Using Your Brand to Gain a Competitor Advantage - with John Lenker

Greg Wilkes (00:00): 

So in today’s podcast we are interviewing John Lanker. Now John is the CEO of a company that specializes in helping construction businesses grow, and one of their big focuses is on branding. So we’re really diving into what a brand is today, how you can show value to your clients and the best ways of promoting that value. We also talk about competitor analysis and how it’s really important to understand what your competitors are doing and then how to make sure your value proposition out does the competition. So have a listen to the podcast. Let’s jump in. John, great to have you on the show. Welcome. Thank 

John Lanker (00:35): 

You for having me. Awesome to be here. 

Greg Wilkes (00:39): 

Yeah. So John, would you like to give us a little bit of an intro? Let us know who you are and what you do? 

John Lanker (00:44): 

Sure. I’m the founder and chief vision officer of Linker. We offer growth consulting and marketing services. We’re located here in the United States in a little place called Minnesota, and we have a number of industries that we work in from consumer packaged goods to heavy equipment manufacturers to the construction industry is one of our vertical markets, and so we help small businesses grow to be bigger businesses and we do that not just by helping them generate new interest in acquiring new clients, but we do it by helping them really analyze the delivery of their services, the efficiency, the effectiveness, how they’re making financial decisions, how they’re structuring their costs, how they’re planning for the future. And we’ve got models for different sizes of businesses in the construction industry and we have a pattern of what really needs to be there and what needs to not be there, more importantly at different stages of growth. So we are focused on helping them make really smart business decisions and how to really differentiate themselves in the marketplace amongst their competitors so that they stand head and shoulders above the rest and become the brand that is recognized and loved by their audiences. 

Greg Wilkes (02:05): 

Sounds fantastic and so important for businesses to be able to differentiate themselves. I think that’s absolutely key. So what is one way they can do that then? How would a business be able to differentiate itself from a general contractor or a builder? How would they then differentiate themselves from another business? What would you help ’em do? 

John Lanker (02:22): 

Well, step one is you have to have a sense of the context, the competitive context that you’re operating. You can’t say that you’re going to be better if you don’t know what the reference point is. What is the baseline? So doing a really thorough job of examining the competitive field and gathering information in different aspects about the business to kind of gauge who is doing better than others in one area or another. For example, brand recognition or clear communication of what they offer or how they differentiate. If you just, for example, examine a half dozen websites of competitors, the way that they present themselves, is it very much in a status quo kind of way, or is there something they’re doing that’s special? Could be as simple as wow, visual presentation is the best amongst the competitors or the way that they communicate their value and how they’re different than the competition stands out. 

(03:28): 

For example, they could have some videos on their website that go through the process of communication and staying on top of projects so that they show that their ability to communicate with the project managers within their counterparts, whether it’s subcontractors or some of our clients are in the trades and they’re getting hired by general contractors. Some are going direct to consumers and they need the homeowners have a sense of, wow, these guys are going to really follow through and do a better job. So we do an audit of all of these different communications elements and we look at how you compare, how do you compare against all these other competitors for each aspect of their messaging. So that’s one way that we begin is look at what the competition is doing. 

Greg Wilkes (04:17): 

So that’s really interested. So obviously it’s fantastic to be able to see what your competitors are up to and it’s important to be aware of that. How do you then make sure that you are not just copying competitors and you are actually leveling up and doing something better than them? Because I guess there’s a danger of always being behind the curve and only implementing what other people are implementing. So what do you do then once you’ve analyzed your competitors? 

John Lanker (04:42): 

I mean, the analogy that comes to mind, I’ve never used this before, but it just occurred to me, is it’s kind of like if you watch a bunch of comedy specials on TV and you memorize the jokes of a comedian, then you go out and try to tell the same jokes. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be funny like that other person. Why? Because there’s a unique flavor, there’s a chemistry. The things that are funny by one comedian are funny because it’s emerging from their actual personality, the way they say something. It’s funny when they say it because who they are, how they are their vantage point in the world. But if another comedian tried to be funny in that same way, it could fall flat in the same way. When you are trying to develop differentiation, it really needs, you need to dig deep within yourself and you need to look at what’s real and substantive about you. 

(05:35): 

It could be your values, it could be your work ethic, it could be some aspect. For example, one client that we had was in a field that it was in the trades, but this person had an engineering degree and everything they did was calculated in just a different way than the average competitor would do it. And so we took that of the engineer’s mindset and articulated that in a way that really showed, wow, this person is going to look at this from a different perspective. They’re going to think through this in a way that will lead to fewer problems, more efficiency or value engineering. They’re going to find ways of doing it that maintains the quality standard but is going to save me time and money. So it’s got to start from something genuine about yourself. It could be maybe you’ve got a background in military service and you talk about the fact that there’s discipline and order that was brought into you as you served your country and you bring that same mindset into the work you do, but whatever it is, it’s got to start with what is real about you. 

(06:44): 

Now, one of the most important things that we do for clients though is when we do this competitive audit, it’s important to understand that marketing isn’t just about telling a story that sounds better than the other stories being told because then you’re just making things up. Part of what we need to audit is how are you actually performing? For example, how are your client communications? Do you have really amazing client communications where you’re constantly getting told, wow, you guys are on top of it. We’re always getting the right information. I’m never chasing information. You guys are right on it. If that’s something that’s real great, you can talk about it. But if on the other hand that you’re lagging behind and that you’re not so great in client communications, well that’s a huge problem because if you create inefficiencies for your clients, if you get that reputation, then they’re less inclined to want to do repeat business. 

(07:43): 

So this is something that must be fixed. And so what we focus on is, okay, if you’re falling a little short in an area like solid communications and efficiency, what do we need to do to bring you up to par and beyond? What are the changes that you need to make that if you made those changes would make you the undeniable solution, the undeniable market leader amongst your peers? So it’s not just about putting a nice polish on your story and telling something to the audiences that sounds good. It’s about actually evaluating the qualitative value of each aspect of your business, finding out what is not quite up to par, and then coming up with a smart game plan to get it to par. And these are things that are difficult to do when you’re running your own business as a contractor or somebody in the trades. When is there time so things slip and you never get around to it? 

Greg Wilkes (08:43): 

Yeah, I think that’s really, really valuable because I guess some of the problem you’ll get is when someone looks at your brand or they’re trying to get your messaging, if they don’t really know you as a business, they’ll say you can do things, but if you can’t deliver on that we were just speaking about earlier, then it just comes across as insincere, doesn’t it? You’re not genuine and you soon get called out on it because, oh, you’re saying you can do all this, but actually you don’t. So it’s getting that balance, isn’t it, between what you say you do and what you actually do and getting that sweet spot. So what you are saying is when you’re doing the competitor analysis and then you are also having to really understand the business you’re working with to work out what their strengths are and then put that message in across the right way so you’re enhancing their strengths. 

John Lanker (09:23): 

And this is really where brand comes in, branding and brand identity because a lot of people don’t really understand what brand is. They think it’s my logo or my tagline, it’s the colors on my business card or my website. And really that’s not what brand is. Your brand is what people believe about you. That’s what your brand is. Your brand is the space that people have in their mind where they store information about you. It’s how they index you, it’s how they view you and what they believe about your value proposition. If they think that you’re a market leader, if they think you’re kind of a middling competitor. And in the world of construction and contractors and subcontractors, oftentimes they think brand doesn’t really matter the quality of my work, my reputation is what matters. And that’s true to a very big degree. But the fact is, if you don’t give proper attention to assessing what your brand really stands for and what it means and how other people interpret it, they’re just going to make up their own story about you. They’re going to fill in the blanks on their own. They’re going to control the narrative. And just like anything in a business, you’ve got to know your numbers. You’ve got to know the situation of all your projects, the status, keep things flowing. In the same sense, you need to take inventory about your brand and what people understand about you and believe about you and take control of it so that you can shape it in a way that drives your goals forward. 

Greg Wilkes (10:56): 

So how would you do that in a practical way? So if you’re working with a company from scratch and you ask ’em what their brand is, and let’s imagine they’ve got no idea, I dunno, what do people actually think about me? How would you ascertain what clients are deciding about a particular brand? 

John Lanker (11:13): 

Well, the first, again, if you take the idea that a brand is what people believe about you, well what does that mean specifically? It’s what they believe about your value proposition, the value that you’re proposing that you can deliver for a given audience. So in the world of construction, there are a few audiences. There’s not just the clients and customers you’re trying to gain to hire you, but in a competitive job market, it’s also attracting employees to come and work for you. Why would they want to work for you versus somebody else? Well, I’ll tell you one thing. If you’ve got six or 10 competitors in your market and almost all of them behave as if the employees don’t really matter, there’s no section on website that kind of sells them on why they’d want to come work for me versus somebody else. That’s a market opportunity. 

(12:00): 

What if you decide to be the competitor that shows that you care about the people who work for you, that it’s not just about using people so that you can make money on their time in exchange for a wage, but you’re trying to create a team, you’re trying to create a career path. You’re trying to create a place for them to invest in their own futures, and you use that kind of language. You don’t have to try very hard. Suddenly you’re the one in the marketplace that people are going, yeah, those guys really seem to care about the workers. They think I’m going to apply for a job there. But then it can’t just be words. The experience that they have when they come and work for you, the training, the orientation, the mentoring, the guidance, helping when there’s a problem, not just condemning someone and coming down hard but saying, okay, this is what happened. 

(12:54): 

This isn’t ideal. How can we work together to prevent that from happening in the future? Let’s be a team and fix that and be nurturing. So that’s an example of how a brand takes shape. It’s not about some angle or some kind of slogan or some gimmick. It’s about trying to draw out from yourself and put into reality the things that are going to be appealing and nurturing to an audience. So in the case we just spoke of the workers, but in the case of if you’re a millwork company selling to commercial general contractors for large scale millwork contracts, you first got to understand who is the audience? Well, it’s not just the general contractor. You’re now your audience. They’re estimators and project managers within the general contractor. And now you have to think about, well, what does the estimator care about? What does the project manager care about? 

(13:53): 

If they’re the ones who have the power to award me the work as a millwork company, what is it that they’re going to care about the most that if I focus on that and I take careful consideration of all those details, they’re going to appreciate me enough to give me consistent opportunities to bid. And when I do, they’re maybe not just looking at the lowest price, they’re looking at the fact that when I work with John, he makes things happen so much more smoothly. I have fewer hassles, they get it done on time and they do a good job. Those are the things that we need to think about. So now the branding becomes, how do I help that audience estimators and project managers within a general contractor believe that my company is going to give them great quality, but a seamless experience, consistent communication and a job well done on time? How do I get that message into their brains? 

Greg Wilkes (14:55): 

Yeah, that is real value there. So just thinking about that, some questions that are popping up in my mind then. So obviously appealing to your audience is absolutely crucial, but if you have got multiple audiences, so let’s imagine we’ve, we’re trying to bring on tradies and builders to come and work for us, but we’re also trying to appeal to a homeowner or maybe an architect. How do you then manage that if you’ve got multiple audiences, do you need to mix the brands that you’re appealing to everyone or do you try and align it so you’ve got something that appeals to wall? What would you do in that case? 

John Lanker (15:29): 

Well, just like anything in life, one size fits all is not a good approach. You need to think about who you’re talking to and when and where are they interacting with your message. And when you understand who you’re talking to and when and where they’re interacting with you, you can then think about what is the outcome? What is it that I want them to do when they meet me, when they interact with my information? And just like any relationship, you don’t go from the first meeting to the ultimate commitment in one step. There’s usually a series of steps that get you acclimated and to make you mutually comfortable with one another to go forward. Think of dating people do such a bad job in dating. It’s almost funny that you go on a first date like eight times out of 10. It ends in failure. 

(16:24): 

And one of the reasons it does is because people focus on the wrong thing on the first date. On the first date, you should be focused on just getting the second date, not talking about long-term plans and huge heavy issues. Just, Hey, I want them to have a good time and I want them to get at the end of the day, go, you know what? I had a really good time. I’d love to go out with you again, that is the outcome. So if you know who you’re talking to, the person I’m on the date with, when and where you’re encountering each other over a two hour dinner meeting and you know what you want the outcome to be, gosh, I had a great time, I’d love to go out with you again, then you should be able to shape your message around just that push away everything else that doesn’t matter. 

(17:07): 

In the same sense, when you’re kind of dating your audiences, think about what are the natural relationship milestones that you need to pass through to qualify yourself to go to the next step and just focus on those step by step by step. Don’t try to oversell, don’t try to be too pushy. Don’t try to convince somebody to be defensive and explain 50,000 things. Just focus on the one thing that is going to get you to the next stage. And for each audience that’s going to be a little different. It’s going to be a little different. So you have to think through. The smartest way to do it is to think through the natural human to human relationships that you have and what works really well on the human to human level. And then construct a marketing plan that kind of maps out to that that matches that natural progression and try to use all of your digital tools and everything that you’re doing to kind of nurture that relationship along in a natural way. 

Greg Wilkes (18:08): 

Yeah, that makes complete sense. So just makes me think of what a sales funnel looks like anyway. When you are getting a lead that comes in, you’re not thinking, right, obviously ultimately you want the sale, but the next thing is right, let me go and meet the client now. Let me send a proposal. Now let me negotiate. So each stage, you’re just trying to get ’em to move one step, aren’t you? Rather than thinking of the always pushing for the end outcome. So that makes complete sense for your messaging too. So just segueing into what you just said there about some of how we then communicate that brand out there, what are some of the best tools that people are using to get their brand out there? Now, thinking of digital tools, I know a lot of builders are all on social media now. We’re not so used to be a bit of a dinosaur industry construction, but now construction are all over social. What’s sort of working at the moment from a digital side? 

John Lanker (18:59): 

Well, it depends. If you’re doing business to business or business to consumer, it’s a little bit different. If you’re selling to other businesses, LinkedIn is a great tool, but with a caveat, you can’t be using it to just spam people and trying to get them to respond to you. Within LinkedIn, what we do is if we’re targeting a business for one of our clients, we look at a landscape and ecosystem and all the different people that could potentially hire that client, and then we look at their LinkedIn profiles, we go to the business page and we look at the people section, and then we look for the names of the people that hire us or hire our client. And we don’t necessarily reach out to them, but we make a record of it. You either put it in our CRM, whether it’s Pipedrive or something else and start to game plan out the best way to approach that person. 

(20:01): 

And it could be that what you do is you say, well, instead of reaching out on LinkedIn, one of the things that works kind of, well, this is going to sound really dumb, but is just saying, okay, if it’s business to business, here’s a general contractor. They’ve got 10 project managers, five estimators, and I want them, I want to be doing business with them and they don’t know who I am. Maybe you’re new to the market and you show up there unannounced with two dozen cupcakes that are handcrafted with your brand colors and you’ve got a small little leave behind and you’ve got 15 business cards for each one of those people. You just come to the front desk and you don’t even ask to speak to any of them unless they happen to be around and you say, Hey, this is for your team. 

(20:46): 

I’m John and we’re new. Here’s a little piece of, maybe you have a little leave behind about yourselves. And then now it’s like there are tools that you can use to go in and find information, their business email address for example, and then later you just draw, Hey, I stopped by your office the other day, dropped off a bunch of cupcakes. I hope you guys got them and it would be great if we could maybe schedule a call sometime. I just wanted to say hello again. Here’s going back to the dating thing. If in this moment they have never even met you and you’re saying, I want do business with you, you’re going too far. They don’t even know you. They don’t even like you. They haven’t looked in your eye and trusted you. What you’re asking for isn’t to do business together. You’re asking, Hey, it’d be great to be able to say hello sometime and maybe I could stop back and just introduce myself in person or whatever. 

(21:44): 

Now if they have the idea, you know what? I appreciated that and I’ve got a job I’d like you to bid on. Great. They’re telling you they want to jump a few steps, but finding a human way of showing that you are a real contender, that you are in it for the long haul. You’re patient to develop the relationships over time, and you’re going to take the time to do the simple gestures that maybe have been lost in this day and age that in the past were typical for business. You’re not asking them to lunch, you’re not asking them for a 20 minute zoom meeting to introduce yourself, which is all self-serving, showing up there. You’re taking a risk, you’re spending a little bit of money, you’re doing something nice. And we’ve done that before. And what happened, one case they said, Hey, you know what? 

(22:35): 

On Fridays we have the signup for vendors to come in and introduce, we have a happy hour and come to our happy hour and introduce yourself to everybody. It’s like, oh my gosh. Now they’re inviting me into their situation to shake hands and just hang out and have a good time not to go into depth about all the business I want to get, but just meet people and be likable. That’s your only job on that happy hour. Meet people and be likable. And you know what? Things will naturally unfold from there. So that’s an example of non-traditional. Yes, there’s some digital components to it, but there’s put your shoes on and go out the door components to it as well. 

Greg Wilkes (23:17): 

Yeah, some old school stuff. I think that’s so valuable. Interestingly enough, it just reminds me of a story of my friend who moved to Sydney. He did smart homes, so control four and high-end smart systems come here with no work whatsoever, no contacts, and all he did is he used to go rounds with a box of Krispy Kreme donuts, just done exactly what you said, walked into offices, just introduced himself. He built his entire business off of that and fast because it was all about relationship building and doing non-conventional things. Now, he could probably have spent a year on digital market and pump these people full of emails and things like that. But actually I think it’s really good just to, let’s get back to what actually works because people are buying from people they, it’s all about that relationship building. So I think you’ve raised something really interesting there that gets people thinking a little bit, 

John Lanker (24:05): 

And from a digital standpoint, people are so concerned with building a funnel. I like to think in the trades, I like to think of it more like a sales pipeline, especially business to business. Business to consumer is a little different, but business to business, you’re building long-term repeat relationships. And I think the most important things you can do with digital tools, especially in the business to business, is use tools like Buildertrend or Procore, the things that will facilitate super professional client interactions, that project management, that IES and everything are handled in the most professional manner, that there’s visibility to everything and all the stakeholders have a place and you are using those digital tools to create an efficient process. Your company’s going to make more money, you’re more efficient, your clients are going to give you repeat business because you’re managing things properly. When it comes to direct to consumer, yeah, it is more of a traditional and you’ve got to have money for customer acquisition and running your ads and doing all the things that you need to do. 

(25:21): 

But working out those numbers, it gets into the math. I mean, it’s almost more important to think through the financial side of customer acquisition and budgeting for proper direct to consumer marketing campaigns and advertising campaigns. It’s almost more important to think through the financial side of it is than it is to think through the creative side because you can have the greatest creative in the world, and if you really don’t understand customer acquisition costs and how things are going to financially pencil out for you, you’re never going to really know how much to spend if you don’t know those numbers. So the business side of direct to consumer marketing is something that a lot of competitors in the trades don’t really understand that well, they’re guessing, and that leads to a lot of disappointment, wasted opportunities, wasted time, wasted money. 

Greg Wilkes (26:20): 

I think you’ve raised a really valid point there because you’re right, so many people don’t track that. So just from something I bring out in my book actually, something that’s really straightforward for businesses to do is just every time someone calls or they send an email through, we’re asking the question, how did you get our details? How did you hear about us? And you’re going to start tracking that. Was it through an advert? Was it through Facebook? Was it through Google Ads? Something like that. And sometimes you’re not going to quite work it out, but without that data, how do you then make informed decisions on where people are necessarily coming from? And I think there’s a lot that don’t do that, which is putting ’em at a real disadvantage. 

John Lanker (26:56): 

So here’s a pro tip. So yes, you can ask that question or you can put in a technology like CallRail in the US anyway, this is a technology that can be used and it’s used to determine attribution on your ad spend, not just tracking phone calls, which it does a great job of, but also it tracks all of the clicks through to your site and all the forms that are filled out so that you do have really great visibility. It wasn’t just coming from Google, it was coming from this kind of a search on Google, it was organic or it was paid or it was a display ad, or it was Facebook and it was a promoted post versus a paid ad versus whatever. There are ways of getting that data and then integrating it into your CRM in such a way that you can get reports on that and take full command of that. And it doesn’t have to be something where you’re having to ask the question, which can be very inefficient. 

Greg Wilkes (27:58): 

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because I guess when you’re asking the question, sometimes people don’t actually know where they’ve seen you from. They, if it’s been a Google ad, oftentimes they don’t even realize it’s a Google ad today, so they’s seen you somewhere on the internet, so yeah, that can be a real problem. Thinking about other brand benefits then, so we’ve spoken about obviously customer acquisition. We’ve talked about hiring potentially by having a strong brand. Are there any other areas where a strong brand can really help a business? Well, 

John Lanker (28:26): 

Absolutely. I mean, what does your banker believe about you? That’s branding, right? When you go into seek a loan and you leave it completely to chance to let the banker form an impression, you haven’t done the homework, you haven’t crafted a presentation that’s going to build confidence on the part of them. You’re just kind of hoping they like you and that they’re going to give you the money. That doesn’t work. It doesn’t work consistently. Bankers need to be seen as an audience, and if they know that, wow, this guy really prepared, he understands what I needed to see, what his financials needed to look like, what the business plan needed to look like, I’ve never seen a more organized presentation. He understands his numbers, he understands his cashflow, right? That’s something that all of us struggle with is cashflow, and to not look at it, to not think about it isn’t a good strategy. 

(29:23): 

It’s kind of barrier your head in the sand if you know you’re going to have trouble. Believe it or not, it makes a banker more confident in you to say, Hey, in 90 days I’m going to be negative $25,000 that month. I need a line of credit to cover that. It’s like, wow, he knows that. He knows it in three months, the way all the timing of payment, everything’s going to play out. He’s going to need $25,000. Wow. He’s got his act together. That makes him more confident versus trying to present a picture of the world, oh yeah, we’re making money. It’s got to be based on reality. You need to understand what the criteria are for your audience, how they’re evaluating. Most of the times banks, they want to say yes to you. Give them reasons to say yes, help them be confident, but again, it’s like any other audience, and it gets back to your original point you said, well, can you just kind of generically speak one presentation to everybody, the gunshot approach, if you want to be very mediocre, yes, if you want to be very inefficient and have a bell curve of outcomes, if you want to really maximize a probability of success though with any given audience, I am going through a hiring process right now on LinkedIn. 

(30:41): 

I put a job post and there were several people that did not have a photograph of themselves on their profile, and almost universally, I just does not qualify, does not qualify, does not quality. It’s a very simple thing. If you don’t understand that this is part of how people perceive you, you don’t think it matters that your face isn’t there, then what is your discernment and judgment in how you’d represent my business? 

Greg Wilkes (31:12): 

And so just that. Then when we’re thinking about, again, we spoke about people buying from people and your face being as part of your business. We know some businesses will be very much, the owner will be hands off and let’s just promote the brand as in the company, whereas others will be, let’s put my face on the brand and this is me and this is what I’m about. What do you think thinking about who’s listening to this podcast, one to 10 million pound or dollar businesses, should it be the business owner that’s the face of the business, or can you step back a bit and just make it all about the company? What would your recommendation be? 

John Lanker (31:46): 

Well, I’m going to give you very specific answers. From zero to a million and a half dollars in revenue, it should be the face of the owner, your reputation. You’re out there hustling, they’re doing business with you. As you are growing beyond that, you need to be able to represent more of an organization. It’s not just about you and your reputation, it’s about your ability to lead a team, and really that’s the struggle. This is why we do a lot of business consulting. You can be doing about a million, a million, a half dollars in revenue and live in a pretty fancy life. You’re profitable. You’re kind of at that point where you don’t have many employees, not a lot of overhead, and you can kind of pay yourself well, as soon as you start pivoting past that, you need a team, you need to fill certain roles that cost money. 

(32:36): 

It’s going to be draining your bank account. You’re not have as much money for you. You have to make huge sacrifices as an owner at that stage and at that stage it becomes incumbent upon you to make sure that the team and the presentation of your brand is that of a well-oiled machine, not maybe based on your values. There can be a little bit about you, but now it’s about your ability to run an organization. So it should start to pivot in that, and the larger you become, the more it’s important that maybe in your story, people see this grew out of you and your values, but now they see that you’ve successfully gathered a team around you that exhibits those values. You’ve set the tone, and now you’ve built a team that it’s the company that has these values. It’s not just you. 

Greg Wilkes (33:26): 

Yeah, that’s really, really valuable advice there, John. That’s awesome. John, thanks so much for your time today. We’ve covered a real different areas on branding, and I think that’s been really useful for a lot of people to take away. If you were going to give people three tips on what they should be doing with their brand, if they were looking at this from scratch, what three tips would you give them? Where should they start? 

John Lanker (33:48): 

Tip number one is don’t assume that your brand doesn’t matter. So many trades, especially businesses starting out, they think, yeah, brand, it doesn’t matter. My reputation, my ability to deliver, that’s what matters, so don’t assume that that’s not true. Number two is really understand who your audiences are, understand the details about what makes them say yes to somebody like you, and create profiles around those people and then create messaging strategies that go through the natural progression of how people get to know each other so that you check those boxes in the minds of those peoples. It can be different for different audiences and make sure you go through that step. And third is just really understand that people are simple. When you walk into a room, if you smell bad, the first thing you’re going to know is, oh my gosh, that guy smells. If you look sharp and crisp and you got a smile on your face and you’ve got a brand identity, it’s like, wow, that guy really has his act together. 

(34:55): 

Get your brand to look like. You’ve got your act together. You’ve thought through the details. There’s a place for everything. Everything’s in its place. It doesn’t need to be overly elaborate, especially when you’re starting out, but it does need to be thought through. It does need to be thought through in consideration of the competitive landscape and do what it takes to have a clearer message than your competition, a more crisp, clean, attractive corporate identity system than your competition, a seamless experience through your website and every aspect of your digital funnel. Get your act together in that way, and you’re going to be well on your way to success. 

Greg Wilkes (35:35): 

They are three fantastic tips there. John. Thank you so much for your time today. John, if people want to understand a little bit more about what you do and want to make contact with you, John, how would they do that? 

John Lanker (35:46): 

Well, I think normally what we do is we say linker.com/the name of the podcast, but there’s so many words in the name of your podcast. I think we’ll do linker.com/greg Wilkes. That’s where they can learn more about us and there’ll actually be a PDF they can download that gives some advice for succeeding with your contracting business. 

Greg Wilkes (36:06): 

Perfect. That’s great, and we’ll put that link in the show notes as well so people have got that. John, thank you very much. I wish you all the best going forward. 

John Lanker (36:15): 

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.