Ep. 280: Mid-Year Marketing Check In - Same Tactics, New Steroids

Speaker A: Welcome back to out of the Hourglass, the podcast for small business owners and leaders in the trades industry. We're halfway through 2026 and marketing is moving fast. AI AEO. New platforms, new pressure. Today's guest, David Kryjack of Spartan Digital just gave a talk on exactly this. He's bringing it straight to us. We're talking what's actually working, what's not, and how businesses can cut through the noise without chasing every shiny new tool. If you've been wondering whether you need to overhaul your marketing or just lean in harder, this episode speaks to your answer. For those who don't know you, David, can you give us a quick rundown of who you are, what you do, and where you're from?

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, so I'm Dave Krajak. I'm the founder and president of Spartan Digital, and we are a team of website and lead generation warriors specifically designed for home service companies. Um, quick background on me professionally. When I was a kid, when I first grew up, I wanted to be a musician and played five instruments almost professionally. Um, and I've always been a nerd my whole life. Fixing phone screens for people, right. And little computers and help people out. Um, that's both sides of your brain working at one time, right? The creative side and the tech sign. Buddy of mine's dad, he was a plumber and he's on the phone with me under the sink and he's like, I need a website, can you help me? Blah, blah, blah. Belittling me on the phone as I'm 15 or 16 years old, right? Um, and I told him, yeah, give me a bunch of money and we'll take care of it in like five weeks. He said, I'll give the check to your mother. He hung the phone up and I said, how do we do that? Uh, no idea. But I was creative and I was a nerd and we figured it out. Uh, that was 10 years ago in high school. And um, now we're going into our decade in business here and we have 15 full time W2s in the Philadelphia region. And um, we service probably about 3 to 500 clients a year on a project on a monthly basis all across the country.

Speaker A: It's pretty wild when you look back 10 years ago, just that initial kind of challenge to where you are now.

Speaker B: Mhm. Very blessed. And um, now that we have a really strong team behind us for I know we are all Philadelphia people here on the Nolan team, most of the Spartan team, but, you know, we're all Eagles fans that work here. We Always want more, and we're never satisfied. So in the marketing space, that turns out to be pretty solid with our clients.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, and I've had the pleasure of working with a lot of Nolan clients as well, and we're very happy and blessed for that relationship.

Speaker A: Did you ever think you were going to be, like an entrepreneur did when you were. When you were younger or was starting your own business? Something kind of surprised you?

Speaker B: I didn't know what I wanted to be when I really grew up. Music was cool. Then I learned how much money they got paid because I've had the pleasure of playing with the Philly Orchestra, with the US Navy Band. I've met all of those amazing people that do that full time. And then I didn't. It didn't sound as good as it was. Um, my mom is New Jersey state trooper. Was a New Jersey state trooper. Dad's a Marine. So that was also something that influenced me very heavily growing up, maybe where we came up with Spartan, um, and that was our high school mascot. We're serving the country of somehow. Um, but, you know, we'll. We'll figure that out in the next 10 or 15 years or so. We'll definitely want to do something, um, in that regard, but, no, I never. Never thought of it as a business. Somebody said one day, you know, hey, you should register this as an llc. I'm like, okay. Guided through by a lot of really good friends to help us get to where we're at now, just as a structuring thing. Um, I did have a couple jobs throughout college, um, but my parents were very, um. They kind of let me figure out what I wanted to do, and I'm very thankful for that. Not like, you must do this. You must go to college, but outside of that, kind of explore and fall in love with what you want to fall in love with.

Speaker A: So it's a kind of.

Speaker B: I'm grateful.

Speaker A: It's kind of a similar trajectory, too. I feel like a lot of clients that either, you know, we both share the type of clients that we work with, they have a hobby or a passion or hard skills that they're really good at, and it somehow becomes a business and, you know, like, they're just doing it on the side, and all of a sudden, an opportunity presents itself, you know, to register, become. Become an LLC and to make something of it. And that's. That's what you've done.

Speaker B: Yeah. My neighbor down the street who. Well, uh, our original first plumbing client, who also is in my neighborhood, but my other neighbor Same exact, same exact story. Excuse me. Just became a appliance repair business owner. He's been working for a guy for 25 years, but he always did the side work for people and they said, dude, you should just do this on your own. And I was talking to him one night and I'm like, listen, here's the website. Fill out the paperwork and now you're in business. Well, he did it so nice. Now he's getting off on his own. I'm like, well, welcome to the cool kids club. It's good to have you. Yeah.

Speaker A: So you know where to go if you need your marketing right down the street.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, literally.

Speaker A: Um, that's great. Well, I appreciate you being here and of course, um, the listeners of ours are clients of ours who were at the Seattle Grand Summit Conference. Had a chance to meet you, David. Um, you were there, you were on a panel, you were a sponsor. It was great, great to have you there. Um, and I know several of our, we now share several, several clients, which is great. And um, I appreciate you being here because we're going to do like um, a mid year marketing check in. It is kind of the mid year point and I want to get a kind of a status read from your side of what's going on, kind of, you know what, what you're seeing are you guys changing anything and kind of how you look at the way companies perform and kind of changing activities. So we'll dive into all of that. But to get us started as we hit this midpoint of the year, what, what is the headline? Like, what are, what kind of conversations are you having with clients right now about where things stand?

Speaker B: I'll give you the, the five year old version of that. Um, we got a phone call this morning, uh, about I want ads on Chat GPT. How do we do that? Yeah, that's the, that's the newest thing we're getting.

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: the, the trends of. You know, listen, I'm Google searching and they're not picking the top three right now. Google's just suggesting who to call. Right. Unless I ask it for options or, or Chat's just giving me an option to pick for a plumber. They're not giving me four or five or six or seven. So the marketing of those platforms, Chat and Gemini and Claude and all these companies, they're pitching it as we're the newest thing since sliced bread. What I have been researching from a panel perspective and some other things that I've will be on our website by the time this comes out. It's all the same marketing tactics, just on steroids. So the basic. And for home service companies, not uh, that you care about any of this stuff, but if you're a little technical, like some of our best clients, they ask these kinds of questions. Well, if we do more SEO, will we rank higher in aeo, which is the AI Engine optimization. The same strategy with more execution, more work, more pickaxes in the mine, more shovels in the ground will then rank you higher so that nothing scientifically has changed. When you put in a chat, the algorithm is executing 400 quadrillion searches. Right. It's basically a professional research assistant. That research assistant is going to just reference kind of like the Black's law book of SEO. Are they referenced a lot? Do they publish more recent stuff? Are they talking a lot about their community? Do they have nice reviews? All the 101 level stuff that they're kind of AI ing. Um, and making it sound really sexy of like. Well, this is the new algorithm. It still all relies off of the traditional search models.

Speaker A: Interesting. That's kind of good to know, right? I mean it is. That is. Should that feel. I would think that would feel reassuring to a lot of listeners because it means that we don't have to completely change all the things that we're doing. We just have to lean in more aggressively.

Speaker B: Yeah. And if you have companies that you're talking to or your internal people, it's. I was, I was just born ranked 27. That.com boom of AI of like this is the greatest thing. Well, that's great. Everybody went on a website 25 years ago too. And there are still companies that don't operate with a website that are doing 10, 50, $100 million companies. So it sounds really good. And it's one of those things that can be molded really fast from a quick gotcha thing. Um, but we would. Deliverability wise, what we're doing, it is the same tactics just tailored towards those models.

Speaker A: So you have to know kind of how to tailor towards, towards those models and. Or whoever you're working with needs to be able to speak to that.

Speaker B: Yeah, bai, uh, before AI, uh, I used to say robots are tricking robots. Right. And that's, that's what we're doing now. And the more we trick the robots, the more they'll show your content to people.

Speaker A: Interesting. I love you just have said two like acronyms here in the last, you know, minute.

Speaker B: That.

Speaker A: What the, the bai, the before AI. I just.

Speaker B: Yeah, we like to joke. The team comes up with all these Jokes of like before AI. I'm like, oh my gosh.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, but it's, it's true. Like it, it has changed the way a lot of us think and operate and use, you know, use tools. It makes sense to consider like a before and after. But then also the aeo, the AI Engine optimization. Is that going to be a phrase that you think we're going to hear more often going forward? Um, is it the first time I've ever heard it, yeah. Google.

Speaker B: So as an agency, we partner with, you know, our vendors, right? Google, Meta, Facebook, Instagram, all these guys are who we do all the buys through. They're starting to use all these terms and I'm not a big at spartan. We're not acronym people. Um, I always joke, you know, the federal book of acronyms is like a 450 page book from the government of all those departments and names. Marketing's the same way. So we don't, we don't speak in acronyms. If you look on our website, you will never ever see that stuff. I, it's just not how this works for most of our clients and that's not the business goals that derive into that kind of tactic. So. But The Googles, the LinkedIns, they're talking about that stuff now. So I think once they create the acronym in the industry, that's when it'll start to stick, which it is. You know, Google just had their live presentation, which is their big, kind of like their annual meeting for state of the Company, um, as to what's going on. And they're changing how Google Search works a little bit, but it's still that same. If I pulled that server box out and showed you what Google Search does, it's still the same hard drive, still the same data on. Just got a new little spin on it to compete against chat.

Speaker A: That mean that to me is reassuring ultimately. So it means that the things that you have been doing are still working.

Speaker B: Yeah, because we have a lot of clients that are, have been with us for, I mean our average client tenure is five plus years on the aggressive side of our business, which is the ads and the SEO and all that. Um, those tactics are still the same. Just instead of saying the, we say the in terms of how we're speaking to an AI platform versus a traditional Google only style platform.

Speaker A: Going back to the question that you got, and pardon me, I just am coughing. So listeners, I'm sorry, I sound terrible. Um, going back to the phone call you got this morning from one of your clients saying how do I run ads on AI. I know, not all platforms like Claude. There is no, there is no marketing, you know, advertising platform. Um, are you seeing that becoming a thing on other platforms though?

Speaker B: So we have, we will be in the. Well, we are currently in the beta for the chat ads program. We are actually Spartan themselves or we're running chat ads as part of our marketing strategy. Right. The marketing company also needs a marketing strategy sometimes. Yeah, um, that's coming up. Uh, they're competing with Google. Right. Google Ads and them are going to be, you know, in six months time from now, probably the number one and number two in terms of how we would suggest new business coming in.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Um, it's going to be like the Wild west, though. Not to get too political, but they just. When we think of Google Ads, right, the monopolization stuff you may have heard about in the past, they're required to disclose how Google works to the government. Right. This is what happens when you search stuff. This is how we collect that data. Right. Um, chat, the policy for AI is one page right now from Washington. Right. It's basically like do whatever you want. Right. It's the Wild West. That's why we don't know how it works. Right. It's this like aura of AI. Well, that's cool. Gemini works off the Google algorithm, which is a publicly available document. AI is just the one page from the government saying, yeah, just build whatever you want kind of thing. Once that gets. That is currently, as of the time of we're recording this now, by the time this comes out, that is currently going through regulatory processes.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: That company is getting larger. And not to get too far down that rabbit hole, which nobody talks about, by the way, but that's something to look at in terms of once we know what that algorithm is, then you can backdoor the science to how do I place first? How do we really do that instead of just throwing more money on the fire, which is typically what marketing people ask for.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And the advertisers ask for is how much more can you give us to burn on the Google Ads, the yelp ads, the etc. Etc. But yeah, I think it'll be part of a conversation for some larger budgets. Right now There are about 40 companies from the Indy 500 pushing ads right now on there for free users.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, okay.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's more product based stuff. You know, Nike, Adidas, Under Armour, those kinds of guys. Service I'm a little nervous about.

Speaker A: Why, why are you nervous versus it for like the product side?

Speaker B: Because it's not going to be a, uh, it's not going to automatically be required to give three recommendations. Right. It's just going to say, hey, if I need business consulting, call Nolan. Period. Give the phone number, please do. Instead of, you know, it's not going to be the old school, you know, maybe they call the first three people and, uh, if your phone, if you pick up the phone, you're going to get the business. So we don't know how that scientifically, data, science wise, is going to come out. So that's. That if people talk about, like the Wild west, that's the knowledge gap right

Speaker A: there, which seems like it's a pretty, It's a pretty large gap. I mean, there's still, still a lot of. We know that things that we're currently doing now we need to continue to do on, on steroids and we'll, you know, have better chances of showing up. But there's still so much, so much unknown. So I ask you, how do you and your team stay up to date? Like, how are you guys staying in the know or at least trying to stay in the know with all of this? Because it is changing so fast.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, uh, um, funny, just a consulting thing. We, I have. We have to buy them a lot of gifts for Christmas. But we do have physical humans that work at these giant companies that we have their cell phone numbers to talk to, which is awesome. Facebook, um, reps, Yelp reps, Google reps, they're giving us some really good insider data because they're in it. Um, but part of Spartan's culture and our hiring process is you must go through 80 hours a year of certified training of some kind, whether it's a kind of like real estate, like CE programs or lawyer CE programs. Most of that has been through some Harvard classes on AI and some Miami tech, actually is doing some really cool classes on that, uh, which anybody can take. But we're doing that as a continuing education side on our end, and they're physically doing most of that outside research on, you know, how these platforms might work or how that's different from what's going on now, and vice versa.

Speaker A: That's great. I like that that is a focus for you. Uh, you continue to require it every year. I mean, it's only going to, to make you guys better.

Speaker B: Yeah. And this industry can change in one press release from a giant company. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why we also don't like to keep all the eggs in one basket. There's a lot of clients we're switching from the Googles to the Yelps. The Yelps. To maybe some AI down the road. Um, or some people that just don't need it. And you're never going to hear an advertiser say that. But some clients just don't need it and that's okay.

Speaker A: Like who. Who wouldn't need it?

Speaker B: If somebody. Once we get into. We're more in the partnership business of how we. We work with clients. Um, we'll talk about a couple Nolan ones. I won't name them, but the way they approach the business is goal oriented first. And then let's just build the marketing around. Hey, Dave, I need my books perfectly scheduled out for two weeks. We could build an entire plan around that. That's perfect for residential jobs. I'd like this so that I'm two to four weeks out. Right. Homeowner sometimes wants that, sometimes they don't. Um, and backing the plan into those goals versus just saying, hey, I need to run ads. Well, that's great. Anybody. You can run ads? I can show you. It'll take me about 25 minutes to show you how to set it up, and you can do it yourself. Um, but it's not just a binary turn them on, turn them off thing. If you're dying for work. Yeah, it'll help. Right? But if you're four weeks booked out, you're spending money to tell a client no, so you just double paid yourself. And you paid us to get that for you.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So you just wasted all that money and, uh, you pissed off. And not pissed off, but somebody's gonna hang the phone up on you. They're probably never going to call you back, so I'd rather just have them not call you in the first place.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah. So first, you know, but then on the commercial side, like a painter getting ready to hibernate for the winter. Right. Great. How many commercial leads can I get before September 1st so that I'm cash flowing properly through the winter to pay all my people because I don't want to let them go.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So the marketing, I like to derive it from the business goals first, which most Nolan clients come to us with those first. Not the. I have this immediate marketing problem, which we can do that too. But that's. I find that that's more of a fix it and then, all right, I don't need you anymore kind of thing.

Speaker A: Yeah. Where it's. It's better for you guys and it's better for the bigger picture if you're operating off of a strategy I mean it, it, that makes sense all around. I mean it's, that's obviously from even a coaching perspective we want a strategy

Speaker B: and we find that it's better from a, the ups and downs perspective on the partnership side of sometimes it's really going to work and sometimes it's really not going to work.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So um, especially on the seasonality of the business, we want to eat when we can eat really well.

Speaker A: And you were just, were telling me next week is a crazy week. You've got I won't say specific number but so many client touch calls next week and you're kind of, you put them all, you've changed your kind of your strategy, you put them all in a week. Um, because it just makes, it's more efficient that way. But those, I would imagine those touch calls, those check ins are what allow you to, to know when we need to pull back. If people are booked out for weeks. We don't need, we don't need to be spending the same, the same rate. Uh, you know that, that we were. So are those check in calls vital for those types of strategy changes?

Speaker B: Yeah. Most of our new partners will meet with. Well, most. We'd like to meet with you at least weekly.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Maybe even twice a week. Just hey, we're turning these on. We're taking over your website. Make sure your email doesn't go down. Like little technical stuff as we're doing that whole, you know, switching big major vendors of there's a lot happening there. Then it's kind of punching it down to hey, everything's up. We chat every two weeks, make sure everything's good. Yes. No, um, we're getting live feedback of these calls are right. These calls are wrong. They're not in the right place because I can listen to it all day but I need to, need to hear it from those that are actually answering the phone. And then when we're comfortable we punch down to a monthly. Which is what I was just talking about. And I will tell you, we have, I just looked. We have 65 meetings in one week with all of our team members with, for that, that set of clients. So we're very blessed. We have special forces people working on it. That's, that's why we do that.

Speaker A: That's a hefty, a hefty week. And I mean hefty also from like a preparation standpoint, hefty action items afterwards. Um, but like you said, I mean that's an amazing, I'll say problem but amazing quantity of, of of touch bases to have?

Speaker B: Um, yeah. And they. Everybody needs it, otherwise we wouldn't have it. Yeah, we need to, we have, you have questions, right? You client, vendor, partner, whatever. We have questions of like, hey, I heard this on the phone. Did that turn into this big commercial job that I might have heard about? Or those types of things more on the proactive side. And then for different parts of the country. Right. We're in 35 states. How's the weather? We look at the weather, but how, how's the weather? What we see seasonality here a little different because we see all four seasons.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: I'll be in San Diego in two weeks. That will not be the case. It's 75 all the time. So how do we get somebody to call us when it's beautiful forever?

Speaker A: So I just was going to ask you that. Like, obviously we know for those of us who live in places where the seasons change and we see all four seasons, we know the challenges of seasonal business. But at the same time we might think that somewhere like San Diego where it's 75 and sunny and it's beautiful 365 days of the year, that they've got it good. But is that necessarily not the case? I mean, uh, are there challenges to it being beautiful in 75 degrees all the time?

Speaker B: Yeah, we talk about it mostly in the disaster recovery space, water damage, fire mitigation, mold remediation, those types of businesses. When it's a blue sky day, how do we get people to call us for emergencies?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like they're not thinking about the mold in their house or they're not thinking about. Well, the wind's a little drafty, but it's always nice out. So what's the, what is the underlying condition on my house or those types of things? So for them it's not as predictable.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is why they rely mostly on storms and natural disasters as their peak seasons. But we can't predict those.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So for them it's even more of a cash flow problem of it's not like a painter. Here on the east coast where we know we're going to be tight for six months out of the year, we just, we know that we can plan for it, we can budget for it, we can do that appropriately out there, it might be 9, 10, 12 months. We've seen for some clients where they're, you know, they're using their other assets, their lines of credit and those types of things to, to float that so they can get out of that.

Speaker A: It's.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's their own problem.

Speaker A: Yeah, I've never actually thought about it that way. I always just thought, gosh, if you live in California, you've got it good. Like it, you know, you don't have to worry about even like the, the. I mean, obviously they worry about heat, but you know, those November through March months where it's pretty terrible if you're in the north, you know, north part of the country. Um, but it is. Everyone's every. The grass is always greener, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Looking at. Well, it's funny, not many marketing companies. We do have a meteorologist that's on contract with us.

Speaker A: Stop it.

Speaker B: I swear to God. Jim Everwine, he's a, He's a meteorologist, um, works with the New Jersey State Police, who's a. Through my mom, an old friend of mine. Um, but stuff we want to know about during peak seasons for those businesses and anybody that does emergency work, let's make sure that we're doing really well during that time. Uh, it's unfortunate, but we want to be there for our customers when they need us. So. Yeah, channeling things based off the weather, setting things up, you know, post weather, that kind of stuff, that's all that can all be marketed and planned from an advertising perspective.

Speaker A: That might be a first for me. I have never heard of a marketing agency having a meteorologist on. On contract. That's. That's pretty cool. That's. I feel like that's really thinking outside the box.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, you have to.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: Uh, I mean, ah, that's. We've. I've seen the success of not having it or the lack of success of not having.

Speaker A: So I want to dive into some more AI conversation. Um, first, uh, or you know, in this conversation. But first I want to just see, you know, what is not. So obviously you, you know, what is working and you're leaning into that more. But anything that you started off the year with or have been doing for a while for clients that's just no longer working as productive, you're. You're kind of dialing it.

Speaker B: We always say content's everything.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: But the right content now is everything. So to give you an example, we uh, have some clients we post, you know, upwards of 30 to 40 times a month. For right now that's been scaled back to maybe half of that.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: But the quality of it is insanely better. It's either we're getting them live in person for a podcast and clipping that all out, um, versus just static image posting or, um, just noise into the system. Now there are places we have a lot of clients that we run static imaging for because that's what they need. But I feel like some sometimes people think the answer is just post and post and post and post. An old sales coach always taught me activity does not equate to performance. So by posting more stuff, does it actually have the meat and potatoes on what we wanted to say and is it actionable? Otherwise don't post it because they'll find you. They'll find you when they need you anyway. So that's what I see is not working right now. Um, and please don't send me another AI flyer and ask a full time graphic designer to edit it. She's not going to be very happy. You can't vectorize an eight and a half by 11 generated, um, generated poster. I will say that for the record. Okay, you can, but it'll take a long time. And every, just like, just like when you copy stuff right out of chat and post it into social media, everybody can tell it's A.I. uh, yeah, it's the new, you know, our lens isn't. They always said it's going to get really good. It is really good. But we can still tell when that came out of something and into something else without a human being physically, you know, penning that or at least reviewing that from a graphic arts perspective.

Speaker A: Is that easier to tell from a visual standpoint like um, visuals being created by AI or more or more copy? Or is it one in the same?

Speaker B: I would say the visuals, obviously our eyes pick up a lot better on that. Um, of the. You may have seen it for like I'm just gonna pick something I saw on Facebook this morning, like your local bar posting all their specials. Now they're posting all that into AI and just giving a really nice banner on it with their logo up top or the colors are a little off. Something like that. Um, the second thing is with the copy, that five paragraph essay on LinkedIn is the perfect right out of ChatGPT. You know, we see it all the time though. So that's. Our eyes might be a little bit more uh, skewed, but that really long, elongated like paragraphical Edward Allen Poe storytelling, you're like man, that guy who runs that plumbing company, he ain't got all that time to write that. Yeah, he's working on running a five, six, $10 million business. You know, so I mean the right copy, the right content, not, not just more, but the more of the right stuff.

Speaker A: So are you, are uh, do you encourage people to, to Use it. But of course to take the time to make it their own. Like, what's, what's the balance there? Especially when it comes to creating content, um, writing copy, you know, visually. Like, obviously we want people to be utilizing tools that can make their lives more productive and can help them think more creatively. But what's the, what's the fine line of using it completely versus using it strategically?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, a couple things we get on our side too, of, you know, hey, I don't need you anymore. I have AI. Well, that's great. Uh, we have AI too. We pay for nine subscriptions for AI Tools right now. What's your favorite for all different facets of the company? Uh, my go to right now because I write a lot of emails just in my role in my seat. Um, is chat with the right agents and the right. Okay, preface. You know, like that good book has that amazing preface beforehand. Chat's all about the preface of how you're feeding at the instructions. Otherwise it's a loose can. But um, we always say, you know, we're AI assisted. Right. We still have a full time copywriter on staff who gets paid to write and physically write stuff.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That it's 2026. You still need a human talking to humans about stuff. Right. Um, but it makes it more efficient for us to get it done for you. So now instead of two weeks for that video turnaround, it's two days.

Speaker A: Right? Okay.

Speaker B: So the, the speed to delivery as an agency that provides those services is where we see the most value. Um, from a client perspective, it's about what you need it for. A lot of people really like it for emails and for their executive assistants to write on behalf of that person because it learns how you write and it can then start to write like that executive. Um, we use a lot of little note taker tools and stuff too. So the fathoms of the world, the fixers of the world. There's a couple links on our website of like everything we use. It's, it's all out there.

Speaker A: Oh, great.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, and I'll give you a couple links of that for when you post this. But that's, you know, there's all kinds of stuff for the note taking side of our business. Right. A very technical website build out. They don't have to write, which I still do, but 48 pages of handwritten notes. Um, we can get that all summarized now and everybody can be more present in the conversations.

Speaker A: Yeah, that is nice. That is.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: I love that you still have, um, and will continue to have a copywriter on staff. I mean that I, I worry about those, those careers where, you know, that that's what, what they do all day, every day. And how, how does this, how do these new tools give them the leg up without replacing.

Speaker B: Yeah, why like this gentleman that is with us, he used to write for guys like Tony Robbins. Right. So to be, to write like that guy and to. You have to be with him like you have to just kind of like a messiah. You got to listen to him and, and take it all down. But now you can build an ecosystem around him in AI and get something close, but it's still not that. Well, that's, that that's him. Like somebody just wrote that for me. I always think of all of our speech writers too, for all of our leaders in office and all that kind of stuff. There's still a human writing that, that's going to go in front of other humans. Same thing with the graphics, right. That you know, we're going to get an assistant. But the vectorization of files for the T shirts and the walls and the banners and all. Yeah, it's not that good yet. It might get there. Um, but a human still has to make sure that's centered and make sure it's right. Hey. Ah, I can definitely help with spell check though.

Speaker A: Yes, it can use it where it works.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Speaker A: More as an assistant for, for companies, you know, who are working with a marketing company or, or a freelancer who like who may just now be relying solely on um, AI. I mean what are the things to be, to be cautious of if they are like if you're a business owner, you're a gm, you're an office manager maybe like where you fully contract out your, your marketing activities. What, where are the red flags?

Speaker B: Um, well, my, my note on anybody that anybody's currently working with. If you like their relationship, you can probably fix everything else that I'm about to tell you.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: You should keep working with that person because that, that's where I think the most value comes from. Whether it's internal hires, external contracting agencies in country, out of country. Um, I'm a big fan of if you like the person, you can probably get past all the business problems. I'm about to tell you about the things to look out at agencies like the hide in numbers. So that's why we do on our sales process. It's typically two or three hours of meeting with you before we even talk about monies or anything like that. We need to know what each other should be held accountable to. I could give you just like early with the acronyms, I can give you 400 pieces of data that we could be liable for at least. But do you want more jobs or do you want more views or do you just want better branding? Those are three very different conversations to be had at one time. So I think setting the expectations either up front in the contract or at your next status call, um, is extremely important. Other stuff is not meeting enough or meeting too much. We do need time to do stuff just like you need time to change out light sockets or wire new house and do all that kind of thing. We need time to build stuff, we need time to optimize it. Um, the unrealistic expectations on both sides I've seen become an issue. Most of our stuff, if anybody's telling you they can do it in 30 days, you should have them call me. I'd like to buy them out. Um, most of our stuff is a 60 to 90 day rollout after all the admin and technical pieces and after everything's all said and done. So when you plan for it, we always ask now, do you have three months of this cash flow? Right. Because I also don't want you gambling everything on one little thing working from this team. Yeah, that's not the way to be doing business either. So we say no more than we say yes now as in the, you know, I can just tell you're gonna fire us just because we can't align on all of those things before we buy any ads or run any websites for you or do any of that stuff. So the having the clear business goals up front had like it a we. Our goal is to generate two new jobs a week. I'm in the house doing the work.

Speaker A: Cool.

Speaker B: We can. That is quantifiable in terms of is it a sales problem, is it a marketing problem, is it an ownership problem, is it an agency problem? And that, you know, our best clients are able to delineate that difference. A lot of people just blame the agencies or the contract that helped for anything. Um, when really there are greater issues and it's our job to uncover those issues if they exist.

Speaker A: I like that you don't say yes to every potential prospect that comes up walking and knocking on your door. I think that's really important that you're really about, you know, aligning and setting expectations. And if you can tell that from the get go that this is probably not going to work, you're not going to take you're not going to take their marketing investment.

Speaker B: That's how we got here. Right. But now, 10 years into it, um, I can see it coming from, from a mile away. And I'd rather. There's other, there's many other professionals, um, in this network that I know their personalities. It might not, just might not be a good culture fit too.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker B: Dave doesn't care. Dave will take it and Dave will do it, but Dave doesn't do it anymore. I used to. Now we have 15 awesome Spartans that, you know, are going to manage that part of that relationship. So I need them to have as much buy in as everybody else does.

Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. Personality and culture fit really, in these relationships. It's very similar to coaching. You know, it's coach and a client. They've got to have a. They got to figure out a good kind of rapport. And if you. And if that doesn't work, probably means the rest of the relationship's not going to work.

Speaker B: Yeah. Um, I think the maturity to call that out ahead of time.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: A lot of people miss.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then you're six months into something, you're mad, they're mad. And you're like, right when you were going to bed that one night and you thought, I don't know about this, that was the time. Now, now we're too far down the rabbit hole. But, you know, you do what you can for people.

Speaker A: Yeah. In terms of how your clients are currently performing this year, um, and just, you know, what you're seeing kind of across the board lead generation, um, revenue being up is, you know, are people, you know, and marketing is a big, A big part of the game. But there's also just outside factors that you at Spartan cannot control. So like, when you think about the landscape currently for how this year is turning out, are, are you pleased? Are. You're not just like, where. What's your feeling on it?

Speaker B: Certain industries, yes. Certain industries, no. Uh, we try to do it by industry.

Speaker A: That's good.

Speaker B: Um, I will tell you, disaster recovery for us and other agencies that we know is down 10 to 15%.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Countrywide, the Belfors, the serve pros, the service masters of the world. They're dealing with giant revenue gaps, um, because it's not coming up from the franchises. So then they report on that with their quarterly earnings. That's how we can kind of derive those issues. Um, couple consumer trends that we've been reading, I really only read like the Wall Street Journal in terms of consumer Marketing trends and like their CMO section. Um, people are loving. I call them the mayor of your hometown companies.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Like Jim's Plumbing. Right. Jim works in the greater Philly market. He's. He lives in Philly. His family, his kids go to school here. People are loving that, like, keeping their money, local mindset. Um, and that's. We've seen some of those smaller clients for us are bumping up little too quickly at times. Um, but they're getting a lot of that repeat referral, Facebook group business just because they are doing a good job, because they're at that pivotal point in their business of it's still them plus some help. And then it's that, okay, well, now I need. Can I 3x my operations tomorrow? Because that's the, that's the current flow of what's happening. So that, um, that's really what we're seeing there. Not too much else in terms of anything being down. I, I'm not a big fan of traditional news headlines or anything. I, I think of your county, if you service a couple counties, that, that kind of radius of what you're doing and what's happening in your state, if that's a, if that's of a concern, if you're in a regulated business and if, if that's to your benefit, taking some advantage of that. We have some clients in PA that are doing that, um, targeting some real estate agents. When you sell a house, it has to have a certain sort of plumbing compliance. There's now a strategy derived to just get those agents because now they're going to call us. So that's really the extent of, you know, newsworthy stuff. I wouldn't, I wouldn't get too wrapped up in all that.

Speaker A: So you look at this by industry. Do you look at things also as well by, like, by region? Like, is the Northeast perform clients in the Northeast performing any stronger than clients that say in the Southwest?

Speaker B: I will always say our Northeast people, we just have that there's some kind of grit there. Um, if I see anything trending down in the Northeast, it's like, all right, how much more do we spend to fix it? That's the mentality. Or what are we. What are we doing to fix it out west where we have some clients too. Um, and in the middle of the country, they're used to it, but they don't. There's not bad instant like, but we'll. We'll get through it. You know, it's a, uh, it's a. We've done this before or We've seen this before, and it's a common go kind of thing. They're much more relaxed about everything.

Speaker A: Which is. Makes it fascinating too. Just as, you know, as you're working with each different company, kind of the response to different. Different scenarios, um, and what to expect, you know, on the. On the other side, you know, you mentioned, like, you know, see something coming down in the Northeast. You know, how do we fix it? How much more money? Is it always money that fixes it, or is it like, what if it's not money? That's. That. That's the problem. Like, not spending enough. What. What might it be? What are some of the things you might do?

Speaker B: That's what they think will fix it. Yeah, sometimes. Um, Now I do notice a lot of our, I'll say medium to larger size companies, the owner's not. The owner's running the business. Right. They're not in the business anymore. Um, or they're almost out of it. It's really a trust issue when it comes to the sales and deliverability of what they're doing. The marketing. Most times, not all the time. Most times is working. They have a nice brand. They don't do crappy work. Right. That's how they got to where they are today. But once that phone picks up, it's not Jim anymore, it's Sally. And if sally isn't like 90% as close to Jim, we're not going to get the customer or it's not the right customer. It's not that. It's. We only see it from the first interaction. Right. Because we run the ads, we make the phone ring, but then after that, I kind of go into a black box for non Nolan clients. Nolan people. We get a really good workup of what's going on, but they, you know, if they don't have the rest of the business figured out, it may look like things aren't working on the front end, but you're actually just losing it on the back end from a deliverability perspective.

Speaker A: So it's important to kind of like, look at the bigger picture, kind of the full. The full funnel to maybe really diagnose where the issue is.

Speaker B: Yep. And, uh, we don't. There's a lot of agencies that offer like that. I've seen it, and a couple friends of mine do it like the same CSR coaching. The customer service representative. Like, the coaching. How do we sound on the phone? We don't offer that. But if I hear something, I don't want to count how many calls I've listened to over 10 years of doing this. But mhm. If something's off, I'm going to flag it, we'll bring it up. Which typically starts a bigger conversation. But that might be some sales training that might be, you know, how good is your sales staff? Are your technicians also selling those kinds of other professionals that can, that can help with that side of the business.

Speaker A: With this in mind with like this particular topic, what are your thoughts on AI Voice agents kind of taking over a lot of the answering of phone calls?

Speaker B: Again, I think it's the A.I. uh, the dot com boom of stuff for the right client. The owner would love to answer the phone every time. Really. I go back, we have a lot of disaster recovery meetings this week so my brain's in that mode today. And plumbing too. We can talk about that. If Amazon calls you during a storm event for a 6 million square foot warehouse, boy would you love to make sure that you answer that phone. Right, right. But you wanted to make sure that it's John, the guy who sold him the business, like who got him on the account, gets that call. AI can route that stuff properly. In the human world in a storm event or you know, a major event, we lose that management of stuff of how many calls or you know, we're missing Amazon because we're on the phone with Mrs. Jones and we only have six people in the office. So for certain events we like to punch it up. But like our San Diego friends, Blue Sky Day people, if you have the staff and that's part of your core values and your mission and your vision of your company, I would hold off as long as possible. I think for most of what we're doing it's too complex. I'm mhm. Not the largest fan of it. Just me personally.

Speaker A: No it's fair. And that's why, that's why I asked because you get people on kind of both sides of the table there. Um, and we have clients who I don't know say are fully using it like as a replacement for, for answering the calls but are using it as a backup if the, you know, the current person who does answer the phone calls is.

Speaker B: Is that I cool with.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I'm very cool with of like we don't want to ever miss it.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Right. Speed. I think of workers, comp attorneys which we do not work on. But that speed delete thing of they're not you, it's somebody else.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That all day or if you have weird office hours with your staff or Susie can only work a couple hours A day answering the phones. Or maybe you're a little smaller company. Maybe catching those three or four more appointments via AI might save you that month. You know, in terms of if they're sub 1 million. Right. That three or four new jobs just missing off of you're physically out on the job or you're doing the time, that's the cost savings.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that, that might save you.

Speaker A: Yeah. And we're also seeing it, we love it as a backup, as a backup after hours, like after typical hours, weekend time. Um, to really make sure you're capturing that information. But I, I agree with you. I think where and if you can like hold on to the human voice for as long, for as long as possible.

Speaker B: All the studies I've ever read about it is Mrs. Jones is not going to be a very big fan for home services.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And then for large commercial too. They want that you sold them based on the account based relationship you have with them, not the fact that you know when you call, it's going to pick up every time. Well that's great. But I want to talk to John. Yeah, just maybe if John doesn't pick up, then it goes to Dave. If Dave doesn't pick up, then it goes to the call center. If the call center is too busy then it goes to the AI. So that, that right. Voip partner, that right phone partner in that space is very critical for the routing and everything.

Speaker A: That way you don't want to be or have your customers going through that feeling of, you know, when you're sitting on with an airline for an hour, be like human, I want to talk to a human. Give me a real person. Like you're just so often put through kind of the ringer of agent to agent to agent and you just want to talk to somebody real on the other side of the phone.

Speaker B: Yeah. All the big companies want to look like the small companies and all the small companies want to act like they're the big ones.

Speaker A: Gosh, that's so true. It's a really good point.

Speaker B: I, well we, you know some of our large in the franchise ecosystem but you know, they're 50 to $100 billion business units. They want to look like our smallest client. Yeah. And they can't because they're under a franchise agreement. But if they could, they would do John's restoration and it would just be John, his wife, his daughters, his staff and that's it. And you get a human every time.

Speaker A: It's funny, I think about that. Um, I mean in the painting industry, I Think Certapro being one a large, a large franchise. Um, we don't work with franchises here at Nolan Consulting Group. We work with independent, you know, private, um, companies. But I often hear on the radio, you know, the local Certapro and they try to make it feel really local and community based and you know, it's so and so down the street who owns it. So you're right. It's a really, it's a large front facing brand trying to feel like the local gyms, plumbing. And it's a disconnect for me. Uh, maybe because I know more about the industry. But I wonder how someone who's not as in tune with the home service world, like what their, what their take is on that.

Speaker B: I'll tell you, um, 98 of our franchise clients wish they were independent. I will, I will tell you that for a fact. They're like, man, what are you doing for this other company? I'm like, yeah, I wish I could do that for you too.

Speaker A: Yeah. But your hands. So your hands are tied for what you're able to do with them because of the franchise agreements.

Speaker B: Yep. Very restrictive and that's. It sounds really good. And unless I'm friend of a, uh, lot of franchise consultants, but that, you know, you have to understand what you're signing. It's a lot of paperwork. So if you, if you're thinking of that route or that, you know, that new business unit, I would always say do it, do it first. And then if you get some success then you could, you could pop into that.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: But yeah, we, the no training wheels is always the best. As I like to say.

Speaker A: No trading wheels. Dave, as you think about kind of the next six months here, five months remaining of the year, what, what are you going to continue to have your clients lean in on? What are you expecting? If you could have a, if you could predict what's going to go, go down in the marketing space, what do you think? Like, what should we expect here as we finish out 2026?

Speaker B: What we're talking about today as it relates to AI will be exponentially different as we go into 2027. Um, find a, find a news source that's not too salesy for that and just make sure that you're monitoring that. Um, and make sure that whoever you have working on any marketing AI search related stuff is monitoring some, some news. Because what comes out if they're not a vetted certified agency, which is fine, may be the reason that you're a month or two behind the eight ball and in that world just like in the traditional SEO, just like traditional ads a month behind might cost you that number one spot for six to eight months while you're fighting to get back up there. So that's you're gonna have the first chance to like get up top. And if you can keep it there, it's gonna be really nice.

Speaker A: It feels like such an uphill battle if you get behind.

Speaker B: Yeah, well. And they know just like the Google architects of the universe. Right. More money will think conceptually solve more problems. But I m would look at you know, if you're a roofing company, right. Or you're a painting company, I would think of instead of just the perfect client. Right. Brand new house. Give me the whole thing. Interior, exterior, the whole nine yards. Could we get in there on a patch job, spend half the amount of money paying for that lead and could sales convert them while they're in the house? Right now you're getting double the amount of leads. Maybe not the right cash flow, but Google and AI and all that see that you know they're a new roof as just as an example is the most expensive lead right now. It's like 500 on the east coast at least. But a roof patch is $35. So could sales convert one of 10 patches into a new roof? So that's the kind of the data science of what we get into of Google knows it's just more money. Right. So can we avoid that where possible?

Speaker A: It's an interesting way to look at it because it does also require the business to embrace the smaller jobs that they maybe wouldn't have otherwise. But maybe that's how you need to get a little bit more aggressive one

Speaker B: I like the, the mitigation of the volatility of a company. Right. When doing cash flow planning as ah business owner we have a lot of littles and a lot of bigs m But nothing's over 5 or 6% for us, which is how we run our, our company. So when you think of that, um, we have some clients that have that big whale which is awesome. Right? It's a great account. It's awesome. But just like if you put all your eggs in one basket on the marketing side, if Google changes the algorithm tomorrow and you're only in Google Ads, you're in a lot of trouble. So that whole business down to even like what you're spending your dollars on should be a nice mixture where applicable. I know it's not always possible but um, we've noticed that a lot of companies like that especially for training the new hires too, and getting them in on some, some smaller jobs.

Speaker A: Yeah. With, with the mix of marketing activities and then we'll, we'll kind of wrap up here. Um, I know obviously we talked a lot about kind of AI in the digital space today. What are, what are you seeing, um, in terms of direct mailers? Because I feel like this is coming up with a lot of people, clients are, are giving it a shot again. I've always been one. You know, I think about my own consumer behavior. It comes in, you know, comes in the mail. I glance at it. I generally toss it, put it in the recycling bin. Like it. Are you seeing overturn to direct mailers being more successful? What's, what's your thought on that side of it?

Speaker B: Listen, I'm primarily a digital marketer. I will secede to two traditional things, direct mail and billboards, if you have enough money to spend on them in certain markets.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Um, and tv. The reason why I say that on a very small scale, you can do that by yourself, right? We can, we, Spartan can design them, Spartan can print them for you. Spartan can ship them to your office. You could start direct mail by literally, as you're doing the job, take the foreman on the job site and literally walk the first five houses each way and just drop it. There's no direct mail fee on that in New Jersey. It's not illegal. I would check with your local states before you do that because you might need a solicitor license.

Speaker A: True, but true.

Speaker B: The, um, you can start at that on that small of a scale and then get into the, you know, spending tens of thousands a month on zip codes and counties and all that stuff. Um, but it might just be for that brain recognition, right? Mrs. Jones lived next to Ms. Sally. Ms. Sally's going to look over and say, who is. I mean, I see some trucks, maybe you have some subs, maybe you don't. I see a couple trucks out there, see some guys with some green shirts on and then that postcards in the mail. It's like, oh, they're really nice. They were professional. There's no nails in my driveway from the roof. Right. They were, you know, they came in over and knocked and said, hey, just let you know, we're going to start around 7:30am every day. If you have any problems, blah, blah, blah. That's a really good brand touch for you that you didn't re. You didn't pay. You actually got paid to do that because you were on that job site at the, that customer's house and that can all be done with a three cent postcard. You don't have to hire anybody to do that. You can get your local print shop to do it. Um, that's a good way to start that if it works. Right. And then if it does, maybe we do a little more aggressively but that people always want to jump so far. And I'm like, just get that to work first. Prove the roi right marketing guy, prove the numbers and then spend more money on it.

Speaker A: It's good. Start small. That's a good reminder. With those, you know, ones we're not, we're not quite sure are gonna, are gonna hit home. But you know, marketing is a science, right? You're, it's. Someone said to me before, it's where art meets science. You're just trying to figure out what works, what's gonna hit. And not everything does.

Speaker B: No. And if anybody tells you again, I need their phone number please, immediately.

Speaker A: Um, folks, if they want to learn more about Spartan Digital, get in touch with you, kind of follow you guys, see what you guys are up to. What's the best, um, way for someone to do that?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, if you remember this long Polish last name, my LinkedIn. Ah, Dave Krajak. Um, we post a lot of industry stuff there. Our website's going to start having a lot more content on it. It's www.spartan digital.com. um, or you can just Google us. We will come up. We're doing our own AI stuff so we should come up for all of our trends and some newsletters that we're doing. Not sales stuff. Just as we get the news of this stuff, we're just redistributing it to our list. So.

Speaker A: Well, good deal. Well, thanks so much for being here. I appreciate it for kind of bringing us into the marketing head space for the mid year of 2026. It's always interesting to, you know, see where things are at where we thought we were going to be. Um, maybe we'll do another check in here in 6 to 12 months or so and see, see where we're at in this, you know, in this crazy landscape and what has changed because it's certainly, certainly going at the speed of light. That's for sure.

Speaker B: Absolutely. It's going to be very different if we talk a year from now.

Speaker A: Let's do it. Let's plan to do it June 2027 or July 2027. Well, let's have a, let's, let's touch base and see where, see where life's at. Sound like a plan?

Speaker B: Sounds good.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Until then, thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thank you. Molly.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to this episode of out of the Hourglass. This podcast is recorded and produced by the team at NOLA Consulting Group, a nationwide coaching firm built specifically for leaders in the trades. If today's conversation sparked some ideas and you're curious about what coaching could look like for your business, we would love to connect. Visit nolancg.com to learn more. Have a question, comment or idea for a future podcast episode? I want to hear it. Subscribe wherever you listen, and we'll see you next time.