fucking money you spent, you nine outta 10 times. That didn't work out well.
And you're like, I've sent direct mail. It doesn't work. Like, bro, I get it. I'm, It's not what we're talking about. We use direct mail in that neighborhood analogy with data. So we say average job has a life cycle or a customer, they request an estimate or a lead comes. An estimate is given. An estimate is approved.
Mm-hmm. , The work is scheduled. The work is started. The work is completed. The work is paid for pretty relative transaction. Sure. Yep. We identify the steps in that transaction and make sure the neighbors of that job get postcards to know, We just got your neighbor approved for a roof. Be on the lookout.
We're gonna be in the neighborhood. Pardon the dust. Pardon the noise. We're working in the area. Look at this job we just finished. Thank you. Dave's Roofing lives off reviews and testimonials. Scan this QR code and tell the world how great we are. Or if you had a bad experience, ran over an nail in your driveway.
We looked at your cat wrong. Your daughter didn't like the cut of our gym. Call me first and let me deal with this before you leave that one star review online. So what we've done is taken direct mail, looked at a different approach, looked at data, looked at buyer psychology, human interactions, and basically just made a path of like, what are you doing Well?
How do we focus on that and get more people, just like the people you're doing something for, to know about what you're doing. So instead of like trying to get new things to work, the psychology is taking data to have an understanding that people are predictable creatures and direct mail, it's a valuable touch.
You put something in someone's hand, it's a little bit more important than showing 'em a Facebook ad, but they work together. You wanna be found on Google, you want to have a good looking truck crap. You wanna have people at people's houses that don't look like they're gonna rob them or hit 'em with a gun and get stabbed in their house or whatever, assholes.
Do you wanna be able to give an image, get the valuable touches, and direct mail is a part of that. It's one of the hardest parts. And so what we did at Dope Marketing is we make that really easy.
[00:38:04] Mike: That's awesome. So you know it's taking something that's typically perceived negatively as like a traditional waste of money.
It's archaic, right? It's not as sexy as Google, but then you're implementing through data driven means. A methodical way to bring down what you have to spend to get in front of that ideal person. Right? And I mean, that's all you want when you're marketing or advertising. You want to put your brand in front of the
[00:38:30] David: right people.
There's two sides to it. The bad side is, what I'm bad at is it takes time. It's like, okay, I'm gonna try this for a month and see if it works. Like again, I know how much business owners love being told this, but like if there was some shit that worked in a month, wouldn't everyone do it and own a business?
And it would just be like that. That's, that's the problem we have. This takes for our strategy. We have some short wins. We get stuff done right away, but it takes a couple months to get this going, to look at the data, to see what's going on and responsiveness and all that stuff. And we understand that like business owners have a hundred problems during the day.
We just solve four of 'em perfectly. Data design, direct mail automation, like that's what we really focus on. Um, and like every other business, like we're growing, we're learning, we're figuring stuff out. But I feel like we're taking a very logical approach to. How to grow a business at a scalable rate that's in budget.
That makes sense. That compliments other things. Like Mike, what you do, You know, like we work together with clients. Yeah. Using our joint services. And I think that's really important is like people understand that as an entrepreneur you have five fingers on your hand for a reason. Four things that you're trying, one thing that's working the worst, that's disposable.
That could easily become one of these other things. You gotta, you gotta trust yourself and be like trying shit. And so, uh, we really pride ourselves on trying to bolt onto what a business is doing well and continuing to try to make that stuff better. So
[00:39:54] Mike: you had talked about the life cycle, right? And you guys automate, so for those watching, like how do you determine when things are sent?
How important is the timing of that?
[00:40:06] David: So there's stuff you can control. There's stuff you can't control. So like, I can't tell you that a postcard's gonna get to someone's house on Wednesday for sure. I can tell you that we print and mail every 24 hours. . There's not like a good day of the week for one postcard to drop.
We get asked that a lot, Dave. I right. I wanna be really strategic with what I'm doing and we're gonna do this. What day should I drop? No, it's, how many times in a row should you drop something to get someone to trust you? We did this, there's this amazing case study, we'll talk about it in a second with that eight by eight stuff we were discussing, Mike.
Mm-hmm. . But like, like the idea is you can be very targeted, but the thing is being consistent. So instead of like spraying something everywhere and doing two or three touches to a customer, it's much more important to get a smaller area and make sure your Facebook ads, your door knocking, where you're spending time doing an estimates, your direct mail, your Google focus stuff like everything you're doing is focused in smaller pockets.
Cuz then you can scale. People are born every day. People live in their house for an average of five to eight years. 10 to 30,000 people buy a home every day in the United States. Motherfuckers are moving around. Yeah, so the idea is if you know the neighborhoods of what type of houses you're working on, the square footage of 'em, the type of people that live there, what the materials like.
People ask me a lot about targeting Dave. Who do I get in front of? Like I just started my business, or I'm trying to get into this new area. Who should I target on a list? I have this avatar and they're 34 to to 37 years old, and they have spiky hair and they have one and a half children, and they drive this color car and their grass is this length.
It's like I'm a data guy and I love everything you're saying, but calm the fuck down. The only thing that matters is the value of their home and where it's located. People live relative lifestyles based on the things they can afford. Are there anomalies? Is there one or two people in a neighborhood that has a million dollar home that is cheap as fuck?
Absolutely. But the data will tell you. that if you read, uh, Dan Kennedy's Guide Marketing to the Affluent, No Bullshit Guy or No BS Guide Marketing to the affluent, what Dan will explain is recessions down economies, like any of that shit, it doesn't affect 3% of the country. What if, and I'm not saying anyone should do this, but what if you understood that the messaging to those 3% of people, you could run a business off that?
Now, the great part, businesses are scalable. So there's other 97% of people, like there's 90 million homeowners in the United States, 90 million people. So if you're watching this or listening and you own a home service business, the idea is like your audience is pretty fucking big. Now, it depends on the area of where you live.
Dallas or Minneapolis or Miami is a little bit different than like Meina Arkansas or Knoxville, Iowa. It's a little bit different. But what is the same is the value of the home of the people that live in specific neighborhood. Seven or eight out of them. If you put 10 people in a room that live in a neighborhood and ask them to make a buying decision, seven out of 10 of them are gonna make roughly the same buying decision based on what they can financially afford and what makes sense for their lifestyle.
So when you understand that logic, and it's like, who do I target? What do you sell? What do you do? What is the pain that you solve? And how much does the person's house cost that you can do that for? It's the best start in the fucking world if you need to target someone or get in front of a homeowner specifically.
[00:43:45] Mike: Yeah, that's good stuff. And you know, I think I'm gonna emphasize a point that you made as far as keeping your, your messaging in tight knit pockets where it makes the most sense. That's really, really, really important. And I think it's, you know, maybe it's an ego thing or maybe it's just something that like some of us don't know when we start a business.
Is, you know, we can have aspirations to service a huge demographic marketing area, a metropolitan area, and all these suburbs and every, every hamlet or village or town in between, right? And that's great. But you, like you said, not everybody has a limitless advertising budget. So we have to be efficient.
And the more that we spread, if we have a budget of X amount of dollars, and let's just say for round numbers it's $5,000 a month, the wider we're targeting, the more it dilutes our message, the less times that the people within our target area are going to see it. So we could deploy, uh, a marketing campaign.
It could be direct mail, it could be Google Ads, Facebook, and you could hit three pockets of people and they can see your message 10 times, or you could target 20 places and maybe only 30% of that entire population sees your message that fits into your target market. So, very, very important guys. Keep in mind, How diluted your messaging becomes if you are scaling your areas that you're marketing in and not scaling your budget in a proportionate way.
Very good point, David. So let's talk about attribution. Everybody wants attribution. There needs to be a clear line of what I'm spending, what I'm getting. That can be very tough, especially when you're doing branding efforts and things of the sort. They don't fit into a spreadsheet. Right? So how have you dealt with that?
With dope marketing?
[00:45:30] David: There's things you can track, there's things you can't. Mm-hmm. , we can track the day that we print, mail where it's at in the process and when it gets to a house. So we track that. Mm-hmm. , um, mail production date, mail delivery day. We track, uh, I love call tracking, call or text. Um, when I go to tracking attribution, I think about it like humans.
Humans like to digest content in different ways. Mike, like Mike likes to read the book. Dave likes to listen to the book. Eric likes to watch the video. Someone else likes the braille, Someone else likes when it's transcribed in whatever the fuck. You gotta give everyone the option to be trackable. So you would like ideally to have a call tracking number that can be called or texted.
We all got familiar with QR codes. I'm not gonna go on that tangent, but a QR code can do a lot of shit. It can take you to a page, it can show you a video, it can initiate a text message conversation. It can guide someone, it can tell them to do basically fucking everything. And everyone from my nine year old daughter to my 75 year old mother knows what to do with that QR code.
See it? You're gonna scan it and then if you're interested, you're gonna do what it asks you to do. A lot of tracking can come from QR codes, and because we're a print company, we can put QR codes on a lot of shit. Mm-hmm. . Um, I like, one thing that we do that's very important is we, we look at CRM data. So your crm, whatever you're using, if you're in the roofing space, you know the, the cast of characters, aing, Roof Link, Job nibu, what Job Progress?
There's a bunch of them, but HubSpot, High level Sales Force, you know, whatever House Call Pro, there's a lot of them. What we do at Dope Marketing is you're gonna have a list of leads that come into your business every month. You better be tracking those leads. Verse jobs. It's very important that if you are giving someone a dollar to spend on marketing, that you're not just tracking your closed jobs, cuz God forbid your close rate could be improved or you only close half of your job, Whatever the case is, we're not gonna go on that tangent, but track your leads and your jobs separately.
What we do at Dope Marketing, you mailed in January. You have a list of leads that came into your business in January, in February, we're gonna ask you for those list of leads. We have a list of people of addresses we sent direct mail to. So regardless as if they called scanned, texted, smoke signaled, whatever they did to tell you that they got hold of you, we can take the list of your leads, we can bounce it against the list of people we sent mail to last month and say, This is how many people responded to your marketing that got a postcard.
And we give some value to that. That holds some weight
[00:48:16] Mike: for us. Yeah, that's interesting. So that's it. It's, it's just an innovative approach, right? To, to take something that's traditionally not quantifiable and to be able to help people understand what they're getting on, what they're investing, their roi, which is always important when running a.
I'm a fan of a comeback story, The underdog. And I don't know of a better comeback story than the QR code. Man, this thing was dead in the water. Right. .
[00:48:43] David: Unreal. Did Unreal. I remember seeing him on vending machines. Yeah. 10 years ago. Yep. I was
[00:48:49] Mike: watching Shark Tanks a while back and Mark Cuban, the guy had a, it was a QR centric, QR code centric concept.
And he is like, there, he's like, I will not put a dollar into QR codes. Right. Push notifications are everything it there? It's already antiquated. The technology. And like who would've thought something, you know, I think was Covid that really brought that back, that
[00:49:10] David: non, it was a hundred percent C Don't touch me, scan me, whatever.
Not a lot of good things came outta covid, but QR codes were one of 'em. Hmm. So, and, and one or two of my, one or two of my kids,
[00:49:27] Mike: Uh, well played. So do you work with just roofers? .
[00:49:33] David: No. If you have a business, a tax id, a crm, and a pulse, we need to talk. We got some cool shit we can do for
[00:49:45] Mike: you. So what's the best way for people to reach
[00:49:47] David: out to you? So if you type into Facebook dope marketing.
[00:49:52] Mike: I'm just kidding. I'm not letting you off the hook.
Yeah, we're not done, .
[00:49:55] David: Come on. Right.
[00:49:58] Mike: We were talking about this eight by eight concept and as a guy, I too, I don't have the thick glasses. I've been blessed with great vision. Um, and I hope that that stays true, uh, in perpetuity. Until then, I love data. I'm a spreadsheet guy. Anyone that knows me knows that I'll geek out on data and case studies and even anecdotal stuff as well.
Right. So you had brought this concept to me, showed me a video, and I was super, my interest was peaked to say the least. So let's talk about that.
[00:50:30] David: So I'm not a big TikTok guy. I try as I, as I'm getting older to do all these different social media things and TikTok just hasn't got me yet. But we hired a digital marketing manager that's gonna help us with TikTok.
I bring up TikTok because people started sending me this thing on TikTok about six weeks ago. And if one thing about being successful or trying to be successful, cause I'm not successful, but I'm trying still like an artist cuz success leaves clues. So someone sends me this video and I'm like, I'm running with this shit.
This makes sense. This works. It applies to what we do. In the video that I was sent, that I showed to Mike, go something like this California, this real estate company, they go to this neighborhood and they had an idea. They're like, We're trying to figure out who the number one real estate agent is in this neighborhood.
We have an idea of how to do it. We're gonna go knock on 200 doors. They knock on 200 doors, They get a hold of Mike, they get a hold of Dave, they get a hold of Eric. I go, Mike, who's the number one real estate agent in your neighborhood? And Mike goes, Dude, I know that it's my niece. Dave goes, It's the guy that sold my house.
Eric goes, It's that clown on the billboard. And radio all over. No consistent answers between the 200 people. Not one consistent answer. Maybe one or two, but not a lot. Sure. So they go, Okay, let's run a test. They make up a fake company, stock image, sun title, real estate, branding, the whole thing, and it's fake.
They've never sold a house. And they do what's called an eight by eight campaign. They pick 200 people. They sent one postcard a week to these 200 people. Week one, week two, week three, over eight weeks, one postcard a week about that company, who they are, how great they are, what they're doing in the neighborhood, all this stuff.
Mike, you're a smart guy. After eight weeks, they go back, they knock on the 200 doors. What did 65% of homeowners say the number one real estate agent was in that neighborhood?
[00:52:19] Mike: My guess would be that's the company that didn't.
[00:52:23] David: You know that, that that emoji with the mind being blown . And that was my age when I saw that this was happening, it was, it was wild to me.
Like, shit, I know a guy that owns a direct mail automated business with no minimum order. I think we could do something with this. That's amazing. So we've taken this and applied this to our strategy of what we're doing, setting up automations, doing the eight by eight campaigns, and we do a version of an eight by eight.
We take your last 10 previous jobs, pull the 25 people around each job, and we send them a postcard once a week for four weeks to kind of see what's gonna happen with your automations. When you set up your pre-job, your post job, your thank you. You know, that whole workflow thing we talked about. So this eight by eight and this reactivation campaign, it just came from something that I saw from digesting content and from surrounding myself with the right people that send me shit that pertains to me in my life.
Mm-hmm. . Um, this made a lot of sense to me. So I shared it with
some
[00:53:12] David: people I take serious and I was like, Hey guys, you know, I get a little excited easily about things. Does this make sense to you? Yeah. The way I'm looking at this and you're like, Yeah, Dave, it does. So. It's what we're doing at adult marketing.
It's a really
[00:53:23] Mike: creative, it's a really creative way to prove a point that they, the way that they positioned it, right? You're
[00:53:29] David: just look at it like this. So let's just say it was what? Buck a postcard and you were gonna do. So the way the math backs out, it's like 200 people for eight weeks is 1600 bucks.
You take 200 people that are not in your crm. Like you can't say they've never heard of you if you've done marketing. Sure. But let's say you took your previous jobs that you did over the past three months, last year, whatever, you had a cluster of jobs and you put 'em on a map on Google Maps and it dropped all these pins and you could see where the jobs were.
And you went into an area and you knew a dude that had a map tool where you could draw shape on a map. I know this guy. So we go and we draw shape on the. And then we eliminate the addresses of the pins. So we have a fresh 200 people. Like the, the pins showed us where to grab the area, right? We did work there.
We did jobs there. We went to high school there. We park a truck there. We, we have a good neighborhood, whatever it is. We see the data that we're doing jobs in this area. We grab a list of people. We remove the people from the list that we've done work for. They have 200 people. They might have seen you.
They might know about you, but they're not in your database. They've never requested a lead. They've never done anything. We can show that. Would you pay $1,600 to know over eight weeks? How many of those people would engage with your business after getting one postcard a week for eight weeks in a cycle of, Look at this job we just did in your neighborhood.
Dave's Roofing is the best company in town. Here's a review. We got meet the owner and my team. Here's a picture of me and my kids. Here's a job we did. There's a cute postcard snuck in. Are we getting your attention yet? Another one that highlights an offer. We have templates of a series of these eight by eight things where it's like for 1600 bucks, would you want to know how many people out of 200 this worked for in an area where you're already doing work?
Would be question one for me, It's not, right. Yes, I would pay that. I would do that. That would make sense to set that up. Great. Now, what if you could take and scale that anywhere in any town in your business, once you had the data, you said, I could pay 1600 bucks. 13 people hit me up from this and we closed seven deals.
Does it sound like relative math that you could reapply then in your business to go back to the well meaning that humans are relative creatures, they're predictable, they live in the same areas, and maybe you got a couple areas around town you want to test or try this with it like it made so much sense to us from a trial budget perspective, whatever.
So this is our focus. This is what we're setting up for people to show and prove based on this messaging, what can we tweak? What dials can we do? It's not like you run one eight by eight and you're like solve the world problems, but it's like run one. See what happens. Then run two at a time in different areas in your market and just see what happens and keep kind of proving this out.
What cards are they responding to? What questions are they asking? Continuing to improve that process. What if you did that for a year? Like you were, you were getting more jobs from the neighbors of your jobs with automations, but then you were trying out new areas with an eight by eight, Traditionally complimented by a digital strategy.
It's like, I don't know, dude, I've been doing this shit for 13 years running businesses. This makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. And then I put myself into shoes of like a door knocker, and I think of a question I'm like, . What if one company was doing this in an area already, like they had this established and they were doing a postcard a week or two postcards a week or something with a salesperson, like actually on the card, the faves face, and they were warming up a neighborhood like this for their reps or whatever.
Just a team, a neighborhood. The owner, the neighborhood wanted to know the owner of some shit. Yeah. What if you had a neighborhood, you were working and you were doing this, Would you wanna be that company or the company competing against that company? If you had the decision, one company was doing what we were talking about and one wasn't, which one do you wanna be?
[00:57:14] Mike: Probably be the one that's doing it. Okay. Yeah,
[00:57:18] David: that makes sense
[00:57:19] Mike: to me too. Mm-hmm. . So it's well positioned, ,
[00:57:24] David: we don't get it all right over here, but we have our moments. Well, I think
[00:57:27] Mike: that's important, like not only with the strategy, just in general, right? Take things that are good, test other ways to make them better.
And guess what guys? You're gonna fail on some of them, some tests. Five fingers. Yeah, exactly. Like some of your tests are gonna be, you know, you're gonna have a really strong feeling that something's good. I challenge you to always test those, right? It's just like when you're starting a business, you, you, you do market research, right?
Because I could have a really good idea that turns out to be complete shit because 99 out of a hundred people thinks it's shit. So it's not a viable business. So you're doing market research in a different way. So figure out what works and then keep testing ways, track them, what's working, what's not.
Like David said, questions that are being asked, like, those are ways in, in indicators of ways that you can make your deliverables, your marketing, your processes, anything better by being aware. Gotta be aware.
[00:58:19] David: I think that's important.
[00:58:21] Mike: Yeah, me too. So I think when you're, when you're communicating with people, especially like a piece of mail, like a mailer or door hang, I think you wanna make your, your branding, you wanna make it clear, concise, and you wanna make it consistent.
Right? Those, that's usually, those are the tenants that I operate off of. And how do you connect, right? You would introduce something not to, well, a while back actually now, like your handwritten mail. Let's talk about that. I got, so I went out and I bought flowers for Lacey, for those of you that don't know, Lacey's my wife to be, shout out to Lacey.
I love you. Um, so I bought her flowers and I was trying to, you know, be the guy that got her flowers just cuz it was Wednesday, right? I saw it in a movie. It seemed like a great idea. I'm gonna do that. And it was from Michel's Florist. They sent me a handwritten postcard a week later and I was like, I will never spend a dollar with another florist simply because the emotion that took place as a result of me receiving some.
Now there's a really good chance that they have a marketing company that's doing handwritten mail for them, right? They might, It would be very hard. I wrote 30 handwritten po um, Christmas cards last year, and that sucked. And probably 18 of them were not legible. So my guess would be that they, they're doing this at scale and I'm somebody who's acutely aware of how marketing works, what's available, the fact that this happens.
And even myself in that moment, I wasn't in tune with the fact that, that was probably happening, was after me reflecting like, Oh, that's probably what happened. But I still appreciate the effort. Right. So talk to me about your handwritten mail.
[01:00:08] David: So we've been doing handwritten direct mail for a couple years and I've just learned a lot about the process.
I bought the machines. We brought, we done a bunch of shit. So fast forward hair lines. I quit smoking. I get this stupid thing that doesn't taste good before I can like pretend that I didn't quit, but. Basically, I've learned a lot through the pain and the journey of getting handwritten direct mail together.
We are very proud that now starting this month, we have handwritten direct mail, fully automated with variable data. Meaning you can go to Mike, Dave, say their name on it, all the stuff on the inside of the card with no minimum order baked into our offering now. So when you go to these eight by eights or something like that, four by four, whatever, something as simple as just like marking a job complete and a handwritten note going out from the owner, we can do that.
Now today. We can also incorporate that into a campaign where like you're warming up a neighborhood or like our neighborhood blitz feature where you draw a map and you wanna send handwritten notes saying, Hey, I saw this, or blah, blah, blah. Maybe you got a list of roofs that you drove by that you wanna upload.
You got the list, you got the addresses, um, and you wanna send those people something We can help with that. Handwritten, no minimum order. And again, I could go, I don't wanna make this into some sales pitch on this. Sure. But like, I am so excited about it because it's been a fucking journey and we got it dialed in and it's fucking beautiful.
And actually again, again, I don't know where, when this comes out, but July 21st, we're releasing it like tomorrow. Secretly basically have to ask us for it. Um, but yeah, something we're really, really excited about because it's so powerful. Two years ago we did a test. I sent out a hundred checks randomly to affluent homeowners cuz like people that are busy, they were less likely to do things.
Can we agree to that? Like, I didn't do a free giveaway, like, do this and you'll get something. But I put a hundred envelopes in the mail, something like this, handwritten, you know, all whatever. Um, with a $10 check inside. And I put a note in there and said, If you open this, just cash this. Check your next cup of coffee's on me.
Guess how many people out of a hundred cash the check? How many? 99. Really? So that means we got a 99% open rate on our mail. So handwritten drug mail, it's a 99% open rate. We proof. It. So now it's, we proved it. cost me money. I literally approved it. I show you a fucking receipt, show you 99 receipts of $10.
Um, it works and it's part of the process with those touches. How valuable is a touch of a postcard versus a piece of handwritten direct mail with the sender, the receiver address and the postcard all written in blue pen? I don't know. Seems pretty powerful to me. So we, again, we don't have it all right over here, but we figured that shit out for real.
I like it.
[01:02:47] Mike: It hits me very excited. I like it. I like it. So for those that are doing direct mail now that are considering handwritten mail, when would you say is the best time to seize the opportunity to deliver a piece of handwritten mail to them? Is it the first touch? Is it after the job? Is it somewhere in between?
Is it all of them? What does that look like to you?
[01:03:07] David: I think it should be in a, in a calculated sequence of what the touches are. You could have handwritten, direct mail work really well for you just doing. Like a thank you, A follow. Maybe you only do commercial work and you want to send a couple of these a month or whatever.
That's very powerful. Still the thank you, the referral, the follow up, the bonus. Um, but doing very intimate strategic touches, that's the focus. I mean, when you look at the value of these touches, like is there a perfect strategy for everyone? No. But the workflow in your business, when you show that to someone that understands marketing, will be able to kind of identify where you put that, put that touch.
That's
[01:03:46] Mike: a good answer. What else you got for us before you head out?
[01:03:51] David: I'm just happy to be here, man. Yeah, we're happy. It was a great talk. I know we went kind of deep of whatever, business, life, all that shit. These are, these are the fun ones for me, man. I'm just excited to, uh, I'm excited to connect with people, man.
We got, I won't say we got a ton of shows coming up, but we're doing a lot of cool stuff where, uh, I'm just excited to connect with businesses.
[01:04:10] Mike: Nice. So I'm not, I'm not pulling your chain this time. How do people go about reaching you if they wanted to, to have that conversation,
[01:04:16] David: this jerk set me up. Um, if you type into Facebook dope marketing, you'll get this hilarious error that's like, whoa.
You might be searching something that has to do with drugs or illegal narcotics. I promise you're not. It's just us. It's dope marketing. We're there behind that. Error dope marketing.com. Shoot us a message. We got Messenger all over our website. Look us up on Google Dope, d o p e marketing. Um, we're pretty easy to find.
I'm, I'm the bald guy yelling about stuff on the internet. I
[01:04:49] Mike: promise you, once you go to that Facebook page, he will not let you forget who he iss. Probably not. Or the website or . Well, David, always a pleasure man. Thanks for coming on. Lot of value and uh, we'll,